--I hope she 'll be
pleased with my wedding-gift."

Tobe buried Checker's hand in his great horny palm. "Mr. Checkers," he
said, and his voice grew husky, "ye 're God's own kind; may He have ye
in His keepin'!" and he climbed upon his wagon, and drove slowly out
into the night.

Checkers was alone. He went slowly into the house. A clock upon the
mantel was chiming ten. There was still two hours before train time.
He sat down and wrote a long letter to Judge Martin, sealed and stamped
it, and put it in his pocket. His hat and light overcoat lay upon a
chair beside him. He arose and put them on. His satchel, cane, and
umbrella he then carefully laid on the stoop outside, and stood a while
listening in the darkness. Apparently satisfied, he returned, and,
taking one last, lingering look around, put out the lights.

For perhaps ten minutes he was busy at something under the stairway.
He then silently emerged and locked the door.

The people of Clarksville and that vicinity are given to retiring
early. Had they been abroad, or even awake, as late as eleven o'clock
that night, they might have seen a startling spectacle in the
distance--that of a mass of ruthless, hungry flames devouring a little
white dwelling; leaping up in their fierce ecstacy to the heavens, and
painting the sky all about a lurid, smoky crimson.

Checkers sat perched upon the fence some distance off. One heel was
caught upon the first rail below him. His elbow rested upon his knee,
and his upturned palm supported his chin.

The poor little house writhed helpless in the withering grasp of the
remorseless flames. "This, then, was the final ending," he
thought--"ashes to ashes," literally. This was the awakening from his
short dream of bliss. Here he had lived six happy months; then
ill-fortune singled him out for a plaything. He laughed a bitter,
mirthless laugh.

The night was perfectly still and the myriad sparks from the flames
rose straight to heaven. "There 's one good thing about it all," he
mused, "and that is that I kept neglecting to insure the house and
furniture when I went to Little Rock. That being the case, it 's a
wonder I did n't burn out before this. I guess it was coming. I
probably got a lead of a couple of days on my luck, and beat it out a
length or two."

He looked at his watch. He had still half an hour before train time.
The fire was burning lower. Suddenly the whole standing structure fell
in with a mu