"Dum karracktur! What signify that? Ef all the young weemen in these parts war to wait till they got a husband o' good karracktur, they'd stay a long spell single, I reck'n. Alf Brandon ain't no worse nor other people; an', what's o' far more konsequince, he air richer than most. Ye'd be a fool, gurl, a dod-rotted eedyit, not to jump at the chance. An' don't you get it into yur head that I'm gwine to let it slip. Willin' or not, ye've got to be the wife o' Alf Brandon. Refuse? an' by the Eturnal, ye shall be no longer my darter? Ye hear that?" "I hear you, father. It is very painful to hear you; and painful, too, for me to tell you, that your threat cannot change me. I'm sure I have been obedient to you in everything else. Why should you force me to this?" "Wal," said the hardened man, apparently relenting, "I acknowledge ye've been a good gurl; but why shed yur now speil all the chances o' our gettin' a good livin' by yur obstinateness in bizness? I tell ye that my affairs air jest at this time a leetle preecarious. I owe Alf Brandon money--a good grist o't--an' now his father's dead he may be on me for't. Beside, you're o' full age, an' oughter be spliced to somebody. Who's better'n Alf Brandon?" Had Jerry arrived a little sooner at his house, or approached it with greater caution, he might have received a more satisfactory answer to his question. As it was, he got none, his daughter remaining silent, as if not caring to venture a reply. She had averted her eyes, displaying some slight embarrassment. Something of this the old man must have noticed, as evinced by the remark that followed:-- "Poor white, ye ain't a gwine to marry wi' my consent--I don't care what be his karracktur; an' ef ye've been makin' a fool o' yurself wi' sich, an' gin any promise, ye've got to get out o' it best way ye kin." Neither was there any rejoinder to this; he sat for a time in silence, as if reflecting on the probability of some such complication. He had never heard of his daughter having bestowed her heart on any one; and, indeed, she had gained some celebrity for having so long kept it to herself. For all that, it might have been secretly surrendered; and this would, perhaps, account for her aversion to the man he most wished her to marry. "I heerd a shot as I war coming along the road. It war the crack o' a rifle, an' sounded as ef 'twar somewhar near the house. Hez anybody been hyar?" The question was but a corollary to the train of thought he had been pursuing. Fortunately for the young girl, it admitted of an evasive answer, under the circumstances excusable. "There has been no one _at the house_ since you left. There was a shot though; I heard it myself." "Whar away?" "I think down by the creek--maybe in the woods beyond the orchard." "Thar ain't nothin' in them woods, 'ceptin' squrrl. Who's been squrrl shootin' this time o' day?" "Some boys, perhaps?"