ef. His unusual tears were a tribute to eloquence. Sonorous words and
noble thoughts thrilled Eddie Crosson then as ever after.

He had loved to speak pieces at school. Whether it were Spartacus
exhorting his brawny slaves to revolt, or Daniel Webster upholding the
Union now and forever, one and inseparable, he had felt an exaltation,
an exultation that enlarged him to the clouds. He loved the phrase more
than the meaning. What was well worded was well reasoned.

His passion for elocution had inclined him at first to be a lawyer, but
when he visited the county courthouse the attorneys he listened to had
such dull themes to expound that he felt no call to the law. What glory
was there in pleading for the honor of an old darky chicken-thief when
everybody knew at once that he was guilty of stealing the chickens in
question, or would have been if he had known of their accessibility?
What rapture was there in insisting that a case in an Alabama court
eight years before furnished an exact precedent in the matter of a
mechanic's lien in Carthage?

So Crosson chilled toward the legal profession. His father urged him to
come into the Crosson hardware emporium, but Eddie hated the silent
trades. The revivalist decided him, and he began to make his heart
ready for the clerical life. His father opposed him heathenishly and
would not pay for his seminary course.

For several months Crosson waited about, becalmed in the doldrums. There
was little to interest him in town except a helpless espionage on
Irene's loyalty to Drury Boldin. Her troth defied both time and space.
She went every day to the post-office to mail a heavy letter and to
receive the heavy letter she was sure to find there.

She became a sort of tender joke at the post-office, and on the street
as well, for she always read her daily letter on the way home. She would
be so absorbed in the petty chronicles of Drury's life that she would
stroll into people and bump into trees, or fetch up short against a
fence. She sprained her ankle once walking off the walk. And once she
marched plump into the parson's horrified bosom.

Crosson often stood in ambush so that she would run into him. She was
very soft and delicate, and she usually had flowers pinned at her
breast.

Crosson would grin as she stumbled against him; then the lovelorn girl
would stare up at him through the haze of the distance her letter had
carried her to, and stammer excuses and fall back and blush, a