friendliness, talked so much and so fast about her visit, that the honest
fellow was quite bewildered, and had to go home to think the matter over,
and cudgel his dull wits to divine whether she was pleasanter than ever,
or had drifted altogether out of his reach.

Allen Golyer was, after all, a man of nerve and decision. He wasted only a
day or two in doubts and fears, and one Sunday afternoon, with a beating
but resolute heart, he left his Sunday-school class to walk down to
Crystal Glen and solve his questions and learn his doom. When he came in
sight of the widow's modest house, he saw a buggy hitched by the gate.

"Dow Padgett's chestnut sorrel, by jing! What is Dow after out here?"

It is natural, if not logical, that young men should regard the visits of
all other persons of their age and sex in certain quarters as a serious
impropriety.

But it was not his friend and crony Dow Padgett, the liveryman, who came
out of the widow's door, leading by the hand the blushing and bridling
Susie. It was a startling apparition of the Southwestern dandy of the
period--light hair drenched with bear's oil, blue eyes and jet-black
moustache, an enormous paste brooch in his bosom, a waistcoat and trowsers
that shrieked in discordant tones, and very small and elegant varnished
boots. The gamblers and bagmen of the Mississippi River are the best-shod
men in the world.

Golyer's heart sank within him as this splendid being shone upon him. But
with his rustic directness he walked to meet the laughing couple at the
gate, and said, "Tudie, I come to see you. Shall I go in and talk to your
mother twell you come back?"