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raise her estimation of her value and to look for something higher. Rachel's lovers came and went, and married themselves to young women without beauty. Lately, however, Rachel Albaugh's neighbors began to think that she had at length fallen in love" for keeps," as the country phrase expressed it.

"I say, Rache," called her brother Ike, a youth of fifteen, who was just then half-hidden in the boughs of the summer apple-tree by the garden gate, "they 's somebody coming." "Who is it, Ike?"

"Henry Miller and the two Miller girls." "Oh! is that all?" said Rachel in a teasing tone.

"Is that all?" said Ike. "You don't care for anybody but Tom Grayson these days. I'll bet you Tom 'll be here to-night."

"What makes you think so?" asked Rachel, trying not to evince any interest in the information.

through the quivering atmosphere, and then excitement of trifling with the mouse that can dying away by degrees into languishing, long-hardly escape her in any way. Prey that comes drawn, and at last barely audible vibrations. too easily to hand is not highly valued. EvRachel, the daughter of the prosperous ery bid for such a woman's hand leads her to owner of the farm, was tying some jasmine vines to the upright posts that supported the roof of a porch, or veranda, that stretched along the entire front of the house. There was that in her fresh calico gown and in her action which gave her the air of one expect ing the arrival of guests. She almost always expected company in the evening of a fine. day. For the young person whose fortune it is to be by long odds the finest-looking woman in a new country where young men abound, and where women are appreciated at a rate proportioned to their scarcity, knows what it is to be a "reigning belle" indeed. In the vigorous phrase of the country, Rachel was described as "real knock-down handsome;" and, tried by severer standards than those of Illinois, her beauty would have been beyond question. She had the three essentials: eyes that were large and lustrous, a complexion rich and fresh, yet delicately tinted, and features well-balanced and harmonious. Her blonde hair was abundant, and, like everything about her, vital. Her hands and feet were not overlarge, and, fortunately, they were not disproportionately small; but just the hands and feet of a well-developed country girl used to activity and the open air. She was not more than ordinarily clever, but she had a certain passive intelligence. Her voice was not a fine one, nor had her manners any particular charm except that which comes from the repose of one who understands that she is at her best when silent, and who feels herself easily ahead of rivals without making any exertion whatever. Hers was one of those faces the sight of which quickens the pulses even of an old man, and attracts young men with a fascination as irresistible as it is beyond analysis or description. So it happened that many young men were visitors at John Albaugh's hospitable house. Rachel, being chief, could afford to be generous, and where the young men came the young women were prone to come. Thus it happened that Albaugh's was a place of frequent and spontaneous resort for the young people from all the country round.

But it had happened with this much-courted girl, as it has happened to many another like her, that with all the world to choose from, she had tarried single longer than her companions. She was now past twenty-three, in a land where a woman was accounted something of an old maid if unmarried at twenty. Beauties such as she find a certain pleasure in playing with their destiny, as pussy loves the

VOL. XXXV.-6.

"Don't you wish you knew?" he answered, glad to repay her teasing in kind.

"Did you see him to-day?"

"Say, Sis," said Ike, affecting to dismiss the subject, "here 's an awful nice apple. Can you ketch? "

Rachel held up her hands to catch the apple, baring her pretty arms by the falling back of her loose sleeves. The mischievous Ike threw a swift ball, and Rachel, holding her hands for it, could not help shrinking as the apple came flying at her. She shut her eyes and ducked her head, and of course the apple went past her, bowling away along the porch and off the other end of it into the grass.

"That's just like a girl," said Ike. "Here's a better apple. I won't throw so hard this time." And Rachel caught the large striped apple in her two hands.

"I say, Ike,” she said, coaxingly, "where did you see Tom?"

"Oh! I met him over on the big road as I went to mill this morning; he was going home to his mother's, an' he said he was coming over to see you to-night. An' I told him to fetch Barbara, so 's I'd have somebody to talk to, 'cause you would n't let me get a word in ageways with him. An' Tom laughed an' looked tickled."

"I guess you won't talk much to Barbara while Ginnie Miller 's here," Rachel said; and by this time Henry Miller and his two sisters were nearing the white gate which stood forty feet away from the cool front porch of the house.

