ainfully-written letter to
some relative in Christiana or Stockholm. And the three or four hundred
dollars of income enabled Charlton to prosecute his studies. In his
gratitude he lent the two hundred and twenty dollars--all that was left
of his educational fund--to Mr. Plausaby, at two per cent a month, on
demand, secured by a mortgage on lots in Metropolisville.

Poor infatuated George Gray--the Inhabitant of the Lone Cabin, the
Trapper of Pleasant Brook, the Hoosier Poet from the Wawbosh
country--poor infatuated George Gray found his cabin untenable after
little Katy had come and gone. He came up to Metropolisville, improved
his dress by buying some ready-made clothing, and haunted the streets
where he could catch a glimpse now and then of Katy.

One night, Charlton, coming home from an evening with Miss Minorkey at
the hotel, found a man standing in front of the fence.

"What do you want here?" he asked sharply.

"Didn' mean no harm, stranger, to nobody."

"Oh! it's you!" exclaimed Charlton, recognizing his friend the Poet.
"Come in, come in."

"Come in? Couldn' do it no way, stranger. Ef I was to go in thar amongst
all them air ladies, my knees would gin out. I was jist a-lookin' at that
purty creetur. But I 'druther die'n do her any harm. I mos' wish I was
dead. But 'ta'n't no harm to look at her ef she don' know it. I shan't
disturb her; and ef she marries a gentleman, I shan't disturb him nuther.
On'y, ef he don' mind it, you know, I'll write po'try about her now and
then. I got some varses now that I wish you'd show to her, ef you think
they won't do her no harm, you know, and I don't 'low they will. Good-by,
Mr. Charlton. Comin' down to sleep on your claim? Land's a-comin' into
market down thar."

After the Poet left him, Albert took the verses into the house and read
them, and gave them to Katy. The first stanza was, if I remember it
rightly, something of this sort:

"A angel come inter the poar trapper's door,
The purty feet tromped on the rough puncheon floor,
Her lovely head slep' on his prairie-grass piller--
The cabin is lonesome and the trapper is poar,
He hears little shoes a-pattin' the floor;
He can't sleep at night on that piller no more;
His Hoosier harp hangs on the wild water-willer!"

CHAPTER XVII.

SAWNEY AND HIS OLD LOVE.

Self-conceit is a great source of happiness, a buffer that softens all
the jolts of life. After David Sawney's failure to capture Perritaut's