dventures."

She had all the instincts of Desdemona, did that pretty little lady.
Three times that week she came to the toll-house and listened with
lips apart and eyes shining. Cap'n Sproul had never heard of Othello
and his wooing, but after a time his heart began to glow under the
reverent regard she bent on him. Never did mutual selection more
naturally come about. She loved him for the perils he had braved,
and he--robbed of his mistress, the sea--yearned for just such
companionship as she was giving him. He had known that life lacked
something. This was it.

And when one day, after a stuttering preamble that lasted a full half
hour, he finally blurted out his heart-hankering, she wept a little
while on his shoulder--it being luckily a time when there was no one
passing--and then sobbingly declared it could never be.

"'Fraid of your brother, hey?" he inquired.

She bumped her forehead gently on his shoulder in nod of assent.

"I reckon ye like me?"

"Oh, Aaron!" It was a volume of rebuke, appeal, and affection in two
words.

"Then there ain't nothin' more to say, little woman. You ain't never
had any one to look out for your int'rests in this life. After this,
it's me that does it. I don't want your money. I've got plenty of
my own. But your interests bein' my interests after this, you hand
ev'rything over to me, and I'll put a twist in the tail of that Bengal
tiger in your fam'ly that 'll last him all his life."

At the end of a long talk he sent her away with a pat on her shoulder
and a cheery word in her ear.

It was Old Man Jordan who, a week or so later, on his way to the village
with butter in his bucket, stood in the middle of the road and tossed
his arms so frenziedly that Colonel Ward, gathering up his speed
behind the willows, pulled up with an oath.

"Ye're jest gittin' back from up-country, ain't ye?" asked Uncle
Jordan.

"What do you mean, you old fool, by stoppin' me when I'm busy? What
be ye, gittin' items for newspapers?"

"No, Kun'l Ward, but I've got some news that I thought ye might like
to hear before ye went past the toll-house this time. Intentions
between Cap'n Aaron Sproul and Miss Jane Ward has been published."

"Wha-a-at!"

"They were married yistiddy."

"Wha--" The cry broke into inarticulateness.

"The Cap'n ain't goin' to be toll-man after to-day. Says he's goin'
to live on the home place with his wife. There!" Uncle Jordan stepped
to one side just in time, for th