an' two nigger waiters said Tom was askin' about me an' had just run
over to the court-house, whar I'd be shore to find him."

"I see the point," Mostyn laughed.

"I'm glad you do so quick, for I had to have it beat into me with a
sledge-hammer," Webb said, dryly. "I was so mad I could have chawed
nails, but I blamed myself more'n anybody else, for they was just
havin' their fun an' meant no harm."

"I suppose not," Mostyn said.

"Well, I can't complain; they have their sport with one another. Dolph
Wartrace, you know, that keeps the cross-roads store nigh us, clerked
in Darley before he went in on his own hook out here, an' I've heard
'im tell of a lot o' pranks that they had over thar. He said thar was
an old bachelor that, kept a dry-goods store who never had had much to
do with women. He was bashful-like, but thar was _one_ young woman
that he had his eye on, an' now an' then he'd spruce up an' go to see
'er or take 'er out to meetin', but Jeff said he was too weak-kneed to
pop the question, an' the gal went off on a visit to Alabama and got
married. Now, the old bach' had a gang o' friends that was always in
for fun, an' with long, sad faces they went about askin' everybody
they met if they had heard that Bob Hadley--that was the feller's
name--if they had heard that he was. dead. Bob knowed what they was
sayin' an' tried to put a pleasant face on it, but it must have been
hard work, considerin' all that happened.

"Well, one thing added to another till a gang of Bob's friends met the
next night in a grocery store after he had gone to bed and still with