Fifteen years before Jedediah Crane had been Mattie Adams's beau.
Jedediah was romantic even then, but, as he was a slim young fellow at
the time, with an abundance of fair, curly hair and innocent blue
eyes, his romance was rather an attraction than not. At least the then
young and pretty Mattie had found it so.

The Adamses looked with no favour on the match. They were a thrifty,
well-to-do folk. As for the Cranes--well, they were lazy and
shiftless, for the most part. It would be a _mesalliance_ for an Adams
to marry a Crane. Still, it would doubtless have happened--for Mattie,
though a meek-looking damsel, had a mind of her own--had it not been
for Selena Ford, Mattie's older sister.

Selena, people said, had married James Ford for no other reason than
that his house commanded a view of nearly every dooryard in Amberley.
This may or may not have been sheer malice. Certainly nothing that
went on in the Adams yard escaped Selena.

She watched Mattie and Jed in the moonlight one night. She saw Jed
kiss Mattie. It was the first time he had ever done so--and the last,
poor fellow. For Selena swooped down on her parents the next day. Such
a storm did she brew up that Mattie was forbidden to speak to Jed
again. Selena herself gave Jed a piece of her mind. Jed usually was
not afflicted with undue sensitiveness. But he had some slumbering
pride at the basis of his character and it was very stubborn when
roused. Selena roused it. Jed vowed he would never creep and crawl at
the feet of the Adamses, and he went west forthwith, determined, as
aforesaid, to make his fortune and hurl Selena's scorn back in her
face.

And now he had come home, driving a tin-wagon. Mattie smiled to think
of it. She bore Jed no ill will for his failure. She felt sorry for
him and inclined to think that fate had used him hardly--fate and
Selena together. Mattie had never had another beau. People thought she
was engaged to Jed Crane until her time for beaus went by. Mattie did
not mind; she had never liked anybody so well as Jed. To be sure, she
had not thought of him for years. It was strange he should come back
like this--"romantic," as he said himself.

Mattie's reverie was interrupted by Selena. Angular, pale-eyed Mrs.
Ford was as unlike the plump, rosy Mattie as a sister could be.
Perhaps her chronic curiosity, which would not let her rest, was
accountable for her excessive leanness.

"Who was that pedlar that was here this afternoon, M