The Big Mogul by Joseph C. Lincoln — Read

At precisely eight-thirty she turned the key in the side door of the post-office building, and, hurrying to the sidewalk, almost ran along it. Twenty minutes later, when she reëntered the yard, she was not alone. She was shooing before her, as she might have shooed a stray chicken, a thin young man, who wore eyeglasses and whose cheeks were ornamented with a pair of sidewhiskers of the kind much affected at that date by theological students or youths active in the Y. M. C. A. The irreverent laity called such whiskers "fire escapes."

The young man was the Reverend Mr. Barstow and he was the newly called minister of the Baptist chapel in Harniss. He had lived in the village less than a month. Consequently his acquaintance in the community was limited and his awe of the great Foster Townsend not yet overpowering. Reliance had chosen him with this fact in mind. Mr. Colton, the big mogul's own parson, would have found some excuse for refusing to marry a niece of that mogul to any one, without being first assured of his patron's presence or consent. To suggest that he perform a ceremony uniting her to a grandson of Elisha Cook would have been like suggesting that he commit suicide.