nkle shot through the cloud which hid gathered on Reuben's
brow. He opened his left hand and showed me the doe-skin glove crumpled
up in his palm.

'I would not barter it for all the gold in her grandsire's coffers,'
said he, with a sudden outflame, and then half-laughing, half-blushing
at his own heat, he whisked in and left me to my thoughts.

And so I learned for the first time, my dears, that my good comrade had
been struck by the little god's arrows. When a man's years number one
score, love springs up in him, as the gourd grew in the Scriptures, in a
single night. I have told my story ill if I have not made you understand
that my friend was a frank, warm-hearted lad of impulse, whose reason
seldom stood sentry over his inclinations. Such a man can no more draw
away from a winning maid than the needle can shun the magnet. He loves
as the mavis sings or the kitten plays. Now, a slow-witted, heavy fellow
like myself, in whose veins the blood has always flowed somewhat coolly
and temperately, may go into love as a horse goes into a shelving
stream, step by step, but a man like Reuben is kicking his heels upon
the bank one moment, and is over ears in the deepest pool the nest.

Heaven only knows what match it was that had set the tow alight. I can
but say that from that day on my comrade was sad and cloudy one hour,
gay and blithesome the next. His even flow of good spirits had deserted
him, and he became as dismal as a moulting chicken, which has ever
seemed to me to be one of the strangest outcomes of what poets have
called the joyous state of love. But, indeed, pain and pleasure are so
very nearly akin in this world, that it is as if they were tethered
in neighbouring stalls, and a kick would at any time bring down the
partition. Here is a man who is as full of sighs as a grenade is of
powder, his face is sad, his brow is downcast, his wits are wandering;
yet if you remark to him that it is an ill thing that he should be
in this state, he will answer you, as like as not, that he would not
exchange it for all the powers and principalities. Tears to him are
golden, and laughter is but base coin. Well, my dears, it is useless
for me to expound to you that which I cannot myself understand. If, as I
have heard, it is impossible to get the thumb-marks of any two men to
be alike, how can we expect their inmost thoughts and feelings to tally?
Yet this I can say with all truth, that when I asked your grandmother's
hand I d