Bud's nature was not fine.

But it was deep, true, and manly.

To him Martha Hawkins was the chief of women.

What was he that he should aspire to possess her?
And yet on that Sunday, with his crippled arm carefully bound up, with his cleanest shirt, and with his heavy boots freshly oiled with the fat of the raccoon, he started hopefully through fields white with snow to the house of Squire Hawkins.

When he started his spirits were high, but they descended exactly in proportion to his proximity to the object of his love.