"This turned out to be true. And I am not sure that the business man had not known it all the while. 'We looked over the property pretty thoroughly at the time of the Tamarack excitement,' he said. And in a few days more, in fact, it was generally known that this land had returned to its old state of not quite paying the taxes."
"Then I paid my visit to Mr. Beverly, but with no cowhide. 'Mr. Beverly,' said I, 'I want to announce to you my engagement to Miss Ethel Lansing, whose Michigan copper land you have lately acquired. I hope that you bought some for your mother.'"
"Those," concluded Mr. Richard Field, "are the circumstances attending my engagement which I felt might interest you. And now, Ethel, tell your story, if they'll listen."
"Richard," said Ethel, "that is the story I was going to tell."
** End **