Tom Beauling
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Chapter I
ONE spring, before the peaches were done blossoming or the cherry blossoms come to their best, Judge Tyler, of Mitford, sat in the cool of his study and considered what the year might bring. Although a sturdy reputation, a number of excellent investments, and sixty years of bachelor life rendered Judge Tyler independent of droughts, floods, high winds, or other criminal manifestations of weather, still there was the blood of stout Connecticut farmers in his veins, and the open pamphlet on his knees was Whalen's "Agricultural Prophecies." As he sat taking in the prophecies for pretty nearly what they were worth (and grumbling over his own sagacity), he threw a glance out the window, and ob-
