"But Tim knows, surely," said I.

"Yes—he must," answered Weston. "Of course I'm wrong. But this Miss Parker—are they engaged?"

"I can't tell from his last letter," I replied. "It seems that they must be pretty near it—that's what Mary says, too."

Weston started. Then he rose to his feet very slowly, and wheeling about looked down on me and smoked.

"Mary says so too," he repeated. "How in the world does Mary know?"

"I read her the letter," said I, apologetically. It did seem wrong to read Tim's letter that way. From my standpoint it was all right now, but Weston did not know that, so he whistled softly to himself.

From the hollow came the long-drawn cry of the hound. It was old Captain. Betsy joined in, then Mike; and now the ridges rang with the music of the chase. They were on a fresh trail; they were away over hill and hollow, singing full-throated as they ran.

"They've found him," I cried, rising to hear the song of the hounds.

Weston sat down on the log.

"They are making for the other ridge," said I, pointing over the narrow gully. "Hark! There's young Colonel."

But Weston went on smoking. "Poor Tim!" I heard him say.

Full and strong rang the music of the dogs, as they swung out of the hollow, up the ridge-side. For a moment, in the clearing, I had a glimpse of them, Captain leading, with Betsy at his haunches, and Mike and Major nose and nose behind them. Far in the rear, but in the chase, was little Colonel. A grand puppy, he! All ears and feet. But he runs bravely through the tangled brush. Many a stouter dog comes from it with flanks all torn and bloody. I waved my hat wildly, cheering him on. I called to him loudly, in the vain hope he might look back, as though at a time like this a hound would turn from the trail. On he went into the woods—nose to the ground and body low—all feet and ears—and a stout heart!

"Now we must wait," I said, "and watch, and hope."

Already they had turned the crest of the hill, and fainter and fainter came the sound of the chase.

"Mark," Weston began, "I hope this affair of Tim's turns out all right. What little I can do shall be done, and to-night I'm going to write to the office that they must help him along. He deserves it."

"But the poorer men are, the greater their love," I laughed. "With money to marry, Tim might think that after all he'd better look around more—take a choice."

"But Tim is the most serious person that ever was," returned Weston. "I have found that out. Once he makes up his mind, there is no changing it. He is full of ideas. He actually thinks that a man who is in business is doing something praiseworthy; that a man who has bought and sold merchandise at a profit all his life can fold his hands when he dies and say; 'I have not lived in vain.' He does not know yet that the larger estate a man leaves to his relatives the more useful his life has been. Now I suppose he hopes some day to be a tea-king. Perhaps he will. I hope so. I don't want the job. But once he has picked out his queen, you can't change him by making marriage a financial impossibility."

"Well, I'm certainly not protesting against your raising his salary," said I.

"You needn't. To tell the truth, it's too late. I wrote to the office about that yesterday."

It was of no use to thank Weston for anything. I tried to, but he brushed it aside airily and told me to attend to my own affairs and light one of his cigars. When we were smoking together, his mood became more serious, and as he spoke of Tim and Tim's ambition, and of his interest in the boy, he was carried back to his own earlier life. So for the first time I came to understand his prolonged stay in the valley.

Like Elmer Spiker, in my heart Weston's conduct puzzled me. When he told me that he had come here simply because he liked the country I believed him that far, but I suspected some deeper reason to keep a man of his stamp dawdling in a remote valley. Now it was so simple. The foundation of Weston's fortunes had been laid in one small saloon; its bulk had been built on a chain stretching from end to end of the city. Its founder had been a coarse, uneducated man, but his success in the liquor trade had been too great to be forgotten, even years after he had abandoned it and built up the great commercial house that bore his name. His ambition for his son had been boundless. He had spared nothing to make him a better man in the world's eye than his father. He had succeeded. But the world had persisted in remembering the parental bar. Robert Weston had never seen that bar, for he had entered on the scene when there was a chain of them, and his father had brought him up almost in ignorance of their very existence. Even at the university he had little reason to be ashamed of them. It was after he had spent years in rounding out his education abroad, and had returned to take his place in those circles which he believed he was entitled to enter, that he found that the world persisted in pointing to the large revenue stamp that seemed to cling to him. A stronger man would have fought against odds like those and won for himself a place that would suffer no denial. But Weston was physically a delicate man. By nature he was retiring, rather than aggressive. If those who were his equals would have none of him because of his father's faults, then he would not seek them. Equally distasteful were those who equalled him in wealth alone, for by a strange contradiction, the very fact that the rumshop did not jar on their sensibilities, marked them for him as coarse and uncongenial. Weston had turned to himself. It is the study of oneself that makes cynics. The study of others makes egotists. Then a woman had come. Of her Weston did not say much, except that she had made him turn from himself for a time to study her. He had become an egotist and so had dared to love her. She had loved him, he thought, for she said so, and promised to become his wife. Things were growing brighter. But they met an officious friend. They were in Venice at the time, he having joined her there with her family. The officious friend joined the family too, and he held up his hands in horror when he heard of it. Didn't the family know? Oh, yes, Bob was himself a fine fellow; but he was Whiskey Weston!

"Of course, no good woman wants to be Mrs. Whiskey Weston," said my friend grimly. "Still, I think she did care a bit for me; but it was all up. Back I came, and here I am, Mark, just kind of stopping to stretch my legs and rest a little and breathe. I came on a wheel, for I had ridden for miles and miles trying to get my mind back on myself the way it used to be."

Then he smoked.

"Is that the dogs again?" I said, to break the oppressive silence.

Weston did not heed me, but pointed down the valley to the house by the clump of oaks.

"Do you know sometimes I think that Mary there, with all her bringing up, would edge away from me if she knew that my father had kept saloons and gambling places and all that." Weston spoke carelessly, puffing at his cigar, for he had recovered his easy demeanor. "I think a world of Mary, Mark. She is beautiful, and good, and honest. Sometimes I suspect that I've stayed here just for her. Sometimes I think I will not leave till she goes—" Weston sprang to his feet. "It's the dogs! Hear them!" he cried.

I was up too. Away down the ridge we heard the bay of the hounds again.

"I want to tell you something," I said, pointing to the house by the clump of oaks. "I wish for your sake that there were two Marys, Weston. But there is only one, and she is good and beautiful, and for some reason—Heaven only knows why—she is going to be my wife."

Weston stepped hack and gazed at me. I did not blame him. He seemed to study me from head to foot, and I knew that he was trying to find some reason why the girl should care for me. It was natural. I had puzzled over the same problem and I had not solved it. Now I did not care.

