feet move heavily, unnaturally, under the imprisoning weight of shoes. But their voices! The slow provincial speech in mellow monotone sounds on the ear as if the whispers of native forests had mingled long ago with baby-lips, and left with the tones of the mountain-born a cadence akin to melody; but it is a music as common to the wood as the matinees and vespers of the robin, and as little noted. The clearing of patches for buckwheat and the fights with weeds in the corn-field leave little space for the gleams of poetry about them. And so moves life over the old hunting-grounds of the Six Nations-those Indian auto

crats.

And one evening of early spring, one of the spring days that grow misty as with the tenderness of Indian summer, the dignitaries of the store porch were struck into contemplative silence as the sound of hoof-beats on the road was followed by the sight of two equestrians riding from one of the back roads into the broad national one called the Pike. The new-comers were a man and woman, both young, both looking rather "tailor-made" beside the natives of "The Roads."

"They are stationed there like guardian angels," said the girl in an undertone as her companion dismounted; "and what eyes they have! Don't be long in there about the mail. I am not easily abashed, but to be a target for all that scrutiny is rather appalling."

She did not look abashed, however, as her very level eyes took in the unstudied grouping about the door in one leisurely, comprehensive glance, after which she turned her attention back over the way they had come, where great billows of green rise in shattered irregularity across the rugged Ligonier Valley.

"Did you notice that loose shoe?" she asked, pointing to his mare's foot as he reappeared; "that's what made her

stumble down there in the hollow. It's a pity to ride her home like that."

"So it is," he agreed, examining its hoof; while two or three of the guardian angels flopped down from their perches on the railings and fluttered nearer, with the dubious mingling of unconcern and curiosity on their faces.

"Any blacksmith around here?" he asked, looking up at their approach.

Naw, sir, tha' ain't," returned a stripling with a snuffstick in his cheek.

"None nearer than Uniontown?" asked the girl, turning to an older man who was braced complacently against a hitching-post.

"No, ma'am, not much; there's one down foot of the mountain, this side o' town, 'an then tha' is a man back in the timber shoes stock if he's a mind to; but strangers couldn't find the way, likely."

"Back in the timber?" repeated the stranger impatiently; "small use he is to the community back there. I should think right at the cross-roads is the place where one is needed; a good one ought to make money here. Why don't he try it?"

A smile of grim sympathy lit up two or three of the faces, and then the man at the post remarked:

"It's been talked over some, an' the decision o' the judges in the case has decided that it's becase he's too cussed." The speaker turned his eyes porchward as if for commendation, and evidently thought he got it, though all was silence. "Yes, sir-yes, ma'am, they's some people so plum contrary tha' won't do theyselves a good turn becase tha'r too scared lest tha' might be doing one for some other man; an' that's about the measure o' Dick Le Fevre."

"Well, I wish for the time being that he was here, what

ever his disposition," remarked the horseman, looking gloomily at the hobbled hoof. "If I can't get it on I'd be satisfied to get it off."

"Here comes a man who will fix it," said the storekeeper and post-master, as from the door he spied a figure crossing a mountain meadow toward them.

Yep," agreed the loquacious he of the post, "he'll either tinker the shoe or argy scripture, whichever you will;" and then he tapped his bony temple significantly. "Not dangerous, though," was the hasty assurance as the girl turned quickly around; "oh no, ma'am, not a bit; only just queer, that's all.”

The man who was "queer crossed the fence carrying an ax on his shoulder-a man of perhaps thirty, a slowmoving, bearded specimen of a mountaineer, with shoulders so broad that they gave him a squatty appearance as he came toward them with his head bent.

"Ho, Lennard! called the man of the store, "here's someone wants your help a bit."

He raised his head then, and no longer looked squat, and coming close to them his size made the other men look small. His slow eyes of a greenish gray moved over the group, looked intently into the eyes of the girl, who drew back a little, and then with equal earnestness perused the face of the stranger.

"You, I reckon?" he said, slowly; "what might it be?" The loose shoe was shown him, at which he looked without comment, and then leaning his ax against the porch he disappeared around the corner, and they heard him opening and closing the barn-door.

"It's all right," nodded the storekeeper.

"He has

gone to the tool-chest for something to work with."

"What an uncomfortable character to have around," said the girl; "his eyes make me nervous. Does he live here?"

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“God bless you-no, ma'am," was the gratuitous benediction of Mr. Speaker of the occasion. "Lennard don't live in no man s cabin but his own, and it's quite a ways back from 'The Roads.' But no one minds him comin' and goin'. He'll take what he needs out o' any man's stable, but he brings it back again."

Then they heard the barn-door close again, and the clink-et-y-clank of metals, and the subject of their discourse loomed up around the corner with some pinchers, a claw-hammer, and a cold-chisel, tools pressed into service for blacksmithing. Without a word, he picked up the foot and tapped and twisted, and loosened and pulled the remaining nails until the shoe dropped into his big hand; and the mare set her foot down gingerly, as if by degrees to get used to the lightness of that one leg.

"I am very, very much obliged to you," said the young man, as the smith picked up the tools and turned away. "But wait a bit, sir. I owe you something for that."

"I allow not," returned the man, not checking in the slightest his walk. "I'd do that much to save any beast from going lame."

"That's him all over," remarked one of the guardian angels; "an' talkin' to him ain't no kind of use. He's got

as much contrariness as Le Fevre, only it's a different sort."

The stranger, with his hand in his pocket, looked perplexedly in the direction the man had gone.

"Well, it's a favor, and I'm greatly obliged to him,” he said at last.

"That's all right," decided the judge at the post, as if it was himself who had given the service. You're welcome. Reckon the hoof can make the trip without a shoe all the distance you're goin'. Headin' for the summit, ain't you?” "Up that way. Good-evening."

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And then the halt was ended, the horses turned again into the road, and their riders turned naturally to the discussion of the group they had left.

"All of them looked alike," decided the girl.

"No," protested her companion, "that man the smith looked like no other."

"Oh! he; well, we must make allowance for that one. Yes, he had an individuality in his face, but of a queer sort; and you know they said he is a bit silly."

"Nothing silly about the nice way he took off that shoe." "No use talking to you," she laughed. "You have a faith in finding unalloyed nuggets of gold among the native specimens here, but you won't; you seem to think that the magnificent character of the country must of course produce the biped man on the same scale of grandeur, and you may find some type which will physically come up to your expectations, but mentally-well, with all their width of views and rare air, I would fancy people stifling here."

The speaker was a pretty girl, with a tinge of habitual disdain about the lips that showed she was aware of the prettiness; a clever girl-just clever enough for no one ever to be quite sure how much Dinah Floyd really knew about anything.

"Oh, I agree that the natural advantages and disadvantages are above par up here," she continued, "and the timber-lands seem endless; but those people-I mean the ones in the wood—what monotonous, sleepy lives they live in the cabins by the corn-fields. I wonder if many of them go melancholy mad?"

"Not any," returned the gentleman, composedly; "they generally have sound minds in sound bodies; and if you ask them what class furnishes the greatest number of lunatics to the county, they will tell you the latest innovation, the idle summer visitor."