"You young limb of Satan, you! I could shake the life out of you if I didn't prefer a live girl to a dead boy. I knew just such a thing as this would happen to me in my old age for a long life of cussedness. And what's more, I'll wager I'll never be able to give a great husky thing like you away. You cost as much to feed as a man. Who'd want you?" But even as he stormed at me I felt his strong old arms cease from their tremblings and clasp me with a very rough tenderness. "I do, General," said my Gouverneur Faulkner as he attempted to take me from that very rough embrace of my Uncle, the General Robert. "I'll take her off your hands." "No, sir, I never ask personal favors of my friends," answered my Uncle, the General Robert, as he held me away from the arms of the Gouverneur Faulkner with a very great determination. "General Carruthers," then said my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner as he drew his beautiful body to all the height that was possible to him, and looked into the eyes of my beloved Uncle Robert with his own, which are stars of the dawn, so that all of his heart and soul and honor shone therefrom in a radiance, "the Marquise of Grez and Bye went a three days' journey into the wilds of the Harpeth mountains with me to rescue my honor and for the welfare of this great State and of France. And because we thought not of ourselves but of the welfare of Harpeth and of France, and did but what was necessary as two comrades, God has revealed to us his gift of gifts--love. As you see, she is returned to you radiant and unharmed. Have I your consent to try to win her hand in marriage?" For no more than a long minute my Uncle, the General Robert, gazed straight into the eyes of my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner, and then a very beautiful smile did break from under those white swords crossed above his lips, as he spoke with a great urgency: "Would you like to take the baggage along with you to-night, Governor? Don't leave her here. I don't want a woman about my house. I can wake up the county court clerk for a license," he said with a fine twinkling of the eye. "Oh, but all friends must forgive me my deception; and then must not a courtship of great decorum be made from my Gouverneur Faulkner for the hand of the lady whom he would make his wife?" I asked with an uncertainty as I looked from my Uncle, the General Robert, to my Gouverneur Faulkner. "I'm sorry, sir, but I think the Marquise is right and under the circumstances I'll have to make a very public courtship, which out of consideration for you I'll make as ardent and rapid as possible. Only we three know the wonderful truth and we'll keep it to ourselves." And as he spoke that great Gouverneur Faulkner bent and laid a kiss of great ceremony upon the hand of Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye.