r still another long minute all of the persons present waited
again and I forced to remain in my throat a sob, while my beloved
Gouverneur Faulkner laid one of his hands on the shoulder of my Uncle,
the General Robert.

And then did come that explosion!

"You young limb of Satan, you! I could shake the life out of you if I
didn't prefer a live girl to a dead boy. I knew just such a thing as
this would happen to me in my old age for a long life of cussedness.
And what's more, I'll wager I'll never be able to give a great husky
thing like you away. You cost as much to feed as a man. Who'd want
you?"

But even as he stormed at me I felt his strong old arms cease from
their tremblings and clasp me with a very rough tenderness.

"I do, General," said my Gouverneur Faulkner as he attempted to take
me from that very rough embrace of my Uncle, the General Robert. "I'll
take her off your hands."

"No, sir, I never ask personal favors of my friends," answered my
Uncle, the General Robert, as he held me away from the arms of the
Gouverneur Faulkner with a very great determination.

"General Carruthers," then said my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner as he
drew his beautiful body to all the height that was possible to him,
and looked into the eyes of my beloved Uncle Robert with his own,
which are stars of the dawn, so that all of his heart and soul and
honor shone therefrom in a radiance, "the Marquise of Grez and Bye
went a three days' journey into the wilds of the Harpeth mountains
with me to rescue my honor and for the welfare of this great State and
of France. And because we thought not of ourselves but of the welfare
of Harpeth and of France, and did but what was necessary as two
comrades, God has revealed to us his gift of gifts--love. As you see,
she is returned to you radiant and unharmed. Have I your consent to
try to win her hand in marriage?"

For no more than a long minute my Uncle, the General Robert, gazed
straight into the eyes of my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner, and then a
very beautiful smile did break from under those white swords crossed
above his lips, as he spoke with a great urgency:

"Would you like to take the baggage along with you to-night, Governor?
Don't leave her here. I don't want a woman about my house. I can wake
up the county court clerk for a license," he said with a fine
twinkling of the eye.

"Oh, but all friends must forgive me my deception; and then must not a
courtship of great decorum b