discomposure.

"Why, Bill, the trouble has given you a bigger bite than I thought
for. What words did you have with the preacher?"

"None: I don't know that he is a preacher. He speaks only as if he
was trying to become one."

"What, you hadn't any difference--no quarrel?"

"None."

"And it's only to-night that you've seen him for the first time?"

A flush passed over the grave features of William Hinkley as he heard
this question, and it was with a hesitating manner and faltering
accents, that he contrived to tell his cousin of the brief glimpse
which he had of the same stranger several months before, on that
occasion, when, in the emotion of Margaret Cooper, replying to
a similar question, he first felt the incipient seed of jealousy
planted within his bosom. But this latter incident he forbore to
reveal to the inquirer; and Ned Hinkley, though certainly endowed
by nature with sufficient skill to draw forth the very soul of music
from the instrument on which he played, had no similar power upon
the secret soul of the person whom he partially examined.

"But 'tis very strange how you should take offence at a man you've
seen so little; though I have heard before this of people taking
dislikes at other people the first moment they set eyes on 'em.
Now, I'm not a person of that sort, unless it was in the case of