What made you think of such an absurd thing ?" "'Not to speak of'-- what do you mean ?" "Oh, I kept company with her for awhile--before you came to Salem--when we were merely boy and girl." "There never was any troth plighted between you ?" "How foolish you are, Dulcibel! What has started you off on this track ?" "Yourself.

Answer me plainly.

Was there ever any love compact between you ?" "Oh, pshaw! what nonsense all this is!" "If you do not answer me, I shall ask her this very evening." "Of course there was nothing between us--nothing of any account--only a boy and girl affair--calling her my little wife, and that kind of nonsense." "I think that a great deal.

Did that continue up to the time I came to the village ?" "How seriously you take it all! Remember, I have your promise, Dulcibel." "A promise on a promise is no promise--every girl knows that.

If you do not answer me fully and truly, Jethro, I shall ask Leah." "Yes," said the young man desperately "there was a kind of childish troth up to that time, but it was, as I said, a mere boy and girl affair." "Boy and girl! You were eighteen, Jethro; and she sixteen nearly as old as Joseph Putnam and his wife were when they married." "I do not care.