And that was how Richard Markham, M.C., came to be in Chicopee at the precise time when Ethelyn's heart was bleeding at every pore, and ready to seize upon any new excitement which would divert it from its pain. She remembered well the time he had once before visited Chicopee. She was a little girl of ten, fleeing across the meadow-land from a maddened cow, when a tall, athletic young man had come to her rescue, standing between her and danger, helping her over the fence, picking up the apron full of apples which she had been purloining from the Captain's orchard, and even pinning together a huge rent made in her dress by catching it upon a protruding splint as she sprang to the ground. She was too much frightened to know whether he had been wholly graceful in his endeavors to serve her, and too thankful for her escape to think that possibly her torn dress was the result of his rather awkward handling. She remembered only the dark, handsome face which bent so near to hers, the brown, curly head actually bumping against her own, as he stooped to gather the stolen apples. She remembered, too, the kindly voice which asked if "her aunt would scold," while the large, red hands pinned together the unsightly seam, and she liked the Westerner, as the people of Chicopee called the stranger who had recently come among them. Frank was in Chicopee then, fishing on the river, when her mishaps occurred; and once after that, when walking with him, she had met Richard Markham, who bowed modestly and passed on, never taking his hands from his pockets where they were planted so firmly, and never touching his hat as Frank said a gentleman would have done. "Isn't he handsome?" Ethelyn had asked, and Frank had answered, "Looks well enough, though anybody with half an eye would know he was a codger from the West. His pants are a great deal too short; and look at his coat--at least three years behind the fashion; and such a hat, with that rusty old band of crape around it. Wonder if he is in mourning for his grandmother. Oh, my! we boys would hoot him in Boston. He's what I call a gawky."