" said the
Deacon. "There'll be nobody to interfere with you, an' a handsome legacy
if I die first; for none o' my few savin's is goin' to my daughters, I
can promise you that!"

The Deacon threw out this tempting bait advisedly, for at this moment he
would have poured his hoard into the lap of any woman who would help him
to avenge his fancied wrongs.

This was information, indeed! The "few savings" alluded to amounted to
some thousands, Jane Tillman knew. Had she not better burn her ships
behind her, take the risks, and have faith in her own powers? She was
getting along in ears, and her charms of person were lessening with
every day that passed over her head. If the Deacon's queer ways grew
too queer, she thought an appeal to the doctor and the minister might
provide a way of escape and a neat little income to boot; so, on the
whole, the marriage, though much against her natural inclinations,
seemed to be providentially arranged.

The interview that succeeded, had it been reported verbatim, deserved
to be recorded in local history. Deacon Baxter had met in Jane Tillman a
foeman more than worthy of his steel. She was just as crafty as he, and
in generalship as much superior to him as Napoleon Bonaparte to Cephas
Cole. Her knowledge of and her experiences with men, all very humble, it
is true, but decidedly varied, enabled her to play on every weakness of
this particular one she had in hand, and at the same time skilfully to
avoided alarming him.

Heretofore, the women with whom the Deacon had come in contact had
timidly steered away from the rocks and reefs in his nature, and had
been too ignorant or too proud to look among them for certain softer
places that were likely to be there--since man is man, after all, even
when he is made on a very small pattern.

If Jane Tillman became Mrs. Baxter, she intended to get the whip hand
and keep it; but nothing was further from her intention than to make the
Deacon miserable if she could help it. That was not her disposition; and
so, when the deluded man left her house, he had made more concessions in
a single hour than in all the former years of his life.

His future spouse was to write out a little paper for his signature;
just a friendly little paper to be kept quite private and confidential
between themselves, stating that she was to do no work outside of the
house; that her pension was to be her own; that she was to have five
dollars in cash on the first of every mo