“But the panther, Mr. Ross,” interposed Dora, who saw, with womanly sympathy, the flush of mortification upon Mehitable’s face:  “do tell us about the panther.”

“Yes:  I b’lieve my idees was kind o’ wandering from the pint; but that’s nothing strange, if you knowed what an out-an-outer that gal was.  Well, well, ’tain’t no use a-crying over spilt milk, and by-gones may as well be stay-gones.

“Sam Hedge, he was my uncle’s hired man, and a plaguy smart feller too; good-looking, merry as a grig, a live Yankee for faculty, and pretty forehanded too, though he hadn’t set up for himself then.  I more than suspicioned he’d ruther live with Uncle ’Siah, and see Harnah from morning to night, than go off and take up land for himself; or maybe he didn’t feel as if he’d the peth to take right hold of new land all alone.  Anyway, there he wor, and there he stuck, right squar in my way, do as much as I might to git him out on’t.

“Of course, you onderstand about being in my way means all along o’ Harnah.  We was both sweet on her, and no mistake; though nary one on us, nor, I believe, the gal herself, could ha’ told which one she favored.

“Waal, to skip over all the rest (though there’s the stuff for half a dozen stories in it), I’ll come to one night when I’d been up to Uncle ’Siah’s, and Harnah and Sam had come down to the crick to see me off; for I’d come in my boat.  I felt kind o’ savage; for Harnah had been mighty pooty with me all that evening; and I knew Sam had come down to the boat a purpose to go back to the house with her, and, ’fore they was half-way, she’d come right round, and be just as clever to him as she’d been before to me.”

“If you knew your cousin to be such a terrible little flirt as that, I shouldn’t think you would have cared so much about her, Seth,” suggested Karl, laughing.

“No more shouldn’t I, cap’n,” replied Seth ruefully.  “But somehow I couldn’t help it.  I’d think it over nights, and say to myself, ’You darned fool! don’t you see the gal’s a-playing one of you off agin t’other, and maybe don’t care a pin for neither?  Get shet of her once for all, and be a man; can’t ye?’ And then I’d find I couldn’t; and so it went till we come to that night, and stood there on the edge of the crick,—­two on us ready to clinch and fight till one cried enough, and t’other a-laughing at us both.

“So, all to once, Harnah says, says she,—­

“’I do believe them harebells are blowed out by this time.  Ain’t they, boys?’

“‘You and I’ll go to-morrow and see, anyway,’ says Sam, speaking up quick, ’fore I got the chance.

“‘I’m a-going to see; and, if Harnah’ll come too, all the better,’ says I, as pleasant as a bear with a sore head.

“’Two’s company, and three’s a crowd; so you’d better stop to home, Seth,’ says Sam.

“’Two’s company, that’s Harnah and me; and three’s a crowd, that’s you:  so, ef you don’t like crowding nor being crowded, you’d better stop to home yourself,’ says I.