ame here to see a patient, and as there must have been
some mistake in the message--I must try to discover it."

"Oh! Is that all?" said the widow quickly. "Why?"--she flushed again and
laughed faintly--"Well! I am that patient! I wanted to see you alone to
explain everything, and I could think of no other way. I'm afraid I've
got into the habit of thinking nothing of being somebody else."

"I wish you would let me select who you should be," said the doctor
boldly.

"We really must go back--to the horses," said the widow.

"Agreed--if we will ride home together."

They did. And before the year was over, although they both remained, the
name of MacGlowrie had passed out of Laurel Spring.

A WARD OF COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S

"The kernel seems a little off color to-day," said the barkeeper as
he replaced the whiskey decanter, and gazed reflectively after the
departing figure of Colonel Starbottle.

"I didn't notice anything," said a bystander; "he passed the time o' day
civil enough to me."

"Oh, he's allus polite enough to strangers and wimmin folk even when he
is that way; it's only his old chums, or them ez like to be thought so,
that he's peppery with. Why, ez to that, after he'd had that quo'll with
his old partner, Judge Pratt, in one o' them spells, I saw him the next
minit go half a block out of his way to direct an entire stranger; and
ez for wimmin!--well, I reckon if he'd just got a head drawn on a man,
and a woman spoke to him, he'd drop his battery and take off his hat to
her. No--ye can't judge by that!"

And perhaps in his larger experience the barkeeper was right. He might
have added, too, that the colonel, in his general outward bearing and
jauntiness, gave no indication of his internal irritation. Yet he was
undoubtedly in one of his "spells," suffering from a moody cynicism
which made him as susceptible of affront as he was dangerous in
resentment.

Luckily, on this particular morning he reached his office and entered
his private room without any serious rencontre. Here he opened his desk,
and arranging his papers, he at once set to work with grim persistency.
He had not been occupied for many minutes before the door opened to Mr.
Pyecroft--one of a firm of attorneys who undertook the colonel's office
work.

"I see you are early to work, Colonel," said Mr. Pyecroft cheerfully.

"You see, sir," said the colonel, correcting him with a slow
deliberation that boded no good--"you see a S