ty, for her part, drank a cup of
coffee but ate little, though the Inhabitant offered her the best he had
with a voice stammering with emotion. He could not speak to her without
blushing to his temples. He tried to apologize for the biscuit and the
coffee, but could hardly ever get through his sentence intelligibly, he
was so full of a sentiment of adoration for the first lady into whose
presence he had come in years. Albert felt a profound respect for the man
on account of his reverence for Katy. And Katy of course loved him as she
did everybody who was kind to her or to her friends, and she essayed once
or twice to make him feel comfortable by speaking to him, but so great
was his agitation when spoken to by the divine creature, that he came
near dropping a plate of biscuit the first time she spoke, and almost
upset the coffee the next time. I have often noticed that the anchorites
of the frontier belong to two classes--those who have left humanity and
civilization from sheer antagonism to men, a selfish, crabbed love of
solitude, and those who have fled from their fellows from a morbid
sensitiveness. The Inhabitant was of the latter sort.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE INHABITANT.

When Albert awoke next morning from a sound sleep on the buffalo-robe in
the loft of the cabin of the Inhabitant, the strange being who had slept
at his side had gone. He found him leaning against the foot of the
ladder outside.

"Waitin', you know," he said when he saw Albert, "tell she gits up. I was
tryin' to think what I _could_ do to make this house fit fer her to stay
in; fer, you see, stranger, they's no movin' on tell to-morry, fer though
the rain's stopped, I 'low you can't git that buggy over afore to-morry
mornin'. But blam'd ef 'ta'n't too bad fer sech as her to stay in sech a
cabin! I never wanted no better place tell las' night, but ever sence
that creetur crossed the door-sill. I've wished it was a palace of
di'monds. She hadn't orter live in nothin' poarer."

"Where did you come from?" asked Charlton.

"From the Wawbosh. You see I couldn't stay. They treated me bad. I had a
idee. I wanted to write somethin' or nother in country talk. I need to
try to write potry in good big dictionary words, but I hadn't but 'mazin
little schoolin', and lived along of a set of folks that talked jes' like
I do. But a Scotchman what I worked along of one winter, he read me some
potry, writ out by a Mr. Burns, in the sort of bad grammar that