ch came tinkling
up to the door, and a tall man, very much muffled in furs, had entered
the house unawares and stood beside her chair.

"Oh, John, how glad I am that you have come!" she exclaimed, meeting his
honest, ugly smile. And she sprang from her seat with both hands
outstretched toward him, a glad light overspreading her whole face.
"Where have you been all this time?"

"Daown-river, keepin' store. 'N' I shouldn't never 'a' come back, Drusy,
only I heard haow you wouldn't hev Reube, 'n' he'd gone back 'n' merried
Henrietty. When I heard that I says tew myself, 'Naow I'll go up 'n' try
my hand, though 'tain't likely she'll hev enything favorable tew say tew
a gre't, rough, hulkin' feller like me.' Tell me, Drusy, could yeou ever
think o' hevin' me?"

"Could I ever? Why, I would have had you before, John, if you'd taken
the trouble to come up 'n' ask me."

"Great Jupiter! tew hear yeou say thet!" he exclaimed, throwing his arms
about her in a perfect rapture of joy.

And just then whom should fate send upon the scene but Reube Wetherbee!
He came in unobserved by the absorbed lovers, and stood gazing upon them
with a white face and flashing eyes.

"Reube, four years ago, as p'r'aps you'll remember, I played a game, 'n'
lost. Now I've been a-tryin' my hand ag'in, 'n' won," said John, who
turned suddenly and saw him there.

"So I should suppose," said Reube, with a great effort to be hearty and
friendly as well as unconcerned. "And I reckon 'twill be a wedding this
time instead of a dance."

SUSAN HARTLEY SWETT.

VAN.

He was the evolution of a military horse-trade,--one of those periodical
swappings required of his dragoons by Uncle Sam on those rare occasions
when a regiment that has been dry-rotting half a decade in Arizona is at
last relieved by one from the Plains. How it happened that we of the
Fifth should have kept him from the clutches of those sharp
horse-fanciers of the Sixth is more than I know. Regimental tradition
had it that we got him from the Third Cavalry when it came our turn to
go into exile in 1871. He was the victim of some temporary malady at the
time,--one of those multitudinous ills to which horse-flesh is heir,--or
he never would have come to us. It was simply impossible that anybody
who knew anything about horses should trade off such a promising young
racer so long as there remained an unpledged pay-account in the
officers' mess. Possibly the arid climate of Arizona had