and enjoy
life once more.

When I struck the cabin I nearly fainted. Mack was standing in the
door; and if angels ever wept, I saw no reason why they should be
smiling then.

That man was a spectacle. Yes; he was worse; he was a spyglass; he
was the great telescope in the Lick Observatory [7]. He had on a coat
and shiny shoes and a white vest and a high silk hat; and a geranium
as big as an order of spinach was spiked onto his front. And he was
smirking and warping his face like an infernal storekeeper or a kid
with colic.

[FOOTNOTE 7: The Lick Observatory, the first permanent
mountain-top observatory, was built in the 1880's.
Its 36-inch refracting telescope was the largest in
the world until the Yerkes Observatory was opened
in 1897.]

"Hello, Andy," says Mack, out of his face. "Glad to see you back.
Things have happened since you went away."

"I know it," says I, "and a sacrilegious sight it is. God never made
you that way, Mack Lonsbury. Why do you scarify His works with this
presumptuous kind of ribaldry?"

"Why, Andy," says he, "they've elected me justice of the peace since
you left."

I looked at Mack close. He was restless and inspired. A justice of the
peace ought to be disconsolate and assuaged.

Just then a young woman passed on the sidewalk; and I saw Mack kind of
half snicker and blush, and then he raised up his hat and smiled and
bowed, and she smiled and bowed, and went on by.

"No hope for you," says I, "if you've got the Mary-Jane infirmity at
your age. I thought it wasn't going to take on you. And patent leather
shoes! All this in two little short months!"

"I'm going to marry the young lady who just passed to-night," says
Mack, in a kind of flutter.

"I forgot something at the post-office," says I, and walked away
quick.

I overtook that young woman a hundred yards away. I raised my hat and
told her my name. She was about nineteen; and young for her age. She
blushed, and then looked at me cool, like I was the snow scene from
the "Two Orphans [8]."

[FOOTNOTE 8: "Two Orphans"--probably a reference to a popular
play, "Le Deux Orphelines," written in 1875 by
Adolphe d'Ennery and Eugene Cormon]

"I understand you are to be married to-night," I said.

"Correct," says she. "You got any objections?"

"Listen, sissy," I begins.

"My name is Miss Rebosa Redd," says sh