The old man did not seem to hear him. "I forbade the renunciation she
wished to make for my sake," he said, gently, "but I accept it now for the
sake of our stricken friend--for Mr. Harkless."
"And for the Carlow 'Herald,'" completed the foreman.
The morning following that upon which this conversation took place, the
two gentlemen stood together on the station platform, awaiting the arrival
of the express from Rouen. It was a wet gray day; the wide country lay
dripping under formless wraps of thin mist, and a warm, drizzling rain
blackened the weather-beaten shingles of the station; made clear-
reflecting puddles of the unevenly worn planks of the platform, and
dampened the packing-cases that never went anywhere too thoroughly for
occupation by the station-lounger, and ran in a little crystal stream off
Fisbee's brown cotton umbrella and down Mr. Parker's back. The 'bus
driver, Mr. Bennett, the proprietor of two attendant "cut-unders," and
three or four other worthies whom business, or the lack of it, called to
that locality, availed themselves of the shelter of the waiting-room, but
the gentlemen of the "Herald" were too agitated to be confined, save by
the limits of the horizon. They had reached the station half an hour
before train time, and consumed the interval in pacing the platform under
the cotton umbrella, addressing each other only in monosyllables. Those in
the waiting-room gossiped eagerly, and for the thousandth time, about the
late events, and the tremendous news concerning Fisbee. Judd Bennett
looked out through the rainy doorway at the latter with reverence and a
fine pride of townsmanship, declaring it to be his belief that Fisbee and
Parker were waiting for her at the present moment. It was a lady, and a
bird of a lady, too, else why should Cale Parker be wearing a coat, and be
otherwise dooded and fixed up beyond any wedding? Judd and his friends
were somewhat excited over Parker.
Fisbee was clad in his best shabby black, which lent an air of state to
the occasion, but Mr. Parker--Caleb Parker, whose heart, during his five
years of residence in Plattville, had been steel-proof against all the
feminine blandishments of the town, whose long, lank face had shown
beneath as long, and lanker, locks of proverbially uncombed hair, he who
had for weeks conspicuously affected a single, string-patched suspender,
who never, even upon the Sabbath day, wore a collar or blacked his shoes--
what aesthetic leaven had entered his soul that he donned not a coat alone
but also a waistcoat with checks?--and, more than that, a gleaming
celluloid collar?--and, more than that, a brilliant blue tie? What had
this iron youth to do with a rising excitement at train time and brilliant
blue ties?