The Queen of Sheba / My Cousin the Colonel | Page 4

as good as a play.
At noon that day our adventureless adventurer had reached Bayley's
Four- Corners, where he found provender for himself and Mary at what
had formerly been a tavern, in the naive stage-coach epoch. It was the
sole house in the neighborhood, and was occupied by the ex-landlord,
one Tobias Sewell, who had turned farmer. On finishing his cigar after
dinner, Lynde put the saddle on Mary, and started forward again. It is
hardly correct to say forward, for Mary took it into her head to back out
of Bayley's Four-Corners, a feat which she performed to the
unspeakable amusement of Mr. Sewell and a quaint old gentleman,
named Jaffrey, who boarded in the house.
"I guess that must be a suck-cuss hoss," remarked Mr. Sewell, resting
his loosely jointed figure against the rail fence as he watched his
departing guest.
Mary backed to the ridge of the hill up which the turnpike stretched
from the ancient tavern, then recovered herself and went on.
"I never saw such an out-and-out wilful old girl as you are, Mary!"
ejaculated Lynde, scarlet with mortification. "I begin to admire you."
Perhaps the covert reproach touched some finer chord of Mary's nature,
or perhaps Mary had done her day's allowance of backing; whatever the
case was, she indulged no further caprice that afternoon beyond shying
vigorously at a heavily loaded tin-pedler's wagon, a proceeding which
may be palliated by the statement of the fact that many of Mary's
earlier years were passed in connection with a similar establishment.
The afterglow of sunset had faded out behind the serrated line of hills,
and black shadows were assembling, like conspirators, in the orchards
and under the spreading elms by the roadside, when Edward Lynde
came in sight of a large manufacturing town, which presented a
sufficiently bizarre appearance at that hour.
Grouped together in a valley were five or six high, irregular buildings,
illuminated from basement to roof, each with a monstrous chimney

from which issued a fan of party-colored flame. On one long low
structure, with a double row of windows gleaming like the port-holes of
a man-of- war at night, was a squat round tower that now and then
threw open a vast valve at the top, and belched forth a volume of amber
smoke, which curled upward to a dizzy height and spread itself out
against the sky. Lying in the weird light of these chimneys, with here
and there a gable or a spire suddenly outlined in vivid purple, the
huddled town beneath seemed like an outpost of the infernal regions.
Lynde, however, resolved to spend the night there instead of riding on
farther and trusting for shelter to some farm-house or barn. Ten or
twelve hours in the saddle had given him a keen appetite for rest.
Presently the roar of flues and furnaces, and the resonant din of mighty
hammers beating against plates of iron, fell upon his ear; a few minutes
later he rode into the town, not knowing and not caring in the least
what town it was.
All this had quite the flavor of foreign travel to Lynde, who began
pondering on which hotel he should bestow his patronage--a question
that sometimes perplexes the tourist on arriving at a strange city. In
Lynde's case the matter was considerably simplified by the
circumstance that there was but a single aristocratic hotel in the place.
He extracted this information from a small boy, begrimed with
iron-dust, and looking as if he had just been cast at a neighboring
foundry, who kindly acted as cicerone, and conducted the tired
wayfarer to the doorstep of The Spread Eagle, under one of whose
wings--to be at once figurative and literal--he was glad to nestle for the
night.

II
IN WHICH THERE IS A FAMILY JAR
While Lynde is enjoying the refreshing sleep that easily overtook him
after supper, we will reveal to the reader so much of the young man's
private history as may be necessary to the narrative. In order to do this,

the author, like Deacon Twombly's mare, feels it indispensable to back
a little.
One morning, about three years previous to the day when Edward
Lynde set forth on his aimless pilgrimage, Mr. Jenness Bowlsby, the
president of the Nautilus Bank at Rivermouth, received the following
letter from his wife's nephew, Mr. John Flemming, a young merchant in
New York--
NEW YORK, May 28,1869.
MY DEAR UNCLE: In the course of a few days a friend of mine, Mr.
Edward Lynde of this city, will call upon you and hand you a note of
introduction from myself. I write this to secure for him in advance the
liking and interest which I am persuaded you will not be able to
withhold on closer acquaintance. I have been