"Howdy, Rachel!" said Henry Miller, as he

reached the gate, and "Howdy! Howdy!" came from the two sisters, to which Rachel answered with a cordial "Howdy! Come in!" meant for the three. When they reached the porch, she led the way through the open front door to the "settin' room" of the house, as the living-room was always called in that day. The fire-place looked like an extinct crater; curtains of narrow green slats hung at the windows, and the floor was covered by a new rag-carpet in which was imbedded a whole history of family costume; a patient geologist might have discovered in it traces of each separate garment worn in the past five years by the several members of the Albaugh family. The mantelpiece was commonplace enough, of "poplar" wood—that is, tulip-tree- -painted brown. The paint while fresh had been scratched in rhythmical waves with a common coarse comb. This graining was supposed to resemble the grain of some wood yet undiscovered. The table at the side of the room farthest from the door had a cover of thin oilcloth decorated with flowers; most of them done in yellow. A tall wooden clock stood against the wall at the right of the door as you entered, and its slow ticking seemed to make the room cooler. For the rest, there was a black rocking-chair with a curved wooden seat and uncomfortable round slats in the back; there were some rank-and-file chairs besides, these were black, with yellow stripes; and there was a green settee with three rockers beneath and an arm at each end.

Henry Miller was a square-set young fellow, without a spark of romance in him. He had plowed corn all day, and he would have danced all night had the chance offered, and then followed the plow the next day. His sisters were like him, plain and of a square type that bespoke a certain sort of "Pennsylvania Dutch" ancestry, though the Millers had migrated to Illinois, not from Pennsylvania, but from one of the old German settlements in the valley of Virginia. Ike jumped out of the apple-tree to follow Virginia, the youngest of the Millers, into the house; there was between him and "Ginnie," as she was called, that sort of adolescent attachment, or effervescent reaction, which always appears to the parties involved in it the most serious interest in the universe, and to everybody else something deliciously ridiculous; a sort of burlesque of the follies of people more mature.

This was destined to be one of Rachel's "company evenings "; she had not more than seated the Millers and taken the girls' bonnets to a place of security, when there was a knock on the door-jamb. It was Mely McCord, who had once been a hired help in the Albaugh family. There were even in that day wide. differences in wealth and education in Illinois,

but class demarcations there were not. Nothing was more natural than that Mely, who had come over from Hubbard township to visit some cousin in the neighborhood, should visit the Albaughs. Mely McCord was a girl—she was always called a girl, though now a little in the past tense - with a stoop in the shoulders, and hair that would have been better if it had been positively and decoratively red. As it was, her head seemed always striving to be red without ever attaining to any purity of color.

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Half an hour later, McGill, an Irish bache lor of thirty-five, who, being county clerk, was prudently riding through the country in order to keep up his acquaintance with the voters, hitched his horse at the fence outside of the Albaugh gate, and came in just as Rachel was bringing a candle. Though he had no notion of cumbering himself with a family or with anything else likely to interfere with the freedom or pleasure of "an Irish gentleman," McGill was very fond of playing at gallantry, and he affected a great liking for what he called "faymale beauty," and plumed himself on the impression his own sprucely dressed person and plump face-a little overruddy, especially toward the end of the nose might make on the sex. He never passed Albaugh's without stopping and enjoying a platonic flirtation with Rachel. George Lockwood arrived at the same time; he was a clerk in Wooden's store, at the county-seat village of Moscow, and he could manage, on his busiest days even, to spend half an hour in selling a spool of cotton thread to Rachel Albaugh. He had now come five miles in the vain hope of finding her alone. The country beauty appreciated the flattery of his long ride, and received his attention with a pleasure undisguised.

But George Lockwood's was no platonic sentiment. He watched intently every motion of Rachel's arms only half-hidden in her opensleeved dress; even the rustling of the calico of her gown made his heart flutter. He made a shame-faced effort to conceal his agitation; he even tried to devote himself to Mely McCord and the "Miller girls" now and then; but his eyes followed Rachel's tranquil movements, as she amused herself with McGill's bold flatteries, and Lockwood could not help turning himself from side to side in order to keep the ravishing vision in view when he was talking to some one else.

"You had better make the most of your chance, Mr. Lockwood," said pert little Virginia Miller, piqued by his absent-minded pretense of talking with her.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Oh, talk to Rachel while you can, for maybe after a while you can't!"

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"She's glad enough to talk to you now, but just you wait till Tom Grayson comes. If he should happen in to-night, what do you think would become of you?

"Maybe I'm not so dead in love as you think," he answered.

