mer, and
then one day he went out as usual and didn't come back. We hunted
the hills out for signs, thinkin' maybe he met up with some
trouble. He'd sent all his pictures away the week before, Jim Lane
haulin' them to the settlement for him.

"The girl was nigh about wild and rode with me all durin' the
hunt, and once when we saw some buzzards circlin', she gave a
little cry and turned so white that I suspicioned maybe she got to
thinkin' more of him than we knew. Then one afternoon when we were
down yonder in the Hollow, she says, all of a sudden like, 'Daddy,
it ain't no use a ridin' no more. He ain't met up with no trouble.
He's left all the trouble with us.' She looked so piqued and her
eyes were so big and starin' that it come over me in a flash what
she meant. She saw in a minute that I sensed it, and just hung her
head, and we come home.

"She just kept a gettin' worse and worse, Mr. Howitt; 'peared to
fade away like, like I watched them big glade lilies do when the
hot weather comes. About the only time she would show any life at
all was when someone would go for the mail, when she'd always be
at the gate a waitin' for us.

"Then one day, a letter come. I brung it myself. She give a little
cry when I handed it to her, and run into the house, most like her
old self. I went on out to the barn to put up my horse, thinkin'
maybe it was goin' to be alright after all; but pretty soon, I
heard a scream and then a laugh. 'Fore God, sir, that laugh's a
ringin' in my ears yet. She was ravin' mad when I got to her, a
laughin', and a screechin', and tryin' to hurt herself, all the
while callin' for him to come.

"I read the letter afterwards. It told over and over how he loved
her and how no woman could ever be to him what she was; said they
was made for each other, and all that; and then it went on to say
how he couldn't never see her again; and told about what a grand
old family his was, and how his father was so proud and expected
such great things from him, that he didn't dare tell, them bein'
the last of this here old family, and her bein' a backwoods girl,
without any schoolin' or nothin'."

"My God! O, my God!" faltered the stranger's voice in the
darkness.

Old Matt talked on in a hard easy tone. "Course it was all wrote
out nice and smooth like he talked, but that's the sense of it. He
finished it by sayin' that he would be on his way to the old
country when the letter reached her, and that it wouldn't be