“You bet,” said the man, peeping up with a grin from behind a barrel.  “If he don’t, he’ll be about the only one in town who don’t.”

“No,” said Keith, pleasantly, but firmly.  “I can’t go.”

“Oh, yes, you will,” she laughed.  “I’ll expect you.  By-by”; and she walked out of the store with a jaunty air, humming a song about the “iligint, bauld McIntyres.”

The “blow-out” came off, and was honored with a column in the next issue of the Whistle—­a column of reeking eulogy.  But Keith did not attend, though he heard the wheezing of fiddles and the shouting and stamping of Terpsichore’s guests deep into the night.

Keith was too much engrossed for the next few days in looking about him for work and getting himself as comfortably settled as possible to think of anything else.

If, however, he forgot the “only decent-looking woman in Gumbolt,” she did not forget him.  The invitation of a sovereign is equivalent to a command the world over; and Terpsichore was as much the queen regnant of Gumbolt as Her Majesty, Victoria, was Queen of England, or of any other country in her wide realm.  She was more; she was absolute.  She could have had any one of a half-dozen men cut the throat of any other man in Gumbolt at her bidding.

The mistress of the “Dancing Academy” had not forgotten her boast.  The institution over which she presided was popular enough almost to justify her wager.  There were few men of Keith’s age in Gumbolt who did not attend its sessions and pay their tribute over the green tables that stretched along the big, low room.

In fact, Miss Terpsichore was not of that class that forget either friends or foes; whatever she was she was frankly and outspokenly.  Mr. Plume informed Keith that she was “down on him.”

“She’s got it in for you,” he said.  “Says she’s goin’ to drive you out of Gumbolt.”

“Well, she will not,” said Keith, with a flash in his eye.

“She is a good friend and a good foe,” said the editor.  “Better go and offer a pinch of incense to Diana.  She is worth cultivating.  You ought to see her dance.”

Keith, however, had made his decision.  A girl with eyes like dewy violets was his Diana, and to her his incense was offered.

A day or two later Keith was passing down the main street, when he saw the young woman crossing over at the corner ahead of him, stepping from one stone to another quite daintily.  She was holding up her skirt, and showed a very neat pair of feet in perfectly fitting boots.  At the crossing she stopped.  As Keith passed her, he glanced at her, and caught her eye fastened on him.  She did not look away at all, and Keith inclined his head in recognition of their former meeting.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning.”  Keith lifted his hat and was passing on.

“Why haven’t you been to see me?” she demanded.

Keith pretended not to hear.