“Wait! I have not told you everything. When I took over the responsibility of being Allen MacGlowrie's widow, I had to take over HER relations and HER history as I gathered it from the frontiersmen. I never frightened any grizzly--I never jabbed anybody with the scissors; it was SHE who did it. I never was among the Injins--I never had any fighting relations; my paw was a plain farmer. I was only a peaceful Blue Grass girl--there! I never thought there was any harm in it; it seemed to keep the men off, and leave me free--until I knew you! And you know I didn't want you to believe it--don't you?” She hid her flushed face and dimples in her handkerchief. “But did you never think there might be another way to keep the men off, and sink the name of MacGlowrie forever?” said Blair in a lower voice. “I think we must be going back now,” said the widow timidly, withdrawing her hand, which Blair had again mysteriously got possession of in her confusion. “But wait just a few minutes longer to keep me company,” said Blair pleadingly. “I came here to see a patient, and as there must have been some mistake in the message--I must try to discover it.” “Oh! Is that all?” said the widow quickly. “Why?”--she flushed again and laughed faintly--“Well! I am that patient! I wanted to see you alone to explain everything, and I could think of no other way. I'm afraid I've got into the habit of thinking nothing of being somebody else.” “I wish you would let me select who you should be,” said the doctor boldly. “We really must go back--to the horses,” said the widow. “Agreed--if we will ride home together.” They did. And before the year was over, although they both remained, the name of MacGlowrie had passed out of Laurel Spring. A WARD OF COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S “The kernel seems a little off color to-day,” said the barkeeper as he replaced the whiskey decanter, and gazed reflectively after the departing figure of Colonel Starbottle. “I didn't notice anything,” said a bystander; “he passed the time o' day civil enough to me.” “Oh, he's allus polite enough to strangers and wimmin folk even when he is that way; it's only his old chums, or them ez like to be thought so, that he's peppery with. Why, ez to that, after he'd had that quo'll with his old partner, Judge Pratt, in one o' them spells, I saw him the next minit go half a block out of his way to direct an entire stranger; and ez for wimmin!--well, I reckon if he'd just got a head drawn on a man, and a woman spoke to him, he'd drop his battery and take off his hat to her. No--ye can't judge by that!” And perhaps in his larger experience the barkeeper was right. He might have added, too, that the colonel, in his general outward bearing and jauntiness, gave no indication of his internal irritation. Yet he was undoubtedly in one of his “spells,” suffering from a moody cynicism which made him as susceptible of affront as he was dangerous in resentment.