Unto the other was given the order, “Put out this fire, and bring me two palm-leaf fans and a pitcher of ice-water.”

Then the young people were dismissed, and the elders sat down to talk the sweet surprise over and make the wedding plans.

Some minutes before this Mr. Burley rushed from the mansion on Telegraph Hill without meeting or taking formal leave of anybody.  He hissed through his teeth, in unconscious imitation of a popular favorite in melodrama, “Him shall she never wed!  I have sworn it!  Ere great Nature shall have doffed her winter’s ermine to don the emerald gauds of spring, she shall be mine!”

III

Two weeks later.  Every few hours, during same three or four days, a very prim and devout-looking Episcopal clergyman, with a cast in his eye, had visited Alonzo.  According to his card, he was the Rev. Melton Hargrave, of Cincinnati.  He said he had retired from the ministry on account of his health.  If he had said on account of ill-health, he would probably have erred, to judge by his wholesome looks and firm build.  He was the inventor of an improvement in telephones, and hoped to make his bread by selling the privilege of using it.  “At present,” he continued, “a man may go and tap a telegraph wire which is conveying a song or a concert from one state to another, and he can attach his private telephone and steal a hearing of that music as it passes along.  My invention will stop all that.”

“Well,” answered Alonzo, “if the owner of the music could not miss what was stolen, why should he care?”

“He shouldn’t care,” said the Reverend.

“Well?” said Alonzo, inquiringly.

“Suppose,” replied the Reverend, “suppose that, instead of music that was passing along and being stolen, the burden of the wire was loving endearments of the most private and sacred nature?”

Alonzo shuddered from head to heel.  “Sir, it is a priceless invention,” said he; “I must have it at any cost.”

But the invention was delayed somewhere on the road from Cincinnati, most unaccountably.  The impatient Alonzo could hardly wait.  The thought of Rosannah’s sweet words being shared with him by some ribald thief was galling to him.  The Reverend came frequently and lamented the delay, and told of measures he had taken to hurry things up.  This was some little comfort to Alonzo.

One forenoon the Reverend ascended the stairs and knocked at Alonzo’s door.  There was no response.  He entered, glanced eagerly around, closed the door softly, then ran to the telephone.  The exquisitely soft and remote strains of the “Sweet By-and-by” came floating through the instrument.  The singer was flatting, as usual, the five notes that follow the first two in the chorus, when the Reverend interrupted her with this word, in a voice which was an exact imitation of Alonzo’s, with just the faintest flavor of impatience added: