"There has been a sad mistake," said Mr. Singleton. "You honestly believed that my daughter had beaten you, and did not intend to slander her when you so a.s.serted."

"She did beat me, sir," said Pate, "and most barbarously. She knocked me down with her fist and then broke my arm."

"You thought so," said Mr. Singleton; "but it was a mistake."

"How could it be a mistake?" cried Pate. "Did I not feel the blow from her fist? Did I not see her standing over me, kicking me with her foot and beating me with a terrible club? Was not my arm broken? Did I not lie in bed for weeks? And then to sue me! And now I am a ruined man! I have not a dollar in the world!"

And the big tears rolled down his cheeks as he thought of his dest.i.tute condition.

"Mr. Pate," said the father of the fair Juliet, visibly affected by Pate's distress, "I am rich, and so is my daughter's husband. She is my only child and will inherit all my wealth. She don't want your property.

Your farm has been purchased by us, and a deed prepared securing the t.i.tle to you. Here is the deed, sir, and here is a check on my banker for a sum equal to the value of your personal property, which was sold by the sheriff. Good-morning, Mr. Pate." And Mr. Singleton hurried away, leaving Pate dumb with amazement.

After having been haunted by bad lack for a long period Fortune smiled upon M. T. Pate at last. The first thing he did, after being re-established in his former home, was to hunt up old Whitey, then in the possession of Simon Rump. Simon's angel had gone to Abraham's bosom, and the eldest of the female cherubs, who had now a.s.sumed the appearance of a full-grown woman, kept house for the bereaved Rump. When Pate called at the house he found his friend Perch seated by the side of the female cherub, who was evidently delighted with his society. Perch was entertaining the cherub with an account of his adventures by sea and land, and, like Desdemona,--

"She swore, in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas pa.s.sing strange; 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful; She wished she had not heard it; yet she wished That Heaven had made her such a man."

The sagacity of M. T. Pate enabled him to perceive that Perch and the cherub were in the incipient stages of love, and he left them in that embarra.s.sing condition and sought Simon Rump, whom he found feeding his hogs. Rump agreed to give up old Whitey, and Pate paid the ransom for his horse and rode home in a happy mood of mind.

Next morning, as he was riding his four-footed friend through the streets of Mapleton, he perceived Wiggins walking with the widow whom he had once led to the altar but failed to marry, owing to an unfortunate blunder. They had evidently become reconciled; and Wiggins was now performing the part of Oth.e.l.lo, and employing the witchcraft which that dusky hero had used in wooing Brabantio's daughter.

As Pate rode on he met Gideon Foot, who informed him that Bliss had been blessed with an heir, and the boy was to be named M. T. Pate. Love had a sweet babe several weeks old, that looked like a Cupid smiling in the cradle, and very recently a pretty pair of young Doves had made their appearance in the town of Mapleton.

Pate rode home in a meditative mood. A strange feeling came over him; a feeling he had never experienced before; and as he sat in his lonely abode, absorbed in meditation, it became stronger, and finally obtained the mastery.

"I see it plainly!" he exclaimed, in a soliloquy. "It is useless for man to seek to avoid his destiny. Inevitable Fate will pursue him wherever he goes. He cannot escape. My time has come. I must marry." He uttered these last words in great agitation, and trembled from head to foot. In a few moments he started up and exclaimed,--

"I must marry;--but whom?"

He could not answer this question, and held it under consideration for several months, without being able to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion.

During this period he witnessed the marriage of Perch and the cherub, and waited on Wiggins when the latter again led the blushing widow to the altar, and, on a second trial, responded pertinently and satisfactorily to the interrogatories propounded by the parson. His two friends were now in the midst of domestic bliss, while he was unable to solve the question, which was perplexing him during the day and interrupting his slumbers at night.

