and as Elmer’s own ancestors were from Allentown, he thought he’d like to take up the language, so he’d borrowed from his guest a book called “The Sorrows of Werther.”  Of all the rubbish that was ever wrote, them “Sorrows” were the poorest.  Elmer had only figured out a page and a half, but that gave him enough insight into their character to convince him that a man who could set reading them till half-past ten was—­here mine host tapped his forehead and winked.  Curious chap, Weston.  Elmer had seen a heap of men in his time and never met the like.  There’s no way to get to see men and understand them like keeping a hotel.  When you’ve “kept” for about forty years, there’s hardly a man comes along that you can’t set right down in his particular class before he’s even registered.  But Weston had blocked him at every turn.  Elmer knew no more of the man now than on the day he came.  In fact, he was getting more and more tangled up about him all the time.  For instance, why should one who could read Goth and understand the “Sorrows,” want to set around the store and argue with such-like ignoramuses as Ike Bolum and Hen Holmes?  Spiker was willing to bet that right now Weston was over the way trying to prove to them that two and two was four.

The suggestion seemed a likely one, so I interrupted the flow of Elmer’s troubled thoughts to say good-night, and went out.  I paused a moment on the porch.  A lamp was blazing in the store and I could plainly see everyone gathered along the counter.  Henry Holmes was standing with his back to the stove, one hand wagging up and down at the solemn line of figures on the bench.  But Weston was not there.  And in our valley, when a man is not at home o’night he should be at the store, else there is a mystery to be solved.  To solve this one I stopped on the tavern steps, leaned against a pillar, and gazed through the dozing village.

At the head of the street where our house stood a bright light burned.  There Tim was and there I should be also.  A hundred times down South on my post at night, with my back on the rows and rows of white tents, I had sought to pierce the black gloom before me as if there I could see that same light—­the home light.  Often I fancied I saw it, and in its bright circle Tim was bending over his book.  Here it was in truth, calling me, but I turned from it and looked away over the flats, where another light was winking on the hillside.

Behind that hill, on the eastward ridge, a great ball is glowing, fiery red.  Higher and higher it rises, into the tree-tops, then over them; higher and higher, bathing the valley in soft, white light, uncovering the gray road that climbs the ridge-side; higher and higher, until the pines on the ridge-top stand out boldly, fringing into the sky; higher and higher, casting mysterious shadows over the meadows, touching with light the hillside, new-ploughed and naked; clear and white lies the road over the flats