“‘Put him into that car an’ take him to Chesterville,’ I said.

“He limped to the car an’ left without a word.

“I returned to my friends an’ gently broke the news.

“Sam blubbered ‘Education done it,’ says he, as he mournfully shook his head.

“‘Yes,’ I says.  ’Education is responsible for a damned lot of ignorance.’

“‘An’ some foolishness,’ says Sam, as he scraped the mud out of his hair.  ‘Think of our goin’ like that.  We ought to have known better.’ “‘We knew better,’ I says, ’but we had to keep up with Lizzie.’

“Sam turned toward Lizzie an’ moaned in a broken voice, ’I wish it had killed me.’

“‘Why so?’ I asked.

“‘It costs so much to live,’ Sam sobbed, in a half-hysterical way.  ‘I’ve got an expensive family on my hands.’

“‘You needn’t be afraid o’ havin’ Lizzie on your hands,’ says Dan, who held the girl in his arms.

“’What do you mean?^ Sam inquired.

“‘She’s on my hands an’ she’s goin’ to stay there,’ says the young man.  ’I’m in love with Lizzie myself.  I’ve always been in love with Lizzie.’

“‘Your confession is ill-timed,’ says Lizzie, as she pulled away an’ tried to smooth her hair.  She began to cry again, an’ added, between sobs:  ’My heart is about broken, and I must go home and get help for my poor father.’

“‘I’ll attend to that,’ says Dan; ‘but I warn you that I’m goin’ to offer a Pettigrew for a Henshaw even.  If I had a million dollars I’d give it all to boot.’

“Sam turned toward me, his face red as a beet.

“‘The money!’ he shouted.  ‘Get it, quick!’

“‘Here it is!’ I said, as I put the roll o’ bills in his hand.

“‘Did you take it off him?’

“‘I took it off him.’

“‘Poor Aleck!’ he says, mournfully, as he counted the money.  ’It’s kind o’ hard on him.’

“Soon we halted a passin’ automobile an’ got Sam up the bank an’ over the wall.  It was like movin’ a piano with somebody playin’ on it, but we managed to seat him on the front floor o’ the car, which took us all home.

“So the affair ended without disgrace to any one, if not without violence, and no one knows of the cablegram save the few persons directly concerned.  But the price of Alecks took a big slump in Pointview.  No han’some foreign gent could marry any one in this village, unless it was a chambermaid in a hotel.

“That was the end of the first heat of the race with Lizzie in Pointview.  Aleck had folded up his bluff an’ silently sneaked away.  I heard no more of him save from a lady with blond, curly hair an’ a face done in water-colors, who called at my office one day to ask about him, an’ who proved to my satisfaction that she was his wife, an’ who remarked with real, patrician accent when I told her the truth about him:  ‘Ah, g’wan, yer kiddin’ me.’