'd call 'fond,'" returned the girl.

"Ah! Adoniram K. Hotchkiss was not 'fond' in the ordinary acceptance
of the word," said the Colonel, with professional gravity.

She lifted her disturbing eyes, and again absorbed his in her own. She
also said "Yes," although her eyes in their mysterious prescience of
all he was thinking disclaimed the necessity of any answer at all. He
smiled vacantly. There was a long pause. On which she slowly
disengaged her parasol from the carpet pattern and stood up.

"I reckon that's about all," she said.

"Er--yes--but one moment," said the Colonel, vaguely. He would have
liked to keep her longer, but with her strange premonition of him he
felt powerless to detain her, or explain his reason for doing so. He
instinctively knew she had told him all; his professional judgment
told him that a more hopeless case had never come to his knowledge.
Yet he was not daunted, only embarrassed. "No matter," he said,
vaguely. "Of course I shall have to consult with you again." Her eyes
again answered that she expected he would, but she added, simply,
"When?"

"In the course of a day or two," said the Colonel, quickly. "I will
send you word." She turned to go. In his eagerness to open the door
for her he upset his chair, and with some confusion, that was actually
youthful, he almost impeded her movements in the hall, and knocked his
broad-brimmed Panama hat from his bowing hand in a final gallant
sweep. Yet as her small, trim, youthful figure, with its simple
Leghorn straw hat confined by a blue bow under her round chin, passed
away before him, she looked more like a child than ever.

The Colonel spent that afternoon in making diplomatic inquiries. He
found his youthful client was the daughter of a widow who had a small
ranch on the cross-roads, near the new Free-Will Baptist church--the
evident theatre of this pastoral. They led a secluded life; the girl
being little known in the town, and her beauty and fascination
apparently not yet being a recognized fact. The Colonel felt a
pleasurable relief at this, and a general satisfaction he could not
account for. His few inquiries concerning Mr. Hotchkiss only confirmed
his own impressions of the alleged lover--a serious-minded,
practically abstracted man--abstentive of youthful society, and the
last man apparently capable of levity of the affections or serious
flirtation. The Colonel was mystified--but determined of
purpose--whatever that purpose might ha