Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. "down To York." Despite his father's expressed desire, Phil went to New York on Sol Mantring's sloop. The difference in time promised to be a day or two days, but the difference in cash outlay was more than five dollars,— a sum which no one in the vicinity of Hayn Farm had ever been known to spend needlessly without coming to grief. Between cash in hand and its nominal equivalent in time, Phil, like most other prudent young countrymen, had learned to distinguish with alacrity and positiveness: besides, he knew how small was the amount of ready money that his father, in spite of care and skill at his business, was able to show for more than a quarter of a century of hard work. The young man's departure was the occasion for quite a demonstration by the neighbors. Other young men of the vicinage had been to New York, but generally they were those whom their neighbors did not hope to see again ; Phil, on the contrary, was a general favorite. His family intended that no one should know of the journey until Phil was fairly off, for they knew by experience, in which sometimes they had been the offenders, how insatiable is rural curiosity about any doings out of the ordinary. Butwhen Sol Mantring told his wife that Phil was to go down with him as a " hand," Mrs. Mantring straightway put on her best things and went out to tell all her neighbors that Phil Hayn was going down to York, and, being a woman who never did anything by halves, she afterward plodded the dusty road that led to the little village at the railway-station, where she consumed several hours in doing petty shopping at the several stores, varying this recreation by industrious gossip with every acquaintance who dropped in. As each person who heard the news wondered what Phil was going for, and as Mrs. M...