The Desired Woman

w and viewed the scene with delight, drawing into his lungs with a sense of restful content the crisp, rarefied air. To the west, and marking the vicinity of Drake's

getting normal again, and I must stay so. What are Alan Delbridge's operations to me? He has no nerves nor imagination. He could have slept through that last tangle of mine which came within an inch of laying me out stiff and stark. I wonder how all the Drakes are, especially Dolly. She must be fully grown now. Saunders says she is beautiful and as wise as Socrates. I suppose there are a dozen mountain boys after her by this time. For a little girl she was astonishingly mature in manner and thought. I ought not to have talked to her as I did. I have never forgotten her face and voice as I saw and heard them that last night. I see the wonderful e

, he saw the little old-fashioned brick car-shed ahead and heard the grinding of the brakes on the smoo

, forming three sides of a square of which the car-shed, depot, and railway made the fourth. In the open space stood some canvas-covered mountain-wagons

the hotel and approached swinging his slouch h

s hotel, whar all de drummers put up. Goo

ag, which the swarthy h

he explained. "I'm goi

in de freight depot. I done hear 'im say

bag of flour, and smiled and waved his hat by way of salutation as he advanced to a buggy at a public hitching-rack and deposited his b

er up your legs, but Lucy made me fetch the buggy along, as some said you wasn't as well as common. But you look all right to me-that is, as well as any of you city fe

good-naturedly, "just a little r

an you have. I've always meant to ask you or Mr. Saunders what you fellers do, anyway. I reckon banks are the same in big towns as in little ones. They haven't got a regular bank here in Ridgeville, but I've been to the one in Darley. I went in with Tom when he wanted to draw the cash on a cotton check. Talk about hard work-I'll swear I couldn't see it. Me 'n' Tom had been up f

d-work," Webb echoed, the cloud still on his brow. He clucked to his horse and gently shook the reins. "To

y are saying that worry will kill a man quicker than any sort of physical ailment. You see

t does seem like a man would have more gumption 'an to worry hisse'f to death about

the remark. They had driven out of the vill

man, an' I'm a country feller. I could take you to the edge o' that cotton-field whar it joins on to the woods on that slope thar, an' point out a spot whar you couldn't make cotton grow more'n six inches high though it will reach four feet everywhar else in the fi

now that,"

u about it, but it is different in town. Jest let a spindle-legged counter-jumper at a store with his hair parted in the middl

nswered, smiling. "You seem too s

summer day when all hands was lyin' round the stores and law-offices tryin' to git cool

t," the ban

something important, just skin your eye at 'im, tell 'im right out that you don't give a dang about Tom Collins. La me, what a fool-what a fool I was! A feller workin' at the cotton-compress told me that a man by the name o' Tom Collins wanted to see me right off, an' that he was up at the wholesal

s dancin'. 'He was here, but he's just left,' a clerk said. 'He went to the hotel to git his grip. He was awfully put out. He's been all over town lookin' for you.' Well, as I made a break for the hotel, wonderin' if somebody had died an' left me a

point," Mos

er," Webb said, dryly. "I was so mad I could have chawed nails, but I blamed my

e not," M

had had much to do with women. He was bashful-like, but thar was one young woman that he had his eye on, an' now an' then he'd spruce up an' go to see 'er or take 'er out to meetin', but Jeff said he was too weak-kneed to pop the question, an' the gal went off on a visit to Alabama and got married. Now, the old bach' had a gang o'

ut off at the end o' his store was in the game, an' he had a key an' unlocked the door, an' the solemn procession marched in singin' some sad hymn or other with every man-jack of 'em wipin' his eyes an' snufflin'. Now, that was all well an' good as far as it went, but thar was a traitor in the camp. Somebody had let the dead man in on the job, an' when the gang got to the door of the little room he jumped

city life seemed almost dreamlike in its remoteness from his present more rational existence. With the handle of his whip Webb p

ose the children are much larger now. Dolly, at least, must be

the face of the banker

nkle in their mystic

head of that shebang, me included. What she says goes with young or old. She ain't more'n eighteen, if she's that, an' yet she furni