The Reign Of Queen Isyl Author:Gelett Burgess, Will Irwin Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Old Man Golcher's Story THE THREE-MILE LIMIT Or, Love Strategic I HAD a hound pup once that would eat anything in the world if he only got the idea that... more » you was takin' it away from him. Sawdust or grass or chunks of coal, it made no difference to the pup. Just hold it out, an' make like you was goin' to haul it back again, an' he'd grab it an' sink it so quick he never knew how it tasted. He only wanted it because he couldn't get it. Now, when I was younger, they was points of resemblance between me an' that pup. That's the only excuse I could ever cook up for my fallin' in love with Matie Kenney. You see, old man Kenney had a line of fence across our private road. Twice a year my pa used to go out with a shot-gun and take pot shots at old Kenney, while our hired man sawed down the fence-posts. An' twice a year, Kenney would swear out a warrant for pa. It come as reg'Iar as Christmas an' Fourth of July. Snipin' Kenneys was the favourite sport of my childhood's happy hours. Seem' that buckshot is penetratin' an' sometimes permanent in its effects, I never met Matie Kenney till I was nineteen, when one July day, havin' noth- in' particular to do, I went up to take a look at the mines at Almaden. She blew into the superintendent's office with another girl while I was hearin' how amalgam works. "Miss Willmarth, Mr. Golcher," he says, an' then, "Miss Kenney, Mr. Golcher." Well, sir, when he said Kenney, I was for dodg- in' behind the desk an' drawin' quick, by instinct, but by the time he had finished sayin' Golcher, I was laid out cold. She caught my game complete. I approved of her most cordial. I s'pose it was the hound pup in me, for she was a doll if they ever was one. She was little, an' kind of chunky an' huggy, with a pink face an' great big black eye...« less