That morning Ossian Orne came in and sat at the table without asking for permission to be admitted to such intimacy.  He came with the air of a man who was keeping an appointment, and Mr. Britt’s manner of greeting Orne showed that this was so.

Mr. Orne did not remove the earlapper cap which the nippy February day demanded; nor did he shuck off the buffalo coat whose baldness in the rear below the waistline suggested the sedentary habits of Mr. Orne.  He selected a doughnut from the plate at Britt’s elbow and munched placidly.

Landlord Files, who was bringing ham and eggs to a commercial drummer, was amazed by this familiarity and stopped and showed that amazement.  He was more astonished by what he overheard.  Mr. Orne was saying, “As your manager, Britt—­”

Mr. Britt scowled at Mr. Files, and the latter slap-slupped on his slippered way; it was certainly news that Britt had taken on a manager.  Such a personage must be permitted to be familiar.  When Mr. Files looked again, Mr. Orne was eating a second doughnut.  He was laying down the law to a nodding and assenting Mr. Britt on some point, and then he took a third doughnut and rose to his feet.

“I’ll be back to-night, with full details and further instructions to you, Britt,” declared Mr. Orne, who was known in the county political circles as “Sniffer” Orne.  He combined politics with nursery-stock canvassing and had a way of his own in getting under the skins of men when he went in search of information.  “If I ain’t back to-night I’ll report to-morrow.  I may have to take a run over into Norway, Vienna, and Peru to make sure of how things stand generally.”

He trudged out, stooping forward and waddling with the gait of a parrot ambling along on a pole; his projecting coat tail and his thin beak gave him a sort of avian look.  The commercial drummer, overhearing his projected itinerary, glanced out of the window as if he expected to see Mr. Orne spread wings and fly.  But Mr. Orne tucked himself into a high-backed sleigh and went jangling off along Egypt’s single street.

The stranger, inquiring of Mr. Files, learned that Mr. Orne was not as much of a globe-trotter as he sounded.

“It’s only the way the Old Sirs named the towns in the ranges about here when the land was took up.  In this range we have Egypt and them other towns you heard him speak of.  In the next range below are Jerusalem and Damascus and Levant and Purgatory Mills.  If them unorganized townships to the north of us are ever took up and made towns of, it would be just like some whifflehead to name ’em Heaven, Hell, Hooray, and Hackmetack.  But the name of Egypt fits this town all right,” stated Mr. Files, disconsolately, and in his perturbation raising his voice.

“Files, don’t run down your home town,” rasped Mr. Britt.

“What has been run down as far’s it can be run can’t be run no farther,” said the landlord.  “And I ’ain’t said why the name Egypt fits the town, for that matter.”  Britt’s ugly stare was taking the spirit out of the landlord’s rebelliousness.