I had the impression that Jo was an excellent husband, for he was always thinking of what would please Mateel, and when they were together he was as gentle and gallant as he had been when they were lovers, which I have heard is very unusual. Mateel was a good wife, but I do not know that I ever heard her say a kind word for her husband, although others talked about him a great deal. She thought, no doubt, that his excellences were understood, and did not need to be mentioned. I thought of this circumstance then, because I believed it would have been no more than natural for her to say that Jo had succeeded well, or that he had bravely won her, but she never did, although she seemed pleased when I complimented her husband, as though it was an expression of a hope that if he were not so rich then as she desired, he might be in the future. Usually when Jo and Mateel came to Twin Mounds, Agnes came with them, as it was their custom to drive over on Saturday, and back in the evening of the next day, and with so many of her old friends around her, my mother perceptibly revived, but when they had gone away, she resumed her old melancholy, and pined away in the room where she watched at night. If they offered to take her home with them, she refused, and never went out, except occasionally to ride with me, and then I thought it was more to admire the speed of “Dan” and “Dave” than because she cared to leave the house. Although the Rev. John Westlock was never heard of, the light was always burning in his old room at night, and his deserted wife was always waiting to forgive him. I think she never for a moment gave up the hope that he would come back; for, winter and summer alike, she waited for him every night, and was weaker the next day because he did not come. The fear began to oppress me that some morning we should find her dead at her post, and I proposed to get some one to stay with her at night, but she would not hear of it, thinking, no doubt, that when he came he would much prefer to find her alone. Thus the months went by, and at the close of every one I found that her head was whiter and her step more feeble. I saw Lytle Biggs nearly every week, and Big Adam often came there with products of the farm to sell, and he always came in to see me, usually having the information to impart that another relative had been killed by the Indians, or that his old mistress “jawed” him more than ever. If he found it necessary to stay in the town over night, which was sometimes the case, I took him home with me, and treated him with so much consideration in other ways that he soon became my greatest friend.