WELL, my dear, here's a pretty kettle of fish! Kitty has arrived, and one Mr. Harshaw. Where the Mr. Harshaw is, quien sabe! It's awfully late. Poor Kitty has gone to bed, and has cried herself to sleep, I dare say, if sleep she can. I never have heard of a girl being treated so.

Tom and the other Mr. Harshaw are smoking in the dining-room, and Tom is talking endlessly-what about I can't imagine, unless he is giving this young recordbreaker his opinion of his extraordinary conduct. But I must begin at the beginning.

Mrs. Percifer wired us from New York the day the bride-elect started, and she was to wire us from Ogden, which she did. I went to the train to meet her, and I told Tom to be on the watch for the bridegroom, who would come in from his ranch on the Snake River, by wagon or on horseback, across country from Ten Mile. To come by rail he 'd have had to go round a hundred miles or so, by Mountain Home. An American would have done it, of course, and have come in with her on the train; but the Percifers plainly expected no such wild burst of enthusiasm from him.

HE PULLED UP AND SPOKE TO A TRAINMAN.»

can marry our daughters at all unless we can give them dowries, or professions to support their husbands on, and "feelings are a luxury that only the rich can afford.

I hope «Kitty » won't have any; but still more I hope that her young man will arrive on schedule time, and that they can trot round the corner and be married, with Tom and me for witnesses, as speedily as possible.

I'VE had such a blow! Tom, with an effort, has succeeded in remembering this Mr. Harshaw who is poor Kitty's fate. He must have been years in this country, long enough to have citizenized himself and become a member of our first Idaho legislature (I don't believe you even know that we are a State!). Tom was on the supper committee of the ball the city gave them. They were a deplorable set of men; it was easy enough to remember the nice ones. Tom says he is a «chump, if you know what that means. I tell him that every man, married or single, is constitutionally horrid to any other man who has had the luck to be chosen of a charming girl. But I 'm afraid Harshaw was n't one of the nice ones, or I should have remembered him myself; we had them to dinner-all who were at all worth while.

The train was late. I walked and walked the platform; some of the people who were waiting went away, but I dared not leave my post. I fell to watching a spurt of dust away off across the river toward the mesa. It rolled up fast, and presently I saw a man on horseback; then I did n't see him; then he had crossed the bridge, and was pounding down the track-side toward the depot. He pulled up and spoke to a trainman, and after that he walked his horse as if he was satisfied.

That is Harshaw, I thought, and a very pretty fellow, but not in the least like an Idaho legislator. I don't seem to care for the sort of Englishman who is so prompt to swear allegiance to our flag, and take out his first papers and his second papers and all that; they never do unless they want to go in for government land, or politics, or something that has nothing to do with any flag. But this youngster looked ridiculously young. I simply knew he was coming for that girl, and that he had no ulterior motives whatever. He was ashy-white with dust-hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, and his fair little mustache all powdered with it; his corduroys, leggings, and hat all of a color. I saw no baggage, and I wondered what he expected to be married in. He leaned on his horse dizzily a moment when he first got out of the saddle, and the poor

"I don't think you'll have time to go uptown,» said the ticket-man.

Harshaw came out then, and he began to walk the platform, and to stare down the track toward Nampa; so I sat down. Presently he stopped, and raised his hat, and asked if I was Mrs. Daly, a friend of Mrs. Percifer of London and New York.

Not to be boastful, I said that I knew Mrs. Percifer.

«Then,» said he, "we are here on the same errand, I think.»>

I was there to meet Miss Kitty Comyn, 1

«Is Mr. Harshaw ill?» I asked. He looked foolish, and dropped his eyes. «No," said he. «He was well last night when I left him at the ranch.» Last night! He had come a hundred miles between dark of one day and noon of the next!

«Your cousin takes a royal way of bringing home his bride-by proxy,» I said.

« Ah, but it's partly my fault, you know,» -he could not quell a sudden shamefaced laugh,-« if you'd kindly allow me to explain. I shall have to be quite brutally frank; but Mrs. Percifer said»-here he lugged in a

propitiatory compliment, which sounded no more like Mrs. Percifer than it fitted me; but mistaking my smile of irony for one of encouragement, he babbled on. I wish I could do justice to his «charmin' » accent and his perfectly unstudied manner of speech, a mixture of native and acquired colloquialisms, that is, British and American slang.

<< It's like this, Mrs. Daly. A man ought n't to be a dog-in-the-manger about a girl, even if he has got her promise, you know. If he can't get a move on and marry her before her hair is gray, he ought to step out and give the other fellows a show. I'm not speaking for myself, though I would have spoken three years ago if she had n't been engaged to Micky-she's always been engaged to him, one may say. And I accepted the fact; and when I came over here and took a share in Micky's ranch I meant right by him, and God knows I meant more than right by her. Was n't it right to suppose she must be tremendously fond of him, to let him keep her on the string the way he has? They 've been engaged four years now. And was it any wonder I was mad with Micky, seeing how he was loafing along, fooling his money away, not looking ahead and denying himself as a man ought who's got a nice girl waiting for him? I'm quite frank, you see; but when you hear what an ass I've made of myself, you'll not begrudge me the few excuses I have to offer. All I tried to do was to give Micky a leg to help him over his natural difficultyof laziness, you know. He's not a bad sort at all, only he 's slow, and it 's hard to get him to look things square in the face. It was for her sake, supposing her happiness was bound up in him, that I undertook to boom the marriage a bit. But Micky won't boom worth a deuce. He's back on my hands now, and what in Heaven's name I'm to say to her- His eloquence failed him here, and he came down to the level of ordinary conversation, with the remark, «It's a facer, by Jove! >>

