oubt. Laurel
Spring was a peaceful agricultural settlement. Few of its citizens
dared to aspire to the dangerous eminence of succeeding the defunct
MacGlowrie; few could hope that the sister of living Boompointers
would accept an obvious mesalliance with them. However sincere their
affection, life was still sweet to the rude inhabitants of Laurel
Spring, and the preservation of the usual quantity of limbs necessary to
them in their avocations. With their devotion thus chastened by caution,
it would seem as if the charming mistress of Laurel Spring House was
secure from disturbing attentions.

It was a pleasant summer afternoon, and the sun was beginning to strike
under the laurels around the hotel into the little office where the
widow sat with the housekeeper--a stout spinster of a coarser Western
type. Mrs. MacGlowrie was looking wearily over some accounts on the
desk before her, and absently putting back some tumbled sheaves from the
stack of her heavy hair. For the widow had a certain indolent Southern
negligence, which in a less pretty woman would have been untidiness,
and a characteristic hook and eyeless freedom of attire which on less
graceful limbs would have been slovenly. One sleeve cuff was unbuttoned,
but it showed the blue veins of her delicate wrist; the neck of her
dress had lost a hook, but the glimpse of a bit of edging round the
white throat made amends. Of all which, however, it should be said that
the widow, in her limp abstraction, was really unconscious.

"I reckon we kin put the new preacher in Kernel Starbottle's room," said
Miss Morvin, the housekeeper. "The kernel's going to-night."

"Oh," said the widow in a tone of relief, but whether at the early
departure of the gallant colonel or at the successful solution of the
problem of lodging the preacher, Miss Morvin could not determine. But
she went on tentatively:--

"The kernel was talkin' in the bar room, and kind o' wonderin' why you
hadn't got married agin. Said you'd make a stir in Sacramento--but you
was jest berried HERE."

"I suppose he's heard of my husband?" said the widow indifferently.

"Yes--but he said he couldn't PLACE YOU," returned Miss Morvin.

The widow looked up. "Couldn't place ME?" she repeated.

"Yes--hadn't heard o' MacGlowrie's wife and disremembered your
brothers."

"The colonel doesn't know everybody, even if he is a fighting man," said
Mrs. MacGlowrie with languid scorn.

"That's just what Dick Blair said,"