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CONTENTS

STORIES FROM Strangers and Wayfarers, Published 1890

  A winter courtship (Atlantic Monthly, Feb., 1889)

  Going to Shrewsbury (Atlantic Monthly, July, 1889)

  The white rose road (Atlantic Monthly, Sept., 1889)

  THE TOWN POOR (Atlantic Monthly, July, 1890)

STORIES FROM A Native of Winby and Other Tales, Published 1893

  A NATIVE OF WINBY (Atlantic Monthly, May, 1891)

LOOKING BACK ON GIRLHOOD, Youth’s Companion, January 7, 1892

MORE STORIES FROM A Native of Winby and Other Tales, Published 1893

  THE PASSING OF SISTER BARSETT (Cosmopolitan Magazine, May, 1892)

  DECORATION DAY (Harper’s Magazine, June, 1892)

  THE FLIGHT OF BETSEY LANE (Scribner’s Magazine, Aug. 1893)

THE GRAY MILLS OF FARLEY, Cosmopolitan Magazine, June, 1898

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A Winter Courtship

The passenger and mail transportation between the towns of North Kilby and Sanscrit Pond was carried on by Mr. Jefferson Briley, whose two-seated covered wagon was usually much too large for the demands of business.  Both the Sanscrit Pond and North Kilby people were stayers-at-home, and Mr. Briley often made his seven-mile journey in entire solitude, except for the limp leather mail-bag, which he held firmly to the floor of the carriage with his heavily shod left foot.  The mail-bag had almost a personality to him, born of long association.  Mr. Briley was a meek and timid-looking body, but he held a warlike soul, and encouraged his fancies by reading awful tales of bloodshed and lawlessness in the far West.  Mindful of stage robberies and train thieves, and of express messengers who died at their posts, he was prepared for anything; and although he had trusted to his own strength and bravery these many years, he carried a heavy pistol under his front-seat cushion for better defense.  This awful weapon was familiar to all his regular passengers, and was usually shown to strangers by the time two of the seven miles of Mr. Briley’s route had been passed.  The pistol was not loaded.  Nobody (at least not Mr. Briley himself) doubted that the mere sight of such a weapon would turn the boldest adventurer aside.