h-bound, going to Cincinnati, about eighteen months
ago, when I saw, across the aisle, the finest-looking girl I'd ever
laid eyes on. Nothing spectacular, you know, but just the sort you
want for keeps. Well, I never was up to the flirtation business,
either handkerchief, automobile, postage-stamp, or door-step, and she
wasn't the kind to start anything. She read a book and minded her
business, which was to make the world prettier and better just by
residing on it. I kept on looking out of the side doors of my eyes,
and finally the proposition got out of the Pullman class into a case
of a cottage with a lawn and vines running over the porch. I never
thought of speaking to her, but I let the plate-glass business go to
smash for a while.

"She changed cars at Cincinnati, and took a sleeper to Louisville over
the L. and N. There she bought another ticket, and went on through
Shelbyville, Frankfort, and Lexington. Along there I began to have
a hard time keeping up with her. The trains came along when they
pleased, and didn't seem to be going anywhere in particular, except to
keep on the track and the right of way as much as possible. Then they
began to stop at junctions instead of towns, and at last they stopped
altogether. I'll bet Pinkerton would outbid the plate-glass people
for my services any time if they knew how I managed to shadow that
young lady. I contrived to keep out of her sight as much as I could,
but I never lost track of her.

"The last station she got off at was away down in Virginia, about
six in the afternoon. There were about fifty houses and four hundred
niggers in sight. The rest was red mud, mules, and speckled hounds.

"A tall old man, with a smooth face and white hair, looking as proud
as Julius Caesar and Roscoe Conkling on the same post-card, was there
to meet her. His clothes were frazzled, but I didn't notice that
till later. He took her little satchel, and they started over the
plank-walks and went up a road along the hill. I kept along a piece
behind 'em, trying to look like I was hunting a garnet ring in the
sand that my sister had lost at a picnic the previous Saturday.

"They went in a gate on top of the hill. It nearly took my breath
away when I looked up. Up there in the biggest grove I ever saw was a
tremendous house with round white pillars about a thousand feet high,
and the yard was so full of rose-bushes and box-bushes and lilacs
that you couldn't have seen the house if it hadn't