A few days before the expected wedding, Davy set out, as he told his employer, for a hunt, deer being then numerous. Instead of hunting, he went to a shooting-match on the way to the girl’s home. Making a deal with another rifleman, who must have had a little money, they took chances in the shoot for a beef, and when it was over, Davy had won. After selling the prize, the partners each had five dollars, and with that in his pocket, and his head above the clouds, the boy went to claim his bride. Two miles from the girl’s home her uncle lived, and there he found her sister. As soon as he began to talk with her, he saw that something troubled her, and then the whole pitiful story came out: the girl had played with him, and was to be married the next day to another man. For a time Davy was speechless. His pride was hurt, and he turned homeward his “lonesome and miserable steps,” like a wounded animal, stricken with mortal pain. He was thought to be sick for several weeks, for he was too proud to tell his trouble, and in his story of suffering there is ample evidence of the strength of his attachment to those whom he loved. For some time Davy was too low-spirited to care for anything, even hunting; but one day he took his rifle and set out for the woods. On his way home, he stopped at the cabin of a Dutch widow, whose daughter, he says, was “as ugly as a stone fence.” It was this girl, however, who pointed out to him how great a mistake he made in “mourning over the loss of a single fish, when the sea was full of others as good.” She told him of a pretty Irish lass who was to be at a reaping bee in a few days, and induced him to come, too. By the end of the evening the charms of Polly Finlay took possession of his thoughts and Davy found life more worth living. As in so many cases, the course of true love did not run smooth, for the girl’s mother had selected another suitor for her daughter, and she bitterly opposed Davy’s suit. After some weeks of courting, Davy won the girl’s heart, but when he went to ask for his bride, the old lady ordered him out of the house. With the girl’s consent and the tacit permission of her father, the young man secured the services of a justice to marry him on the following Thursday, and made arrangements to have his wife received at the tavern kept by his own father. In Ellis’s story of Crockett’s life, he quotes the following from the records of Weakley County, Tennessee: Davy Crockett, with Thomas Doggett, security, binds himself in a bond of twelve hundred and fifty dollars, to Gov. John Sevier, Aug. 1, 1806, to marry Polly Finlay. No record of this kind really exists, as Weakley County was not organized until 1823. We do not know what the wedding fee was in those days, but it was probably in the shape of worldly goods of small value. As all sorts of pelts were used for currency, we may imagine Davy paying the justice in coon-skins or muskrat hides.