JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY: XXIV. THE SQUIRE FLIES INTO A TEMPER

JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S birthday-- his jubilee, as the thought of it had been shaping itself in his mind and in that of some few other persons since the occasion when he spoke of it in the Murray household-- was an event which has probably made a permanent mark in the history of his native village. Some eighteen months ago, at all events, when the present chronicler of certain incidents that immediately preceded and followed it made a first visit to Milton Centre, on an errand partly of friendship and partly of business, people were still dating back to it in a half- conscious sort of way, much as the earliest of the "true believers" may have done to the Hegira.