“ You ? You're past hope. Your eyes go round the room after her like a sunflower twistin' its neck off to see the sun."

"Pshaw!" said George. “You know better than that."

But Virginia noted with amusement that his smile of affected indifference was rather a forced one, and that he was "swallowing his feelings," as she put it. He took her advice as soon as he dared and crossed to where Rachel was sitting with the back of her chair against the jamb of the mantel-piece. Rachel was smiling a little foolishly at the shameless palaver of McGill, who told her that there was a ravishing perfiction about her faychers that he 'd niver sane surpassed, though he'd had the exquisite playsure of dancing with many of the most beautiful faymales in Europe. Rachel was a little sick of such unwatered sweetness, and was glad to have George Lockwood interrupt these frank criticisms of an appreciative connoisseur.

possible to the farther corner of the room where
she was standing talking to George Lockwood.
He extended his hand to her with a hearty

"Well, Rache, how are you? It would cure
fever and ague to see you;" and then turning
to Lockwood he said: "Hello, George! you
out here! I would n't 'ave thought there was
any other fellow fool enough to ride five
miles and back to get a look at Rachel but
me." And at that he laughed, not a laugh
that had any derision in it, or any defiance,
only the outbreaking of animal spirits that
were unchecked by foreboding or care.

"I say, George," he went on, "let's go out and fight a duel and have it over. There's no chance for any of us here till Rachel's beaux are thinned out a little. If I should get you killed off out of the way, I suppose I should have to take Mr. McGill next."

"No, Tom, it's not with me you 'd foight, me boy. I've sane too many handsome girls to fight over them, though I have never sane such transcindent

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"Ah, hush, now, Mr. McGill," said Rachel.
"Faymale beauty 's always adorned by
modesty, Miss Albaugh. I'll only add, that
whoever Miss Rachel stoops to marry'
and McGill laughed a slow, complacent laugh
as he put an emphasis on stoops "I'll be
a thorn in his soide, d' yeh mark that; fer to
the day of me death I'll be her most devot-
ed admirer"; and he made a half-bow at the
close of this speech, with a quick_recovery,
which expressed his sense of the formidable
character of his own personal charms.

But if McGill was a connoisseur of beauty
he was also a politician too prudent to slight
any one. He was soon after this paying the
closest heed to Mely McCord's very sponta-
neous talk. He had selected Mely in order
that he might not get a reputation for being
"stuck up."

"I hear Tom Grayson outside now," said Mely McCord, in a half-whisper to Henry Miller. "George Lockwood won't be nowhere when he gits here "; and Mely's freckled face broke into ripples of delight at the evident annoyance which Lockwood began to show at hearing Grayson's voice on the porch. Tom Grayson was preceded by his sister Barbara, a rather petite figure, brunette in complexion, with a face that was interesting and intelligent, and that had an odd look hard to analyze, but which came perhaps, from a slight lack of symmetry. As a child, she had been called "cunning" in the popular American use of the "Tom Grayson a'n't the leas' bit afeerd uh word when applied to children; that is to say, George Lockwood nur nobody else," said Mely we piquantly interesting; and this characteristic of rather confidentially to McGill, who stood with quaint piquancy of appearance she retained, hands crossed under the tail of his blue-gray now that she was a young woman of eighteen. coat. "He all'ays wuz that away; a kind 'v Her brother Tom was a middle-sized, well- a high-headed, don't-keer sort uv a feller. He'd proportioned man, about two years older than better luck out, though. Rache's one uh them she, of a fresh, vivacious countenance, and skittish kind uh critters that don't stan' 'thout with a be-gone-dull-care look. He had a knack hitchin', an' weth a halter knot at that. Tom of imparting into any company something of Grayson 's not the fust feller that's felt shore his own cheerful heedlessness, and for this his she wuz his 'n an' then found out kind uh sudsociety was prized. He spoke to everybody dently 't 'e wuz n't so almighty shore arter right cordially, and shook hands with all the all. But, lawsee gracious! Tom Grayson a'n't company as though they had been his first afeerd uv nuthin', nohow. When the master cousins, looking in every face without reserve wuz a-lickin' him wunst, at school, an' gin 'im or suspicion, and he was greeted on all hands three cuts, an' then says, says he, ‘You may with a corresponding heartiness. But while go now,' Tom, he jes lucks at 'im an' says uz Tom saluted everybody, his eye turned toward peart's ever you see, says he, 'Gimme another Rachel, and he made his way as quickly as to make it even numbers.'"

