jibe with keepin'
company with 'road agents.' That's what I got outer that paper you gave
me, Mr. Brice."

Rage and disgust filled Brice at the man's utter selfishness and
shameless desertion of his kindred, none the less powerfully that he
remembered the part he himself had played in concocting the paragraph.
"Do you mean to say," he demanded passionately, "that for the sake of
that foolish paragraph you gave up your own kindred? That you truckled
to the mean prejudices of your neighbors and kept that poor, defenseless
girl from the only honest roof she could find refuge under? That you
dared to destroy my letter to her, and made her believe I was as selfish
and ungrateful as yourself?"

"Young feller," said Mr. Tarbox still more deliberately, yet with a
certain dignity that Brice had never noticed before, "what's between you
and Flo, and what rights she has fer thinkin' ye 'ez selfish' and 'ez
ongrateful' ez me--ef she does, I dunno!--but when ye talk o' me givin'
up my kindred, and sling such hogwash ez 'ongrateful' and 'selfish'
round this yer sittin'-room, mebbe it mout occur to ye that Harry
Dimwood might hev HIS opinion o' what was 'ongrateful' and 'selfish' ef
I'd played in between his niece and a young man o' the express company,
his nat'ral enemy. It's one thing to hev helped ye to see her in
her uncle's own camp, but another to help ye by makin' a clandecent
post-offis o' my cabin. Ef, instead o' writin', you'd hev posted
yourself by comin' to me, you mout hev found out that when I broke with
Harry I offered to take Flo with me for good and all--ef he'd keep
away from us. And that's the kind o' 'honest roof' that that thar 'poor
defenseless girl' got under when her crippled mother died three
weeks ago, and left Harry free. It was by 'trucklin'' to them 'mean
prejudices,' and readin' that thar 'foolish paragraph,' that I settled
this thing then and thar!"

Brice's revulsion of sentiment was so complete, and the gratitude that
beamed in his eyes was so sincere, that Mr. Tarbox hardly needed the
profuse apologies which broke from him. "Forgive me!" he continued to
stammer, "I have wronged you, wronged HER--everybody. But as you know,
Mr. Tarbox, how I have felt over this, how deeply--how passionately"--

"It DOES make a man loony sometimes," said Mr. Tarbox, relaxing into
demure dryness again, "so I reckon you DID! Mebbe she reckoned so, too,
for she asked me to give you the handkercher I sent ye. It looked