“Well, Tom, wot’s to hinder you from goin’?”

“Mam’s goin’ to Brown’s store at sunup, and I s’pose I’ve got to pack her and the baby agin.”

I think the expression of scorn this unfortunate youth exhibited for the filial duty into which he had been evidently beguiled was one of the finest things I had ever seen.

“Wise?”

Wise deigned no verbal reply, but figuratively thrust a worn and patched boot into the discourse.  The old man flushed quickly.

“I told ye to get Brown to give you a pair the last time you war down the river.”

“Said he wouldn’t without’en order.  Said it was like pulling gum teeth to get the money from you even then.”

There was a grim smile at this local hit at the old man’s parsimony, and Wise, who was clearly the privileged wit of the family, sank back in honorable retirement.

“Well, Joe, ef your boots are new, and you aren’t pestered with wimmin and children, p’r’aps you’ll go,” said Tryan, with a nervous twitching, intended for a smile, about a mouth not remarkably mirthful.

Tom lifted a pair of bushy eyebrows, and said shortly: 

“Got no saddle.”

“Wot’s gone of your saddle?”

“Kerg, there”—­indicating his brother with a look such as Cain might have worn at the sacrifice.

“You lie!” returned Kerg, cheerfully.

Tryan sprang to his feet, seizing the chair, flourishing it around his head and gazing furiously in the hard young faces which fearlessly met his own.  But it was only for a moment; his arm soon dropped by his side, and a look of hopeless fatality crossed his face.  He allowed me to take the chair from his hand, and I was trying to pacify him by the assurance that I required no guide when the irrepressible Wise again lifted his voice: 

“Theer’s George comin’! why don’t ye ask him?  He’ll go and introduce you to Don Fernandy’s darter, too, ef you ain’t pertickler.”

The laugh which followed this joke, which evidently had some domestic allusion (the general tendency of rural pleasantry), was followed by a light step on the platform, and the young man entered.  Seeing a stranger present, he stopped and colored, made a shy salute and colored again, and then, drawing a box from the corner, sat down, his hands clasped lightly together and his very handsome bright blue eyes turned frankly on mine.

Perhaps I was in a condition to receive the romantic impression he made upon me, and I took it upon myself to ask his company as guide, and he cheerfully assented.  But some domestic duty called him presently away.