and made myself one of them,
and drank vile whiskey and home-made wine until my head began to feel as
big as two heads, and I do not think I knew what I was about. As bad
luck would have it, the man who was to stand with Eudora as groomsman
failed to come, and I was asked to take his place.

"'Certainly, I am ready for anything,' I said, and my voice sounded
husky and unnatural, and I wondered what ailed me.

"'Then, s'posin' you and Dory get spliced, and we'll have a double
weddin'. You have sparked it long enough, and we don't stand foolin'
here,' Mr. Brown said to me, in a half-laughing, half-threatening tone.

"I looked at Eudora, and her beautiful eyes were shining upon me with a
look which made my pulses quicken as they never had before. I don't know
what demon possessed me, unless it were the demon of the whiskey punch,
of which I had drank far too much, and which prompted me to say, 'All
right, if Eudora is willing.'

"To do her justice, she hesitated a moment, but when I kissed her she
yielded, and with the touch of her lips there came over me a feeling I
mistook for love, and everything was forgotten except the girl. Elder
Covil performed the double ceremony, and looked questioningly at me, as
if doubtful whether I were in my right mind or not. I thought I was, and
felt extremely happy, until I woke to what I had done, and from which
there was no escape. I was bound to a girl whose sweet disposition and
great beauty were her only attractions, and whose environments made me
shudder. I could not bring her to Crompton Place and introduce her to my
friends, and I did not know what to do.

"Tom was furious when he heard of it, and suggested suicide and divorce,
and everything else that was bad. But Dora's eyes held me for two weeks,
and then I became so disillusionized and so sick of my surroundings,
that I was nearly ready to follow Tom's advice and blow out my brains.

"'If you won't kill yourself,' he said, 'send the girl home to Florida,
and leave her there till you make up your mind what to do. There must be
some way to untie that knot. If not, you are in for it.'

"I sent her home, and after two or three weeks, during which Tom and I
revolved a hundred plans, I decided on one, and went to see her in her
home--and such a home! A log-house in a palmetto clearing, with a
foolish old grandmother who did not know enough to ask or care what I
was to Eudora. I could not endure it, and I told Eudora how impossi