ccess. In two
years he was able to take his wife on a six months' holiday to Europe
via Australia, but of the details of that holiday no one knew. It is,
however, on record that ten or twelve years ago Dornton Hall, which had
been leased or unoccupied for a long time, was refitted for the heiress,
her husband, and their children during a brief occupancy, and that
in that period extensive repairs were made to the interior of the
old Norman church, and much attention given to the redecoration and
restoration of its ancient tombs.

MR. MACGLOWRIE'S WIDOW

Very little was known of her late husband, yet that little was of a
sufficiently awe-inspiring character to satisfy the curiosity of
Laurel Spring. A man of unswerving animosity and candid belligerency,
untempered by any human weakness, he had been actively engaged as
survivor in two or three blood feuds in Kentucky, and some desultory
dueling, only to succumb, through the irony of fate, to an attack of
fever and ague in San Francisco. Gifted with a fine sense of humor, he
is said, in his last moments, to have called the simple-minded clergyman
to his bedside to assist him in putting on his boots. The kindly divine,
although pointing out to him that he was too weak to rise, much
less walk, could not resist the request of a dying man. When it was
fulfilled, Mr. MacGlowrie crawled back into bed with the remark that his
race had always "died with their boots on," and so passed smilingly and
tranquilly away.

It is probable that this story was invented to soften the ignominy of
MacGlowrie's peaceful end. The widow herself was also reported to be
endowed with relations of equally homicidal eccentricities. Her two
brothers, Stephen and Hector Boompointer, had Western reputations that
were quite as lurid and remote. Her own experiences of a frontier life
had been rude and startling, and her scalp--a singularly beautiful one
of blond hair--had been in peril from Indians on several occasions. A
pair of scissors, with which she had once pinned the intruding hand of
a marauder to her cabin doorpost, was to be seen in her sitting room at
Laurel Spring. A fair-faced woman with eyes the color of pale sherry,
a complexion sallowed by innutritious food, slight and tall figure, she
gave little suggestion of this Amazonian feat. But that it exercised a
wholesome restraint over the many who would like to have induced her
to reenter the married state, there is little reason to d