ugh--"you with your tombstone trouble at
home, and me with a dead bridegroom to look after, and one that treated
me like a hound-pup in the bargain?"

Henley laughed now, for she was laughing. "I'm not going to let mine
bother me any more," he said, "now that I've heard what you are going
through."

"And you'll forgive me for the lie I told you?" she asked anxiously, as
she turned to leave him at a point where their ways parted.

"I would for a million of its sort," he said, fervently. He raised his
hat and smiled, and stood watching her till she was out of sight in the
apple-orchard she had to traverse to reach the cottage.

CHAPTER IX

Henley had been away nearly a year, his absence being protracted by
various business enterprises. Letters to Jim Cahews in regard to the
store, which Cahews was admirably managing, contained humorous accounts
of the various deals which Henley had put through. At one time he had
bought a roller-skating rink, which was sold by auction at a great
sacrifice because the town was too small to support it. Henley had bid
it in, packed it up, and shipped it to a thriving young city, advertised
a big opening, and sold it for a handsome profit while the novelty was
at its height. On another occasion he was the highest bidder on the
scrap-iron in a stove-foundry which had been destroyed by fire, and he
made a handsome "speck" through his ability to guess more nearly than
any of his competitors the weight of the refuse. There was nothing he
would not buy if the price was right, he wrote his clerk, except
_tombstones_, and Cahews understood, and answered to the best of his
ability and tact that the public had long since ceased to talk about
that unfortunate little matter, and when Henley returned he would
perhaps never hear it mentioned.

The stepfather-in-law had used less diplomacy in the account he had
forwarded to Henley on the day following the great occasion. Wrinkle was
as fond of writing as he was of talking, and he fairly basked in the
sunshine of the letter he sent. He read it aloud to himself as he
walked to Chester to post it, pausing now and then to scratch out a word
or to add one with a pencil as the paper lay on his raised knee. This is
the way it sounded to his pleased ears:

"DEAR ALF,--I take my pen in hand to address these few lines to you
to let you know that we are all well, and hope you are endowed with
the same and many like blessings. Nothin' un