red. He tore the precious volume from its
desecrator's hand, losing the pictured cover in the struggle.

"You--you pesky fool!" he shouted. "You mind your own business."

The blacksmith roared in glee. "Oh, ho!" he cried. "Issy's in love and
I never guessed it. Aw, say, Is, don't be mean! Who is she? Have you
strained her to your manly bosom yit? What's her name?"

"Shut up!" shrieked Issy, and strode out of the shop. His tormentor
begged him not to "go off mad," and shouted sarcastic sympathy after
him. But Mr. McKay heeded not. He stalked angrily along the sidewalk.
Then espying just ahead of him the boys who had thrown the potatoes,
he paused, turned, and walking down the carriageway at the side of the
blacksmith's place of business, sat down upon a sawhorse under one of
its rear windows. He could, at least, be alone here and think; and he
wanted to think.

For Issy--although he didn't look it--was deeply interested in another
love story as well as that in his pocket. This one was printed upon
his heart's pages, and in it he was the hero, while the heroine--the
unsuspecting heroine--was Gertie Higgins, daughter of Beriah Higgins,
once a fisherman, now the crotchety and dyspeptic proprietor of the
"general store" and postmaster at East Harniss.

This story began when Issy first acquired the Lady May. The Higgins home
stood on the slope close to the boat landing, and when Issy came in from
quahauging, Gertie was likely to be in the back yard, hanging out the
clothes or watering the flower garden. Sometimes she spoke to him of her
own accord, concerning the weather or other important topics. Once
she even asked him if he were going to the Fourth of July ball at the
town-hall. It took him until the next morning--like other warriors, Issy
was cursed with shyness--to summon courage enough to ask her to go to
the ball with him. Then he found it was too late; she was going with
her cousin, Lennie Bloomer. But he felt that she had offered him the
opportunity, and was happy and hopeful accordingly.

This, however, was before she went to Boston to study telegraphy. When
she returned, with a picture hat and a Boston accent, it was to preside
at the telegraph instrument in the little room adjoining the post office
at her father's store. When Issy bowed blushingly outside the window
of the telegraph room, he received only the airiest of frigid nods. Was
there what Lord Lyndhurst would have called "another"? It would seem
no