go up against the other man
game, too? I seem to have been standing by with a basket picking up
chips of Phoebe's lovers for a long lifetime; Tom, Hob, Payt, widowers
and flocks of new fledges. But I had an idea that you must have been a
first-and-only with Mrs. Matilda."

"Well, it sometimes happens, David, that the individuality of all of a
woman's first loves get so merged into that of the last that it would be
difficult for her to differentiate them herself; and it is best
to keep her happily employed so she doesn't try."

"Well, all I can say for you, Major," interrupted Kildare with a laugh,
"is that your forty years' work shows some. Your Mrs. Buchanan is what I
call a finished product of a wife. I'll never do it in the world. I can
get up and talk a jury into seeing things my way, but I get cross-brained
when I go to put things to Phoebe. That reminds me, that case on old Jim
Cross for getting tangled up with some fussy hens in Latimer's hen-house
week before last is called for to-day at twelve sharp. I'm due to put the
old body through and pay the fine and costs; only the third time this
year. I'm thinking of buying him a hen farm to save myself trouble.
Good-by, sir!"

"David, David," laughed the major, "beware of your growing
responsibilities! Cap Hobson reported that sensation of yours before
the grand jury over that negro and policeman trouble. The darkies will
put up your portrait beside that of Father Abe on Emancipation Day
and you will be in danger of passing down to posterity by the
public-spirit-fame chute. Your record will be in the annals of the
city if you don't mind!"

"Not much danger, Major," answered David with a smile. "I'm just a glad
man with not balance enough to run the rail of any kind of heavy track
affairs."

"David," said the major with a sudden sadness coming into his voice and
eyes, "one of the greatest men I ever knew we called the glad man--the
boy's father, Andrew Sevier. We called him Andrew, the Glad. Something
has brought it all back to me to-day and with your laugh you reminded me
of him. The tragedy of it all!"

"I've always known what a sorrow it was to you, Major, and it is the
bitterness that is eating the heart out of Andy. What was it all about
exactly, sir? I have always wanted to ask you." David looked into
the major's stern old eyes with such a depth of sympathy in his young
ones that a barrier suddenly melted and with the tone of bestowing an
honor the old fi