to his bedside to assist him in putting on his boots. The kindly divine,
although pointing out to him that he was too weak to rise, much
less walk, could not resist the request of a dying man. When it was
fulfilled, Mr. MacGlowrie crawled back into bed with the remark that his
race had always "died with their boots on," and so passed smilingly and
tranquilly away.
It is probable that this story was invented to soften the ignominy of
MacGlowrie's peaceful end. The widow herself was also reported to be
endowed with relations of equally homicidal eccentricities. Her two
brothers, Stephen and Hector Boompointer, had Western reputations that
were quite as lurid and remote. Her own experiences of a frontier life
had been rude and startling, and her scalp--a singularly beautiful one
of blond hair--had been in peril from Indians on several occasions. A
pair of scissors, with which she had once pinned the intruding hand of
a marauder to her cabin doorpost, was to be seen in her sitting room at
Laurel Spring. A fair-faced woman with eyes the color of pale sherry,
a complexion sallowed by innutritious food, slight and tall figure, she
gave little suggestion of this Amazonian feat. But that it exercised a
wholesome restraint over the many who would like to have induced her
to reenter the married state, there is little reason to doubt. Laurel
Spring was a peaceful agricultural settlement. Few of its citizens
dared to aspire to the dangerous eminence of succeeding the defunct
MacGlowrie; few could hope that the sister of living Boompointers
would accept an obvious mesalliance with them. However sincere their
affection, life was still sweet to the rude inhabitants of Laurel
Spring, and the preservation of the usual quantity of limbs necessary to
them in their avocations. With their devotion thus chastened by caution,
it would seem as if the charming mistress of Laurel Spring House was
secure from disturbing attentions.
It was a pleasant summer afternoon, and the sun was beginning to strike
under the laurels around the hotel into the little office where the
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