"But you have not yet told me who this sweetheart was? You say it is not the Indian damsel you've just parted with?" "No, stranger, nothin' o' the kind: though there are some Injun in _her_ too. 'Twar o' her the girl spoke when ye heerd her talk o' a half-blood. She aint just that--she's more white than Injun; her mother only war a half-blood--o' the Chicasaw nation, that used to belong in these parts." "Her name?" "It _war_ Marian Holt. It are now Stebbins, I s'pose! since I've jest heerd she's married to a fellow o' that name." "She has certainly not improved her name." "She are the daughter o' Holt the squatter--the same whar you say you're a-goin'. Thar's another, as I told ye; but she's a younger un. Her name's Lilian." "A pretty name. The older sister was very beautiful you say?" "I niver set eyes on the like o' her." "Does the younger one resemble her?" "Ain't a bit like her--different as a squ'll from a coon." "She's more beautiful, then?" "Well, that depends upon people's ways o' thinkin'. Most people as know 'em liked Lilian the best, an' thort her the handsumest o' the two. That wan't my notion. Besides, Lilly's only a young crittur--not out o' her teens yit." "But if she be also pretty, why not try to fall in love with her? Down in Mexico, where I've been lately, they have a shrewd saying: _Un clavo saca otro clavo_, meaning that `one nail drives out another'--as much as to say, that one love cures another." "Ah, stranger! that may be all be very well in Mexico, whar I've heerd they ain't partickler about thar way o' lovin': but we've a sayin' here jest the contrairy o' that: `two bars can't get into the same trap.'" "Ha, ha, ha! Well your backwoods proverb is perhaps the truer one, as it is the more honest. But you have not yet told me the full particulars of your affair with Marian? You say she has gone away from the neighbourhood?" "You shall hear it all, stranger. I reckon thar can be no harm in tellin' it to _you_; an' if you've a mind to listen, I'll make a clean breast o' the whole bisness."