lausaby has saved some of his best lots for me."

"Yes, it's a nice town, or will be. I hold a mortgage on the best
eighty--the one this way--at three per cent and five after maturity, with
a waiver. I liked to have died here one night last summer. I was taken
just after supper with a violent--"

"What a beauty of a girl that is," broke in the fat gentleman, "little
Katy Charlton, Plausaby's step-daughter!" And instantly Mr. Albert
Charlton thrust his head out of the coach and shouted "Hello, Katy!" to a
girl of fifteen, who ran to intercept the coach at the hotel steps.

"Hurrah, Katy!" said the young man, as she kissed him impulsively as soon
as he had alighted.

"P'int out your baggage, mister," said Jim, interrupting Katy's raptures
with a tone that befitted a Superior Being.

In a few moments the coach, having deposited Charlton and the fat
gentleman, was starting away for its destination at Perritaut, eight
miles farther on, when Charlton, remembering again his companion on the
front seat, lifted his hat and bowed, and Miss Minorkey was kind enough
to return the bow. Albert tried to analyze her bow as he lay awake in bed
that night. Miss Minorkey doubtless slept soundly. She always did.

CHAPTER IV.

ALBERT AND KATY.

All that day in which Albert Charlton had been riding from Red Owl
Landing to Metropolisville, sweet Little Katy Charlton had been expecting
him. Everybody called her _sweet_, and I suppose there was no word in the
dictionary that so perfectly described her. She was not well-read, like
Miss Minorkey; she was not even very smart at her lessons: but she was
sweet. Sweetness is a quality that covers a multitude of defects. Katy's
heart had love in it for everybody. She loved her mother; she loved
Squire Plausaby, her step-father; she loved cousin Isa, as she called her
step-father's niece; she loved--well, no matter, she would have told you
that she loved nobody more than Brother Albert.

And now that Brother Albert was coming to the new home in the new land
he had never seen before, Katy's heart was in her eyes. She would show
him so many things he had never seen, explain how the pocket-gophers
built their mounds, show him the nestful of flying-squirrels--had he
ever seen flying-squirrels? And she would show him Diamond Lake, and
the speckled pickerel among the water-plants. And she would point out
the people, and entertain Albert with telling him their names and the
curious gossip ab