ev. Mr. Coalyard myself--I know
him. When shall it be?--speak, dearest!"

I gasped out "to-morrow," and buried my blushing face on her shoulder.

For a moment her soft arms were twined around me--a moment only, for
we were on the open lake drive. Not more than ten seconds did the
pretty widow embrace me, but that was time enough, as I learned to my
sorrow, for her to extract my pocket-book, containing the five hundred
dollars I still had remaining from the sale of my mining-stock, and
not one dollar of which did I ever see again.

CHAPTER XVI.

AT LAST HE SECURES A TREASURE.

I had to pawn my watch to get away from Chicago, for the police failed
to find my pretty widow. The thought of getting again under my mother's
wing was as welcome as my desire to get away from it had been eager. At
night my dreams were haunted by all sorts of horrible fire-works, where
old gentlemen sat down on powder-kegs, etc. Oh, for home! I knew there
were no widows in my native village, except Widow Green, and I was not
afraid of her. Well, I took the cars once more, and I had been riding
two days and a night, and was not over forty miles from my destination,
when the little incident occurred which proved to lead me into one of
the worst blunders of all. It's _awful_ to be a bashful young man!
Everybody takes advantage of you. You are the victim of practical
jokes--folks laugh if you do nothing on earth but enter a room. If you
happen to hit your foot against a stool, or trip over a rug, or call a
lady "sir," the girls giggle and the boys nudge each other, as if it
were extremely amusing. But to blow up a confiding Wall street
speculator, and to be swindled out of all your money by a pretty widow,
is enough to make a sensitive man a raving lunatic. I had all this to
think of as I was whirled along toward home. So absorbed was I in
melancholy reflection, that I did not notice what was going on until a
sudden shrill squawk close in my ear caused me to turn, when I found
that a very common-looking young woman, with a by no means interesting
infant of six months, had taken the vacant half of my seat. I was
annoyed. There were plenty of unoccupied seats in the car, and I saw no
reason why she should intrude upon my comfort. The infant shrieked
wildly when I looked at it; but its mother stopped its mouth with one of
those what-do-you-call-'ems that are stuck on the end of a flat bottle
containing sweetened milk, and, after sputtering an