had been issued for Mr. Malling's arrest; but at
last accounts the officers had been unable to find him.

Miss Elserly immediately went into the closest retirement, and even
girls whom she had robbed of prospective beaus felt sorry for her.
People began to suggest that there might have been a chance for Brown,
after all, if he had staid at home, instead of rushing off to the West
to play missionary. He owned more property in his own right than the
major had misplaced for other people; and though some doubts were
expressed as to Miss Elserly's fitness for the position of a minister's
wife, the matter was no less interesting as a subject for conversation.
The excellence of the chance which both Brown and Miss Elserly had lost
seemed even greater when it became noised abroad that Brown had written
to some real estate agents in the village that, as he might want to go
into business in the West, to sell for him, for cash, a valuable farm
which his father had left him. As for the business which Mr. Brown
proposed entering, the reader may form his own opinions from a little
conversation hereinafter recorded.

As Hubert Brown, trying to drown thought and do good, was wandering
through a Colorado town one evening, he found himself face to face with
Major Mailing. The major looked seedy, and some years older than he did
a month before, but his pluck was unchanged. Seeing that an interview
could not be avoided, he assumed an independent air, and exclaimed:

"Why, Brown, what did you do that you had to come West?"

"Nothing," said the student, flushing a little--"except be useless."

"I thought," said the major, quickly, with a desperate but sickly
attempt at pleasantry, "that you had gone in for Florence again; she's
worth all your 'lost sheep of the house of Israel.'"

"I don't make love to women who love other men," replied Brown.

"Don't, please, Brown," said the major, turning manly in a moment. "I
feel worse about her than about all my creditors or those infernal
bonds. I got into the snarl before I knew her; that's the only way I can
quiet my conscience. Of course the--matter is all up now. I wrote her as
good an apology as I could, and a release; she'd have taken the latter
without my giving it, but--"

"No she wouldn't," interrupted the student.

"How do you know?" demanded the major, with a suspicious glance, which
did not escape Brown. "Did you torment her by proposing again upon the
top of her other troubles?"