d Ephraim's hoarse
chuckle and his "Thomas Payne's got your girl."

Barney turned about and went on with his planting. Ephraim, standing
a little aloof, somewhat warily since his brother's threatening
advance, kept repeating his one remark, as mocking as the snarl of a
mosquito. "Thomas Payne's got your girl, Barney. Say, did you know
it? Thomas Payne's got your girl."

Finally Ephraim stepped close to Barney and shouted it into his ear:
"Say, Barney, Barney Thayer, be you deaf? Thomas Payne has
got--your--_girl!"_ But Barney planted on; his nerves were quivering,
the impetus to strike out was so strong in his arms that it seemed as
if it must by sheer mental force affect his teasing brother, but he
made no sign, and said not another word.

Ephraim, worsted at length by silence, beat a gradual retreat.
Half-way across the field his panting voice called back, "Barney,
Thomas Payne has got your girl," and ended in a choking giggle.
Barney planted, and made no response; but when Ephraim was well out
of sight, he flung down his hoe with a groaning sigh, and went
stumbling across the soft loam of the garden-patch into a little
woody thicket beside it. He penetrated deeply between the trees and
underbrush, and at last flung himself down on his face among the soft
young flowers and weeds. "Oh, Charlotte!" he groaned out. "Oh,
Charlotte, Charlotte!" Barney began sobbing and crying like a child
as he lay there; he moved his arms convulsively, and tore up handfuls
of young grass and leaves, and flung them away in the unconscious
gesturing of grief. "Oh, I can't, I can't!" he groaned.
"I--can't--Charlotte! I can't--let any other man have you! No other
man shall have you!" he cried out, fiercely, and flung up his head;
"you are mine, mine! I'll kill any other man that touches you!"
Barney got up, and his face was flaming; he started off with a great
stride, and then he stopped short and flung an arm around the slender
trunk of a white-birch tree, and pulled it against him and leaned
against it as if it were Charlotte, and laid his cheek on the cool
white bark and sobbed again like a girl. "Oh, Charlotte, Charlotte!"
he moaned, and his voice was drowned out by the manifold rustling of
the young birch leaves, as a human grief is overborne and carried out
of sight by the soft, resistless progress of nature.

Barney, although his faith in Charlotte had been as strong as any
man's should be in his promised wife, had now no doubt bu