r you've played with me. And so--so I'll bid you
good-bye!"

He went straight out without more speech; and she tottered, weeping, to
her uncle and aunt. They couldn't believe their senses; and Jimmy
Stonewer declared thereon that any man who could make himself such a
masterpiece of a fool as Jonathan had done that night, was better out of
the marriage state than in it. He told Hyssop as she'd had a marvelous
escape from a prize zany; and his wife said the same. But the girl
couldn't see it like that. She knowed Jonathan weren't a prize zany,
and his raging pride didn't anger her, for she admired it something
wonderful, and it only made her feel her loss all the crueller to see
what a terrible rare, haughty sort of a chap he was. There were a lot of
other men would have had her, and twice as many again, if they'd known
about the money; but they all seemed as tame as robins beside her hawk
of a Jonathan. She had plenty of devil in her, too, when it came to the
fighting pitch; and now, while he merely said that the match was broken
off through a difference of opinion, and gave no reason for it, she set
to work with all her might to get him back again, and used her
love-sharpened wits so well as she knew how, to best him into matrimony.

II

In truth she made poor speed. Jonathan was always civil afterwards; but
you might as soon have tried to thaw an iceberg with a box of matches as
to get him round again by gentleness and affection. He was the sort that
can't be won with kindness. He felt he'd treated the world better than
the world had treated him, and the thought shriveled his heart a bit.
Always shy and suspicious, you might say; and yet, underneath it, the
most honorable and upright and high-minded man you could wish to meet.
Hyssop loved him like her life, and she got a bit poorly in health after
their sad quarrel. Then chance willed it that, going down from
Princetown to Plymouth by train--to see a chemist, and get something to
make her eat--who should be in the selfsame carriage but Mr. Drake and
his hind, Thomas Parsons.

There was others there, too; and it fell out that an old fellow as
knowed Jonathan's grandfather before him, brought up the yarn about
Miser Brimpson, and asked young Drake if he took any stock in it.

Of course the man pooh-poohed such foolery, and told the old chap not to
talk nonsense like that in the ear of the nineteenth century; but when
Jonathan and Parsons had got out of the train-