O N the day following Long's second visit to Dixie, Henley's affairs took him to Carlton. He was at the cotton-compress making arrangements to have a quantity of cotton prepared for shipment, when he met one of Long's clerks.

"Have you seen Mr. Long?" the young man asked.

"No, I've just got in," Henley answered. He could not have explained the fact, not being given to self-analysis, but he had vaguely determined that he would make every possible effort to avoid the storekeeper. In spite of his good intentions to aid Dixie in the contemplated alliance, he had come to regard it as altogether too incongruous an affair to be viewed favorably. What right had any man to her? What manner of man could possibly be worthy of her, much less the stupid blockhead who was thrusting himself upon her as Long was?

"Well, he's looking for you, Mr. Henley," the clerk said. "It must be important, for he's been to the bank and post-office three times since he heard you'd got in. It really looks like he's in trouble of some sort."

"Business gone crooked?" Henley inquired, as he watched the clerk's face with almost anxious eyes. "Maybe he's been buying futures?"

"Oh no, it ain't that!" the young man hastened to say. "He don't speculate in anything. He's dead sure of everything he touches. No, it ain't that, and business never was brisker, but we boys are doing it all. He ain't much help; don't do anything but write letters and tear 'em up, and talk about marryin' to every man, woman, an' child that happens in. He was all right and sound, and regular as a clock, till you fetched that girl in from over your way and introduced him. Come down right away, Mr. Henley. I'll tell 'im I saw you."

As Henley turned away to attend to his consignment of cotton in the office of the compress he bit his lip and frowned darkly.

"If the dang fool thinks I'm going down there to be buttonholed for hours to hear his tale of woe, he's certainly off his nut," he muttered, angrily. "I've got other matters to attend to. I don't believe she is at all struck with him, nohow. It don't look like she'd put 'im off like she does and keep him floundering in so much hot water if she thought much of him. He was there yesterday. I wonder what ails him now? She didn't take 'im out to church. Little Joe is at her house, but he is doing well enough for her to spare the time; I wonder if she was ashamed to be seen out with him after that first splurge. I don't know; she certainly is a plumb mystery to me."

His business over, he skirted around Long's establishment and made his way through an isolated alley to the wagon-yard where he had left his horse and buggy. He was just congratulating himself on his escape from the storekeeper, when Long suddenly broke upon his vision as he plunged incontinently through the big gateway. With an uneasy look in his eyes, and with a face drawn and serious, the storekeeper came striding toward him.

"Hello!" he panted. "I've been everywhere looking for you. You are as slippery as an eel, and as hard to catch as a flea. I want to see you bad, Alf. It's a particular matter. I can't let it rest."

"I was busy, and I hain't any too much time left on my hands now." Henley looked at the sun and then at his watch. "You'll have to talk fast, Long. Seems to toe there's a lot o' hitches in my affairs here lately. This 'un to see, and that 'un to talk to, and—"

"I'm in trouble, Alf, old man." Long laid a red, perspiring hand on his friend's shoulder and bore down heavily. "I was out yore way yesterday. I tried to see you as I started home, but didn't know where to find you. Alf, I can't jest somehow make out that little trick. Looks like she's sorter shifty. In the first place, havin' to postpone the trip on account of that sick young brat that ain't no blood kin to anybody concerned sort o' knocked me off my props, and then, when the day did come round, very little was done—that is, in the right direction."

"You—you'll have to have patience," Henley remarked, insincerely. "If you can't hold in and take things as they come you'd better call the deal off. I started you; I can't lay down everything and keep—keep telling you what to do and say. Life's too short and makes too many claims on a fellow."

"I want you to say a good word for me, Alf." Long wiped his anxious mouth with his bare hand and tugged at his mustache. "She believes the sun rises and sets in you. Looks to me like it's Alfred did this, an' Alfred said that, an' Alfred thinks so and so and does so and so, with every breath she draws. For a while I 'lowed it was because she was grateful to you for helpin' her out in the marryin' line, but she don't seem to want to marry much, nohow. She'd listen to you, though, if she would to any man alive, and something has to be done."

"Well, I reckon the little woman is friendly to me." Henley avoided the fiercely anxious stare of his flurried companion. "She's done me good turns, and I've tried to respond."

"She'd fight for you tooth and toe-nail," Long declared. "I know from experience. Why, I just happened to say one little, tiny thing about you, and la! she flew at me like a hen fightin' for her brood. I meant no harm. I'd have said the same thing to your face, as I am saying it now. Me 'n her was talking about the way men dress these days, and I said, without meanin' any harm, that it was naturally expected that chaps here in a town like Carlton would be more up to date than at the foot of the mountains where you live, and remarked that you made no great pretence in the clothes you wore, in fact, that I thought you went just a little bit too careless for a man as young and well-off as you are."

"Huh, you told her that, did you?" Henley's cheeks reddened against his will. "Well, I don't go much on style, in hot weather, anyway. I never did want to be called a dude."

