me a disappointed look! If anything, she
was jest a bit TOO romanceful, Martha was.

"No," says I, cheering up a little, "I am going to do something they
ain't many fellers would do, Martha. I'm going to forgive you. Free and
fair and open. And give you back my half of that ring, and--"

Dern it! I had forgot I had lost that half of that there ring! I
remembered so quick it stopped me.

"You always kept it, Danny?" she asts me, very soft-spoken, so as not to
give pain to one so faithful and so noble as what I was. "Let me see it,
Danny."

I made like I was feeling through all my pockets fur it. But that
couldn't last forever. I run out of pockets purty soon. And her face
begun to show she was smelling a rat. Finally I says:

"These ain't my other clothes--it must be in them."

"Danny," she says, "I believe you LOST it."

"Martha," I says, taking a chancet, "you know you lost YOUR half!"

She owns up she has lost it a long while ago. And when she lost it, she
says, she knowed that was fate and that our love was omened in under an
evil star. And who was she, she says, to struggle agin fate?

"Martha," I says, "I'll be honest with you. Fate got away with my
half too one day when I didn't know they was crooks like her sticking
around."

Well, I seen that girl seen through me then. Martha was awful smart
sometimes. And each one was so derned tickled the other one wasn't going
to do any pining away we like to of fell into love all over agin. But
not quite. Fur neither one would ever trust the other one agin. So we
felt more comfortable with each other. You ain't never comfortable with
a person you know is more honest than you be.

"But," says Martha, after a minute, "if you didn't come back to make me
marry you, what does Doctor Kirby want to see Miss Hampton about? And
who was that with him?"

I had been nigh to forgetting the main thing we had all come here fur,
in my gladness at getting rid of any danger of marrying Martha. But it
come to me all to oncet I had been missing a lot that must be taking
place inside that house. I had even missed the way they first looked
when she met 'em at the door, and I wouldn't of missed that fur a lot.
And I seen all to oncet what a big piece of news it will be to Martha.

"Martha," I says, "they ain't no Dr. Hartley L. Kirby. The man known as
such is David Armstrong!"

I never seen any one so peetrified as Martha was fur a minute.

"Yes," says I, "and the other one is Mi