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I fairly opened my mouth at him.

“Oh yes,” he said, laughing in that short way again (and he took his hand off my shoulder); “I’ve been thinking a wonderful lot since we met last. I guess I know some things yu’ haven’t got to yet yourself–Why, there’s a girl!”

“That there is!” said I. “And certainly the world owes her a better–“

“She’s a fine-looker,” interrupted Mr. McLean, paying me no further attention. Here the decrepit, straw-hatted proprietor of the Hotel Brunswick stuck his beard out of the door and uttered “Supper!” with a shrill croak, at which the girl rose.

“Come!” said Lin, “let’s hurry!”

But I hooked my fingers in his belt, and in spite of his plaintive oaths at my losing him the best seat at the table, told him in three words the sister’s devoted journey.

“Nate Buckner!” he exclaimed. “Him with a decent sister!”

“It’s the other way round,” said I. “Her with him for a brother!”

“He goes to the penitentiary this week,” said Lin. “He had no more cash to stake his lawyer with, and the lawyer lost interest in him. So his sister could have waited for her convict away back at Joliet, and saved time and money. How did she act when yu’ told her?”

“I’ve not told her.”

“Not? Too kind o’ not your business? Well, well! You’d ought to know better ‘n me. Only it don’t seem right to let her–no, sir; it’s not right, either. Put it her brother was dead (and Miss. Fligg’s husband would like dearly to make him dead), you’d not let her come slap up against the news unwarned. You would tell her he was sick, and start her gently.”

“Death’s different,” said I.

“Shucks! And she’s to find him caged, and waiting for stripes and a shaved head? How d’ yu’ know she mightn’t hate that worse ‘n if he’d been just shot like a man in a husband scrape, instead of jailed like a skunk for thieving? No, sir, she mustn’t. Think of how it’ll be. Quick as the stage pulls up front o’ the Buffalo post-office, plump she’ll be down ahead of the mail-sacks, inquiring after her brother, and all that crowd around staring. Why, we can’t let her do that; she can’t do that. If you don’t feel so interfering, I’m good for this job myself.” And Mr. McLean took the lead and marched jingling in to supper.

The seat he had coveted was vacant. On either side the girl were empty chairs, two or three; for with that clean, shy respect of the frontier that divines and evades a good woman, the dusty company had sat itself at a distance, and Mr. McLean’s best seat was open to him. Yet he had veered away to the other side of the table, and his usually roving eye attempted no gallantry. He ate sedately, and it was not until after long weeks and many happenings that Miss Buckner told Lin she had known he was looking at her through the whole of this meal. The straw-hatted proprietor came and went, bearing beefsteak hammered flat to make it tender. The girl seemed the one happy person among us; for supper was going forward with the invariable alkali etiquette, all faces brooding and feeding amid a disheartening silence as of guilt or bereavement that springs from I have never been quite sure what–perhaps reversion to the native animal absorbed in his meat, perhaps a little from every guest’s uneasiness lest he drink his coffee wrong or stumble in the accepted uses of the fork. Indeed, a diffident, uncleansed youth nearest Miss Buckner presently wiped his mouth upon the cloth; and Mr. McLean, knowing better than that, eyed him for this conduct in the presence of a lady. The lively strength of the butter must, I think, have reached all in the room; at any rate, the table-cloth lad, troubled by Mr. McLean’s eye, now relieved the general silence by observing, chattily: