"You must keep still," said Mrs. DeVere gently. "You have been ill
with fever for two weeks. You must excuse my son; I am afraid he
startled you. He loves you very much, but he is so impulsive."
"Where is he?" I asked.
"He has gone to bring Cyrus, and it is time he had returned."
"How did I escape from that dreadful fire?"
"Aubrey rescued you. After his fit of passion had passed he dashed
aside the burning furniture and carried you back upstairs."
A few minutes later I heard the sound of footsteps, and looking up saw
Aubrey DeVere and Cyrus Potts standing by my bedside.
"Cyrus," I cried.
"How de do, Penelope," said Cyrus.
Before I could reply there was a loud and fiendish yell outside. The
front door was broken down and a dozen masked men dashed into the
room.
"We hear there is a d--- Yankee in here," they cried. "Lynch him!"
Aubrey DeVere seized a table by the leg and killed every man of the
lynching party.
"Cyrus Potts," he thundered, "kiss that schoolma'am, or I'll brain you
as I did those other fellows."
Cyrus dabbed an icy kiss in my direction.
A week later Cyrus and I left for Boston. His salary has been raised
to $25 per month and I had saved $210.
Aubrey DeVere accompanied us to the train. Under his arm he carried a
keg of blasting powder. As our train rolled out he sat down upon this
keg and touched a lighted match to it.
One of his great toes fell through the car window and fell in my lap.
Cyrus is not of a jealous disposition, and I now have that great toe
in a bottle of alcohol on my writing desk. We are married now, and I
will never taken another trip to the South.
The Southern people are too impulsive.
(_Houston Daily Post_, Sunday morning, May 10, 1896.)