far too many of them to land for
that. Women as a class did not appall him in the least. He had seen
them in the agony of terror, in the throes of despair, and undismayed
had offered them sympathy and cheer. It was one woman only who
disconcerted him, the woman who for years had routed him out of his
habitual poise and left him as discomfited as a guilty schoolboy caught
in raiding the jam-pot.

Yes, he who inspired his associates with both respect and admiration
was forced to acknowledge to himself that when face to face with Sarah
Libbie Lewis he was nothing better than a faltering ten-year-old whose
collar is too tight for him, and whose hands and feet are sizes too
large. The paradox was too humiliating to be endured! Nevertheless,
he had endured the ignominy of it for five-and-twenty years, and there
seemed to be every prospect that he would continue to endure it.
Periodically, it is true, he would rise in his wrath, resolving that
another sun should not go down on his vacillation and timidity; nay,
more, he would even stride forth to Sarah Libbie's home, vowing as he
went that before he slept he would speak the decisive words that had
for so long trembled on his tongue.

Confronted by the lady of his choice, however, his courage, like that
of the immortal Bob Acres, would ooze away, and after basking for a
wretched interval in the glory of her smile, he would retrace his steps
with the declaration still unuttered. As far back as Jack could
remember, this woman had tyrannized over him and humbled his
self-esteem. In childhood she had leveled with a blow the sand castles
he built on the beach for her delight, and ever since she had contrived
to raze to the ground his less tangible castles,--dream-castles where
he saw her the mistress of his lonely fireside. Yet despite her
exasperating capriciousness, Jack had never wavered in his allegiance,
not a whit. Long ago he had made up his mind that Sarah Libbie was the
one woman in the world for him, and he had never seen cause to alter
that verdict. Nor did he entertain any doubt that Sarah Libbie's
sentiments coincided with his own, even though she did cloak her
preference beneath so many intricate and misleading devices of
femininity. It was not fear of the thundering _No_ that hindered Jack
from proclaiming his affection; it was merely the physical
impossibility of putting his heart into intelligible and coherent
phraseology when Sarah Libbie's bewitching