rd about Cupid or his doings.
But the real and more important reason was, that Colonel Fox did not
like Swan, and had said, in so many words, that "he wouldn't have
Swan Day a-hangin' round, no _how_!--that he was a poor kind of a
shote,--that he wished both him and his clutter well out o' town,--and
that he needn't think to make swans out of his geese, no _time_!"

In the first and last sentence, Colonel Fox indicated the ground of
his dislike to the handsome young store-keeper, and his dread that
Swan's eyes would somehow interfere with his own cherished plans of a
union between the Fox and Mower farms. Whatever Colonel Fox determined
on was done or to be done. He had anticipated the French proverb;
and the "impossibility" made not the slightest difference. Therefore
Dorcas had no notion of disobedience in her head, permanently. She
solaced herself by the occasional luxury of departure from set rules,
and she intended to depart in that way to-morrow,--for just five
minutes,--just to hear what that foolish fellow wanted of her; and
what could it be? and why was it the last time?--would he give her up?

Dorcas pondered the matter while the sun still crowned the heights,
and glanced at her sleeping father in silence. Why should Colonel Fox
dislike Swan so very much because he was a Britisher? All that was
done with, long ago, and why not be peaceable? Just then her father
drew the breath sharply between his teeth, as if in pain. It was the
old wound, that had never been healed since the Battle of Bennington.
He had lain on the ground,--Dorcas had often heard him tell the
tale,--and had striven to slake his deathly thirst with the blood that
he scooped up in the hollow of his hand from the ground about him. So
terrible was the carnage where he lay. "A d----d Britisher had shot
him,--another had driven his horse over him, and afterwards, while
he lay half-dead, had tried to rob him!" Would he ever forget it?
He would have continued, on the contrary, to fire and hack till the
present day, but for the wound in his knee, which had disabled him for
life, long before a peace was patched up with the mother-country. So
he had retired to Walton, and before Continental money had depreciated
more than half had bought acres by the thousand, and become
generalissimo of flocks and herds. Through the admiration of his
townsmen for his wounds, he rapidly and easily attained the rank
of Colonel, without the discomfort of fighting for it;