Part 22

“And the colonel never suspected that you were his wife?” said Blair.

“Never! He supposed from the name that he was some relation of my husband, and that was why he refused to tell it--for my sake. The colonel is an old fogy--and pompous--but a gentleman--as good as they make them!”

A slightly jealous uneasiness and a greater sense of shame came over Blair.

“I seem to have been the only one who suspected and did not aid you,” he said sadly, “and yet God knows”--

The widow had put up her slim hand in half-smiling, half-pathetic interruption.

“Wait! I have not told you everything. When I took over the responsibility of being Allen MacGlowrie's widow, I had to take over HER relations and HER history as I gathered it from the frontiersmen. I never frightened any grizzly--I never jabbed anybody with the scissors; it was SHE who did it. I never was among the Injins--I never had any fighting relations; my paw was a plain farmer. I was only a peaceful Blue Grass girl--there! I never thought there was any harm in it; it seemed to keep the men off, and leave me free--until I knew you! And you know I didn't want you to believe it--don't you?”

She hid her flushed face and dimples in her handkerchief.

“But did you never think there might be another way to keep the men off, and sink the name of MacGlowrie forever?” said Blair in a lower voice.

“I think we must be going back now,” said the widow timidly, withdrawing her hand, which Blair had again mysteriously got possession of in her confusion.

“But wait just a few minutes longer to keep me company,” said Blair pleadingly. “I came here to see a patient, and as there must have been some mistake in the message--I must try to discover it.”

“Oh! Is that all?” said the widow quickly. “Why?”--she flushed again and laughed faintly--“Well! I am that patient! I wanted to see you alone to explain everything, and I could think of no other way. I'm afraid I've got into the habit of thinking nothing of being somebody else.”

“I wish you would let me select who you should be,” said the doctor boldly.

“We really must go back--to the horses,” said the widow.

“Agreed--if we will ride home together.”

They did. And before the year was over, although they both remained, the name of MacGlowrie had passed out of Laurel Spring.

A WARD OF COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S

“The kernel seems a little off color to-day,” said the barkeeper as he replaced the whiskey decanter, and gazed reflectively after the departing figure of Colonel Starbottle.

“I didn't notice anything,” said a bystander; “he passed the time o' day civil enough to me.”

“Oh, he's allus polite enough to strangers and wimmin folk even when he is that way; it's only his old chums, or them ez like to be thought so, that he's peppery with. Why, ez to that, after he'd had that quo'll with his old partner, Judge Pratt, in one o' them spells, I saw him the next minit go half a block out of his way to direct an entire stranger; and ez for wimmin!--well, I reckon if he'd just got a head drawn on a man, and a woman spoke to him, he'd drop his battery and take off his hat to her. No--ye can't judge by that!”

And perhaps in his larger experience the barkeeper was right. He might have added, too, that the colonel, in his general outward bearing and jauntiness, gave no indication of his internal irritation. Yet he was undoubtedly in one of his “spells,” suffering from a moody cynicism which made him as susceptible of affront as he was dangerous in resentment.

Luckily, on this particular morning he reached his office and entered his private room without any serious rencontre. Here he opened his desk, and arranging his papers, he at once set to work with grim persistency. He had not been occupied for many minutes before the door opened to Mr. Pyecroft--one of a firm of attorneys who undertook the colonel's office work.

“I see you are early to work, Colonel,” said Mr. Pyecroft cheerfully.

“You see, sir,” said the colonel, correcting him with a slow deliberation that boded no good--“you see a Southern gentleman--blank it!--who has stood at the head of his profession for thirty-five years, obliged to work like a blank nigger, sir, in the dirty squabbles of psalm-singing Yankee traders, instead of--er--attending to the affairs of--er--legislation!”

“But you manage to get pretty good fees out of it--Colonel?” continued Pyecroft, with a laugh.

“Fees, sir! Filthy shekels! and barely enough to satisfy a debt of honor with one hand, and wipe out a tavern score for the entertainment of--er--a few lady friends with the other!”

This allusion to his losses at poker, as well as an oyster supper given to the two principal actresses of the “North Star Troupe,” then performing in the town, convinced Mr. Pyecroft that the colonel was in one of his “moods,” and he changed the subject.

“That reminds me of a little joke that happened in Sacramento last week. You remember Dick Stannard, who died a year ago--one of your friends?”

“I have yet to learn,” interrupted the colonel, with the same deadly deliberation, “what right HE--or ANYBODY--had to intimate that he held such a relationship with me. Am I to understand, sir, that he--er--publicly boasted of it?”