Mrs. Sims’s preliminary apprehension, which she seemed to have forgotten, was once more aghast upon her face. She raised a warning forefinger, and she spoke in her husky penetrating whisper: “Don’t you-uns say nare word ter Tubal Cain Sims. Leave him ter _me_. I’ll settle him.” “Why not?” asked the young man, alert to any menace, however remote. Mrs. Sims knitted her brows in embarrassment. “Waal,” she said, composing herself to divulge the truth so far as she knew it, since no polite subterfuge was handy, “he air cantankerous, an’ quar’lsome, an’ hard-headed, an’ powerful perverse. An’ he ’pears ter be sot agin ye, kase, I reckon, I like ye,--me an’ Phemie, though Phemie never tuk no notice o’ ye in this worl’ till ’bout three weeks ago whenst ye ondertook ter set up ter her so constant. Ye hev witched that gal; ye jes’ _made_ her fall in love with ye, whether or no.” The juggler laughed at this, casting a bright glance at the dusky aperture of the window where the white blossoms all stirred by the wind seemed to be leaning on the sill and eavesdropping too. They might not have all been so happily at ease had they known that, close by the door, still slightly ajar, and awakened by the bang which the juggler had dealt it, lay old Tubal Cain Sims, grimly listening to this conversation. “I can’t agree to that,” said Royce, after a moment’s reflection. He was certainly nothing of a prig, but he had his own views of honor, and they controlled him. “This is Mr. Sims’s house; and I was received into it first as a guest, and it is as a privilege that I have been allowed to remain. I can’t make love to any man’s daughter, under these circumstances, on the sly.” “But s’pose he won’t agree--an’ the critter is ez _con_trary ez--ez”--Comparisons failed Mrs. Sims, and she could only shake her head warningly. “Oh well, everything having been aboveboard, I’d take the girl and elope!” cried the juggler, his eyes alight at the mere prospective fanning of the breeze of adventure. “Being an educated man, Mrs. Sims, I could make a living for myself and my wife in a dozen different ways, in any of these little towns about here. Why--what”--