that cult you all ‘fraid of,’ says he.  ’My master, he ride any hoss,’ says Paul.  ‘You saddle him,’ says be; and so they did, and Paul, he led that colt—­the kickinest and ugliest young beast you ever see in your life—­up to the place where his master, as he calls him, and he lives.  What does that Kirkwood do but clap on a couple of long spurs and jump on to that colt’s back, and off the beast goes, tail up, heels flying, standing up on end, trying all sorts of capers, and at last going it full run for a couple of miles, till he’d got about enough of it.  That colt went off as ferce as a wild-cat, and come back as quiet as a cosset lamb.  A man that pays his bills reg’lar, in good money, and knows how to handle a hoss is three quarters of a gentleman, if he is n’t a whole one,—­and most likely he is a whole one.”

So spake the patriarch of the Anchor Tavern.  His wife had already given her favorable opinion of her former guest.  She now added something to her description as a sequel to her husband’s remarks.

“I call him,” she said, “about as likely a young gentleman as ever I clapped my eyes on.  He is rather slighter than I like to see a young man of his age; if he was my sun, I should like to see him a little more fleshy.  I don’t believe he weighs more than a hundred and thirty or forty pounds.  Did y’ ever look at those eyes of his, M’randy?  Just as blue as succory flowers.  I do like those light-complected young fellows, with their fresh cheeks and their curly hair; somehow, curly hair doos set off anybody’s face.  He is n’t any foreigner, for all that he talks Italian with that Mr. Paul that’s his help.  He looks just like our kind of folks, the college kind, that’s brought up among books, and is handling ’em, and reading of ’em, and making of ’em, as like as not, all their lives.  All that you say about his riding the mad colt is just what I should think he was up to, for he’s as spry as a squirrel; you ought to see him go over that fence, as I did once.  I don’t believe there’s any harm in that young gentleman,—­I don’t care what people say.  I suppose he likes this place just as other people like it, and cares more for walking in the woods and paddling about in the water than he doos for company; and if he doos, whose business is it, I should like to know?”

The third of the speakers was Miranda, who had her own way of judging people.

“I never see him but two or three times,” Miranda said.  “I should like to have waited on him, and got a chance to look stiddy at him when he was eatin’ his vittles.  That ’s the time to watch folks, when their jaws get a-goin’ and their eyes are on what’s afore ’em.  Do you remember that chap the sheriff come and took away when we kep’ tahvern?  Eleven year ago it was, come nex’ Thanksgivin’ time.  A mighty grand gentleman from the City he set up for.  I watched him, and I watched him.  Says I, I don’t believe you’re no gentleman, says I. He eat with his knife, and that ain’t the way city folks