Old Liza had seen service, but her toilet had been made in the spirit of the best foot foremost; her coat had been freshly curried, her gray mane and tail carefully combed, and in her manner there was an air of emotional anticipation.

With one foot hovering above the step of his gig, Ambrose suddenly paused. The laprobe inside the carriage was quivering.

"Holy Moses!" Reaching underneath, the young man drew forth a small black and brown object whose legs and tail were five upturned points of supplication. Setting it upright on the ground, his face hardened. "Ain't I told you you couldn't come with me, Moses?" he began sternly. "Ef ever there was a crittur, human or otherwise, with a talent for bein' where it wasn't wanted, it's you! Besides, ain't I just locked you in the stable?"

The softening in his master's manner, visible in his last question, in the twitching of his eyebrows, in the slight movement of the tip of his long nose, was familiar to Moses. Casually he approached Ambrose's leg, but midway there, sensing defeat and not being an amiable beast, he planted his feet wide apart, barked as loudly as chronic hoarseness permitted, and straightway the young man humbled himself before him.

"Fer the lands sakes don't give me away," he pleaded. "I ain't never had such luck before this, getting off without being pestered." Down on his knees, he patted the stiff bristles, apologetically whispering: "Sorry not to be wishing your company, but Susan and Aunt Ca'line will look after you. Ain't nothin' on God's earth that will keep Susan Barrows from lookin' after every mortal thing she sets eyes on."

Without deigning a farewell, Moses trotted away. A ridiculous looking animal with an ancestry as mixed as any son of Adam, yet he had an enormous self-esteem. You see, though a dog, Moses possessed a self-sustaining ego, which requires no special ancestry or talents to uphold it. For there is a vanity that feeds itself, and many nobler personalities go down before it. Invariably Ambrose's did. Merely christened after the Hebrew lawmaker because of having been found amid some bulrushes, yet Moses may have felt that the name carried its anointment.

But now at last the traveller had fairly started. Swinging into his gig, he arranged his long legs in a comfortable right-angle triangle, taking a final hurried glance around him. "Move on, Liza, faster'n you can, or it's all over with me," he urged, "for things is lookin' kind of nervous."

Three times his wagon wheels had revolved in the clay road when a shutter on the house next door banged open, and like the explosion of a gun a child's voice rent the air.

"He's off! I tell you I see him. He's gettin' away unbeknownst." And a thin, brown figure hopping out of the window on the grass ran toward the street, twittering and moving its head from side to side like an excited bird. An instant later from the same opening a second pair of legs protruded—longer and thinner than the others, clad in white stockings and black cloth gaiters. Like the feelers of a beetle turned over on its back they waved in the air. And from behind a kind of barrel-shaped opening came a voice so tragic and compelling that even old Liza, stopping short, turned an inquiring eye toward the source of the disturbance.

As for Ambrose, although filled with a boy's impatience at interruption, the sight was overpowering. His reins dropped loosely, he stared, gasped, and then shook with silent laughter. Susan Barrows was living in the days of hoopskirts, and now in her effort to slide through the window had been held fast.

Nevertheless, in her time, desire has probably removed as many mountains as faith, so, notwithstanding her present difficulty, Susan's gave her power soon to set herself upright on the ground, and still with her full rigging to continue moving toward her goal like a ship with a full gale behind it.

A thin middle-aged woman, Mrs. Barrows was, of medium height and of terrific energy. The drama of her personal existence in a small town with no outside interests being always insufficient, Susan had filled in her hunger with an insatiate appetite for other people's affairs. Never could her curiosity about her neighbours be wholly gratified, and yet, like the possessor of any other great passion, its owner did her level best to satisfy it.

Out in the road, with one hand she grasped Ambrose's coat sleeve while the other was unconsciously raised toward heaven. Two bright spots of colour burned on her high cheek bones, her bunches of black corkscrew curls trembled with eagerness, her eyes challenged.

"Tell me where you be goin' and what you be a-goin' fer, Ambrose Thompson. It ain't fair you stealin' off this way each year and nobody findin' out where or why. Seems like us bein' neighbours and me seein' to you since your ma's death, that you might leastways have put your trust in me."

Removing her hand from his sleeve, Ambrose patted it gently before returning it to its owner. "No, ma'am, I ain't goin' to tell you no more this time than before," he replied. "And I was hopin' to get off once without remarks."

During this temporary delay the younger Susan had been industriously pecking and poking about in the lower part of their neighbour's gig. Now as the young man moved on for the second time the child's voice again rang after him.

"He's goin' courtin'; Ambrose Thompson is always runnin' after girls! It's Peachy Williams, for I seen his leg under his duster, and he's wearing his Sunday clothes!"

These last words were a triumph of evidence, but not for a moment would Ambrose look back nor appear to have heard. A humorous affection he might feel for the older Susan, but for the younger his dislike was to last for more than fifty years. Nevertheless, a little later he did turn around, and root and branch, the Susans had vanished, so that even now the news of his departure was stirring through Pennyroyal as the wind moves the leaves in a group of closely planted trees.

Something it is to know when one is beaten. Swearing a trifle and yet grinning, the boy settled himself more comfortably in his gig. "Might as well drive through town now kind of slow, and give folks a treat," he relented. "Mebbe I was shirkin' duty in tryin' to sneak off. Pennyrile ain't to say starvin' for food and clothes, but she certainly is pinin' for excitement, and who says that ain't just as bad? Seems like Christian charity for me to give this town something to talk about at least once a year."

And truly these yearly spring migrations of young Ambrose Thompson had aroused more interest and unrest in Pennyroyal than the yearly mystery of the earth's rebirth. Because, for the past five years on a certain May morning (and there never was a way of discovering just which morning he might choose) Ambrose had set out, at first on foot and later with his gig, and been away from his home eight and forty hours. Returning, he had given no clue as to where he had been.

Now like the music of a calliope the squeak of his wagon wheels awoke the village. Windows and doors flew open, heads in nightcaps and bald heads and heads with curls were thrust forth, but to their volley of questionings and accusations, Ambrose offered only the morning's greetings.

Travelling with praiseworthy slowness, he neglected no street in Pennyroyal, and, by the dozen, girls went fluttering in and out of houses, to wave farewells to the adventurer, while bolder voices called out Peachy Williams's name with every teasing inflection. One girl to whom Ambrose threw the spray of honeysuckle from his buttonhole cast it scornfully back, refusing