ture. In years I
looked a refined forty. My hands were not too big for black lace
mitts, my bosom was a success, and my feet, in thin morocco, were out
of sight and nobody's business. A little oil and a burnt match
darkened my eyebrows, my wig sat straight, under the weest of bonnets I
wore a chignon, behind one ear a bunch of curls, and, unseen at one
side of a modest bustle, my revolver. Though I say it myself, I
managed my crinoline with grace.

["That was pritty co'rect," the costumer remarked. "Humph!" said
Chester. The three mesdames exchanged glances, and the reading went
on.]

XI

Leaving a note on her door to tell our landlady that business would
keep me away an indefinite time, I got out at the front gate
unobserved, and with a sweet dignity that charmed me with myself walked
away under a bewitching parasol, well veiled.

I knew where to find my two sportsmen. A few hundred paces put the
town and an open field at my back; a few more down a bushy lane brought
me where a dense wood overhung both sides of the narrow way, and the
damp air was full of the smell of penny-royal and of creek sands. From
here I proposed to saunter down through the woods to the creek, locate
my fishermen, and draw them my way by cries of distress.

On their reaching my side my story, told through my veil and between
meanings and clingings, was to be that while on a journey in my own
coach, a part of its running-gear having broken, I had sent it on to be
mended; that through love of trees and wild flowers I had ventured to
stay alone meantime among them, and that a snake had bitten me on the
ankle. I should describe a harmless one but insist I was poisoned, and
yet refuse to show the wound or be borne back to the road, or to let
either man stay with me alone while the other went for a doctor, or to
drink their whiskey for a cure. On getting back to the road--with the
two fellows for crutches--I should send both to town for my coach,
keeping with me their tackle and fish. Then I should get myself and my
spoils back to our dwelling as best I could and--await the issue. If
this poor performance had so come off--but see what occurred instead!

I had shut my parasol and moved into hiding behind some wild vines to
mop my face, when near by on the farther side of the way came slyly
into view a negro and negress. They were in haste to cross the road
yet quite as wishful to cross unseen. One, in home-spun gown and
sunb