same lies were told over in California, the lawyer they've
got over there, called Colonel Starbottle,--a Southern man too,--got up
and just wrote to Aunt Martha that she'd better quit that afore she got
prosecuted? They didn't tell you that, did they, Mister Chester Brooks?"

But here the unfortunate Brooks, after the fashion of all jealous
lovers, deserted his allies for his fair enemy. "I don't cotton to what
THEY say, Sally, but you DO write to him, and I don't see what you've
got to write about--you and him. Jule Jeffcourt says that when you got
religion at Louisville during the revival, you felt you had a call to
write and save sinners, and you did that as your trial and probation,
but that since you backslided and are worldly again, and go to parties,
you just keep it up for foolin' and flirtin'! SHE ain't goin' to weaken
on the man that shot her brother, just because he's got a gold mine
and--a mustache!"

"She takes his MONEY all the same," said Miss Sally.

"SHE don't,--her mother does. SHE says if she was a man she'd have blood
for blood!"

"My!" said Miss Sally, in affected consternation. "It's a wonder she
don't apply to you to act for her."

"If it was MY brother he killed, I'd challenge him quick enough," said
Chet, flushing through his thin pink skin and light hair.

"Marry her, then, and that'll make you one of the family. I reckon Miss
Hilda can bear it," rejoined the young lady pertly.

"Look here, Miss Sally," said the young fellow with a boyish despair
that was not without a certain pathos in its implied inferiority, "I
ain't gifted like you--I ain't on yo' level no how; I can't pass yo' on
the road, and so I reckon I must take yo' dust as yo' make it. But there
is one thing, Miss Sally, I want to tell you. You know what's going on
in this country, you've heard your father say what the opinion of the
best men is, and what's likely to happen if the Yanks force that nigger
worshiper, Lincoln, on the South. You know that we're drawing the line
closer every day, and spottin' the men that ain't sound. Take care, Miss
Sally, you ain't sellin' us cheap to some Northern Abolitionist
who'd like to set Marm Judy's little niggers to something worse
than eavesdropping down there, and mebbe teach 'em to kindle a fire
underneath yo' own flo'."

He had become quite dialectic in his appeal, as if youthfully reverting
to some accent of the nursery, or as if he were exhorting her in some
recognized shibbolet