t first Mary was nettled; then she grew sad; as weeks passed away she
became nettled again, and at this juncture another suitor appeared in
the shape of a young immigrant farmer, whose good looks and insinuating
address soothed her irritation at the strange abrupt conduct of her
lover. She began to think that she must have been mistaken in supposing
that she cared for the wild trapper--and, in order to prove the
correctness of her supposition, she married Obadiah Marston, the farmer.

Alas! poor Mary discovered her error too late. Marston turned out a
profligate drunkard. At first he did not come out in his true colours.
A son was born, and he insisted on calling him March, for no other
reason than that he was born in the month so named. Mary was obliged to
consent, and at last came to congratulate herself that the child had
been born in March, and not in April or October, or any other month
equally unsuitable for a Christian name. After the first year, Obadiah
Marston treated his wife badly, then brutally, and at last he received a
sound drubbing from his brother-in-law, the blacksmith, for having
beaten poor Mary with a stick. This brought things to a climax.
Marston vowed he would forsake his wife, and never set eyes on her
again; and he kept his vow. He embarked one day in a boat that was
going down to the Missouri with a cargo of furs, and his poor wife never
saw him again. Thus was Mary West forsaken, first by her lover and then
by her husband.

It was long before she recovered from the blow; but time gradually
reconciled her to her lot, and she devoted herself thenceforth to the
training of her little boy. As years rolled on, Mrs Marston recovered
her spirits and her looks; but, although many a fine young fellow sought
her heart and hand, assuring her that she was a widow--that she _must_
be a widow, that no man in his senses could remain so long away from
such a wife unless he were dead--she turned a deaf ear to them all.

March Marston's infancy was spent in yelling and kicking, with the
exception of those preternaturally calm periods when he was employed in
eating and sleeping. As he grew older the kicking and yelling
decreased, the eating increased, and the sleeping continued pretty much
the same. Then came a period when he began to learn his A, B, C. Mrs
Marston had been well educated for her station in life. She had read
much, and had brought a number of books to the backwoods settlement; so