riches than mediating in your
neighbors' squabbles. But it's getting late and I'm afraid we must
bring our talk to an end. I hope you'll think this over before we meet
again--and think differently."

Nevertheless, as they both left the schoolhouse, Mr. Ford lingered over
the locking of the door to give Uncle Ben a final chance for further
explanation. But none came. The new capitalist of Indian Spring regarded
him with an intensification of his usual half sad, half embarrassed
smile, and only said: "You understand this yer's a secret, Mr. Ford?"

"Certainly," said Ford with ill-concealed irritation.

"'Bout my bein' sorter married?"

"Don't be alarmed," he responded dryly; "it's not a taking story."

They separated; Uncle Ben, more than ever involved in his usual
unsatisfactory purposes, wending his way towards his riches; the master
lingering to observe his departure before he plunged, in virtuous
superiority, into the woods that fringed the Harrison and McKinstry
boundaries.

CHAPTER VIII.

The religious attitude which Mrs. McKinstry had assumed towards her
husband's weak civilized tendencies was not entirely free from human
rancor. That strong loyal nature which had unsexed itself in the one
idea of duty, now that duty seemed to be no longer appreciated took
refuge in her forgotten womanhood and in the infinitesimally small
arguments, resources, and manoeuvres at its command. She had conceived a
singular jealousy of this daughter who had changed her husband's nature,
and who had supplanted the traditions of the household life; she had
acquired an exaggerated depreciation of those feminine charms which
had never been a factor in her own domestic happiness. She saw in her
husband's desire to mitigate the savage austerities of their habits
only a weak concession to the powers of beauty and adornment--degrading
vanities she had never known in their life-long struggle for frontier
supremacy--that had never brought them victorious out of that struggle.
"Frizzles," "furblows," and "fancy fixin's" had never helped them in
their exodus across the plains; had never taken the place of swift eyes,
quick ears, strong hands, and endurance; had never nursed the sick or
bandaged the wounded. When envy or jealousy invades the female heart
after forty it is apt to bring a bitterness which knows no attenuating
compensation in that coquetry, emulation, passionate appeal, or innocent
tenderness, which makes tolerable the