was speedily silenced.  The immature Wilbur drove the thing acceptably, though requiring help on the larger boxes of merchandise, and Trimble Cushman, still driving horses on his other truck, was proud of his employee.  Moreover, the boy became in high repute for his knowledge of the inner mysteries of these new mechanisms.  New cars appeared in Newbern every day now, and many of them, developing ailments of a character more or less alarming to their purchasers, were brought to his distinguished notice with results almost uniformly gratifying.  He was looked up to, consulted as a specialist, sent for to minister to distant roadside failures, called in the night, respected and rewarded.

It was a new Newbern through whose thoroughfares the new motor truck of Trimble Cushman was so expertly propelled.  Farm horses still professed the utmost dismay at sight of vehicles drawn by invisible horses, and their owners often sought to block industrial progress by agitation for a law against these things, but progress was triumphant.  The chamber of commerce recorded immense gains in population.  New factories and mills had gone up beside the little river.  New people were on the streets or living in their new houses.  New merchants came to meet the new demand for goods.

The homy little town was putting on airs of a great city.  There was already a Better Newbern club.  The view down River Street from its junction with State, Masonic Hall on the left and the new five-story Whipple block on the right, as preserved on the picture postcards sold by the Cut-Rate Pharmacy, impressed all purchasers with the town’s vitality.  The Advance appeared twice a week, outdoing its rival, the Star, by one issue; and Sam Pickering, ever in the van of progress, was busy with plans for making his journal a daily.

Newbern was coming on, even as boys were coming on from bare feet to shoes on week-days.  Ever and again there were traffic jams on River Street, a weaving turmoil of farmers’ wagons, buggies, delivery carts, about a noisy, fuming centre of motor vehicles.  High in the centre would be the motor truck of Trimble Cushman, loaded with cases and nursed through the muddle by a cool, clear-eyed youth, who sat with delicate, sure hands on a potent wheel.  Never did he kill or maim either citizen or child, to the secret chagrin of Judge Penniman.  Traffic jams to him were a part of the day’s work.

When he had performed for a little time this skilled labour for Trimble Cushman it was brought to him one day that he was old indeed.  For he observed, delivering a box to Rapp Brothers, jewellery, that from the sidewalk before that establishment he was being courted by a small boy; a shy boy with bare feet and freckles who permanently exposed two front teeth, and who followed the truck to the next place of delivery.  Here, when certain boxes had been left, he seated himself, as if absentmindedly, upon the remote rear of the truck and was borne to another stopping place.  The truck’s driver glanced back savagely at him, but not too savagely; then pretended to ignore him.