"An' how did the master fale about that?" asked McGill, who had been a school-master himself.

"W'y he jes let him have it good an' tight right around his shins. Tom walked off an' never wunst said thank yeh, sir. He didn' wear uz good close in them days 's 'e does now, by a long shot. His mother's farm's in the timber, an' slow to open; so many stumps and the like; an' 'f 'is uncle down 't Moscow had n't a' tuck him up, he 'd 'a' been a-plowin' in thatair stickey yaller clay 'v Hubbard township yit. But you know ole Tom Grayson, his father's brother, seein' 's Tom wuz named for him, an' wuz promisin' like, an' had the gift of the gab, he thought 's how Tom mought make 'n all-fired smart lawyer ur doctor, ur the like; an' seein' 's he had n' got no boy to do choores about, he takes Tom an' sends him to school three winters, an' now I believe he's put him to readin' law."

bound so tightly about it as to hold it firmly to the key. The ring end of the key protruded. This was carefully balanced on the tips of the forefingers of Lockwood and Sophronia Miller, so that the Bible hung between and below their hands. A very slight motion, unconscious and invisible, of either of the supporting fingers would be sufficient to precipitate the Bible and key to the floor.

"Who can say the verse?" asked Lockwood.

"I know it like a book," said Virginia Miller.

"You say it, Ginnie," said her sister, "but whose turn first?"

The two amateur sorcerers, with fingers under the key-ring, sat face to face in the dim light of the candle, their right elbows resting on their knees as they bent forward to hold the Bible between them. The others stood about with countenances expressing curiosity

"Yis, I know he went into Blackman's office and amusement. last May," said McGill.

"Ole Tom Grayson's never done nothin' fer the ole woman nur little Barb'ry, there, an' little Barb'ry's the very flower of the flock, accordin' to my tell," Mely went on. "Mrs. Grayson sticks to the ole farm, yeh know, an' rents one field to pap on the sheers, an' works the rest uv it by hirin'. She sets a mighty sight uv store by Tom. Talks about 'im by the hour. She 'lows he'll be a-gittin' to Congress nex' thing. But I d' know"- and here Mely shook her head. "High nose stumped his toes," says I. "Jes look how he 's a-carryin' on with Rache, now.”

"She's older 'n he is," said the clerk, knowing that even this half unfavorable comment would be a comfort to one so far removed from rivalry with her as Mely.

"Three years ef she's a day," responded Mely promptly. "Jest look at that Lockwood. He's like a colt on the outside of a paster fence, now," and Mely giggled heartily at Lockwood's evident discomfiture.

In gossip and banter the time went by, until some one proposed to “turn the Bible." I do not know where this form of sortilege originated; it is probably as old as Luther's Bible. One can find it practiced in Germany to-day as it is in various parts of the United States.

"Come, Sophronia, you and me will hold the key," said Lockwood, who was always quick to seize an advantage.

These two, therefore, set themselves to tell the fortunes of the company. The large iron key to the front door and a short, fat little pocket-Bible were the magic implements. The ward end of the key was inserted between the leaves of the Bible at the first chapter of Ruth; the book was closed and a string

"Rachel first," said Henry Miller; everybody wants to know who in thunderation Rache will marry, ef she ever marries anybody. I don't believe even the Bible can tell that. Turn fer Rachel Albaugh, and let's see how it comes out. Say the verse, Ginnie."

"Letter A," said Virginia Miller, solemnly; and then she repeated the words like a witch saying a charm:

"Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried.'"

The key did not turn. It was manifest, therefore, that Rachel would never marry any man whose name began with the first letter of the alphabet. The letter B was called, and again the solemn charm was repeated; the company resting breathless to the end. The Bible and key refused to respond for B, or C, or D, or E, or F. But when Ginnie Miller announced "Letter G," it was with a voice that betrayed a consciousness of having reached a critical point in her descent of the alphabet; there was a rustle of expectation in the room, and even McGill, standing meditatively with his hands behind his back, shifted his weight from his left foot to his right so as to have a better view of any antics the Bible might take a notion to perform. Just as Virginia Miller reached the words "and where thou diest will I die," the key slipped off Sophronia's fingers first, and the book fell to the floor.

"G stands for Grayson," said McGill gravely, but he pronounced his "G" so nearly like "J" that a titter went around the room.

