imed, "You're a terrible handsome
girl, Nellie--? did you know it?" He repeated it and added, "And the
Lord knows I love you, Nellie, and I've said it a thousand times." He
found her hand again, and said as he put on his hat, "Well, good-by,
Nellie--good-by--if you call that gone." His handclasp tightened and
hers responded, and then he dropped her hand and turned away.

The woman felt a desire to scream; she never knew how she choked her
desire. But she rushed after him and caught him tightly and sobbed,
"Oh, Watts--Watts--Watts McHurdie--are you never going to have any
more snap in you than that?"

As he kicked away the earth from under him, Watts McHurdie saw the
light in a window of the Culpepper home, and when he came down to
earth again five minutes later, he said, "Well, I was just a-thinking
how nice it would be to go over to Culpeppers' and kind of tell them
the news!"

"They'll have news of their own pretty soon, I expect," replied
Nellie. And to Watts' blank look she replied: "The way that man
Brownwell keeps shining around. He was there four nights last week,
and he's been there two this week already. I don't see what Molly
Culpepper can be thinking of."

So they deferred the visit to the Culpeppers', and in due time Watts
McHurdie flitted down Lincoln Avenue and felt himself wafted along
Main Street as far in the clouds as a mortal may be. And though it was
nearly midnight, he brought out his accordion and sat playing it,
beating time with his left foot, and in his closed eyes seeing visions
that by all the rights of this game of life should come only to youth.
And the guests in the Thayer House next morning asked, "Well, for
heaven's sake, who was that playing 'Silver Threads among the Gold'
along there about midnight?--he surely must know it by this time."

And Adrian Brownwell, sitting on the Culpepper veranda the next night
but one, said: "Colonel, your harness-maker friend is a musical
artist. The other night when I came in I heard him twanging his
lute--'The Harp that once through Tara's Hall'; you know, Colonel."

And John Barclay closed his letter to Bob Hendricks: "Well, Bob, as I
sit here with fifty letters written this evening and ready to mail,
and the blessed knowledge that we have 18,000 acres of winter wheat
all planted if not paid for, I can hear old Watts wheezing away on his
accordion in his shop down street. Poor old Watts, it's a pity that
man hasn't the acquisitive faculty--he co