While in this condition of mind, he visited the metropolis of the State, and on a bright sunny day drove a young widow in his buggy to see a magnificent country residence, located a few miles from the city, which had just been completed, but was not yet occupied by the owner. With his fair companion on his arm he entered the building, and much time was spent in a critical examination of the various apartments, from the hall to the attic. The widow at last complained of fatigue, and seated herself in one of the parlors. Pate blandly requested her to excuse his absence for a few moments, and said that he would go down and explore the cellar. The lady waited for a long time and then began to feel lonesome, and finally becoming quite uneasy, impatiently exclaimed,--

"What in the world has become of him?"

Hardly had these words escaped her lips when she was horrified by hearing most singular and startling sounds coming up from the cellar below. It seemed as if a mult.i.tude of dogs, of every size and breed, had been let loose, and were all yelping and barking at the same time; while amidst this canine uproar could be distinguished a human voice l.u.s.tily shrieking,--

"Get out! get out! Help! help! Murder! murder!"

The lady was astonished and frightened, but had courage enough to rush towards the scene of action. But as soon as she had reached the head of the stairway leading to the cellar, a sight met her eyes which compelled her to retire; for modesty forbade her taking any part in the strife, although her companion was vastly overpowered and sadly in need of a.s.sistance. On the stairway stood M. T. Pate; having just escaped from the combined a.s.sault made upon him by a large number of dogs which had been temporarily confined in the cellar by the proprietor of the mansion. The whole of poor Pate's under-garments had been torn from his person, and there he stood in a tailless coat and a stout pair of boots, thanking a merciful Providence for the preservation of his life. In this condition he did not dare to appear in the presence of his fair companion, and communication was carried on between them, by each taking a position in a separate apartment and calling to the other in a voice raised to a high key. After a prolonged consultation conducted in this manner, the widow proposed to leave one of her under-garments in the room which she then occupied and retreat to another, while he came in and put it on. Poor Pate thankfully accepted the loan which the kind lady offered him; being driven to this shift to hide his nudity. He and the widow were compelled to remain in that lonely mansion until the shades of night covered the earth, when he drove her in his buggy back to the city. He left her at her door and proceeded with his buggy to a livery-stable. Here the sight of his strange habiliments created great amazement among the hostlers and stable-boys; and when he started up the street in his robes he was arrested by the police and carried to a station-house; where he spent the whole night weeping and wailing on a hard oaken bench. In the morning he was taken before a magistrate, where his strange story was listened to with wonder mingled with much merriment; and being entirely satisfactory, he obtained his discharge, as well as the loan of a coat and a pair of pantaloons.

On the following day Pate called upon the widow and restored the garment borrowed from her, after the brutal a.s.sault upon his person in the lonely mansion. She blushed when she received it, and sank into a chair overcome with emotion. The heart of a woman is an inexplicable puzzle. Newton, with his mighty mind, could comprehend the movements of suns and planets and calculate their density; but woman was to him an incomprehensible problem, even when he pressed the hand of a fair lady who sat by his side, and felt that he could make so free as to thrust her finger into the bowl of his pipe. Who can tell what caused the widow to bestow her affections on M. T. Pate? Perhaps, after he had so nearly fallen a bleeding victim to canine ferocity,--

"She loved him for the dangers he had pa.s.sed, And he loved her that she did pity them."

Upon no other hypothesis can we account for the fact that after he had been in constant attendance on the widow for several weeks they were married. A few days afterwards a carriage drove through the streets of Mapleton, in which sat M. T. Pate and his bride. The event was announced in the local newspaper, which also contained an obituary notice of the death of Samuel Crabstick, who had left a will, by which he bestowed the riches he had so carefully h.o.a.rded on his niece, the beautiful Ida Somers.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

