Alack! I fear me she will never think of me now.

Why should she, when so proper a youth is nigh?
If he should go away and leave her, perchance her heart might turn to me for comfort; but I fear me he looks every day more tenderly into her bright eyes.

How could he live beneath the roof and not learn to love her?
He would be scarce human, scarce flesh and blood, were he to fail in loving her; and what is my chance beside his?
I might, almost as well yield her at once, and take good Kezzie instead.

Kezzie would make a better housewife--my mother has told me so a hundred times; and I am fond of her, and methinks she--" But there Jacob stopped short, blushing even in the darkness at the thought of what he had nearly said.

Anchoring against the wooden piles of the bridge, and letting his fancy run riot as it would, he indulged in a shifting daydream, in which pain and a vague sense of consolation were oddly blended.