ng to discover I had no money, no assets. There were no odds and
ends, even, of wreckage which I could salvage for one more week of the old
life.

Among my first friends had been Ericus Dale and his daughter, Patricia. To
her intimates she was known as Patsy. As was to be expected when an
awkward boy meets a dainty and wonderful maid, I fell in love completely
out of sight. At nineteen I observed that the girl, eighteen, was becoming
a toast among men much older and very, very much more sophisticated than
I.

She was often spoken of as the belle of Charles City County, and I spent
much time vainly wishing she was less attractive. Her father, engaged in
the Indian-trade, and often away from home for several months at a time,
had seemed to be very kindly disposed to me.

I instinctively hurried to the Dales to impart the astounding fact that I
was bankrupt. One usually speaks of financial reverses as "crashing about"
one's head. My wind-up did not even possess that poor dignity; for there
was not enough left even to rattle, let alone crash.

The youth who rode so desperately to the Dale home that wonderful day
tragically to proclaim his plight, followed by fervid vows to go away and
make a new fortune, has long since won my sympathy. I have always resented
Ericus Dale's attitude toward that youth on learning he was a pauper. It
is bad enough to confess to a girl that one has not enough to marry on;
but it is hell to be compelled to add that one has not enough to woo on.

How it wrung my heart to tell her I was an impostor, that I was going to
the back-country and begin life all over. Poor young devil! How many like
me have solemnly declared their intentions to begin all over, whereas, in
fact, they never had begun at all.

And why does youth in such juvenile cataclysms feel forced to seek new
fields in making the fresh start? Shame for having failed, I suppose. An
unwillingness to toe the scratch under the handicap of having his
neighbors know it is his second trial.

But so much had happened since that epochal day back in Williamsburg that
it seemed our parting had been fully a million years ago. It made me smile
to remember how mature Patsy had been when I meekly ran her errands and
gladly wore her yoke in the old days.

Three years of surveying, scouting and despatch-bearing through the
trackless wilderness had aged me. I prided myself I was an old man in
worldly wisdom. Patsy Dale had only added three years to