I managed not to smile. If he 'd undertaken, I said, to « boom» his cousin's marriage to a girl he liked himself, he ought at least to get credit for disinterestedness; but so few really good acts were rewarded in this world! I seemed to have heard that it was not very comfortable, though it might be heroic, to put one's hand between the tree and the bark.

«Ah,» he said feelingly, «it 's unearthly! I never was so rattled in my life. But before you give me too much credit for disinterestedness, you know, I must tell you that I'm thinking of-that-in short, I've a mind to

speak for myself now, if Micky does n't come up to time.»><

I simply looked at him, and he blushed, but went on more explicitly. «He could have married her, Mrs. Daly, any time these three years if he 'd had the pluck to think so. He'd say, If we have a good season with the horses, I'll send for her in the fall. We'd have our usual season, and then he'd say, It won't do, Cecy. And in the spring we are always as poor as jack-rabbits, and so he 'd wait till the next fall. I got so mad with his infernal coolness, and the contrast of how things were and how she must think they were! Still, I knew he'd be good to her if he had her here, and he'd save twice as much with her to provide for as he ever could alone. I used to hear all her little news, poor girl. She had lost her father, and there were tight times at home. The next word was that she was going for a governess. Then I said, You ought to go over and get her, or else send for her sharp. You are as ready to marry her now as ever you will be.

"I'm too confounded strapped,' said he. I told him I would fix all that if he would go or write her to come. But the weeks went by, and he never made a move. And there were reasons, Mrs. Daly, why it was best that any one who cared for him should be on the ground. Then I made my kick. I don't believe in kicking, as a rule; but if you do kick, kick hard, I say. If you don't send for her, Micky, I'll send for her myself, I said. <<<What for? said he.

(

For you, said I, if you 'll have the manliness to step up and claim her, and treat her as you ought. If not, she can see how things are, and maybe she 'll want a change. You may not think you are wronging her and deceiving her, I said, but that's what you are; and if you won't make an end of this situation (I have n't told you, and I can't tell you, the whole of it, Mrs. Daly), I will end it myself-for your sake and for her sake and for my own. And I warned him that I should have a word to say to her if he did n't occupy the field of vision pretty promptly after she arrived. One of us will meet her at the train, said I, (and the one who loves her will get there first.)

"Well, I'm here, and he was cooking himself a big supper when I left him at the ranch. It was a simple test, Mrs. Daly. If he scorned to abide by it, he might at least have written and put her on her guard, for he knew I was not bluffing. He pawed up the ground a bit, but he never did a thing. Then I cabled her just the question, Would she

come? and she answered directly that she would. So I wired her the money. I signed myself Harshaw, and I told Micky what I'd done.

«And whether he is sulking over my interference, I can't say, but from that moment he has never opened his mouth to me on the subject. I have n't a blessed notion what he means to do; judging by what he has done, nothing, I should say. But it may be he's only waiting to give me the full strength of the situation, seeing it 's one of my own contriving. There's a sort of rum justice in it; but

only suggestion it occurred to me to offer in the case-that he should go to his hotel and get his luncheon or breakfast, for I doubted if he'd had any, and leave me to meet Miss Comyn, and say to her whatever a kind Providence might inspire me with. My husband would call for him and fetch him up to dinner, I said; and after dinner, if Mr. Michael Harshaw had not arrived, or sent some satisfactory message, he could cast himself into the breach.

«And I'm sorry for you,» I said; «for I don't think you will have an easy time of it.»

think of his daring to insult her so, for the sake of punishing me!

«Now, what am I to say to her, Mrs. Daly? Am I to make a clean breast of it, and let her know the true and peculiar state of the case, including the fact that I'm in love with her myself? Or would you let that wait, and try to smooth things over for Micky, and get her to give him another chance? There was no sign of his moving last night; still, he may get here yet.⟫

The young man's spirits seemed to be rising as he neared the end of his tale, perhaps because he could see that it looked pretty black for Micky.»>

"If one could only know what he does mean to do, it would be simpler, would n't it? »

I agreed that it would. Then I made the

«She can't do worse than hate me, Mrs. Daly; and that 's better than sending me friendly little messages in her letters to Micky.»

I wish I could give you this story in his own words, or any idea of his extraordinary, joyous naturalness, and his air of preposterous good faith-as if he had done the only thing conceivable in the case. It was as convincing as a scene in comic opera.

«By the way," said he, «I did n't encumber myself with much luggage this trip. I have nothing but the clothes I stand in.»

I made a reckless offer of my husband's evening things, which he as recklessly accepted, not knowing if he could get into them; but I thought he did not look so badly as he was, in his sun-faded corduroys, the