th ecstasy. Oh, but Dan had been easy! The story would be
all over Valley View in twenty-four hours. Julius laughed until he
came near to falling off the gatepost.

At this point Julius and Danny drop out of our story, and Young Thomas
enters.

It was two days later when Young Thomas heard that he was to be
married to Adelia Williams in June. Eben Clark, the blacksmith, told
him when he went to the forge to get his horse shod. Young Thomas
laughed his big jolly laugh. Valley View gossip had been marrying him
off for the last thirty years, although never before to Adelia
Williams.

"It's news to me," he said tolerantly.

Eben grinned broadly. "Ah, you can't bluff it off like that, Tom," he
said. "The news came too straight this time. Well, I was glad to hear
it, although I was mighty surprised. I never thought of you and
Adelia. But she's a fine little woman and will make you a capital
wife."

Young Thomas grunted and drove away. He had a good deal of business to
do that day, involving calls at various places--the store for
molasses, the mill for flour, Jim Bentley's for seed grain, the
doctor's for toothache drops for his housekeeper, the post office for
mail--and at each and every place he was joked about his approaching
marriage. In the end it rather annoyed Young Thomas, He drove home at
last in what was for him something of a temper. How on earth had that
fool story started? With such detailed circumstantiality of rugs and
quilts, too? Adelia Williams must be going to marry somebody, and the
Valley View gossips, unable to locate the man, had guessed Young
Thomas.

When he reached home, tired, mud-bespattered, and hungry, his
housekeeper, who was also his hired man's wife, asked him if it was
true that he was going to be married. Young Thomas, taking in at a
glance the ill-prepared, half-cold supper on the table, felt more
annoyed than ever, and said it wasn't, with a strong expression--not
quite an oath--for Young Thomas never swore, unless swearing be as
much a matter of intonation as of words.

Mrs. Dunn sighed, patted her swelled face, and said she was sorry; she
had hoped it was true, for her man had decided to go west. They were
to go in a month's time. Young Thomas sat down to his supper with the
prospect of having to look up another housekeeper and hired man before
planting to destroy his appetite.

Next day, three people who came to see Young Thomas on business
congratulated him on his approachin