“Now, young man,” said the stranger, “will you go and do as you’re bid?  I’m ready to pay for my dinner, and you can say so.”  The boy stared at him, slowly taking in the facts of his costume, with eyes that climbed from the heavy shoes up the legs of his thick-ribbed stockings and his knickerbockers, past the pleats and belt of his Norfolk jacket, to the red neckcloth tied under the loose collar of his flannel outing-shirt, and so by his face, with its soft, young beard and its quiet eyes, to the top of his braidless, bandless slouch hat of soft felt.  It was one of the earliest costumes of the kind that had shown itself in the hill country, and it was altogether new to the boy.  “Come,” said the wearer of it, “don’t stand on the order of your going, but go at once,” and he sat down on the steps with his back to the boy, who heard these strange terms of command with a face of vague envy.

The noonday sunshine lay in a thin, silvery glister on the slopes of the mountain before them, and in the brilliant light the colossal forms of the Lion’s Head were prismatically outlined against the speckless sky.  Through the silvery veil there burned here and there on the densely wooded acclivities the crimson torch of a maple, kindled before its time, but everywhere else there was the unbroken green of the forest, subdued to one tone of gray.  The boy heard the stranger fetch his breath deeply, and then expel it in a long sigh, before he could bring himself to obey an order that seemed to leave him without the choice of disobedience.  He came back and found the stranger as he had left him.  “Come on, if you want your dinner,” he said; and the stranger rose and looked at him.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Thomas Jefferson Durgin.”

“Well, Thomas Jefferson Durgin, will you show me the way to the pump and bring a towel along?”

“Want to wash?”

“I haven’t changed my mind.”

“Come along, then.”  The boy made a movement as if to lead the way indoors; the stranger arrested him.

“Here.  Take hold of this and put it out of the rush of travel somewhere.”  He lifted his burden from where he had dropped it in the road and swung it toward the boy, who ran down the steps and embraced it.  As he carried it toward a corner of the porch he felt of the various shapes and materials in it.

Then he said, “Come on!” again, and went before the guest through the dim hall running midway of the house to the door at the rear.  He left him on a narrow space of stone flagging there, and ran with a tin basin to the spring at the barn and brought it back to him full of the cold water.

“Towel,” he said, pulling at the family roller inside the little porch at the door; and he watched the stranger wash his hands and face, and then search for a fresh place on the towel.