"Stare on," I cried, laughing. "You can't think it queerer than I do. It's hard for me to convince myself that it is true."

"I am glad," he said, taking my hand in a warm grasp. "It isn't strange at all, Mark, for Mary is a wise woman."

"There are the dogs," said I; "they are getting nearer."

"They are coming our way at last," he returned quietly. "But what's that to us when you are to be married? I wish you joy and I shall be at the wedding, and it must be soon, too, and Tim shall be here." He was speaking very rapidly; his face was pale and his hand trembled in mine. "I'll send for him. Tim must have a holiday, and perhaps he'll bring Miss—Miss Smyth." Weston laughed. "Parker," he corrected. "He'll bring Miss Parker or Mrs. Tim."

Full and strong the bay of the hounds was ringing along the ridges. Nearer and nearer they were coming. Now I could hear old Captain's deep tones, and the shorter, sharper tongue of Betsy, Mike, and Major. The fox was keeping to the ridge-top and in a few moments he would be sweeping by us. I pointed through the woods to a bit of clearing made by a charcoal burner. If he kept his course the fox would cross it, and that meant a clear shot. Weston knew the place, and without a word he picked up his gun and hurried through the woods.

Nearer and nearer came the hounds. The woods were ringing with their music, and the sound of the chase swung to and fro, from ridge to ridge. Now I could hear the crashing of the underbrush.

Weston fired. The report rattled from hill to hill.

My own gun sprang to the shoulder, but it was too late. The fox, seeing me, veered down the slope, and swept on to safety or to death, for six more anxious hunters were watching for him somewhere in those woods.

The dogs swept by, old Captain as ever leading, with Betsy at his haunches and Mike and Major neck and neck behind.

I watched for little Colonel. A minute passed and he did not come. Poor puppy! He had learned that to live was to suffer. Somewhere in these woods he must be lying, resting those ponderous paws and licking his bloody flanks.

The hollow was alive with the bay of dogs; the ridges were ringing with the echoes of a gunshot; but above them all I heard a plaintive wail over there in the charcoal clearing. I called for Weston and I got no answer, only the cry of the little hound. I called again and I got no answer. Through the hushes I tore as fast as my crutches would take me, calling as I ran and hearing only the wail of the puppy, till I broke from the cover into the open.

On his haunches, his slantwise eyes half closed, his head lifted high in the bright sunlight, sat little Colonel, wailing. He heard me call. He saw me. And when I reached him he was licking the white face of Whiskey Weston.



XIII

Hindsight is better than foresight. A foolish saying. By foresight we do God's will. By hindsight we would seek to better His handiwork. Things are right as they are, I say, as I sit quietly of an evening smoking my pipe on my porch, watching the mountains in the west bathe in the gold and purple of the descending sun. What might have been, might also have been all wrong. A foolish saying, says Tim, for if what might have been should actually be, then we should have the realization of our fondest dreams. And with that realization might come a dreadful awakening from our dreams, say I. You might have become a tea-king, Tim, and measure your fortune in millions. I might have turned lawyer instead of soldier; I might have made a great name for myself in Congress by long speeches full of dry facts and figures, or short ones puffed up with pompous phrases. The fact that Six Stars existed might have gone beyond our valley because here you and I were born, and for a time we honored the place with our presence. Suppose all that had been, and you the tea-king and I the great lawyer sat here together as we sit now, smoking, could you add one note to the evening peace; would the night-hawk pay us homage by a single added ring as he circles among the clouds; would the bull-frogs in the creek sing louder to our glory; would the bleating of the sheep swing in sweeter to the music of the valley? And look at God's fireplace, I cry, pointing to the west, where the sun is heaping the glowing cloud coals among the mountains. God's fireplace? says Tim, with a queer look in his eyes. Yes, say I, and the valley is the hearthstone. The mountains are the andirons. Over them, piled sky high, the cloud-logs are glowing, and never logs burned like those, all gold and red. Night after night I can sit here and warm my heart at that fireside. Could you, tea-king, buy for my eyes a picture more wonderful? The fire is dying. The cloud coals grow fainter—now purple; and now in ashes they float away into the chill blue. But they will come again. Could your millions, tea-king, buy for me a sweeter music than the valley's heart throb as it rocks itself to sleep?

"No," Tim answers, "but suppose——"

"And could I have better company to watch and listen with?" I exclaim. "For with you a tea-king, Tim, and I a lawyer, it would be just the same, would it not?"

"That's just what I was trying to get at," says Tim. "Suppose that day of the fox-hunt you had not carried Weston——"

I hold up my hand to check him.

"Were it to happen a hundred times over, I would take him to Mary's," I cry. "Else he would have died."

"You are right, Mark," Tim says.

* * * * * *

I took Weston to Mary's house that day when I found him lying in the charcoal clearing, with little Colonel standing over him wailing. Tearing open his coat and shirt, I stanched his wound as best I could. Then I called the others to me. Tip and Arnold picked him up and carried him, while Murphy Kallaberger and I broke a path through the bushes, and Aaron ran on to Warden's to tell them of the accident and have them prepare for the wounded man. Warden's was the nearest house, but that was a mile from the clearing, and in the woods our progress was slow. Once free of the ridges and in the open fields the way was easy, and Murphy could lend a hand to the others.

"He's monstrous light," Tip said. "He doesn't seem no more than skin and bones in fancy rags."

It is strange how even our clothes go back on us when we are down. Weston I had always known as a lanky man, but about his loosely fitting garments there had been an air of careless distinction. Now that he was broken, they hung with such an odd perversion as to bring from its hiding-place every sharp angle in the thin frame. The best nine tailors living could not have clothed him better for that little journey, nor lessened a whit the pathos of the thin arms that lay limply across the shoulders of Tip and Arnold.

"He's a livin' skelington," old Arker whispered, as I plodded along at his side. "Poor devil!"

"Poor devil!" said I. For looking at the almost lifeless man I thought of my own good fortune. This morning I had envied him. Now he had nothing but his wealth, and his hold on that was weakening fast. I had everything—life and health, home and friends—I had Mary. As we parted a few minutes before, up there in the woods, I had pitied him. He had seemed so lonely, so bitter in his loneliness, and yet at heart so good. Now his eyes half opened as they carried him on, his glance met mine in recognition, and it seemed to me that he smiled faintly. But it was the same bitter smile. "Poor devil!" I said to myself.

And we carried him into Mary's house.

