King.' His language came in handy, and his
cartridge-belt and pistol all came in Black Ranger's outfit. Yes, it was a
heap easier playing he was a pirate than a dook. All this happened back to
Salt Lake, where me an' paw was married."

Mrs. Yellett looked towards the mountain-range that separated her from the
Mormon country, and her listeners realized that she was verging perilously
close to confidences. Mary Carmichael, who dreaded missing any detail of
the chronicle that dealt with paw in the role of apocryphal duke, hastened
to say:

"And you lost your taste for romance, finally?"

"In Salt Lake I was left to myself a whole lot-there was reasons why I
didn't mingle with the Mormon herd. Paw was mighty attentive to me, but
them was troublous times for paw. I pastures myself with the fleetin'
figures of romance the endoorin' time and enjoys myself a heap. When paw
wasn't a dook or a pirate king, unbeknownst to himself, like as not he was
Sir Marmaduke Trevelyun, or somebody entitled to the same amount of dog.

"'Bout this time a little stranger was due in our midst, and the woman who
came to take care of me was plumb locoed over novels, same as me, only
worse. She just hungered for 'em, same as if she had a longin' for
something out of season. She brought a batch of them with her in her
trunk, we borrowed her a lot more, some I don't know how she come by. But
they didn't have no effect; it was like feedin' an' Injun--you couldn't
strike bottom. She read out of 'em to me with disastrous results
happenin', an' that cured me. The brand on this here book that effected my
change of heart was _The Bride of the Tomb_. I forget the name of the girl
in that romance, but she was in hard luck from the start. She couldn't
head off the man pursooin' her, any way she turned. She'd wheel out of his
way cl'ar across country, but he'd land thar fust an' wait for her, a
smile on his satanine feachers.

"I got so wrought up along o' that book, an' worried as to the outcome,
'most as bad as the girl. Think of it! An' me with only three baby-shirts
an' a flannel petticoat made at the time! Seemed 's if I couldn't hustle
my meals fast enough, I just hankered so to know what was goin' to happen
next! I plumb detested the man with the handsome feachers, same as the
girl. Me an' her felt precisely alike about him. And when he shut her up
in the family vault I just giv' up an' was took then an' there, an' me
without so much as finishin' th