e,--I don't jestly know where. They say that
he's follerin' up the courts in the business about old Malachi's estate.
I don' know much about it."

The news got round Oxbow Village very speedily that Mr. Clement Lindsay,
generally considered the accepted lover of Miss Susan Posey, had arrived
in that place. Now it had come to be the common talk of the village that
young Gifted Hopkins and Susan Posey were getting to be mighty thick with
each other, and the prevailing idea was that Clement's visit had
reference to that state of affairs. Some said that Susan had given her
young man the mitten, meaning thereby that she had signified that his
services as a suitor were dispensed with. Others thought there was only a
wavering in her affection for her lover, and that he feared for her
constancy, and had come to vindicate his rights.

Some of the young fellows, who were doubtless envious of Gifted's
popularity with the fair sex, attempted in the most unjustifiable manner
to play upon his susceptible nature. One of them informed him that he
had seen that Lindsay fellah raound taown with the darndest big stick y'
ever did see. Looked kind o' savage and wild like. Another one told him
that perhaps he'd better keep a little shady; that are chap that had got
the mittin was praowlin' abaout--with a pistil,--one o' them
Darringers,--abaout as long as your thumb, an' fire a bullet as big as a
p'tatah-ball,--'a fellah carries one in his breeches-pocket, an' shoots
y' right threugh his own pahnts, withaout ever takin' on it aout of his
pocket. The stable-keeper, who, it may be remembered, once exchanged a
few playful words with Mr. Gridley, got a hint from some of these
unfeeling young men, and offered the resources of his stable to the youth
supposed to be in peril.

"I 've got a faast colt, Mr. Hopkins, that 'll put twenty mild betwixt
you an' this here village, as quick as any four huffs 'll dew it in this
here caounty, if you should want to get away suddin. I've heern tell
there was some lookin' raound here that wouldn't be wholesome to
meet,--jest say the word, Mr. Hopkins, an' I 'll have ye on that are
colt's back in less than no time, an' start ye off full jump. There's a
good many that's kind o' worried for fear something might happen to ye,
Mr. Hopkins,--y' see fellahs don't like to have other chaps cuttin' on
'em aout with their gals."

Gifted Hopkins had become excessively nervous by this time. It is true
that every