She was waiting for us, and without a word led us upstairs to a room where we laid him on a bed.

"I stumbled, Mark, I stumbled," he whispered, as I leaned over him. "The fox came and I ran for it—then I fell—and then the little hound came, and then——"

Mary was bathing his forehead, and for the first time he saw her.

"I stumbled, Mary," he whispered. "I swear it."

* * * * * *

It was nearly ten o'clock when I left Weston's room. The doctor was with him and was preparing to bivouac at the patient's side. He was a young man from the big valley. Luther Warden had driven to the county town and brought him back to us. The first misgivings I had when I caught sight of his youthful, beardless face were dispelled by the business-like way in which he went about his work. He had been in a volunteer regiment, he told me, as an assistant surgeon, but had never gone past the fever camps, as this was his first case of a gunshot wound. He had made a study of gunshot wounds, and deemed himself fortunate to be in when Mr. Warden called. Truly, said I to myself, one man's death is another man's practice. But it was best that he was so confident, and I found my faith in him growing as he worked. The wound was a bad one, he said, and the ball had narrowly missed the heart, but with care the man would come around all right. The main thing was proper nursing. The young doctor smiled as he spoke, for standing before him in a solemn row were half the women of Six Stars. Mrs. Bolum was there with a tumbler of jelly; Mrs. Tip Pulsifer had brought her "paytent gradeated medicent glass," hoping it would be useful; Mrs. Henry Holmes had no idea what was needed, but just grabbed a hot-water bottle as she ran. Elmer Spiker's better half was there to demand her injured boarder at once; he paid for his room at the tavern; it was but right that he should occupy it and that she should care for him. When she found that she could not have him entirely, she compromised on the promise that she would be allowed to watch over him the whole of the next day. In spite of the jar of jelly, the doctor chose Mrs. Bolum to help him that night, and when I left them the old woman was sitting in a rocker at the bedside, her eyes watching every movement of the sleeping patient's drawn face.



Outside, the wind was whistling. The steady heating of an oak branch on the porch roof told me it was blowing hard. It sounded cold. Mary stood tiptoe to reach my collar and turn it up. Then she buttoned me snug around the neck. It was the first time a woman had ever done that for me. How good it was! I absently turned the collar down again and tore my coat open. Then I smiled.

Again she raised herself tiptoe before me, and with a hand on each shoulder, she stood looking from her eyes into mine.

"You fraud!" she cried.

Then I laughed. Lord, how I laughed! Twenty-four years I had lived, and until now I had never known a real joke, one that made the heart beat quicker, and sent the blood singing through the veins; that made the fingers tingle, the ears burn, and brought tears to the eyes. I don't suppose that other people would have thought this one so amusing. The young doctor upstairs might not have feigned a smile, for instance. That was what made it all the better for me, for it was my own joke and Mary's, and in all the world I was the only man who could see the fun of it.

"When you turn that collar up again I am going," said I.

So she sprang away from me, laughing, and quick as I reached out to seize her, she avoided me.

"You know I can't catch you," I cried, taunting her, "so I must wait."

As she stood there before me quietly, her hands clasped, her eyes looking up into mine, I saw how fair she was, and I wondered. The picture of Weston in the woods, standing off there gazing at me, came back then, and with it a vague feeling of fear and distrust. I saw myself as Weston saw me, and I marvelled.

"Mary," I said, "this morning up there in the woods I told Robert Weston everything, and he stood off just as you are standing now. It seemed to me he wondered how it could be true, and now I wonder too. Maybe it's all a mistake."

"It's not a mistake, Mark," the girl said, and she came to me again and put a hand on each shoulder and looked up. "If I did not care for you I'd never have given you the promise I did last night. But I do care for you, Mark, more than for anyone else in the world. You are big and strong and good—that's why—it's all any woman can ask. You are true, Mark—and that's more than most men——"

"But, Mary, there's Tim," I protested, for I did not care to usurp to myself the sum of all the virtues allotted to my sex.

"Tim?" said she lightly, as though she had never heard of him.

"Yes, Tim," I said shortly. "Why did you choose me instead of a lad like Tim?"

"Mark, I care for you more than anyone else in the world," said Mary.

"But do you love me?" I asked quickly.

"I think I do," she said. But reaching up, she turned my collar again and buttoned my coat against the storm.



XIV

Tim was home in three days. His few months of town life had wrought many changes in him, and they were for the better. I was forced to admit that, but I could not help being just a little in awe of him. He was not as heavy as of old, but there was more firmness in his face and figure. Perhaps it was his clothes that had given him a strange new grace, for in the old days he was a ponderous, slow-moving fellow. Now there was a lightness in his step and quickness in his every motion. Had I not known him, I should have seen in the scrupulous part in his hair a suggestion of the foppish. But I knew him, and while I liked him best with his old tousled head, and tanned face, and homely hickory shirt, I felt a certain pride that he had taken so well with the world and was learning the ways of the town as well as those of the field and wood. His gloves did seem foolish, for it was a bitter December day when the blood had best had full swing in the veins, but he held out to me a hand pinched in a few square inches of yellow kid. The grasp was just as warm though, and I forgave that. When he threw aside his silly little overcoat and stood before me, so tall and strong, so clean-cut and faultless, from the part in his hair to the shine on his boot-tips, I cried, "Heigh-ho, my fine gentleman!"

Then he blushed. I suspected that it pleased him vastly.

"Do you think it an improvement?" he faltered, standing with his back to the fireplace and lifting himself to his full height.

Before I could reply, the door flew open without the formality of a knock, and old Mrs. Bolum ran in. When she saw him, she stopped and stared.

"Well, ain't he tasty!" she cried.



Then she courtesied most formally. "How do you do, Mr. Hope?" she said.

"And how is Mrs. Bolum?" returned Tim gravely, advancing toward her with his hand outstretched.

The old woman rubbed her own hand on her apron, an honor usually accorded only to the preacher, and held it out. Tim seized it, but he brought his other arm around her waist and lifted her from the floor in one mighty embrace.

"You'll spoil your Sunday clothes," panted Mrs. Bolum, when she reached the floor again. Stepping back, she eyed him critically. "You look handsomer than a drummer," she cried admiringly.

"Thank you, ma'am," said Tim very meekly.

"I'm so sorry I left my spectacles at home," she went on. "My eyes ain't as good as they used to be and I can't see you plain as I'd like. Mebbe it's my sight as is the trouble, but it seems to me, as I see you now without my glasses, you're just about the prettiest man that ever come to Six Stars."

