Then it was noticed that while Miss Elserly’s beauty grew no less in degree, it changed in kind; that she was more than ever seen in the society of the handsome broker, and that the broker’s attentions were assiduous.  Then it was suspected that Mr. Brown had proposed and been rejected.  Ladies who owed calls to Mr. Brown’s mother, made haste to pay them, and, as rewards of merit, brought away confirmation of the report.  Then, before the gossips had reported the probable engagement of Miss Elserly to Major Mailing, the lady and major made the announcement themselves to their intimate friends, and the news quickly reached every one who cared to hear it.

A few weeks later, however, there circulated very rapidly a story whose foreshadowing could not have been justly expected of the village gossips.  The major absented himself for a day or two from his boarding-house, and at a time, too, when numerous gentlemen from the city came to call upon him.

Some of these callers returned hurriedly to the city, evincing by words and looks the liveliest disappointment, while two of them, after considerable private conversation with the proprietress of the house, and after displaying some papers, in the presence of a local justice of the peace, to whom the good old lady sent in her perplexity, took possession of the major’s room and made quite free with the ex-warrior’s cigars, liquors, and private papers.

Then the city newspapers told how Mr. Malling, a broker of excellent ability and reputation, as well as one of the most gallant of his country’s defenders in her hour of need, had been unable to meet his engagements, and had also failed to restore on demand fifteen thousand dollars in United States bonds which had been intrusted to him for safe-keeping.  A warrant had been issued for Mr. Malling’s arrest; but at last accounts the officers had been unable to find him.

Miss Elserly immediately went into the closest retirement, and even girls whom she had robbed of prospective beaus felt sorry for her.  People began to suggest that there might have been a chance for Brown, after all, if he had staid at home, instead of rushing off to the West to play missionary.  He owned more property in his own right than the major had misplaced for other people; and though some doubts were expressed as to Miss Elserly’s fitness for the position of a minister’s wife, the matter was no less interesting as a subject for conversation.  The excellence of the chance which both Brown and Miss Elserly had lost seemed even greater when it became noised abroad that Brown had written to some real estate agents in the village that, as he might want to go into business in the West, to sell for him, for cash, a valuable farm which his father had left him.  As for the business which Mr. Brown proposed entering, the reader may form his own opinions from a little conversation hereinafter recorded.

As Hubert Brown, trying to drown thought and do good, was wandering through a Colorado town one evening, he found himself face to face with Major Mailing.  The major looked seedy, and some years older than he did a month before, but his pluck was unchanged.  Seeing that an interview could not be avoided, he assumed an independent air, and exclaimed: