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Suddenly, however, the tall canal-boat captain, coming back along the tow-path, put in his oar by striking the whip out of John Rucker's hand; and snatched me away from him. "I'll have the law on you!" snarled Rucker. "The devil you will!" said the captain. "I'll put you through!" screamed Rucker.

"'Which sports has speshulties same as other folks. Thar's Texas Thompson, his speshulty is ridin' a hoss; while Peets's speshulty is shootin' a derringer, Colonel Sterett's is pol'tics, Enright's is jestice, Dave's is bein' married, Jack Moore's is upholdin' law an' order, Boggs's is bein' sooperstitious, Missis Rucker's is composin' bakin' powder biscuits, an' Huggins's is strong drink.

It must take no less'n a pound of taller a week to keep them shoes and top hat of his'n so slick. I should jedge his courting to be kinder like soft soap and molasses, Miss Rose Mary." And Mr. Rucker's smile was of the saddest as he handed this bit of gentle banter over the wall to Rose Mary, who had come over to stand beside Uncle Tucker in the end of the long path.

It was a happy night for Belinda when Blanche went away; and her husband, with rather a blush and a sigh, said "he had been deceived in her; he had thought her endowed with many precious gifts, he feared they were mere tinsel; he thought she had been a right-thinking person, he feared she had merely made religion an amusement she certainly had quite lost her temper to the schoolmistress, and beat Polly Rucker's knuckles cruelly."

It was a happy night for Belinda when Blanche went away; and her husband, with rather a blush and a sigh, said "he had been deceived in her; he had thought her endowed with many precious gifts, he feared they were mere tinsel; he thought she had been a right-thinking person, he feared she had merely made religion an amusement she certainly had quite lost her temper to the schoolmistress, and beat Polly Rucker's knuckles cruelly."

We went into Milwaukee in a howling blizzard, and I was glad to find a warm bar in the tavern nearest the dock; and a room in which to house up while I carried on my search. I now had found out that the stage lines and real-estate offices were the best places to go for traces of immigrants; and I haunted these places for a month before I got a single clue to Rucker's movements.

As, for example, Robert Schumann writes of Thalberg and his playing, on the occasion of a charity concert, given in Leipzig in 1841: "In his passing flight the master's pinions rested here awhile, and, as from the angel's pinions in one of Rucker's poems, rubies and other precious stones fell from them and into indigent hands, as the master ordained it.

"'No, says Moore, "t'ain't quite sech ancient hist'ry. It's stage coaches. Thar's a passel of people down yere as allows you've been rustlin' the mails. "Old Man Rucker, who keeps the O. K. House, is away when Moore rounds up his party. But Missis Rucker's thar, an' the way that old lady talks to Enright an' the committee is a shame.

"Well, howdy, folks!" came a cheerfully interruptive hail from across the brick wall that separated the garden from the cinder walk that lay along Providence Road, which ran as the only street through Sweetbriar, and Caleb Rucker's long face presented itself framed in a wreath of budding rose briars that topped the wall in their spring growth. "Tenting up the garden sass ag'in, Miss Rose Mary?"

I had no post-office address, and my mother had depended on Rucker's getting Captain Sproule's address at Syracuse which of course he had never meant to do and had not asked me to inquire at any place for mail. I wrote letters to her at Buffalo as she had asked me to do in her letter, but they were returned unclaimed. It was plain that Rucker meant to give me the slip, and had done so.