"Lord, ma'am," protested Tim. "And how is Mr. Bolum?"

"And such a lovely suit," continued the old woman, cautiously approaching and moving her hand across my brother's chest. "Why, Tim, you must have on complete store clothes—dear, oh, dear—to think of Tim Hope gittin' so fine and dressy! Now had it 'a' been Mark I wouldn't 'a' been so took back, for he allus was uppy and big feelin'. But Tim!"

Mrs. Bolum shook her head and held her hands up in astonishment.

"And how is Mr. Bolum?" shouted Tim.

"Never was better, 'ceptin' for his rheumatism and asphmy," was the answer, but the good woman was not to be turned aside that way. "And a cady," she cried, for her eyes had caught Tim's hat and the silly yellow overcoat on the chair where I had thrown them. "A cady, too! Now just put it on and let me see how you look."

Tim obeyed. Mrs. Bolum stepped hack to get a better effect.

"It ain't as pretty as your coon-skin," she said critically; "you'd look lovely in that suit with your coon-skin cap—but hold on—don't take it off—I want Bolum to see you."

She ran from the room and we heard her calling from the porch: "Bo-lum—Bo-lum—Isaac Bo-oh-lum."

Isaac was at the store. It seemed to me that his wife should have known that without much research. The little pile of sticks by the kitchen-door showed that his day's work was done, for when he had split the wood for the morrow it was the old man's custom to put aside all worldly care and start on a tour of the village, which generally ended on the bench at Henry Holmes's side.

It was almost dusk. Tim had come on a mission to Robert Weston. I had sent word to him of the accident, that Weston's friends might know, and the first thought of the injured man's partner was to hurry to Six Stars, but my second despatch, announcing that our friend was well on the road to recovery, led to the change in plans that brought Tim to us. Mrs. Bolum did not succeed in alarming the village before he and I were well up the road, past the school-house and climbing the hill to Warden's.

Tim had a great deal to tell me in that short walk. I had much to tell him, but I was silent and let him chatter on, giving but little attention to what he said, for I was planning a great surprise. The simplest thing would have been to tell him my secret then, but I had pictured something more dramatic. I wanted Mary to witness his dumfounding when he heard the news. I wanted her to be there when its full import broke upon him; then the three of us, Mary and Tim and I, would do a wild jig. What boon companions we should be—we three—to go through life together! And Edith? Four of us—so much the better! I had never seen this Edith, but Tim is a wonderful judge of women.

So I let him talk, on and on about the city and his life there, until we reached the house. We found that Mrs. Spiker had secured her rights, and was on duty that day as nurse. The young doctor was there, too, as were Mrs. Tip Pulsifer and a half dozen others, a goodly company to greet us.

"Hello, Mary!" Tim cried, breaking through the others, when he caught sight of her, standing at the foot of the stairs with a lighted candle in her hand.

"Hello, Tim!" cried Mary. "And where is Edith?"

"Edith?" Tim exclaimed, stopping as if to collect the thoughts her sudden taunting question had scattered. "I left her behind this time, but when I come again you shall see her." Tim, with arms akimbo, stood there laughing.

"We country girls, I understand, cannot compare with her," said Mary, tilting her chin.

She had started up the stairs, and now paused, looking down on us. And I looked up at her face showing out of the darkness in the half light, and I laughed, wondering what Tim thought, wondering if he was blind, or was this Edith really bewildering.

"Did I say that?" cried Tim. "Then I must have meant it when I said it. To-night I have learned better, Mary, but you know I never saw you standing that way before—on the stairs above me—kind of like an angel with a halo——"

"Indeed!" retorted Mary; "but we women of Black Log deck ourselves out in gaudy finery, Mr. Tim, I believe. We women of Black Log do not inspire a man, like your Edith."

"Confound my Edith!" Tim exclaimed hotly. "Why, Mary, can't you see I was joking? The idea of comparing Edith with you—why, Mary——"

Tim in his protest started to mount the stairs, and there was an earnestness in his tone that made me think it high time he knew our secret, for his own sake and for Edith's. It seemed to me unfair of him to desert her so basely in the presence of an enemy. He should have stood by her to the very end, and had he boldly declared that as compared to her Mary was a mummy I should have admired him the more; I should have understood; I should have known he was mistaken, but endured it. Now I seized him by the coat and pulled him back.

"Tim," I said solemnly, "I have something to tell you."

My brother turned and gave me a startled look.

"Mary and I have something to tell you," I went on.

That should have given him a clew. I had expected that at this point he would embrace me. But he didn't.

"I suppose you think I've been a fool about Edith?" he muttered ruefully.

"No, it isn't that," I laughed. "Mary, will you tell him?"

But we were in darkness! She had dropped the candle, and down the stairs the stick came clattering. It landed on the floor and went rolling across the room. Tim made a dive for it. He groped his way to the corner where its career had ended. Then he lighted it again.

Behind us stood the doctor, and Mrs. Tip Pulsifer, and Elmer Spiker's much better half. Mary was at the head of the stairs.

"Come, Tim," she called. "Mr. Weston wants to see you."

"Weston does want to see you very much, Tim," the wounded man said smiling, lifting a thin hand from the bed for my brother; "I heard you chattering downstairs, and I thought you were never coming."

"It was Mary's fault," Tim said. "I came back as soon as I could, sir. Mr. Mills sent me up on the night train—out this afternoon in a livery rig—here afoot just as fast as Mark would let me—then Mary blocked the way. Mark was going to tell me something when she dropped the candle."

"Why, don't you know—" began Weston.

But over my brother's shoulders I shook my head sternly at him and he stopped and broke into a laugh.

Mrs. Elmer Spiker was standing by him; the young doctor was moving about the room, apparently very busy; Mrs. Tip Pulsifer was peeping in at the door.

"Didn't you know," said Weston, "how I'd shot myself all to pieces, and how there's a live fox in the hollows across the ridge?"

"Mark told me of it," answered the innocent Tim, "and I'm glad to find it is not serious. They were worried at the store. Mr. Mills was for coming right away, but we got word you were better, and he thought I should run up anyway for a day to see if we could do anything. I'm to go back to-morrow."

"It was good of you to come," Weston said, "but there is nothing to be done. Just tell Mills the whole valley is nursing me; tell him that I've one nurse alone who is worth a score." Mrs. Spiker looked very conscious, but Weston smiled at Mary. Then he quickly added: "Tell him that Mrs. Bolum and Mrs. Spiker and Mrs. Pulsifer—" he paused to make sure that none was missed—"and Mark here are a hospital corps, taken singly or in a body."

