“I’ve got some land in Monterey County,” said I; “but I don’t know where in the county it is.”

Doctor Bliven started; and Buckner Gowdy shook my hand again, and then the doctor’s.

“A sort of previous neighborhood reunion,” said he.  “I expect one of these days to be one of the old residenters of Monterey County myself.  I am a fellow-sufferer with you, Mr. Vandemark—­I also have land there.  Won’t you and the doctor join me in a night-cap in honor of our neighborship; and drink to better acquaintance?  And let’s invite our fellow wayfarers, too.  I have some game for them.”

He looked across to the other camp, and we went over to it, Gowdy giving the third goose and the gun to the negro who had hard work to manage them.  I had a roadside acquaintance with the movers, but did not know their names.  In a jiffy Gowdy had all of them, and had found out that they expected to locate near Waverly.  In five minutes he had begun discussing with a pretty young woman the best way to cook a goose; and soon wandered away with her on some pretense, and we could hear his subdued, vibratory voice and low laugh from the surrounding darkness, and from time to time her nervous giggle.  Suddenly I remembered his wife, certainly very sick in the house, and the talk that she was “struck with death”—­and he out shooting geese, and now gallivanting around with a strange girl in the dark.

There must be some mistake—­this man with the bold eyes and the warm and friendly handclasp, with the fascinating manners and the neighborly ideas, could not possibly be a person who would do such things.  But even as I thought this, and made up my mind that, after all, I would join him and the queer-behaving doctor in a friendly drink, a woman came flying out of the house and across the road, calling out, asking if any one knew where Mr. Gowdy was, that his wife was dying.

He and the girl came to the fire quickly, and as they came into view I saw a movement of his arm as if he was taking it from around her waist.

“I’m here,” said he—­and his voice sounded harder, somehow.  “What’s the matter?”

“Your wife,” said the woman, “—­she’s taken very bad, Mr. Gowdy.”

He started toward the house without a word; but before he went out of sight he turned and looked for a moment with a sort of half-smile at the girl.  For a while we were all as still as death.  Finally Doctor Bliven remarked that lots of folks were foolish about sick people, and that more patients were scared to death by those about them than died of disease.  The girl said that that certainly was so.  Doctor Bliven then volunteered the assertion that Mr. Gowdy seemed to be a fine fellow, and a gentleman if he ever saw one.  Just then the woman came from across the road again and asked for “the man who was a doctor.”

“I’m a doctor,” said Bliven.  “Somebody wants me?”

She said that Mr. Gowdy would like to have him come into the house—­and he went hurriedly, after taking a medicine-case from his democrat wagon.  I saw my yellow-haired passenger of the Dubuque ferry meet him before the door, throw her arms about him and kiss him.  He returned her greeting, and they went through the door together into the house.