bought a new horse."

"Have you, indeed?"

"Yes, and I've been expecting you to ride up to the line fence and call
me out--I wanted to show him to you. He's a cracker-jack, all right."

"We'll come over in a day or two. I never stay _down_ more than three
days."

Haney, lumbering round the corner of the house, called out, mellowly:
"Here you are! Now don't move a hair." He bent and offered a broad white
hand. "How are ye the day?"

"Better, thank you. Ben, put a chair beside me; I want to talk to
Captain Haney. He was interrupted the other night in the very middle of
one of his best stories, and I'm going to insist on his finishing it."

Haney faced Bertha with a look of humorous amazement on his face. "Think
o' that, now! She remembers one of my best."

"Indeed I do, Captain, and I can tell you just where you left off. You
had just sighted the camp of the robbers."

Haney clicked with his tongue, as if listening to a child. "There now! I
must have been taking more grape-juice than was good for me to start on
that story, for it's all about meself and the great man I thought I was
in those days."

"I love to hear about people who can ride a hundred miles in a night,
and live on roots and berries, and capture men who bristle with
revolvers. Please go on. Ben, you needn't listen if you don't want to.
You can show Mrs. Haney the automobile or the garden."

Ben laughed. "I like to hear Captain Haney talk quite as well as
anybody, but I'll be glad to show Mrs. Haney any of your neighbors'
things she cares to see."

Alice turned to Bertha. "I suppose the Captain's tales are all old songs
in your ears?"

"No, they're mostly all new to me. The Captain never tells stories to
me."

Haney winked. "She knows me too well. She wouldn't believe them."

"Go on, please," said Alice. And so Haney took up the thread, though he
protested. "'Tis a tale for candle-light," he explained.

Ben was studying Bertha with renewed admiration. "Where did she get that
exquisite profile?" he thought.

The story was again interrupted by a group of callers, among them Mrs.
Crego, and though Alice loyally stood by the Haneys and introduced them
boldly, Mrs. Crego's cold nod and something that went out from the eyes
of her companions made Bertha suffer, and she went away with a feeling
of antagonism in her heart. Did these people consider her beneath their
respect?

Haney remarked as they rode away: "If black eyes could freeze, sure w