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Wade packed his kit, and took the Hudson
River train for Dunderbunk the same afternoon.

He swallowed his dust, he gasped for his fresh
air, he wept over his cinders, he refused his “lozengers,”
he was admired by all the pretty girls
and detested by all the puny men in the train, and
in good time got down at his station.

He stopped on the platform to survey the land-and
water-privileges of his new abode.

“The June sunshine is unequalled,” he soliloquized,
“the river is splendid, the hills are pretty,
and the Highlands, north, respectable; but the village
has gone to seed. Place and people look lazy,
vicious, and ashamed. I suppose those chimneys
are my Foundry. The smoke rises as if the furnaces
were ill-fed and weak in the lungs. Nothing,
I can see, looks alive, except that queer little
steamboat coming in, — the `I. Ambuster,' — jolly
name for a boat!”

Wade left his traps at the station, and walked
through the village. All the gilding of a golden
sunset of June could not make it anything but
commonplace. It would be forlorn on a gray day,
and utterly dismal in a storm.

“I must look up a civilized house to lodge in,”
thought the stranger. “I cannot possibly camp at

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the tavern. Its offence is rum, and smells to
heaven.”

Presently our explorer found a neat, white, two-story,
home-like abode on the upper street, overlooking
the river.

“This promises,” he thought. “Here are roses
on the porch, a piano, or at least a melodeon, by
the parlor-window, and they are insured in the
Mutual, as the Mutual's plate announces. Now,
if that nice-looking person in black I see setting
a table in the back-room is a widow, I will camp
here.”

Perry Purtett was the name on the door, and opposite
the sign of an omnium-gatherum country-store
hinted that Perry was deceased. The hint
was a broad one. Wade read, “Ringdove, Successor
to late P. Purtett.”

“It 's worth a try to get in here out of the pagan
barbarism around. I 'll propose — as a lodger—
to the widow.”

So said Wade, and rang the bell under the roses.
A pretty, slim, delicate, fair-haired maiden answered.

“This explains the roses and the melodeon,”
thought Wade, and asked, “Can I see your
mother?”

Mamma came. “Mild, timid, accustomed to
depend on the late Perry, and wants a friend,”
Wade analyzed, while he bowed. He proposed
himself as a lodger.

“I did n't know it was talked of generally,”

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replied the widow, plaintively; “but I have said
that we felt lonesome, Mr. Purtett bein' gone, and
if the new minister —”

Here she paused. The cut of Wade's jib was
unclerical. He did not stoop, like a new minister.
He was not pallid, meagre, and clad in unwhole
some black, like the same. His bronzed face was
frank and bold and unfamiliar with speculations on
Original Sin or Total Depravity.

“I am not the new minister,” said Wade, smiling
slightly over his moustache; “but a new Superintendent
for the Foundry.”

“Mr. Whiffler is goin'?” exclaimed Mrs. Purtett.

She looked at her daughter, who gave a little
sob and ran out of the room.

“What makes my daughter Belle feel bad,” says
the widow, “is, that she had a friend, — well, it
is n't too much to say that they was as good as
engaged, — and he was foreman of the Foundry
finishin'-shop. But somehow Whiffler spoilt him,
just as he spoils everything he touches; and last
winter, when Belle was away, William Tarbox —
that 's his name, and his head is runnin' over with
inventions — took to spreein' and liquor, and got
ashamed of himself, and let down from a foreman
to a hand, and is all the while lettin' down lower.”

The widow's heart thus opened, Wade walked
in as consoler. This also opened the lodgings to
him. He was presently installed in the large and
small front-rooms up-stairs, unpacking his traps,
and making himself permanently at home.

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Superintendent Whiffler came over, by and by,
to see his successor. He did not like his looks.
The new man should have looked mean or weak or
rascally, to suit the outgoer.

“How long do you expect to stay?” asks
Whiffler, with a half-sneer, watching Wade hanging
a map and a print vis-à-vis.

“Until the men and I, or the Company and I,
cannot pull together.”

“I 'll give you a week to quarrel with both, and
another to see the whole concern go to everlasting
smash. And now, if you 're ready, I 'll go over
the accounts with you and prove it.”

Whiffler himself, insolent, cowardly, and a humbug,
if not a swindler, was enough, Wade thought,
to account for any failure. But he did not mention
this conviction.