It was a pleasant summer afternoon, and the sun was beginning to strike under the laurels around the hotel into the little office where the widow sat with the housekeeper--a stout spinster of a coarser Western type. Mrs. MacGlowrie was looking wearily over some accounts on the desk before her, and absently putting back some tumbled sheaves from the stack of her heavy hair. For the widow had a certain indolent Southern negligence, which in a less pretty woman would have been untidiness, and a characteristic hook and eyeless freedom of attire which on less graceful limbs would have been slovenly. One sleeve cuff was unbuttoned, but it showed the blue veins of her delicate wrist; the neck of her dress had lost a hook, but the glimpse of a bit of edging round the white throat made amends. Of all which, however, it should be said that the widow, in her limp abstraction, was really unconscious. “I reckon we kin put the new preacher in Kernel Starbottle's room,” said Miss Morvin, the housekeeper. “The kernel's going to-night.” “Oh,” said the widow in a tone of relief, but whether at the early departure of the gallant colonel or at the successful solution of the problem of lodging the preacher, Miss Morvin could not determine. But she went on tentatively:-- “The kernel was talkin' in the bar room, and kind o' wonderin' why you hadn't got married agin. Said you'd make a stir in Sacramento--but you was jest berried HERE.” “I suppose he's heard of my husband?” said the widow indifferently. “Yes--but he said he couldn't PLACE YOU,” returned Miss Morvin. The widow looked up. “Couldn't place ME?” she repeated. “Yes--hadn't heard o' MacGlowrie's wife and disremembered your brothers.” “The colonel doesn't know everybody, even if he is a fighting man,” said Mrs. MacGlowrie with languid scorn. “That's just what Dick Blair said,” returned Miss Morvin. “And though he's only a doctor, he jest stuck up agin' the kernel, and told that story about your jabbin' that man with your scissors--beautiful; and how you once fought off a bear with a red-hot iron, so that you'd have admired to hear him. He's awfully gone on you!” The widow took that opportunity to button her cuff. “And how long does the preacher calculate to stay?” she added, returning to business details. “Only a day. They'll have his house fixed up and ready for him to-morrow. They're spendin' a heap o' money on it. He ought to be the pow'ful preacher they say he is--to be worth it.” But here Mrs. MacGlowrie's interest in the conversation ceased, and it dropped. In her anxiety to further the suit of Dick Blair, Miss Morvin had scarcely reported the colonel with fairness.