"Don't you know better than to spell Grayson with a J, Mr. McGill?" asked Rachel. McGill did not see the drift of the question, and before he could reply, Lockwood, without looking up, broke in with: "What are you talking about, all of you? It's not the last name, it's the given name you go by."

"Oh!" cried Mely McCord, in mild derision, "George begins with G. I did n't think of that."

"Yis," said McGill, reflectively, "that's a fact; George does begin with Jay too."

"I tell you it's the last name,” said Tom, laughing.

"I tell you it is n't," said Lockwood, doggedly; but Henry Miller, seeing a chance for disagreeable words, made haste to say: "Come, boys, it's the good-natured one that'll win. Hang up the Bible once more and let's see if it'll drop for Lockwood when it gets to L, or for Tom when we come to T. I don't more than half believe in the thing. It never will turn for me on anything but Q, and they a'n't no girl with Q to her name this side of Jericho except Queen Brooks, an' she lives thirteen miles away an' 's engaged to another feller, and I would n't look at her twiste if she wuz n't, nur she 't me like 's not. Come, Ginnie, gee-up your oxen. Let's have H."

The Bible refused to turn at H. "Rachel won't marry you, Henry Miller," said the county clerk.

"No," said Henry, "Rache an' me 's always been first-rate friends, but she knows me too well to fall in love with me, an' I'm the only feller in this end of the county that's never made a fool of myself over Rachel."

Neither would the Bible turn at I, J, or K. But at L it turned.

"Of course it'll turn at L, when Lockwood's got hold of the key," said Tom with another laugh. "That's what he took hold for."

"That's the same as saying I don't play fair," said Lockwood, with irritation.

"Fair and square a'n't just your way, George. But there's no use being cross about it."

"Come, boys, if you're going to quarrel over the Bible you can't have it," said Rachel, who loved tranquillity. "As for me, I'm going to marry whoever I please, and I won't get married till I please, Bible or no Bible"; and she untied the string, put the rusty key in the door, and laid the plump little book in its old place on the mantel-piece, until it should be wanted again for religious disputation or fortune-telling.

Grayson went rattling on with cheerful and good-natured nonsense, but George Lockwood, pushed into the shade by Tom's ready talk and by Rachel's apparent preference for him, was not in a very good humor, and departed early in company with McGill. After all the

rest had gone, Barbara Grayson had to remind Tom more than once of the lateness of the hour, for nine o'clock was late in that day.

"Send him home, Rachel," she said, "at halfpast nine; he 'll never go while you look goodnatured." When, taking her brother by the arm, Barbara led him to the gate, Rachel followed, almost as reluctant to close the evening as Tom himself.

II.

WINNING AND LOSING.

THE next Friday evening Grayson and Lockwood were again brought together; this time in the miscellaneous store of Wooden & Snyder, in which George Lockwood was the only clerk. Here after closing-time the young men of the village were accustomed to gratify their gregarious propensities; this was a clubroom, where, amid characteristic odors of brown sugar, plug tobacco, new calico, vinegar, whisky, molasses, and the dressed leather of boots and shoes, social intercourse was carried on by a group seated on the top of nailkegs, the protruding ends of shoe-boxes, and the counters that stretched around three sides of the room. Here were related again all those stock anecdotes which have come down from an antiquity inconceivably remote, but which in every village are yet told as having happened three or four miles away, and three or four years ago, to the intimate friend of the narrator's uncle. The frequency of such assemblies takes off something of their zest; where everybody knows all his neighbor's history and has heard everybody else's favorite story, a condition of mental equilibrium ensues, and there is no exchange of electricities. The new-comer, or the man who has been away, is a heaven-send in a village; he stirs its stagnant intellect as a fresh breeze, and is for the time the hero of every congregation of idlers.

Such a man on this evening was Dave Sovine, the son of a settler from one of the Channel Islands. Four years ago, when but sixteen years old, Dave had unluckily waked up one summer morning at daybreak. Looking out of the little window in the end of the loft of his father's house, he had contemplated with disgust a large field of Indian corn to be "plowed out" that day under a June sun. So repulsive to his nature was the landscape of young maize and the prospect of toil, that he dressed himself, tied up his spare clothes in a handkerchief, and taking his boots in his hand, descended noiselessly the stairway which was in the outside porch of the house. Once on the ground, he drew on his boots and got away toward the Wabash, where he shipped as cook on a flat-boat bound for New Orleans. No

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