ones from a respectful distance. He
paid no attention to stones or shouts. Keeping the straight path, his
brute head wagging drunkenly, he was making directly for the open
yard-gate, from which a gravel walk led to the porch where we had been
sitting. Snap, his master's favorite hunter, and the petted darling of
his mistress, was hitched to the rack by the gate, ready-saddled for
Cousin Frank's morning round of the plantation. At the noise behind him,
the intelligent creature threw up his handsome head, glanced over his
shoulder, and began to plunge and snort, as if aware of the danger. His
master spoke soothingly as he planted his own body between him and the
ugly beast.

"Steady, old boy! steady!"

In saying it he raised the gun to his shoulder. It was all done so
quickly that I had hardly seen the livid horror in Cousin Molly Belle's
face when the good gun spoke, the muzzle within ten yards of the dog's
head, and he rolled over in the path.

"What if you had missed him! He would have been upon you before you
could reload!" shuddered the wife, as we ran out to meet Cousin Frank.

"I did not mean to miss him. If I had, I should have clubbed my gun and
brained him. No, dear love! it would not 'have done as well had I fired
at him over the palings.' Snap was on the other side of the gate.
And"--with an arch flash he might have learned from her--"you and
Namesake and I think the world and all of Snap, you know."

It was the only allusion he ever made in my hearing to the escapade that
won him his wife.

We learned, within a few hours, that the dog had bitten several cows,
five other dogs, and a valuable colt, before he reached Oakholme.

I was always very fond of Cousin Frank. Henceforward, he stepped into
the vanguard of my heroes. I did not believe that Israel Putnam could
have done anything more daring than what I had witnessed in the safe
place in which he put us "before he sallied forth into the very jaws of
death." That was the way I described it to myself.

Tramping through the lower pasture at his side that afternoon I tried to
voice my admiration to him, but used less inflated language. I dearly
enjoyed these long walks over the plantation in his company. He was an
excellent farmer, and kept no overseer. I learned a great deal of
forestry and botany from his talk. If he adapted himself, consciously,
to my understanding, he did not let me perceive it. The recollection of
his unfailing patience and his app