Allen Golyer was, after all, a man of nerve and decision.  He wasted only a day or two in doubts and fears, and one Sunday afternoon, with a beating but resolute heart, he left his Sunday-school class to walk down to Crystal Glen and solve his questions and learn his doom.  When he came in sight of the widow’s modest house, he saw a buggy hitched by the gate.

“Dow Padgett’s chestnut sorrel, by jing!  What is Dow after out here?”

It is natural, if not logical, that young men should regard the visits of all other persons of their age and sex in certain quarters as a serious impropriety.

But it was not his friend and crony Dow Padgett, the liveryman, who came out of the widow’s door, leading by the hand the blushing and bridling Susie.  It was a startling apparition of the Southwestern dandy of the period—­light hair drenched with bear’s oil, blue eyes and jet-black moustache, an enormous paste brooch in his bosom, a waistcoat and trowsers that shrieked in discordant tones, and very small and elegant varnished boots.  The gamblers and bagmen of the Mississippi River are the best-shod men in the world.

Golyer’s heart sank within him as this splendid being shone upon him.  But with his rustic directness he walked to meet the laughing couple at the gate, and said, “Tudie, I come to see you.  Shall I go in and talk to your mother twell you come back?”

“No, that won’t pay,” promptly replied the brisk stranger.  “We will be gone the heft of the afternoon, I reckon.  This hoss is awful slow,” he added with a wink of preternatural mystery to Miss Susie.

“Mr. Golyer,” said the young lady, “let me interduce you to my friend, Mr. Leon.”

Golyer put out his hand mechanically, after the cordial fashion of the West.  But Leon nodded and said, “I hope to see you again.”  He lifted Miss Susie into the buggy, sprang lightly in, and went off with laughter and the cracking of his whip after Dow Padgett’s chestnut sorrel.

The young farmer walked home desolate, comparing in his simple mind his own plain exterior with his rival’s gorgeous toilet, his awkward address with the other’s easy audacity, till his heart was full to the brim with that infernal compound of love and hate which is called jealousy, from which pray Heaven to guard you.

It was the next morning that Miss Susie vaulted over the fence where Allen Golyer was digging the hole for Colonel Blood’s apple tree.

“Something middlin’ particular,” continued Golyer, resolutely.

“There is no use leaving your work,” said Miss Barringer pluckily.  “I will stay and listen.”

Poor Allen began as badly as possible:  “Who was that feller with you yesterday?”

“Thank you, Mr. Golyer—­my friends ain’t fellers!  What’s that to you, who he was?”

“Susie Barringer, we have been keeping company now a matter of a year.  I have loved you well and true:  I would have give my life to save you any little care or trouble.  I never dreamed of nobody but you—­not that I was half good enough for you, but because I did not know any better man around here.  Ef it ain’t too late, Susie, I ask you to be my wife.  I will love you and care for you, good and true.”