"I've told him that already," said Tim. "He knows everybody in Six Stars, I guess, and he says as soon as you get well and come back to the office, he will take a holiday himself, fox hunting."

"Poor little Colonel!" murmured Weston. "He'll have a melancholy career. And Mary, too, she'll——"

"But it was when I told him about Mary that he made up his mind to come," Tim said.

"Indeed." The girl spoke very quietly. "And, perhaps, Tim, you'll send Edith along to help us. We women of Black Log are so clumsy."

"A good idea," said Weston. "Capital. You must bring Miss Smyth up, too, Tim."

"Parker," I corrected, "Edith Parker."

"But is it Parker?" Weston appealed to my brother. "Mark tells me she's the book-keeper's daughter. Has old Smyth gone?"

"No," Tim stammered, very much confused. "I guess you don't know Parker. He's come lately."

"That explains it, then," said Weston.

But he turned and looked away from us, his brow knitted. Something seemed to puzzle him, for he was frowning, but by and by the old cynical smile came back.

He said suddenly: "Tim, I wish you luck. I'm glad anyway it isn't Smyth's daughter. That was what I couldn't understand. Ever see Smyth's daughter? No. Well, you needn't bemoan it. I dare say Miss Parker is all you picture her, and I hope you'll win."

"Don't you think you'd better rest now?" asked Tim, with sudden solicitation. Though he addressed himself to Weston, his eyes were appealing to the doctor.

"I think I had," Weston answered, not waiting for the physician to interpose any order. "I get tuckered out pretty easily these days, with this confounded bullet-hole in me—but stay a moment, Tim. They've got a letter from me at the office by this time. It may surprise them; it may surprise you, but I wanted you to know I'd fixed it all right for you, my boy. I did it for Edith's sake."

Tim, with face flushed and hands outstretched in protest, arose from his chair and went to the bedside.

"But don't you see it's all a joke," he cried. "I can't take it. Won't you believe me this time? There isn't any Edith!"

"I knew that long ago, Tim," Weston answered quietly. "But there may be some day."

He turned his back to us.

"Please go," he said brusquely. "I want to rest. Don't stand over me that way, Tim. Why, you look like little Colonel!"

* * * * * *

At the school-house door Tim halted suddenly.

"I'm going back, Mark," he whispered, "just for a minute. Weston will think I'm a fraud and I want to tell him something. Now that the others have left I may have a chance. Confound these kind-hearted women that overrun the house! Why, a fellow couldn't say a word without a dozen ears to hear it."

"I'll go back with you," said I.

We had fallen a few steps behind the others, but somehow they divined our purpose and stopped, too.

"You needn't," said Tim. "I'll only be a minute."

"But I've something to tell you—a secret—and Mary——"

He was gone.

"I'll be back in a minute," he called. "Go on home."

He was lost in the darkness, and I started after him.

"Ain't you comin'?" cried Nanny Pulsifer.

"I must go back to Warden's," I answered.

"Then we'll go with you," said Mrs. Spiker firmly.

"Can't you go on home?" I said testily. "There's no use of your troubling yourself further."

"Does you think we'll walk by that graveyard alone?" demanded the tavern-keeper's wife.

"But there are no ghosts," I argued.



"We know that," returned Mrs. Pulsifer. "Everybody knows that, but it's never made any difference."

"A graveyard is a graveyard even if there is no bodies in it," said Mrs. Spiker, planting herself behind me so as to cut off further retreat.

Tim must have caught some echoes of the argument on the spirit world, for down the hill, through the darkness, came his call.

"Go on home, Mark—I'll be back in a minute."

I believed him, and I obeyed.



XV

Tim's minute? God keep me from another as long!

I had my pipe in my chair by the fire, and knocking the ashes out, I went to the door, and with a hand to my ear listened for his footsteps. Tim's minutes are long! Another pipe, and the clock on the mantel marked nine. Still I smoked on. He had had a long talk with Weston, perhaps, and had stopped downstairs for a minute with Mary. She had told him all. How astounded the boy must be! Why, it would take her a half hour at least to convince him that she spoke the truth when she told him she was to marry his wreck of a brother; then when he believed it, another half hour would hardly be enough for him to welcome her into the family of Hope, and to talk over the wonderful fortunes of its sons. Doubtless he had felt it incumbent on himself to sing my praises, for he had always been blind to my faults. In this possibility of his tarrying to display my virtues there was some compensation for my sitting alone, with old Captain and young Colonel, both sleeping, and only my pipe for company. Of course, I should really be there with Tim, but Nanny Pulsifer and Mrs. Spiker had decreed otherwise. Who knows how great may be my reward for bringing them safely past the graveyard!

The third pipe snuffled out. I opened the door and listened. Tim's minutes are long, for the last light in the village is out now. I went to the gate and stood there till I caught the sound of foot-falls. Then I whistled softly. There was no reply, but in a moment Perry Thomas stepped into the light of our window.

"Good-evening," he said cheerfully. "It's rather chilly to be swinging on the gate."

"I was waiting for Tim," I answered.

Perry gave a little dry cackle. "Let's go in," he said. "It's too cold out here to discuss these great events."

I did not know what he meant, neither did I much care, for Perry always treated the most trivial affairs in the most elegant language he knew. But now that he stood there with his back to the fire, warming his hands, he made himself more clear.

"Well, Mark," he said, "I congratulate you most heartily."

I divined his meaning. It did not seem odd that he had learned my secret, for I was lost in admiration of his having once weighed an event at its proper value. So I thanked him and returned to my chair and my pipe.

"Of course it hurts me a bit here," said he, laying his hand on his watch-pocket. "I had hopes at one time myself, but I fear I depended too much on music and elocution. Do you know I'm beginnin' to think that a man shouldn't depend so much on art with weemen. I notice them gets along best who doesn't keep their arms entirely occupied with gestures and workin' the fiddle."



Perry winked sagely at this and cackled. He rocked violently to and fro on his feet, from heel to toe and toe to heel.

"Yet it ain't a bit onreasonable," he went on. "The artist thinks he is amusin' others, when, as a matter of fact, he is gettin' about ninety per cent. of the fun himself. We allus enjoys our own singin' best. I see that now. I thought it up as I was comin' down the road and I concided that the next time I seen a likely lookin' Mrs. Perry Thomas, she could do the singin' and the fiddlin' and the elocution, and I'd set by and look on and say, 'Ain't it lovely?'"

