Blight was coming
back to them. All those weary waiting months he had clung grimly to his
work. He must have heard from her sometimes, else I think he would have
gone to her; but I knew the Blight's pen was reluctant and casual for
anybody, and, moreover, she was having a strenuous winter at home. That
he knew as well, for he took one paper, at least, that he might simply
read her name. He saw accounts of her many social doings as well, and
ate his heart out as lovers have done for all time gone and will do for
all time to come.

I, too, was away all winter, but I got back a month before the Blight,
to learn much of interest that had come about. The Hon. Samuel Budd had
ear-wagged himself into the legislature, had moved that Court-House, and
was going to be State Senator. The Wild Dog had confined his reckless
career to his own hills through the winter, but when spring came,
migratory-like, he began to take frequent wing to the Gap. So far, he
and Marston had never come into personal conflict, though Marston kept
ever ready for him, and several times they had met in the road, eyed
each other in passing and made no hipward gesture at all. But then
Marston had never met him when the Wild Dog was drunk--and when sober, I
took it that the one act of kindness from the engineer always stayed his
hand. But the Police Guard at the Gap saw him quite often--and to it he
was a fearful and elusive nuisance. He seemed to be staying somewhere
within a radius of ten miles, for every night or two he would circle
about the town, yelling and firing his pistol, and when we chased him,
escaping through the Gap or up the valley or down in Lee. Many plans
were laid to catch him, but all failed, and finally he came in one day
and gave himself up and paid his fines. Afterward I recalled that
the time of this gracious surrender to law and order was but little
subsequent to one morning when a woman who brought butter and eggs to my
little sister casually asked when that "purty slim little gal with the
snappin' black eyes was a-comin' back." And the little sister, pleased
with the remembrance, had said cordially that she was coming soon.

Thereafter the Wild Dog was in town every day, and he behaved well until
one Saturday he got drunk again, and this time, by a peculiar chance, it
was Marston again who leaped on him, wrenched his pistol away, and put
him in the calaboose. Again he paid his fine, promptly visited a "blind
Tiger," came back to to