"Of course not, but what you reckon she done? She leaned back in her chair while I was a-talking an' laughed like she'd bust herself wide open. She pointed down at my new tan shoes and green socks and wanted to know if things like them was style, and asked me why I kept my gloves on in the house. She wanted to know if I let my yaller-bordered handkerchief stick out of my upper pocket because I was afraid folks wouldn't see it, an' if I kept a cheaper one to blow my nose on. You may know, Alf, that all the good-dressers here at Carlton—and I pride myself I'm amongst 'em—have their suits pressed once a week to make 'em set right, but she said my pant-legs looked like they was lined with pasteboard, and that my high collar looked like a cuff upside down. Of course, I couldn't get mad, for she was joking all through, and laughin' pleasant-like. But, Alf, I must say she's fallin' off in her meal record. You know she made such a fine spread the first time that I naturally expected some'n out of the common again. I saved myself up for it. I didn't take on a big breakfast before I left home because I told myself, I did, that I'd appreciate her fine fixings all the more. So you can imagine how I felt when she marched me out, with them old women, and set me down to—well, a body oughtn't to criticise what's set before 'em in a friend's house, but, Alf, that really was the limit. I can tell you just exactly what we had. I'll never forget it. It was plain pork and beans, and boiled cabbage, and sliced tomatoes, and hard cornbread. She hadn't put a sign of an egg in it, and cornbread without eggs ain't fit to eat. It looks like Mrs. Hart had had some dispute with Dixie about it, too, for the old lady kept whining and telling me it wasn't her fault, that she thought Dixie was going to set in and fix up proper, but that Dixie wouldn't listen to reason, and why, the old lady said, she was unable to understand, for the like had never happened before. Dixie didn't make any excuses, but set at the head of the table and dished out that stuff as if it was the best afloat. 'Won't you pass yore plate for more beans?' she wanted to know, and 'Won't you try some of the butter with the cornbread?' I reckon I made a mistake by speaking of what a fine spread she got up the last time, for she kind o' tilted her nose in the air, an' said she 'lowed the weather was too hot to stand over a hot cook-stove unless it was some extra occasion."

"She's got lots to do," Henley said, his eyes twinkling with amusement. "She's undertaken to nurse that little boy back to health, and he takes up a lot of her time."

"I reckon he does," Long said. "Looks like me an' her'd hardly get settled in our chairs on the porch before her mammy would call out that Joe wanted water, or Joe wanted to set up, or what not. It was more like hard work than any day of courtin' I ever put in. But now, Alf, I'm coming to my chief trouble. I want her, and I want her bad. I hardly sleep at night for thinking about her sweet, pretty face, and industrious habits, and what a bang-up wife she'd make, but I don't get nowhere. The minute I come down to hard-pan she wiggles away like a scared tadpole in shallow water. I done a thing, and I don't know whether it was a big mistake or not, and that is the main thing I want to see you about. It was just before I left, an' we was standin' at the gate, nigh my hoss and buggy. It had got sorter dark, and—well, I'll tell you all about it. Alf, I've heard fellows say (and they was men that had had experience with women, too)—I've heard 'em say that the chap that dilly-dallies with a woman, and always acts as sweet as pie, never makes no headway. Them fellows say you've just got to be sorter firm with a girl that won't make up her mind—that women like to have a man show that he ain't scared out of his senses when he's with 'em. And so I had all that in mind, you understand, when I made my last set at her there in the dark. I saw nobody wasn't looking, and I catched hold of her hand, I did, and held on to it though she pulled and twisted with all her might. I told her I was bound to have a kiss, and I pulled her up agin me and tried to take it. I couldn't manage it, though, and, by gad! she got loose and slid through the gate, and went in the house and slammed the door in my face."

"She ought to have knocked your head off, you low-lived fool!" cried Henley. He was white in the face, and his eyes had a dangerous glare in them. His breath came rapidly and with an audible sound. "For a minute I'd pull you down here and stomp the life out of you!"

"Why, Alf! Alf! have you plumb lost your senses?" Long gasped. "Why, why, good Lord, man! Why, Alf—"

"Don't Alf me!" Henley cried. "Get out of my sight or me 'n you'll mix right here! I didn't introduce you to that gentle girl to have you pull her around like a housemaid and force your foul lips to hers. I introduced you as a man, not a bar-room roustabout. No wonder she hain't took to you—no wonder she don't want to tie herself down for life to you!"

Henley had sprung into his buggy and taken up the whip and reins. "Stand out of the way!" he cried. "You've imposed on my friendship, and I don't want you ever to mention this matter to me again. I'm heartily ashamed of my part in it, and I don't want to be reminded of it."

Long tried to stop him, but, still white and furious, Henley lashed his horse, and the animal bore him out of the yard and into the street. "I ought to have given him one in the jaw!" Henley fumed. "I'll be sorry I didn't the longer I think about it—the low-lived, dirty brute!"