"You bear your disappointments bravely," said I.

"Not at all," Perry responded. "I'm used to 'em. Why, I don't know what I'd do if I wasn't disappointed. Some day a girl will happen along who won't disappoint me, and then I'll be so set back, I allow I won't have courage to get outen the walley. Had I knowd yesterday how as all the courtin' I've done since the first of last June was to come tumblin' down on my head to-night like ceilin' plaster, not a wink of sleep would I 'a' had. Now I know it. Does I look like I was goin' to jump down the well? No, sir. 'Perry,' I says, 'you've had a nice time settin' a-dreamin' of her; you've sung love-songs to her as you followed the plough; you've pictured her at your side as you've strayed th'oo fields of daisies and looked at the moon. Now in the natural course of events she's goin' to marry another. When she's gettin' peekit like trying to keep the house goin' and at the same time prevent her seven little ones from steppin' into the cistern or fallin' down the hay-hole, you can make up another pretty pickter with one of the nine hundred million other weemen on this globe as the central figger!'"

At the conclusion of this philosophic speech my visitor adjusted his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, brought himself to rest with a click of his heels and smiled his defiance.

"But I congratulate you truly, heartily," he added.

"Thank you, Perry," I answered. "In spite of your trifling way of regarding women, I hope that some day you may find another as good as Mary Warden."

"The same to you, Mark," said he.

"The same to me?" I cried, with a touch of resentment.

"Of course," he replied. "I says to myself to-night, 'I hope Mark is as fortunate,' I says, when I saw them two a——"

"What two?" I exclaimed, lifting myself half out of my chair in my eagerness.

"Why, Tim and her," Perry answered. "Ain't you heard it yet, Mark? Am I the first to know?"

"Tim and her," I cried. "Tim and Mary?"

"Yes," said Perry.

He saw now that he was imparting strange news to me. In my sudden agitation he divined that that news had struck hard home, and that I was not blessed with his own philosophic nature. The smile left his face. He stepped to me, as I sat there in the chair staring vacantly into the fire, and laid a hand on my shoulder.

"I thought of course you knowd it," he said gently. "I thought of course you knowd all about it, and when I seen them up there to-night, her a-holdin' to him so lovin', says I to myself, 'How pleased Mark will be—he thinks so much of Tim and Mary.'"

Tim's minute! I knew now why it was so long. I should have known it long ago. I feared to ask Perry what he had seen. I divined it. I had debated with myself too much the strangeness of Mary's promise, and often in the last few days there had come over me a vague fear that I was treading in the clouds. She had told me again and again that she cared for me more than for anyone else in the world. But that night when I had asked her if she loved me, she had turned my collar up. I believed that when she spoke then it was what she thought the truth. She had pledged herself to me and I had not demanded more. I had been selfish enough to ask that she link herself to my narrow life, and she had looked at me clear in the eye. "You are strong, Mark, and good, and true," she had said, "and in all the world there is none I trust more. I'll love you, too. I promise."

On that promise I had built all my hopes and happiness, and it had failed me. It was not strange. I had been a fool, a silly dreamer, and now I had found it out. A soldier? Paugh! Away back somewhere in the past, I had gone mad at a bugle-call. A hero? For a day. For a day I had puffed myself up with pride at my deeds. And now those deeds were forgotten. I was a veteran, a crippled pensioner, an humble pedagogue, a petty farmer. This was the lot I had asked her to share. She had made her promise, and that promise made and broken was more than I deserved. From a heaven she had smiled down on me, and I had climbed to the clouds, reaching out for her. Then her face was turned from me, and down I had come, clattering to common earth, cursing because I had hurt myself.

I turned to my pipe and lighted it again. Old Captain came and rested his head on my knee and looked up at me, as I stroked it slowly.

"Poor dog," I said. It was such a relief, and Perry misunderstood.

"Has he been hurt?" he asked sympathetically.

"Yes," I answered, still stroking the old hound's head. "Very badly. But he'll be all right in a few days—and we'll go on watching the mountains—and thinking—and chasing foxes—to the end—the end that comes to all poor dogs."

"It's curious how attached one gets to a dog," said Perry sagely, resuming his rocking from heel to toe and toe to heel.

"It is curious," I said, smoking calmly. I even forced a grim smile.

Now that I could smile, I was prepared to hear what Perry had to tell me, for after all I had been drawing conclusions from what might prove to be but inferences of his. But he had been so positive that in my inmost heart I knew the import of all he had to say.

"Well, Perry," I said, "you did give me a surprise. I didn't know it, and, to tell the truth, was taken back a bit, for it hurt me here." I imitated his effective waistcoat-pocket gesture, which caused him much amusement. "I had hopes myself—you know that, and as I neither fiddled nor recited poetry your own conclusions may be wrong."

"But Tim didn't do nothin'," Perry cackled. "He just goes away and lets her pine. When he comes back she falls right into his arms and gazes up into his eyes, and—" Perry stopped rocking and looked into the fire. "You know, Mark," he said after a pause, "it must be nice not to be disappointed."

"It must be very nice," said I, smoking harder than ever.

"That's what I said to myself as I looked in the window and seen them."

"You looked in the window—you peeped!" I fairly shouted, making a hostile demonstration with a crutch.

"Why, yes" said Perry, looking hurt that I should question his action in the least. "I didn't mean to. Comin' from over the ridge I passed Warden's and thought I'd stop in and warm up and see how Weston was. So I stepped light along the porch, not wantin' to disturb him, and seein' a light in the room, I looked in before I knocked. But I never knocked, for I says to myself, 'I'll hurry down and tell Mark; it'll please him.'"



"And you saw Tim and Mary," said I.

"I should say I did," said Perry, "till I slipped away. But says I to myself, 'It must be nice not to be disappointed.'"

"You said you saw Tim and Mary," said I, a trifle angrily.

"I should say I did," Perry answered, chuckling and rocking again on his feet. "The two of 'em, standin' there in the lamplight by the table, him a-lookin' down like he was dyin', her a-lookin' up like she was dyin' and holdin' on to him like he was all there was left for her in the world. It made me swaller, Mark, it made me swaller."

There was a lump in Perry's throat at that moment, and he stopped his rocking and turned to the fire, so his back was toward me.

"Of course you knocked," said I, after a silence.

"Of course I didn't," he snapped. "Do you suppose I was wanted then? 'No, sir,' I says, 'for them there is only two people in all the world—there's Tim and there's Mary.'"

