Year: 1875

BY W. o. SToDDARD.


There was not in all Western New


York a more truly rural district thar
Arway township, twenty years ago. l
would have taken a good judge to deter
mine which was the more dead-alive
Arway, Arway Center, Arway Fou
Corners, or Upper or Lower, or East o.
West Arway, of all the villages int
which the town was cut up, and no
among them all could he or any othel
man have discovered queerer "queel
duck" than old Sol Potter. Nobod,
knew precisely whether Sol's years were
fifty or sixty, for he seemed always tt
have been cold SOL" and nobody else
Probably he couldn't have been anybody
else if he had tried, and rich as he was, in
what went for riches in those parts, moi
soul in Arway would have swapped
places with him. Truth to tell, old Sol
was as mean as he looked, and the only
really devoted friend he had besides him.
self, was the sorry-looking, rough-coated,
rope-tailed, long.eared, little old mule
that carried him to meeting and the few
other errands which took him away from
his farm.


OF late, however, SoPs mule had his
errands and other troubles multiplied for
him, for his master had seen something,
through his horn-rimmed spectacles, of a
sort which has brought trouble, to high
and low alike, since the world began.


If Sol had only looked as earnestly at
some such girl as Sally Won Lennep, be-
fore he began to wear specks," it might
have made man of him. But now,
and of all the girls in Arway! Well, if
Sally had been left to herself, Soils mule
would never have made the second trip
to the Van Lennep homestead.


There was where the trouble came in,
however; for, long and dreary as was the
road across the hills, old Sol could almost
feel at home when he reached the Van
Lenneps', inasmuch as he held the one
mortgage on the farm. And so, easy-go-
ing, trouble-hating Ben Van Lennep had
begged his merry-eyed daughter "not to
make fun of old SOL" and so old Sol per-
sisted in tormenting the life of his m ule
half out of him with those trips across
the hills.


Ben himself would never have cared if
Sally's dry-looking admirer came every
night in the week, but there were Others
whose interest in the matter was more
active.


Perhaps Sally did not feel so very bad
at first, as old Sol succeeded in sitting
out" one after another of her several
beaux, for she felt sure, somehow, that
one of them, at least, would stick, and,
if she had chosen, might have been able
to name the one, for Mat Granger was
a sort of man not all likely to give up
very easily.


1t was a little hard on Mat, though,
all through September and October-al-
most as hard as on the mule himself
and Sol Potter was dreadfully in the way,
in spite of every device which male and
female wit could devise or suggest.
Moreover, even Ben Van Lennep began
to get nervous, dreading continually the
explosion which was sure to come, if ever
Sol Potter got his courage up to the point
of speaking out" to Sally.


There was line, as Ben knew very
we'll, beyond which his parental author
ity, were he mean enough to strain it
that far, was dead-sure to snap asunder.
If his crops turned out well that year,
and sold to good advantage, he knew he
could snap his fingers at Sol Potter and
his mortgage; but, then, what If they
didn't?


There was the rub, and 80 Ben let
things slide after his accustomed fashion
until November came, with its cold
storms and raw, biting night-air,
which made matters 80 much worse for
the mule, and the dread of which kept
old Sol SO very late in SallyVan Lennep's
sitting-room.


Alas for Mr.. Matthew Granger; and
alas for Sally's comfortl


Alas too, for the mule; and now there
came a time when old Sol Potter be-
gan to have his own reason for uneasi-
ness.


Dry and cross grained and selfish as
the grim old bachelor had always been,
he was, nevertheless, a greedy collector
of all the stray news, true or otherwise,
that could get itself afloat in such COM
munity as that of Arway township, and
every man or woman he might come in
contact with was compelled to "stand
and deliver" whatever he or she might
have to tell.


Year after year, until then, the gossip
of Arway had been dull and stupid
enough, even in election times but, just
as Indian summer was coming on, it be-
gan to assume a decidedly different
character. Nothing but robbers and rob-
beries-highway robberies at that; none
of them near at hand, it was true, but
not 80 far away as to rob them of a species
of local interest, and all of them with
just that peculiar dash of vagueness and
uncertainty of detail which gives so keen
a zest to your genuine, up-country tale
of unprin ted and unverified horror.
Why, some days as many as three differ
ent men had met old Sol, and each one
of them stopped to ask him the particu-
lars of some new exploit of the villains
who were disturbing the old-time peace
and quiet.


"Whatl not heard of itT exclaimed
one. "Weli, now, / do declared reck-
oned I'd git the perticklers out Of you,
sartin sure. You alters pear to git the
news as soon as anybody ] know"


And very much the same was the sur
prise expressed by the others; nor did it
fail to come to pass that, before the
week was out, Sol had received all the
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