"Oh, Limuel," his wife protested; "a body to hear you talk would think that you don't do anything at all but thirst for blood. If the Lord puts it in the mind of a steer to kick you, why, it ain't the poor creeter's fault." The old man snorted. "And if the Lord puts it in my mind to kill the steer it ain't my fault, muther. Conscience alive, what are we all dressed up so about?" he added, looking at Alf. "So much stile goin' on that a body don't know whuther he's a shuckin' corn or is at a picnic. Blow his head off as soon as I eat a bite." I could see that Alf was anxious to tell me something, and immediately after supper I went up stairs with him. He took off his coat, and after dusting it carefully hung it up and sat down. He looked at me as if he were delighted with the curiosity that I was showing, and then as he reached for his pipe he began: "I was a-plowing out in the field about three hours by sun, when I saw Millie come out of the valley like a larkspur straightening up in the spring of the year, and after waiting a while, but always with my eye on the house, I quit work, slipped up here and dressed myself so as to be ready to walk home with her. I was rather afraid to ask her at first, knowing that this was breaking away from all my former strings and announcing my determination of keeping company with her, out and out, and I don't know exactly how I got at it, but I did, and the first thing I knew I was walking down the road with her. And this time I do remember what she said, but there wasn't anything so encouraging in it. The fact is she had something to tell me about you." "About me? What can she know about me? Probably she was giving you her father's estimate of me." "No, but somebody else's estimate," he replied. "You recollect a fellow named Bentley?" "Bentley? Of course, I do. We lived on adjoining farms, and I have a sore cause to remember him. But how could she have heard anything about him?"