lled out his pocket-book, and, taking therefrom a
cutting from a newspaper,--which dropped helplessly open of itself, as if
tired of the process, being very tender in the joints or creases, by
reason of having been often folded and unfolded read aloud as follows:

"The bard of Oxbow Pillage--our valued correspondent who writes over the
signature of G. H.--is, in our opinion, more remarkable for his
originality than for any other of his numerous gifts."

Clement was apparently silenced by this, and the poet a little elated
with a sense of triumph. Susan could not help sharing his feeling of
satisfaction, and without meaning it in the least, nay, without knowing
it, for she was as simple and pure as new milk, edged a little bit--the
merest infinitesimal atom--nearer to Gifted Hopkins, who was on one side
of her, while Clement walked on the other. Women love the conquering
party,--it is the way of their sex. And poets, as we have seen, are
well-nigh irresistible when they exert their dangerous power of
fascination upon the female heart. But Clement was above jealousy; and,
if he perceived anything of this movement, took no notice of it.

He saw a good deal of his pretty Susan that day. She was tender in her
expressions and manners as usual, but there was a little something in her
looks and language from time to time that Clement did not know exactly
what to make of. She colored once or twice when the young poet's name
was mentioned. She was not so full of her little plans for the future as
she had sometimes been, "everything was so uncertain," she said. Clement
asked himself whether she felt quite as sure that her attachment would
last as she once did. But there were no reproaches, not even any
explanations, which are about as bad between lovers. There was nothing
but an undefined feeling on his side that she did not cling quite so
closely to him, perhaps, as he had once thought, and that, if he had
happened to have been drowned that day when he went down with the
beautiful young woman, it was just conceivable that Susan, who would have
cried dreadfully, no doubt, would in time have listened to consolation
from some other young man,--possibly from the young poet whose verses he
had been admiring. Easy-crying widows take new husbands soonest; there
is nothing like wet weather for transplanting, as Master Gridley used to
say. Susan had a fluent natural gift for tears, as Clement well knew,
after the exercise of