CHAPTER XXVI.

A LETTER AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

“SQUAR HAUKINS

“this is too Lett u no that u beter be Keerful hoo yoo an yore familly tacks cides with fer peepl wont Stan it too hev the Men wat’s sportin the wuns wat’s robin us, sported bi yor Fokes kepin kumpne with ’em, u been a ossifer ov the Lau, yor Ha wil bern as qick as to an yor Barn tu, so Tak kere.  No mor ad pressnt.”

This letter accomplished its purpose.  The Squire’s spectacles slipped off several times while he read it.  His wig had to be adjusted.  If he had been threatened personally he would not have minded it so much.  But the hay stacks were dearer to him than the apple of his glass eye.  The barn was more precious than his wig.  And those who hoped to touch Bud in a tender place through this letter knew the Squire’s weakness far better than they knew the spelling-book.  To see his new red barn with its large “Mormon” hay-press inside, and the mounted Indian on the vane, consumed, was too much for the Hawkins heart to stand.  Evidently the danger was on the side of his niece.  But how should he influence Martha to give up Bud?  Martha did not value the hay-stacks half so highly as she did her lover.  Martha did not think the new red barn, with the great Mormon press inside and the galloping Indian on the vane, worth half so much as a moral principle or a kind-hearted action.  Martha, bless her! would have sacrificed anything rather than forsake the poor.  But Squire Hawkins’s lips shut tight over his false teeth in a way that suggested astringent purse-strings, and Squire Hawkins could not sleep at night if the new red barn, with the galloping Indian on the vane, were in danger.  Martha must be reached somehow.

So, with many adjustings of that most adjustable wig? with many turnings of that reversible glass eye? the Squire managed to frighten Martha by the intimation that he had been threatened, and to make her understand, what it cost her much to understand, that she must turn the cold shoulder to chivalrous, awkward Bud, whom she loved most tenderly, partly, perhaps, because he did not remind her of anybody she had ever known at the East.

Tuesday evening was the fatal time.  Spelling-school was the fatal occasion.  Bud was the victim.  Pete Jones had his revenge.  For Bud had been all the evening trying to muster courage enough to offer himself as Martha’s escort.  He was not encouraged by the fact that he had spelled even worse than usual, while Martha had distinguished herself by holding her ground against Jeems Phillips for half an hour.  But he screwed his courage to the sticking place, not by quoting to himself the adage, “Faint heart never won fair lady,” which, indeed, he had never heard, but by reminding himself that “ef you don’t resk notin’ you’ll never git nothin’.”  So, when the spelling-school had adjourned, he sidled up to her, and, looking dreadfully solemn and a little foolish, he said: