ons back; they run in the blood of every old family in
my country, and so, I'm ashamed to say, I hesitated and tried to reason
myself into giving her up, but I've had my eyes opened, and I see how
little those things amount to, after all. I'm going to marry Necia, Mr.
Gale. I'd like to do it the day after to-morrow, Sunday, but she isn't
of age yet, and if you object, we'll have to wait until November, when
she turns eighteen. We'd both like your consent, of course; I'd be
sorry to marry her without it; but if you refuse, we'll be forced to
displease you." He looked up and met the father's gaze steadily. "Now,
I'll be glad to listen as long as you care to talk, but I don't think
it will do any good."

The other man's lips framed a faint smile.

"We'll see. I wish to God I'd had your decision when I was your age,
this story would be different, and easier to tell." He waited a moment,
then settled to his self-appointed task. "I was mining at the time up
in the Mother Lode country of California, which was the frontier then,
pretty much as this is now, only we had better things to eat. I came
from the East, or my people did, but I was ranch-raised, and loved the
hills and woods and places where you don't talk much, so I went to
prospecting because it took me out where the sun was bright and I could
see the wild things at play. I was one of the first men into a camp
named Chandon--helped to build it, in fact, and got hold of some ground
that looked real good. It was hard mining, however, and, being poor, I
was still gripping my drill and hammer after the town had grown up.

"A woman came out from the East--Vermont, it was--and school-teaching
was her line of business, only she hadn't been raised to it, and this
was her first clatter at the game; but things had broke bad for her
people, and ended in her pulling stakes and coming West all alone. Her
folks died and left her up against it, I gathered from what little she
told me--sort of an old story, I guess, and usual too, only for her.
She was plumb unusual."

He seemed to ponder this a moment, and then resumed:

"It don't make any difference to you how I first saw her, and how I
began to forget that anything else in the world was worth having but
her. I'd lived in the woods all my life, as I said, and knew more about
birds and bugs and bees than I did about women; I hadn't been broke
proper, and didn't know how to act with them; but I laid out to get
this girl, and I di