things; but you've
got friends that stick to you powerful close. I've heard many a one say
that in taking your wife's father-and mother-in-law to live with you,
and treating them as nice as you have, you are doing what not one man in
ten thousand would do."

"I don't deserve any credit for that--not one bit," the young man
declared. "I'm not going to pass as better than I am, Dixie; I'm just
human, neither better nor worse than the average. I reckon you've heard
about how I happened to get married?"

"Not from _you_, Alfred," the girl answered, in a kindly tone. "I have
often wondered if the busybodies got it straight. I've heard that you
used to go to see your wife before she married the first time."

"Yes, me and Dick Wrinkle was both after her in a neck-and-neck race,
taking her to parties, corn-shuckings, and anything that was got up.
Hettie never was, you know, exactly pretty, but she had a sort o' queer,
say-little way about her that caught my eye. I was a gawky boy, as
green as a gourd, and never had been about with women. Dick was just the
opposite: he was a reckless, splurging chap that dressed as fine as a
fiddle, wasn't afraid to talk, joke, and carry on, and he could dance to
a queen's taste; so he naturally had all the gals after him. I was
afraid he was going to cut me out, and I was fool enough to--well, I
used to hope, when I'd see him so popular in company, that he'd make
another choice. And he might--he might have done it--for he was the most
wishy-washy chap that ever cocked his eye at a woman; he might, I say,
if me an' him hadn't had a regular knock-down-and-drag-out row. He was
drinking once, and said more than I could stand about a hoss trade I'd
made with a cousin o' his, and it ended in blows. The crowd parted us,
and he went one way and me another; but after that he hated me like a
rattlesnake, and he told her not to let me come there again. He might
not have made that demand if he had thought it over, for it sorter give
'er a stick to poke 'im with. She used to say nice things about me to
egg him on, and he often went with her for no other reason than to keep
me away. Well, you can see how it was. She wanted to beat the other
gals, and he wanted to outdo me, and, in the wrangle, they got married
one day all of a sudden."

"And you felt bad, I reckon," Dixie Hart said, sympathetically.

"I wanted to die," Henley answered, grimly. "I cursed man and God. That
gal was my life. I was as blind