"I didn't encourage her admiration. 'He might be made useful on a farm,' I said; 'if his legs were as big as the rest of him, he could draw a plow as well as an ox.' "She made no answer to this; but her interest in astronomy seemed to decrease, and she soon proposed that we should turn back to the town. On the way we met the stranger again, and this time he stopped and asked us some questions about the country and the neighborhood. All the time we were talking he and my scholar were looking at each other, and each of them seemed entirely satisfied with the survey. The next day the girl was very inattentive at school, and in the afternoon, when I hoped to take a walk with her, I could not find her, and went out by myself. Before long I saw her sitting under a tree, talking to the stranger of yesterday." "She was a regular flirt," said Mrs. Crowder. "Apparently she was," replied her husband; "but although I might have excused her, considering how much better suited this stranger was to her, in point of years at least, I was not willing to withdraw and leave her to another, especially as he might be a person entirely unworthy of her. "I did not disturb them, but I went back to the town and made some inquiries about the stranger. I found that he was a Danite, and lived with his parents in Zorah, and that his name was Samson. I also learned that his family was possessed of considerable means. "It soon became plain that it would not be easy for me to carry out my marriage plans and settle down among my vines and fig-trees. Samson went home, told his parents of his desire to marry this girl, and in the course of time they all came down to Timnath and made regular matrimonial propositions to her parents." "Was this the great Samson who tore lions apart and threw down temples?" asked Mrs. Crowder, in amazement. "The very man," was the reply; "and he was the most formidable rival I ever had in that sort of affair. The proper thing for me to do, according to the custom of the times, would have been to take him aside, as soon as I found that he was paying attentions to my sweetheart, and fight him; but the more I looked at him and his peculiar proportions, the more I was convinced that he was not a man with whom I wanted to fight." "I should think not," said Mrs. Crowder. "How glad I am thee never touched him!" "The result might not have been disastrous to me," he said; "for although I have always avoided military matters as much as possible, I was probably better versed in the use of a sword than he was. But I did not care to kill him, and from what I heard of him afterward, I am sure that if he had ever got those long arms around me I should have been a mass of broken bones.