g description, he said, gently, "Are you busy just now?"

"Not very. What can I do for you?"

"Well, not much for ME, I reckon," he returned, with a deeper
respiration, that was his nearest approach to a sigh, "but suthin'
perhaps for yourself and--another. Are you married?"

"No," said the editor, promptly.

"Nor engaged to any--young lady?"--with great politeness.

"No."

"Well, mebbe you think it a queer thing for me to say,--mebbe you reckon
you KNOW it ez well ez anybody,--but it's my opinion that White Violet
is in love with you."

"With me?" ejaculated the editor, in a hopeless astonishment that at
last gave way to an incredulous and irresistible laugh.

A slight touch of pain passed over Mr. Bowers's dejected face, but left
the deep outlines set with a rude dignity. "It's SO," he said, slowly,
"though, as a young man and a gay feller, ye may think it's funny."

"No, not funny, but a terrible blunder, Mr. Bowers, for I give you my
word I know nothing of the lady and have never set eyes upon her."

"No, but she has on YOU. I can't say," continued Mr. Bowers, with
sublime naivete, "that I'd ever recognize you from her description, but
a woman o' that kind don't see with her eyes like you and me, but with
all her senses to onct, and a heap more that ain't senses as we know
'em. The same eyes that seed down through the brush and ferns in the
Summit woods, the same ears that heerd the music of the wind trailin'
through the pines, don't see you with my eyes or hear you with my ears.
And when she paints you, it's nat'ril for a woman with that pow'ful mind
and grand idees to dip her brush into her heart's blood for warmth and
color. Yer smilin', young man. Well, go on and smile at me, my lad, but
not at her. For you don't know her. When you know her story as I do,
when you know she was made a wife afore she ever knew what it was to be
a young woman, when you know that the man she married never understood
the kind o' critter he was tied to no more than ef he'd been a steer
yoked to a Morgan colt, when ye know she had children growin' up around
her afore she had given over bein' a sort of child herself, when ye
know she worked and slaved for that man and those children about the
house--her heart, her soul, and all her pow'ful mind bein' all the time
in the woods along with the flickering leaves and the shadders,--when
ye mind she couldn't get the small ways o' the ranch because she had the
big ways o' Natur' tha