By the will of her uncle, Ida was in possession of a large estate. The fair young girl was without a near relative in the world. Colonel Hazlewood kindly undertook the management of her property; and, at the invitation of Rosabel and her mother, she made her home in the mansion of the Widow Wild. On a certain day we there find her seated in her room and engaged in composition. Her little fingers run rapidly over the pages, and soon finish a letter of several sheets of gilt-edged note-paper. She gazes intently at her own name, written in a beautiful hand at the bottom of the last page, and then she kisses it. Having so done, she folds the letter, and then opens it and imprints another kiss on the same spot. Now, why did the young lady kiss her own name written at the end of the letter? Love has its unerring instincts, and Ida knew that as soon as a certain young gentleman opened that letter, and saw the name at the bottom of the last page, he would rapturously imprint a mult.i.tude of kisses on that particular spot. How did the young maiden know this? Had she not received a number of letters, and as soon as she saw "Tom" written at the end of each, had she not looked around to ascertain if any one was observing her; and then had not her ruby lips kissed the beloved name again and again in rapid succession? Thus Tom had been kissing Ida and Ida had been kissing Tom, for the last six months, with a whole continent between them.

The kiss was carefully sealed up in an envelope and conveyed to the post-office at Mapleton. The iron monster attached to a train of cars, rushing through the hills and over the valleys, carried it to New York.

A magnificent steamer transported it over the Atlantic's waves, and across the Mexican Golf and the Caribbean Sea to the mouth of the Chagres River; and from thence it traveled in a canoe to Gorgona and Cruces; and then rode on the back of a mule to Panama, where another steamer received it, and plowing through the billows of the Pacific, entered the Golden Gate, and took it as far as San Francisco; and from thence, on another steamer, it proceeded up the bay, and entering the river, arrived at the city of Sacramento; and then rode on the back of another mule across the prairies and among the mountains, and was safely deposited in a post-office in a mining-town, where Toney Belton was awaiting the arrival of the mail. We thus see how many means of transportation were required to convey a young lady's kiss to her lover.

But where was the lover? About three miles from that post-office, on the side of a ravine, stood a young man clad in a pair of loose trousers and a red shirt. He appeared to be engaged in culinary operations, and was, in fact, cooking flapjacks. His rifle leaned against a tree; his wool hat lay on the ground; the sleeves of his red shirt were rolled up to the elbow; his long beard was parted and tied in a knot behind his neck, so as to escape being scorched when he stooped over the fire; and he grasped the handle of a frying-pan, used instead of an oven, and watched the effect of the heat upon the material lying in the bottom of the pan.

And now he lifts the pan from the fire and gives it a peculiar toss, and up flies a flapjack in the air about three feet above the pan, and, turning over as it descends, is caught and ready to be baked on the other side. Just as this feat was accomplished, a voice cried out,--

"Here, Tom, is a letter!"

Tom dropped the flapjack on the fire, and, in great excitement, ran to the spot where Toney Belton had just dismounted from a mule. The mule kicked at him, but Tom dodged, and, receiving the letter, hurried behind a pine-tree, and, seating himself on a rock, opened it. He turned it over, and seeing the signature, he kissed Ida several times in quick succession. Thus was Ida's kiss, after having traveled more than ten thousand miles, safely conveyed to Tom's lips.

Tom Seddon read the letter and was the happiest man in the diggings.

When he came to the last line he kissed Ida again. Tom read the letter over five times, and at the close of each reading his lips approached the paper and tenderly pressed it. When he came from behind the tree, Toney had eaten all the flapjacks which had been baked. He told Toney that old Crabstick was dead and that he must go home.

"And so must I," said Toney.

"We will start to-morrow," said Tom.

"We will start from the mines to-morrow," said Toney.

"I wish you had a hundred thousand dollars," said Tom.

"I have more than a hundred thousand dollars," said Toney. "Read that."

And he handed Tom a letter addressed to himself. Tom read it, and then ran to the place where his wool hat lay on the ground, and, seizing it, threw it up in the air.

"Hurrah! hurrah!" shouted Tom. "You can now marry Rosabel!"

CHAPTER XLIX.

"Our sand-hill has been sold," said Toney, after Tom had concluded his enthusiastic demonstrations.

"And for five hundred thousand dollars!" said Tom.

"Good news for Charley when he comes into camp."

"It is time he had returned. He and Botts and Hercules have been prospecting since last Monday."