oing?"

"I've got to stir about," Warren answered. "I have to think when I sit
still and I don't want to think. The truth is, I want to know how she
stands. I wish I had a picture of her as she stood at the churn. It
would make the fortune of a painter. Believe I'll get up a
prayer-meeting at Mt. Zion."

"What, you get up a prayer-meeting?"

"Yes, so I can go home with her through the woods. I think that after
a season of prayer and song she would lean toward me."

"Why not wait for a thunder storm and comfort her between flashes of
lightning?"

"I wish I could get up a thunder storm. I'd like for that girl to grab
me and choke me half to death. Well, I've got to stir around."

Warren went away, and during all the evening Lyman sat picking a
nervous quarrel with himself.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE HOME.

Lyman saw nothing of Warren the next day, but on the day following he
strode into the room, whistling in tuneless good humor.

"It's all right," he said, as he sat down. "I went out there and found
her at the churn. I said, 'Look here, you'll drive me mad if you don't
let that churn alone--I mean with the charm of the position.' And then
she blushed, and I would have grabbed a kiss, but she shied to one
side. She scolded me somewhat for coming so soon. She said that people
would wonder what brought me out that way so often. I told her that if
people had any sense they wouldn't wonder long--they would know that
she had brought me there. Then I came out square-toed. I told her that
I had discovered early in the action that I loved her, that I had
waited long enough to be sure that it was not a passing fancy, but a
genuine case of love. I told her that her cousin Jerry might believe
in waiting, but that I did not. Then how she did blush and shy. I
looked away, to give her a chance to get herself together again,
looked out into the field where the old man was at work, and peeped
through a crack at the old lady thumping the carpet loom. I didn't
wait too long, though; I didn't want the girl to have time to cool off
completely, so I said, looking at her. 'I want you to marry me, you
understand; with my prospects I could go throughout the country and
pick up most any woman who is struck on writing verses and essays, but
I don't want one of them--I want you, and I want your promise to tell
that fellow Jerry to go to the deuce, as far as you are concerned; and
I want you to promise to wait for me a week or two and t