ney for a man to
have and haggle a month over seventy-five dollars the way he did with
me when he sold me his share of College Heights. But," added the
colonel, "I suppose if I had that much I'd value it more." The women
were thinking of other things, and the colonel addressed the night:
"Man gets an appetite for money just as he does for liquor--just like
the love for whiskey, I may say." He shook his sides as he meditated
aloud: "But as for me--I guess I've got so I can take it or let it
alone. Eh, ma?"

"I didn't catch what you were saying, pa," answered his wife. "I was
just thinking whether we had potatoes enough to make hash for
breakfast; have we, Molly?"

As the women were discussing the breakfast, two men came out of a
cross street, and the colonel, who was slightly in advance of his
women, hailed the men with, "Hello there, Bob--you and Jake out here
carrying on your illicit friendship in the dark?"

The men and the Culpeppers stopped for a moment at the corner. Molly
Brownwell's heart throbbed as they met, and she thought of the rising
moon, and in an instant her brain was afire with a hope that shamed
her. Three could not walk abreast on the narrow sidewalk up the hill,
and when she heard Hendricks say after the group had parleyed a
moment, "Well, Jake, good night; I'll go on home with the colonel,"
she managed the pairing off so that the young man fell to her, and the
colonel and Mrs. Culpepper walked before the younger people, and they
all talked together. But at Lincoln Avenue, the younger people
disconnected themselves from the talk of the elders, and finally
lagged a few feet behind. When they reached the gate the colonel
called back, "Better come in and visit a minute, Bob," and Molly
added, "Yes, Bob, it's early yet."

But what she said with her voice did not decide the matter for him. It
was her eyes. And what he said with his voice is immaterial--it was
what his eyes replied that the woman caught. What he said was, "Well,
just for a minute, Colonel," and the party walked up the steps of the
veranda, and Bob and Molly and the colonel sat down.

Mrs. Culpepper stood for a moment and then said, "Well, Bob, you must
excuse me--I forgot to set my sponge, and there isn't a bit of bread
in the house for Sunday." Whereupon she left them, and when the
colonel had talked himself out he left them, and when the two were
alone there came an awkward silence. In the years they had been apart
a thousand thin