returned Miss Morvin. "And though
he's only a doctor, he jest stuck up agin' the kernel, and told that
story about your jabbin' that man with your scissors--beautiful; and
how you once fought off a bear with a red-hot iron, so that you'd have
admired to hear him. He's awfully gone on you!"

The widow took that opportunity to button her cuff.

"And how long does the preacher calculate to stay?" she added, returning
to business details.

"Only a day. They'll have his house fixed up and ready for him
to-morrow. They're spendin' a heap o' money on it. He ought to be the
pow'ful preacher they say he is--to be worth it."

But here Mrs. MacGlowrie's interest in the conversation ceased, and it
dropped.

In her anxiety to further the suit of Dick Blair, Miss Morvin had
scarcely reported the colonel with fairness.

That gentleman, leaning against the bar in the hotel saloon with a
cocktail in his hand, had expatiated with his usual gallantry upon
Mrs. MacGlowrie's charms, and on his own "personal" responsibility
had expressed the opinion that they were thrown away on Laurel Spring.
That--blank it all--she reminded him of the blankest beautiful woman
he had seen even in Washington--old Major Beveridge's daughter from
Kentucky. Were they sure she wasn't from Kentucky? Wasn't her name
Beveridge--and not Boompointer? Becoming more reminiscent over his
second drink, the colonel could vaguely recall only one Boompointer--a
blank skulking hound, sir--a mean white shyster--but, of course, he
couldn't have been of the same breed as such a blank fine woman as the
widow! It was here that Dick Blair interrupted with a heightened color
and a glowing eulogy of the widow's relations and herself, which,
however, only increased the chivalry of the colonel--who would be the
last man, sir, to detract from--or suffer any detraction of--a lady's
reputation. It was needless to say that all this was intensely diverting
to the bystanders, and proportionally discomposing to Blair, who already
experienced some slight jealousy of the colonel as a man whose fighting
reputation might possibly attract the affections of the widow of the
belligerent MacGlowrie. He had cursed his folly and relapsed into gloomy
silence until the colonel left.

For Dick Blair loved the widow with the unselfishness of a generous
nature and a first passion. He had admired her from the first day
his lot was cast in Laurel Spring, where coming from a rude frontier
practice h