ewalk.

"It's you and me for it, Pap," he said hardily. "What was _you_ tryin'
to do? Was you gettin' the patent for Johnnie? Shall I call her up here
and ask her?"

"No, no," exclaimed the old man hastily. "They ain't no use of puttin'
sich things in a fool gal's hands. She never heard of a patent--wouldn't
know one from a hole in the ground. Hit's like you say, Buck--you and
me for it."

The two men rose and stood a moment, Shade smiling a bit to think what
he would do with Pap Himes and his claim if he could only once get
Johnnie to say yes to his suit. The thick wits of the elder man
apparently realized this feature of the matter not at all.

"Why that thar girl is crazy to get married," he argued, half angrily.
"You know in reason she is--they all are. The fust night when you brung
her here I named it to her that she was pretty well along in years, and
she'd better be spry about gettin' her hooks on a man, or she was left.
She said she'd do the best she could--I never heered a gal speak up
pearter--most of 'em would be 'shamed to name it out so free. Why, if it
was me, I'd walk her down to a justice's office an' wed her so quick her
head'd swim.

"Who's that talking about getting married?" called Johnnie's voice from
the street, and Johnnie herself ran up the steps.

"Hit was me," harangued Pap Himes doggedly. "I was tellin' Shade how bad
you wanted to git off, and that I 'lowed you'd be a good bargain
for him."

He looked hopefully from one to the other, as though he expected to see
his advice accepted and put into immediate practice. Johnnie laughed
whole-heartedly.

"Pap," she said with shining eyes, "if you get me a husband, I'll have
to give you a commission on it. Looks like I can't noways get one for
myself, don't it?"

She passed into the house, and Shade regarded his ally in helpless
anger.

"That's the way she talks, here lately," he growled, "Seems like it
would be easy enough to come to something; and by the Lord, it would,
with any other gal I ever seed--or with Johnnie like she was when she
first came down here! But these days and times she's got a way of
puttin' me off that I can't seem to get around."

Neither man quite understood the power of that mental culture which
Johnnie was assimilating so avidly. That reading things in a book should
enable her--a child, a girl, a helpless woman--to negative their wishes
smilingly, this would have been a thing quite outside the comprehension
o