“I should be scairt to death,” said Mrs. Tobin.  “What creatur’s men folks be to like such things!  Well, I do declare.”

“Yes,” explained the mild little man.  “There’s sights of desp’radoes makes a han’some livin’ out o’ followin’ them coaches, an’ stoppin’ an’ robbin’ ’em clean to the bone.  Your money or your life!” and he flourished his stub of a whip over the sorrel mare.

“Landy me! you make me run all of a cold creep.  Do tell somethin’ heartenin’, this cold day.  I shall dream bad dreams all night.”

“They put on black crape over their heads,” said the driver mysteriously.  “Nobody knows who most on ’em be, and like as not some o’ them fellows come o’ good families.  They’ve got so they stop the cars, and go right through ’em bold as brass.  I could make your hair stand on end, Mis’ Tobin,—­I could so!”

“I hope none on ’em’ll git round our way, I’m sure,” said Fanny Tobin.  “I don’t want to see none on ’em in their crape bunnits comin’ after me.”

“I ain’t goin’ to let nobody touch a hair o’ your head,” and Mr. Briley moved a little nearer, and tucked in the buffaloes again.

“I feel considerable warm to what I did,” observed the widow by way of reward.

“There, I used to have my fears,” Mr. Briley resumed, with an inward feeling that he never would get to North Kilby depot a single man.  “But you see I hadn’t nobody but myself to think of.  I’ve got cousins, as you know, but nothin’ nearer, and what I’ve laid up would soon be parted out; and—­well, I suppose some folks would think o’ me if anything was to happen.”

Mrs. Tobin was holding her cloud over her face,—­the wind was sharp on that bit of open road,—­but she gave an encouraging sound, between a groan and a chirp.

“‘T wouldn’t be like nothin’ to me not to see you drivin’ by,” she said, after a minute.  “I shouldn’t know the days o’ the week.  I says to Susan Ellen last week I was sure ’twas Friday, and she said no, ‘twas Thursday; but next minute you druv by and headin’ toward North Kilby, so we found I was right.”

“I’ve got to be a featur’ of the landscape,” said Mr. Briley plaintively.  “This kind o’ weather the old mare and me, we wish we was done with it, and could settle down kind o’ comfortable.  I’ve been lookin’ this good while, as I drove the road, and I’ve picked me out a piece o’ land two or three times.  But I can’t abide the thought o’ buildin’,—­’twould plague me to death; and both Sister Peak to North Kilby and Mis’ Deacon Ash to the Pond, they vie with one another to do well by me, fear I’ll like the other stoppin’-place best.”

“I shouldn’t covet livin’ long o’ neither one o’ them women,” responded the passenger with some spirit.  “I see some o’ Mis’ Peak’s cookin’ to a farmers’ supper once, when I was visitin’ Susan Ellen’s folks, an’ I says ’Deliver me from sech pale-complected baked beans as them!’ and she give a kind of a quack.  She was settin’ jest at my left hand, and couldn’t help hearin’ of me.  I wouldn’t have spoken if I had known, but she needn’t have let on they was hers an’ make everything unpleasant.  ‘I guess them beans taste just as well as other folks’,’ says she, and she wouldn’t never speak to me afterward.”