Perry was putting on his overcoat, winding his long comforter about his neck and drawing on his mittens.

"To tell the truth," he said, with a forced laugh, "I don't feel as chipper as I usually do under such like circumstances. It seems to me you ain't so chipper as you might be, either, Mark."

"Good-night, Perry," I said, smoking very hard.

"Good-night," he answered. At the door he paused and gazed at me.

"Say, Mark," he said, "them two was just intended for one another—you know it—I see you know it. God picked 'em out for one another. I know it. You know it, too. But it's hard not to be picked yourself—ain't it?"

Tim's minute! God keep me from such another!

* * * * * *

It was all so plain now. The fire was dying away. The hands of the clock were crawling off another hour, and still he did not come. But what did I care? All in the world that I loved I had lost—Mary and my brother—and Tim had taken both. He who had so much had come in his strength and robbed me, left me to sit alone night after night, with my pipe and my dogs and my crutches. Had he told me that night when I came back to the valley that he loved the girl in all truth, I should have stood aside and cheered him on in his struggle against her, but I had not measured the depth of his mind nor given him credit for cunning. Perry Thomas saw it. He had gone away from her and wounded her by his neglect. In the fabrication of the other girl, the beautiful Edith, whose charms so outshone all other women, he had hit at the heart of her vanity; and now he had come back so gayly and easily to take from me what I might not have won in a lifetime. Losing her, I cared little that what he had done had been in ignorance that I loved her and that she was plighted to me. Losing her, I had no thought of blame for the girl, for when she told me that in all the world she cared for none so much as me, she meant it, for she believed that he had passed out of her life.

By the fireplace, so close that I could put my hand upon the arm, was the rocking-chair I had placed for her, and many a night had I sat there watching it and smiling, and picturing it as it was to be when she came. There would Mary be, sewing beneath the lamplight; there the fire burning, with old Captain and young Colonel, snuggling along the hearthstone; here I should be with my pipe and my book, unread, in my lap, for we should have many things to talk of, Mary and I. We should have Tim. As he played the great game, we should be watching his every move. And when he won, how she and I would smile over it and say "I told you so!" When he lost—Tim was never to lose, for Tim was invincible! Tim was a man of brain and brawn. His arm was the strongest in the valley; in all our country there was no face so fine as his; in all the world few men so good and true.

Now he had come! The chair there was empty. So it would always be. But here I should always be with my pipe and my crutches, and the dogs snuggling by the fire.

Tim had come! The clock hands were crawling on and on. His minute had better end. I hurled my pipe into the smouldering coals; I tossed a crutch at little Colonel, and the dog ran howling from the room. Old Captain sat up on his haunches, his slantwise eyes wide open with wonder.

Aye, Captain, men are strange creatures. Their moods will change with every clock-tick. One moment your master sits smoking and watching the flames—the next he is tearing hatless from the house; and it is cold outside and the wind in the chimney is tumbling down the soot. When the wind sings like that in the chimney, it is sweeping full and sharp down the village street, and across the flats by the graveyard, whither he goes hobbling.

Little Colonel comes cautiously into the room, hugging the wall till he is back at the fireside. With his head between his fore-paws and one eye closed, he watches the tiny tongue of flame licking up the last coal. There are worse lives than a dog's.



XVI

Tim came whistling down the road. He whistled full and clear, and while he was still at the turn of the hill the wind brought me a bit of his rollicking tune as I huddled on the school-house steps, waiting. The world was going well with him. He had all that the wise count good; he was winning what the foolish count better. With head high and swinging arms he came on, the beat of his feet on the hard road keeping time to his gay whistling. Tim was winning in the game. While his brother was droning over the reader and the spelling-book with two-score leather-headed children, he was fighting his way upward in the world of commerce. While his brother was wringing a living from a few acres of niggardly soil and a little school, he was on the road to riches; while his brother was wrangling with the worthies of the store over the momentous problems of the day, he was where those problems were being worked out and standing by the men who were solving them. All in this world worth having was Tim's, and now even what was his brother's he had taken. To him that hath! From him that hath not! He had all. I had nothing. Now as he came swinging on so carelessly, I knew that I had lost even him.

Never once had there come to my mind the thought of doing my brother any bodily harm. My emotions were too conflicting for me to know just why I had come at all into the night to meet him. Now it was against him that the violence of my anger would vent itself. Now it was against myself, and I cursed myself for an idle, dreaming fool. Then came over me, overwhelming me, a sense of my own utter loneliness, and against it Tim stood out so bold and clear-cut and strong; that I felt myself crying out to him not to desert me and let a woman take him from me. I thought of the old days when he and I had been all in all to each other, and I hated the woman who had come between us, who had lured me from him, who had lured him from me. Then as against my misery, she stood out so bold and good, so wholly fair, that I cursed Tim for taking her from me. I wanted to see him in the full heat of my anger to tell him to his face how he had served me; to stand before him an accuser till he slunk from me and left me alone, as I would be alone from now to the end.

So I had quickened my pace, hobbling up the starlit road to the school-house. There I was driven by sheer exhaustion to the shelter of the doorway, and in the narrow refuge I huddled, waiting and listening. The keen wind found me out and seemed to take joy in rushing in on me in biting gusts and then whirling away over the flat. By and by it brought me the rollicking air my brother whistled, and then came the sound of foot-falls. In a moment he would be passing, and I arose, intending to hail him. It was easy enough when I heard only his whistling to picture myself confrating him in anger, but now that in the starlight I could see his dark form coming nearer and nearer; now that he had broken into a snatch of a song we had often sung together, my courage failed me and I slunk farther into my retreat.

So Tim passed me. He went on toward the village, singing cheerfully for company's sake, and I stood alone, in the shadow of the school-house woods, listening. His song died away. I fancied I heard the beat of his stick on the bridge; then there was silence.

I turned. Through the pines on the eastward ridge the moon was climbing, and now the white road stretched away before me. It was the road to her house. The light that gleamed at the head of the hill was her light, and many a night in this same spot I had stopped to take a last look at it. It used to wink so softly to me as I waved a hand in good-night. Now it seemed to leer. The friendly beacon on the hill had become a wrecker's lantern. A battered hulk of a man, here I was, stranded by the school-house. As the ship on the beach pounds helplessly to and fro, now trying to drive itself farther into its prison, now struggling to break the chains that hold it, so tossed about my love and anger, I turned my face now toward the hill, now toward the village. The same impulse that caused me to draw into the darkness of the doorway instead of facing Tim made it impossible for me to follow him home. Angry though I was, I wanted no quarrel, yet I feared to meet him lest my temper should burst its bounds. But I had a bitter wind to deal with, too, and if I could not go home, neither could I stand longer in the road, turning in my quandary from the beacon on the hill, where she was, to the light that gleamed in our window in the village, where he was.

