"Our favorite walk had been along a line of thick laurels beyond which ran a little stream. Everything was the same. There was no change there to oppress my heart. Above were the same great sycamores and poplars; there ran the same brook; my feet trod the same path they had so often walked with her. It seemed that if I waited she would surely come again, tripping so lightly through the gloaming with her starry eyes, and nut-brown curls, and she loved me, too. It seemed then that nothing could ever have parted us--no doubt, no misunderstanding, no falsehood. But who can tell? "I went to the end of the path. There stood the old hollow tree in which we used to place notes to each other. What sweet words that old tree could tell if it had known! I had fancied that during the rubs and knocks I had received from the world my heart had grown calloused, but such was not the case. "I looked down into the hollow of the tree, and saw something white. It was a folded piece of paper, yellow and stained with age. I opened it and read it with difficulty. "'Dearest Richard: You know I will marry you if you want me to. Come round early tonight and I will give you my answer in a better way. Your own Nellie.' "Gentlemen, I stood there holding that little piece of paper in my hand like one in a dream. I had written her a note asking her to marry me and telling her to leave her answer in the old tree. She must have done so, and I never got it, and all those years had rolled away since." The crowd was silent. The major wiped his eyes, and the judge sniffed a little. They were middle-aged men now, but they, too, had known love. "And then," said the grocer, "you left right away for Texas and never saw her again?" "No," said the colonel. "When I didn't come round that night she sent her father after me, and we were married two months later. She and the five kids are up at the house now. Pass the tobacco, please." A Narrow Escape A meek-looking man, with one eye and a timid, shuffling gait, entered a Houston saloon while no one was in except the bartender, and said: "Excuse me, sir, but would you permit me to step behind the bar for just a moment? You can keep your eye on me. There is something there I wanted to look at." The bartender was not busy, and humored him through curiosity. The meek-looking man stepped around and toward the shelf back of the bar. "Would you kindly remove that wine bottle and those glasses for a moment?" The bartender did so, and disclosed a little plowed streak on the shelf and a small hole bored for quite a distance into the wall. "Thanks, that's all," said the meek man, as he went around to the front again.