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T was a sultry, close day in July, and even old Cap'n Sands, who had seen the sun beat down on Chamboro, on and off, for some seventy long years, could recollect no hotter weather. "Leastaways, Henery," he qualified, "fer this time o' the year!" In this old Cap'n Steiner, mopping his brow with slightly palsied hand, was not inclined to agree. There was a day in Seventy-Nine, he held, that had seemed a sight hotter to him—the Sunday week after the sawmill was burned and Bill Rankin's wife was taken with a stroke on the Market Square, and the whole town said it was a touch o' sun.

"Well, right here suits me well 'nough!" said old Cap'n Sands, placidly. He was the more corpulent of the two, and he fanned himself languidly with his well-worn panama hat.

They were seated in the shade of the maples on the Common, that stretch of open