warmed by his subject, of powerfully affecting the emotions of his
congregation. He was a great favorite with women--whom, however, he
uniformly treated with coldness--and by no means unpopular with men,
toward some of whom he manifested much less reserve. Nevertheless,
before the close of the second year of his incumbency he was known to
be paying his addresses to a young lady of the neighborhood, Miss Edith
Saltine, the only child of an ex-army officer. The colonel was a
widower, and in poor health, and since he was living mainly on his
half-pay, and had very little to give his daughter, the affair was
looked upon as a love match, the rather since Edith was a handsome
young woman of charming character. The Reverend David Poindexter
certainly had every appearance of being deeply in love; and it is often
seen that the passions of reserved men, when once aroused, are stronger
than those of persons more generally demonstrative.

Colonel Saltine did not at first receive his proposed son-in-law with
favor. He was a valetudinarian, and accustomed to regard his daughter
as his nurse by right, and he resented the idea of her leaving him
forlorn for the sake of a good-looking parson. It is very likely that
his objections might have had the effect of breaking off the match, for
his daughter was devotedly attached to him, and hardly questioned his
right to dispose of her as he saw fit; but after a while the worthy
gentleman seems to have thought better of his contrariness. Poindexter
had strong persuasive powers, and no doubt made himself personally
agreeable to the colonel, and, moreover, it was arranged that the
latter should occupy the same house with Mr. and Mrs. Poindexter after
they were married. Nevertheless, the colonel was not a man to move
rapidly, and the engagement had worn along for nearly a year without
the wedding-day having been fixed. One winter evening in the early part
of December, Poindexter dined with the colonel and Edith, and as the