urse--he had so accustomed himself to think of the two in union by
this time. Then he looked again and saw that the girl was much larger
and fair-haired, and recognized her as Bessy Van Dorn, William Van
Dorn's daughter. The girl's semi-German parentage showed in her
complexion and high-bosomed, matronly figure, although she was so
young. She had a large but charming face, full of the sweetest
placidity; her eyes, as blue as the sky, looked out upon the world
with amiable assent to all its conditions. It required no acuteness
to predict this as an ideal spouse for a man of a nervous and
irritable temperament; that there was in her nature that which could
supply cushioned fulnesses to all the exactions of his. She sat on a
high stool and sipped her ice-cream soda with simple absorption in
the pleasant sensation. She paid no attention whatever to her escort
beside her, who took his soda with his eyes fixed on her. Her chin
overlapping in pink curves like a rose, was sunken in the lace at her
neck as she sipped. She did not sit straight, but rested in her
corsets with an awkward lassitude of enjoyment. It was a very warm
night, but she paid no attention to that. She was without a hat, and
the beads of perspiration stood all over her pink forehead, and her
thin white muslin clung to her plump neck and arms. There was
something almost indecent about the girl's enjoyment of her soda.
Hardly a man in the shop but was watching her. Anderson gazed at her
also, but with covert disgust and a resentment which was absurd. He
scowled at the young fellow with her. He felt like a father whose
daughter has been flouted by the man of her choice. "What the devil
does the boy mean, taking soda here with that Van Dorn girl?" he
asked himself. He felt like a reckoning with him, and chafed at the
impossibility of it. When the couple rose to go Anderson met the
young man's salutation with such a surly response and such a stern
glance that he fairly started. The men stared as the two went out,
their shoulders touching as they passed through the door. The girl
was round-shouldered from careless standing, but she moved with a
palpitating grace of yielding, and the smooth, fair braids which
bound her head shone like silver.

"Guess that's a go," a man said, with a chuckle; "a narrower door
would have suited them just as well."

"Mighty good-looking girl," said Amidon.

"Healthy girl," said another. "If more young fellows had the
horse-sense to