Buck, General Store," to "I. Buck, Commercial Emporium," and there he had lived five years, keeping "bachelor's hall" in the big house adjoining the store. Sometimes he dropped vague hints that he might start on the road again, displaying as much assurance of long years ahead as though he were twenty-one.

It was a general saying in Smyrna Corner that a Buck didn't think he was getting old until after he had turned ninety. The townspeople accepted Ivory as a sort of a wild goose of passage, called him "Plug" on account of his never varying style of headgear, and deferred to him because he had fifty thousand dollars tucked away in the savings bank at the shire. The May dusk became tawny in the west, and he gazed out into it discontentedly.