pearance, it would help. He of course gets black about his
business, and Nelly, you know, is very dainty. People do say his
mother does his courting for him, she is so eager. If only Scott
does not turn out hard and penurious like his father! We must all
have our schooling in this life, but I don't want Nelly's to be too
severe. She is a dear girl, and keeps her color."

Mrs. Dow's own schooling had been none too easy. Her husband had
long been crippled with rheumatism, and was bitter and faultfinding.
Her daughters had married poorly, and one of her sons had fallen
into evil ways. But her letters were always cheerful, and in one of
them she gently remonstrated with me because I "seemed inclined to
take a sad view of life."

In the winter vacation of my senior year I stopped on my way home to
visit Mrs. Dow. The first thing she told me when I got into her old
buckboard at the station was that "Scott had at last prevailed," and
that Nelly was to marry him in the spring. As a preliminary step,
Nelly was about to join the Baptist church. "Just think, you will be
here for her baptizing! How that will please Nelly! She is to be
immersed to-morrow night."

I met Scott Spinny in the post-office that morning, and he gave me a
hard grip with one black hand. There was something grim and
saturnine about his powerful body and bearded face and his strong,
cold hands. I wondered what perverse fate had driven him for eight
years to dog the footsteps of a girl whose charm was due to
qualities naturally distasteful to him. It still seems strange to me
that in easy-going Riverbend, where there were so many boys who
could have lived contentedly enough with my little grasshopper, it
was the pushing ant who must have her and all her careless ways.

By a kind of unformulated etiquette one did not call upon candidates
for baptism on the day of the ceremony, so I had my first glimpse of
Nelly that evening. The baptistry was a cemented pit directly under
the pulpit rostrum, over which we had our stage when we sang "Queen
Esther." I sat through the sermon somewhat nervously. After the
minister, in his long, black gown, had gone down into the water and
the choir had finished singing, the door from the dressing-room
opened, and, led by one of the deacons, Nelly came down the steps
into the pool. Oh, she looked so little and meek and chastened! Her
white cashmere robe clung about her, and her brown hair was brushed
straight back and hung in tw