d of a fighting line, the acid of self-scorn began
eating into his pride, and when a few days later he halted at a wayside
smithy, which was really only a "blind-tiger," and came upon a drinking
crowd, the ferment of his thoughts developed into action.

Sol Breck was sitting with his back turned as the boy strolled in and
it chanced that he was talking about Alexander. The girl herself with
her square sense of justice, would have recognized his comments as
crude jesting and would have passed them by unresented.

But Joe had been bitterly accusing himself of timidity and he needed
sustenance for his waning faith in his own temerity. It was
characteristic of him that he should pick an easy beginning, as a timid
swimmer seeks proficiency in shallow water. Sol Breck had the
unenviable reputation of one who never declined battle--and never
emerged from one crowned with victory. Joe hurled at him the challenge
of the fighting epithet and after a brief but animated combat had him
down and defeated. Then he returned home with a swelling breast, and
just enough marks of conflict upon his own person to bear out his
report of counsel heeded and resolution put to the touch.

Alexander listened without interruption to the end, for Joe had told
her all but the name of his adversary and the exact words that had
precipitated battle.

But when the narrative came to its conclusion she inquired quietly,
"What did he say erbout me?"

"Oh, hit wasn't so much what he said es ther way he said hit," was
Joe's somewhat shame-faced reply. "Ef hit hed been erbout any other
gal, I reckon I mout of looked over it."

"What was it?" The demand was insistent.

"He jest 'lowed that if 'stid of warin' pants an' straddlin' hosses,
ye'd pick ye out an upstandin' man an' wed him, thar mout come ter be
some _real_ men in ther fam'ly."

The girl's face crimsoned.

"I thought ye said hit war me ye fought erbout, Joe."

"I did say so, Alexander."

"An' ye didn't see no aspersion thet called fer a fight--in ther way
them words teched _you_?"

That phase of the matter had not occurred to Joe at all. He was used
to being overlooked.

"He warn't thinkin' erbout me," he lamely exculpated. "I reckon he hed
hit in head thet I hain't quite twenty-one yit."

For a while Alexander stood looking at him with a slowly gathering
tempest of anger in her eyes, under which the boy fidgeted, and finally
she spoke in that ominously still manner that ma