at."

"Go ahead then and give me the partic'lars."

"In the first place then, the lieutenant is young and good looking."

"Unfortinitly there can't be any doubt of that."

"Nellie Dawson has never seen a handsome young man----"

"Exceptin' you and me, and we ain't as young as we once was."

"She is now a young woman and ready to fall in love, and just at the
right hour, or rather the very worst hour, the captain brings the man
here."

"You have spoke the exact thoughts I had in mind all along; you're
right, parson."

He would have been better pleased had Ruggles contradicted him. He did
not wish to believe that which he could not help believing.

"We must treat him well because the captain brings him and he has
saved the captain's life, but, Wade, _we must watch them both
close_."

"I agree with you agin, but what shall we do if we find him making
love to the little gal?"

The parson's fierce reply showed how deeply his feelings were
stirred.

"Warn him just once!"

"I feel as bad about it as you do, but, parson, I haven't forgot that
afore the war broke out, and we was afeard the captain meant to take
the gal away to have her eddycated, you told us it was none of our
bus'ness and he had the right to do as he thought best with his own
child."

"All that was true at the time, but the conditions have changed."

"_Now_ I can't foller you. 'Spose the captain is agreeable?"

"He _won't_ be!" exclaimed Brush, who in the depth of his excitement
added an exclamation which sounded perilously like profanity. But for
the parson's intense earnestness, Ruggles would have quizzed him, but
he pitied the man and at the same time was distressed himself.

"I hope you're right, but I doubt it. We've all felt for a good while
that sooner or later, we must lose the little one. Now that she's
growed up, the captain may feel more than ever that she must be took
off to some town where all the men ain't savages, and she can see some
of her own kind."

"If he puts it that way, we shall have to submit. He can take her
where he wills, for my position is the same as four or five years ago,
but nobody else must take her from among us."

Ruggles's mood was now quite similar to that of his partner.

"If I see anything wrong in the doings of that pretty faced young
officer, I'll shoot him down like a mad dog."

"So will I."

The two were in the ugliest temper conceivable. They continued to
smoke, but their meditations were