arming
daughter. All my fears of the early part of the evening tried to crowd
on me again, but were calmed by the girl, who sang and played on the
piano with no audience but me. Then she interested me by telling her
school experiences, and how glad she was that they were over. Finally
she lugged out a great big family album, and sat down aside of me on
one of these horsehair sofas. That album had a clasp on it, a buckle
of pure silver, same as these eighteen dollar bridles. While we were
looking at the pictures--some of the old varmints had fought in the
Revolutionary war, so she said--I noticed how close we were sitting
together. Then we sat farther apart after we had gone through the
album, one on each end of the sofa, and talked about the neighborhood,
until I suddenly remembered that I had to go. While she was getting my
hat and I was getting away, somehow she had me promise to take dinner
with them on Christmas.

"For the next two or three months it was hard to tell if I lived at my
boarding house or at the brick. If I failed to go, my landlady would
hatch up some errand and send me over. If she hadn't been such a good
woman, I'd never forgive her for leading me to the sacrifice like she
did. Well, about two weeks before school was out, I went home over
Saturday and Sunday. Those were fatal days in my life. When I returned
on Monday morning, there was a letter waiting for me. It was from the
girl's mamma. There had been a quilting in the neighborhood on
Saturday, and at this meet of the local gossips, some one had hinted
that there was liable to be a wedding as soon as school was out. Mamma
was present, and neither admitted nor denied the charge. But there was
a woman at this quilting who had once lived over in our neighborhood
and felt it her duty to enlighten the company as to who I was. I got
all this later from my landlady. 'Law me,' said this woman, 'folks
round here in this section think our teacher is the son of that big
farmer who raises so many cattle and horses. Why, I've known both
families of those Quarternights for nigh on to thirty year. Our
teacher is one of old John Fox's boys, the Irish Quarternights, who
live up near the salt licks on Doe Run. They were always so poor that
the children never had enough to eat and hardly half enough to wear.'

"This plain statement of facts fell like a bombshell on mamma. She
started a private investigation of her own, and her verdict was in
that letter. It was a