"Well, I will say, Jack," he drawled, "you had a pretty good nerve to get us out on a night like this to tell us that! You might at least have waited 'til mornin'. Still, I reckon if I'd been nigh on to a quarter of a century gettin' my spunk together to ask a woman to marry me an' had finally done it, I'd a-wanted somebody to know it." The words were not unkindly spoken and Jack joined in the general laugh. Nothing mattered to him now. Oblivious to the spectators, he was bending down over the woman he loved and murmuring: "I love you, Sarah Libbie. I've always loved you." The little old inventor watched the radiant pair a moment then motioned to the villagers to slip away. But Bartley Coffin could not be restrained from lagging behind and whispering confidentially in Jack's ear: "If you want to be truly happy, mate, an' live clear of a life of pesterin', don't you never buy Sarah Libbie a satin dress! Minnie an' I have made it up, thanks to Willie Spence, but 'twas a tussle. I'd come to the jumpin'-off place." The statement was but too true. Willie had indeed intervened and averted a tragedy, but the feat had demanded ruthless measures, and he had trudged home from the Coffins with the bone of contention clutched rigidly beneath his arm. That night Celestina heard muffled sounds in the workshop. "Oh, my land!" she murmured. "If Willie ain't hitched again! I did hope nothin' new would come to him 'til he got rested up from this other idee." But Willie's inspiration was not of the inventive type. Instead the little old man was standing before the stove, kindling a fire, and into its crackling blaze he was bundling the last remnants of Minnie Coffin's far-famed black satin. The light played on his face which was set in grim earnestness. "It seems a wicked shame," he observed in a whisper, as he viewed the funeral pyre, "but it's the only way. Long's that dress remained on earth there'd be no peace for Bart nor his wife either. It had to go." The flames danced higher, flashing in and out of the trimmings of jet and charring the beads to dullness. In the morning only a heap of gray ashes marked the flight of Minnie Coffin's social ambitions. "_Requiescat in pace_!" murmured Willie as with lips firm with Puritan stoicism he passed by the stove. There he added gently: "Poor Minnie! Poor foolish Minnie!" CHAPTER XIX WILLIE AS PILOT The invention was finished! The last rivet was in place, the last screw secure, and before the fulfilment of his dream the little old man stood with glowing face. It was a gentle, happy face with misty blue eyes that carried at the moment a serene contentment. "I couldn't 'a' done it but for you, Bob," he was saying. "The idea was all well enough, but 'twould 'a' been of no use without other brains to carry it out. So you must remember a big slice of the credit is yours." Robert Morton shook his head.