Hugh knew he could trust the colonel, and after a moment’s hesitation told of his embarrassments, and asked the loan of five hundred dollars, offering Rocket as security, with the privilege of redeeming him in a year. Hugh’s chin quivered, and the arm thrown across Rocket’s neck pressed more tightly as he made this offer. Every change in the expression of his face was noted by the colonel, and interpreted with considerable accuracy. He had always liked Hugh. There was something in his straight-forward manner which pleased him, and when he learned why he was not at his daughter’s birth-day party, he had raised a most uncomfortable breeze about the capricious Nellie’s ears, declaring she should apologize, but forgetting to insist upon it as he at first meant to do. “You ask a steep sum,” he said, crossing one fat limb over the other and snapping his whip at Rocket, who eyed him askance. “Pretty steep sum, but I take it, you are in a tight spot and don’t know what else to do. Got too many hangers on. There’s Aunt Eunice—you can’t help her, to be sure, nor your mother, nor your sister, though I’d break her neck before I’d let her run me into debt. Your bill at Harney’s, I know, is most all of her contracting, though you don’t tell me so, and I respect you for it. She’s your sister—blood kin. But that girl in the snow bank—I’ll be hanged if that was ever made quite clear to me.” “It is to me, and that is sufficient,” Hugh answered haughtily, while the old colonel laughingly replied, “Good grit, Hugh. I like you for that. In short, I like you for every thing, and that’s why I was sorry about that New York lady. You see, it may stand in the way of your getting a wife by and by, that’s all.” “I shall never marry,” Hugh answered, moodily, kicking at a decaying stump, and involuntarily thinking of the Golden Haired. “No?” the colonel replied, interrogatively. “Well there ain’t many good enough for you, that’s a fact; there ain’t many girls good for any body. I never saw but one except my Nell, that was worth a picayune, and that was _Alice Johnson_.” “_Who? Who_ did you say?” And Hugh grew white as marble, while a strange light gleamed in the dark eyes fastened so eagerly upon the colonel’s face.