ot, or was it
the romance of the wooing, or was it the fascination of those restless,
searching eyes that Mary so often looked up to find fixed upon her with
an expression she could not forget and could not define?

I incline to the belief that all these things combined to constitute the
charm whereof I speak. Miss Woppit had not the beauty that would be
likely to attract one other own sex; she had none of the sprightliness
and wit of womankind, and she seemed to be wholly unacquainted with the
little arts, accomplishments and vanities in which women invariably find
amusement. She was simply a strange, lonely creature who had accepted
valorously her duty to minister to the comfort of her brother; the
circumstances of her wooing invested her name and her lot with a certain
pleasing romance; she was a woman, she was loyal to her sense of duty,
and she was, to a greater degree than most women, a martyr--herein,
perhaps, lay the secret to the fascination Miss Woppit had for Mary
Lackington.

At any rate, Mary and Miss Woppit became, to all appearances, fast
friends; the wooing of Miss Woppit progressed apace, and the mystery of
those Red Hoss Mountain crimes became more and--but I have already
declared myself upon _that_ point and I shall say no more thereof except
so far as bears directly upon my story, which is, I repeat, of a wooing,
and not of crime.

Three-fingered Hoover had every confidence in the ultimate success of the
scheme to which Miss Mary had become an enthusiastic party. In
occasional pessimistic moods he found himself compelled to confess to
himself that the reports made by Miss Mary were not altogether such as
would inspire enthusiasm in the bosom of a man less optimistic than
he--Hoover--was.

To tell the truth, Mary found the task of doing Hoover's courting for him
much more difficult than she had ever fancied a task of that kind could
be. In spite of her unacquaintance with the artifices of the world Miss
Woppit exhibited the daintiest skill at turning the drift of the
conversation whenever, by the most studied tact, Mary Lackington
succeeded in bringing the conversation around to a point where the
virtues of Three-fingered Hoover, as a candidate for Miss Woppit's
esteem, could be expatiated upon. From what Miss Woppit implied rather
than said, Mary took it that Miss Woppit esteemed Mr. Hoover highly as a
gentleman and as a friend--that she perhaps valued his friendship more
than she did that