“I told the lass she should have left the sale of it to me,” answered the squire, “but ye know what women are.”

“Egad, I sometimes think, shallow as the sex is, no man fully knows that.  However, we will waste no further parley on the matter.  Put the money in your purse, man, for your future needs, and think naught about the debt to me.”

“Nay, Clowes.  Since the money is here, ’t is as well to pay up.”  And protest and argue as the commissary would, nothing would do the squire but to count out the amount on the spot from the heap of guineas, and to pocket, not without some satisfaction, the small surplus that remained.  Then he left the room in great good cheer; but for some time after he was gone, the baron, leaving the gold piled on the table, paced the room in an evident fit of temper, while muttering to himself and occasionally shaking his head threateningly.

The gazetting of Mr. Meredith served only to increase this half-stifled anger, and on the very evening his appointment was announced in the “Pennsylvania Ledger,” the commissary recurred to his proposal.

“I heard by chance to-day that young Hennion had fallen a victim to the camp fever,” he told the squire, “and only held my tongue before the ladies through not wishing to be the reporter of bad tidings—­though, as I understood it, neither Mrs. Meredith nor Miss Janice really wished the match.”

The father took time over a swallow of Madeira, then said:  “’T is a grievous end for the good lad.”

“Ay, though I am not hypocrite enough to pretend that it affects me save for its freeing of your daughter, and so removing the one objection ye made to my taking her to wife.”

Once more the squire gained a moment’s breathing space over his wine before he replied:  “Ye know, Clowes, that I’d willingly give ye the girl, but I find that she will have none of it, and ’t is a matter on which I choose not to force her inclination.”

“Well said; and I am the last man to wish an unwilling spouse,” responded the aspirant.  “But ye know women’s ways enough not to be their dupes.  In truth, having no stability of mind, the sex resemble a ship without a rudder, veering with every shift of the wind, and never sailing two days alike.  But put a man at the helm, and they steer as straight a course as could be wished.  Janice was hot to wed me once, and though she took affront later because she held me responsible for her punishment, yet she herself owned, but a few weeks ago, that she was still bound to me, which shows how little her moods mean.  Having your consent secured, it will take me but a brief wooing to gain hers, that ye shall see.”

“Well,” rejoined Mr. Meredith, “she’s now old enough to know her own mind, and if ye can win her assent to your suit, mine shall not be lacking.  But ’t is for ye to do that.”

“Spoken like a true friend, and here ’s my hand on it,” declared the commissary.  “But there is one matter in which I wish ye to put an interfering finger, not so much to aid me as to save the maid from hazard.  That fopling Mobray is buzzing about her and pilfering all the sweets that can be had short of matrimony—­”