a calf in the far pasture. Inclined as he was to Reuben's
wooing from his eligibility as to property, he was conscious that he
was sadly deficient in certain qualities inherent in the Clay family.
It certainly would be a kind of _mesalliance_.

Left to herself, Salomy Jane stared a long while at the coffee-pot,
and then called the two squaws who assisted her in her household
duties, to clear away the things while she went up to her own room to
make her bed. Here she was confronted with a possible prospect of that
proverbial bed she might be making in her willfulness, and on which
she must lie, in the photograph of a somewhat serious young man of
refined features--Reuben Waters--stuck in her window-frame. Salomy
Jane smiled over her last witticism regarding him and enjoyed it, like
your true humorist, and then, catching sight of her own handsome face
in the little mirror, smiled again. But wasn't it funny about that
horse-thief getting off after all? Good Lordy! Fancy Reuben hearing he
was alive and going round with that kiss of hers set on his lips! She
laughed again, a little more abstractedly. And he had returned it like
a man, holding her tight and almost breathless, and he going to be
hung the next minute! Salomy Jane had been kissed at other times, by
force, chance, or stratagem. In a certain ingenuous forfeit game of
the locality known as "I'm a-pinin'," many had "pined" for a "sweet
kiss" from Salomy Jane, which she had yielded in a sense of honor and
fair play. She had never been kissed like this before--she would never
again; and yet the man was alive! And behold, she could see in the
mirror that she was blushing!

She should hardly know him again. A young man with very bright eyes,
a flushed and sunburnt cheek, a kind of fixed look in the face, and
no beard; no, none that she could feel. Yet he was not at all like
Reuben, not a bit. She took Reuben's picture from the window, and
laid it on her work-box. And to think she did not even know this young
man's name! That was queer. To be kissed by a man whom she might never
know! Of course he knew hers. She wondered if he remembered it and
her. But of course he was so glad to get off with his life that he
never thought of anything else. Yet she did not give more than four or
five minutes to these speculations, and, like a sensible girl, thought
of something else. Once again, however, in opening the closet, she
found the brown holland gown she had worn on the day b