Smith Westcott had the dumps.  No sentimental heart-break over Katy, though he did miss her company sadly in a town where there were no amusements, not even a concert-saloon in which a refined young man could pass an evening.  If he had been in New York now, he wouldn’t have minded it.  But in a place like Metropolisville, a stupid little frontier village of pious and New Englandish tendencies—­in such a place, as Smith pathetically explained to a friend, one can’t get along without a sweetheart, you know.

A few days after Albert’s row with Westcott he met George Gray, the Hoosier Poet, who had haunted Metropolisville, off and on, ever since he had first seen the “angel.”

He looked more wild and savage than usual.

“Hello! my friend,” said Charlton heartily.  “I’m glad to see you.  What’s the matter?”

“Well, Mister Charlton, I’m playin’ the gardeen angel.”

“Guardian angel!  How’s that?”

“I’m a sorter gardeen of your sister.  Do you see that air pistol?  Hey?  Jist as sure as shootin,’ I’ll kill that Wes’cott ef he tries to marry that angel.  I don’t want to marry her.  I aint fit, mister, that’s a fack.  Ef I was, I’d put in fer her.  But I aint.  And ef she marries a gentleman, I haint got not a bit of right to object.  But looky hyer!  Devils haint got no right to angels.  Ef I kin finish up a devil jest about the time he gits his claws onto a angel and let the angel go free, why, I say it’s wuth the doin’.  Hey?”

Charlton, I am ashamed to say, did not at first think the death of Smith Westcott by violence a very great crime or calamity, if it served to save Katy.  However, as he walked and talked with Gray, the thought of murder made him shudder, and he made an earnest effort to persuade the Inhabitant to give up his criminal thoughts.  But it is the misfortune of people like George Gray that the romance in their composition will get into their lives.  They have not mental discipline enough to make the distinction between the world of sentiment and the world of action, in which inflexible conditions modify the purpose.

“Ef I hev to hang fer it I’ll hang, but I’m goin’ to be her gardeen angel.”

“I didn’t know that guardian angels carried pistols,” said Albert, trying to laugh the half-crazed fellow out of a conceit from which he could not drive him by argument.

“Looky hyer, Mr. Charlton,” said Gray, coloring, “I thought you was a gentleman, and wouldn’ stoop to make no sech a remark.  Ef you’re goin’ to talk that-a-way, you and me don’t travel no furder on the same trail.  The road forks right here, mister.”

“Oh!  I hope not, my dear friend.  I didn’t mean any offense.  Give me your hand, and God bless you for your noble heart.”

Gray was touched as easily one way as the other, and he took Charlton’s hand with emotion, at the same time drawing his sleeve across his eyes and saying, “God bless you, Mr. Charlton.  You can depend on me.  I’m the gardeen, and I don’t keer two cents fer life.  It’s a shadder, and a mush-room, as I writ some varses about it wonst.  Let me say ’em over: