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 on the platform, and his heart leaped as he recognized two or three which had long been consigned to oblivion. In a distant group was a man who squinted; with a shudder of compunction Paul recognized Bean-Oh, whose eye he had damaged with his umbrella, twenty years since. And there, walking down the platform with a mail bag on his bent, green shoulders, was old Silas, the postmaster—spitting tobacco juice at regular intervals. Old Silas who kept a shop where Paul and Walter Dreer had spent their weekly allowance on chocolate "dudes" and liquorice whips, old Silas who had pumped the organ in the days before Dr. Wilcove had persuaded the congregation to install water power, old Silas who had seemed venerable and hoary thirteen years ago, but who couldn't be more than sixty even now! Paul stood beside his hand-bags, and the postmaster moved on without a hint of recognition in his watery eyes.

A lanky fellow, in overalls, "one of the Wigginses," to judge by a generalized family likeness, was standing beside an empty cart.

"Can you take these bags and my trunks to the hotel for me?" Paul asked.

"What hotel?"

"Mr. Fraser's," Paul replied. The name came to him along with the familiar sights and smells. "I didn't know there was any other."

"Cance Fraser's been dead two year," said the youth in a tone which made Paul feel the weight of his ignorance.

"Then what's happened to the hotel?"

"Nothin.'Nothin'. [sic] Only Fred Matthews runs it now. Stayin' long, Mister?"

"I haven't decided yet."

"What you sellin'—books?"

"No." Paul resented the familiarity, though he recognized in it a token of respect. The yokel's way of show-