Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/151



arrived, late one November afternoon, at a wretched little tavern in a small village in Maine. I was very unhappy. It was of no consequence to me that I was young; it was of no consequence to me that I had superb health. I was very unhappy. How compassionately middle age smiles, looking back upon the miseries of its healthy youth! How gladly to-day would I be sent away in disgrace from college, to rusticate for six months in a country parson's house, if I could feel the warm, strong blood bound in my veins, as it bounded that night when I jumped from the top of the stage to the ground under the ugly, creaking sign of that village tavern.

It was a dismal afternoon. A warm rain was slowly filtering down through the elm-trees with which the street was too thickly shaded. The ground was sprinkled with golden-yellow leaves, and little pools of muddy water filled every foot-print on the grass-grown sidewalk. A few inert