“But I don’t quite understand about the man—­your husband—­”

“Yep, my lastest one.  Didn’t you know I married ole man Auberry?  He’s ‘round here somewheres, lookin’ fer a drink o’ licker, I reckon.  Colonel Meriwether ‘lowed there’d be some fightin’ ’round these parts afore long.  My man and my son ‘lowed the West was gettin’ right quiet for them, and they’d just take a chanct down here, to see a little life in other parts.”

“I hadn’t heard of this last marriage of yours, Aunt Mandy,” I ventured.

“Oh, yes, me and him hooked up right soon atter you and the gal got lost.  Don’t see how you missed our place when you come East.  We done took at least six bits off’n every other man, woman or child that come through there, east or west, all summer long.  You see I was tired of that lazy husband o’ mine back home, and Auberry he couldn’t see nothin’ to that woman o’ his’n atter he found out how I could bake pie and bread.  So we both seem’ the chanct there was there on the trail, we done set up in business.  Say, I didn’t know there was so many people in the whole world as they was of them emi_grants_.  Preacher come along in a wagon one day—­broke, like most preachers is.  We kep’ him overnight, free, and he merried us next mornin’ for nothin’.  Turn about’s fair play, I reckon.”

I scarcely heard her querulous confidences.  “Where is Colonel Meriwether?” I asked her at last.

“Inside,” she motioned with her pipe.  “Him and the gal, too.  But say, who’s that a-comin’ down the street there in that little sawed-off wagon?”

I looked.  It was my fiancee, Grace Sheraton!

By her side was my friend, Captain Stevenson, and at the other end of the seat was a fluttering and animated figure that could be no one else but Kitty.  So then I guessed that Stevenson and his wife had come on during my absence and were visiting at Dixiana.  No doubt they had driven down now for the evening mail.

Could anything have lacked now to set in worse snarl my already tangled skein of evil fortune!  Out of all the thousand ways in which we several actors in this human comedy might have gone without crossing each other’s paths, why should Fate have chosen the only one to bring us thus together?

Kitty seemed first to spy me, and greeted me with an enthusiastic waving of her gloves, parasol, veil and handkerchief, all held confusedly, after her fashion, in one hand.  “P-r-r-r-t!” she trilled, school-girl-like, to attract my attention meanwhile.  “Howdy, you man!  If it isn’t John Cowles I’m a sinner.  Matt, look at him, isn’t he old, and sour, and solemn?”

Stevenson jumped out and came up to me, smiling, as I passed down the steps.  I assisted his vivacious helpmeet to alight.  I knew that all this tangle would presently force itself one way or the other.  So I only smiled, and urged her and her husband rapidly as I might up the steps and in at the door, where I knew they would immediately be surprised and fully occupied.  Then again I approached Grace Sheraton where she still sat, somewhat discomfited at not being included in these plans, yet not unwilling to have a word with me alone.