"Ye hain't heerd all of it, though," continued Miss Peekin, with a funereal countenance. "They're going to be married."
"Sakes alive '" gasps Mrs. Crankett.
"It's so," said Miss Peekin; "an' they say she sent for him, by way of the Isthmus, an' he come back that way. Bad enough to marry him, when poor Brown hain't been dead six months, but to send for him—"
"Wuz a real noble, big-hearted, womanly thing to do," declared Mrs. Crankett, snatching off her spectacles; "an' I'd hev done it myself ef I'd been her."
The deacon gave his old wife an enthusiastic hug; upon seeing which Miss Peekin hastily departed, with a severely shocked expression of countenance and a nose aspiring heavenward.
MAKING HIS MARK.
Black Hat was, in 1851, about as peaceful and well-regulated a village as could be found in the United States.
It was not on the road to any place, so it grew but little; the dirt paid steadily and well, so but few of the original settlers went away.
The march of civilization, with its churches and circuses, had not yet reached Black Hat; marriages never convulsed the settlement with the pet excitement of villages generally, and the inhabitants were never arrayed at swords' point by either religion, politics or newspapers.