The school-house gave me shelter. I groped my way to my desk and there sank into my chair, leaned my head on my hands, and closed my eyes. I wanted to shut out all the world. Here in the friendly darkness, in the quiet of the night, I could think it all out. I could place myself on trial, and starting at the beginning, retracing my life step by step, I would find again the course my best self had laid down for me to follow. For the moment I had lost that clear way. Blinded by my seeming woes, I had been groping for it, and I had searched in vain. But now the dizziness was going, and as I sat there in the darkness, my eyes closed to shut out even the blackness about me, the light came.

After a long while I looked up to see the moon high over the pines on the eastward ridge, and its yellow light poured into the room, casting dim shadows over the white walls, and bringing up before me row on row of spectre desks. The chair I sat in, the table on which I leaned were real enough. They were part of my to-day, but that dim-lighted room was the school-house of my boyhood. The fourth of those spectre desks measuring back from the stove, was where Tim and I sat day after day together, with heads bowed over open books and eyes aslant. That was not the same Tim who had passed me a while before, swaggering and singing in the joy of his conquest; that was not the same Tim who had stood before me that very afternoon in all the pomp of well-cut clothes, drawing on his whitened hands a pair of woman's gloves; that was not the same Tim who by his artful lies had won what had been denied my stupid, blundering devotion. My Tim was a sturdy little fellow whose booted legs scarce touched the floor, whose tousled black head hardly showed above the desk-top. His cheeks would turn crimson at the thought of woman's gloves on those brown hands. His tongue would cleave to his mouth in a woman's presence, let alone his lying to her. That was the real Tim—the rare Tim. To my eyes he was but a small boy; to my mind he was a mighty man. The first reader that presented such knotty problems to his intellectual side was but part of the impedimenta of his youth, and was no fair measure of his real size. That very day he had fought with me and for me; not because I was in the right, but because I was his brother.

A lean, cadaverous boy from along the mountain, a born enemy of the lads of the village, had dared me. I endured his insults until the time came when further forbearance would have been a disgrace, and then I closed with him. In the front of the little circle drawn about us, right outside there in the school-yard, Tim stood. As we pitched to and fro, the cadaverous boy and I, Tim's shrill cry came to me, and time and again I caught sight of his white face and small clinched hands waving wildly. I believe I should have whipped the cadaverous boy. I had suffered his foul kicks and borne him to the ground; in a second I should have planted him fairly on his back, but his brother, like him a lank, wiry lad and singly more than my match, ran at me. My head swam beneath his blows, and I released my almost vanquished enemy to face the new foe with upraised fists. Then Tim came. A black head shot between me and my towering assailant. It caught him full in the middle; he doubled like a staple and with a cry of pain toppled into the snow. This gave me a brief respite to compel my fallen enemy to capitulate, and when I turned from him, his brother was still staggering about in drunken fashion, gasping and crying, "Foul!" Tim did not know what he meant, but was standing alert, with head lowered, ready to charge again at the first sign of renewed attack. He knew neither "fight foul" nor "fight fair"; he knew only a brother in trouble, and he had come to him in his best might.

That was the real Tim!

"I guess me and you can whip most anybody, Mark," he said, as he looked up at me from his silly spelling-book that day.

"As long as we stick together, Tim," I whispered in return.

He laughed. Of course we would always stand together.

That was long ago. Life is an everlasting waking up. We leave behind us an endless trail of dreams. The real life is but a waking moment. After all, it was the real Tim who had gone singing by as I crouched in the shadow of the school-house. The comrade of my school-days, who had fought for me with eyes closed and with the fury of a child, the companion of the hunt, racing with me over the ridges with Captain singing on before us, the brother at the fireside at night, poring over some rare novel—he was only a phantom. Between me and the real man there was no bond. He had grown above the valley; I was becoming more and more a part of it, like the lone pine on Gander Knob, or the piebald horse that drew the stage. His clothes alone had made wider the breach between us. At first I had admired him. I was proud of my brother. But Solomon in all his glory was dressed in his best; from Dives to Lazarus is largely a matter of garments. Tim had made himself just a bit better than I, when he donned his well-fitting suit and pulled on his silly gloves. Beside him I was a coarse fellow, and to me he was not the old Tim.

This fine man had come back to the valley to take from me all that made life good. He had struck me over the heart and stunned me and then gone singing by. In Mary's eyes he was the better man of the two. To my eyes he was, and I hated him for it. He could go his way and I should go mine, for we must stand alone. In the morning he would go away and leave me with the Tim I loved, with the boy who sat with me at yonder desk, who raced with me over the ridges, who read with me at the fireside.

The shadows deepened in the school-room, for a curtain of clouds was sweeping across the moon. Peering through the window, over the flats, I saw a light gleaming steadily at the head of the village street. It was my light burning in the window, and I knew that Tim was there, waiting for me. All the past rose up to tell me that he was still the comrade of my school-days, my companion of the hunt, my brother of the fireside.

My head sank to the table and my hands clasped my eyes to shut out the blackness. But the blackness came again.



XVII

Tip Pulsifer leaned on my gate. Crowning the post at his side was his travelling bandanna, into which he had securely clasped by one great knot all his portable possessions. It was very early in the morning, in that half-dark and half-dawn time, when the muffled crowing begins to sound from the village barns and the dogs crawl forth from their barrels and survey the deserted street and yawn. Tip was not usually abroad so early, but in his travelling bandanna and solemn face, as he leaned on his elbows and smoked and smoked, I saw his reason for getting out with the sun. He was taking flight. The annual Pulsifer tragedy had occurred; the head of the house had tied together his few goods, and, vowing never to trouble his wife again, had set his face toward the mountain. But on my part I had every reason to believe that Tip would show surprise when I hobbled forth from the misty gloom.



Just a few minutes before I had awakened. I had lifted my head from my desk, half-dazed, and gazed around the school-room. I had rubbed my eyes to drive away the veils that hid my scholars from me. I had pounded the floor with a crutch and cried: "It's books." The silence answered me. I had not been napping in school, nor was I dreaming. The long, miserable night flashed back to me, and I stamped into the misty morning. Weary and dishevelled, I was crawling home, purposeless as ever, now vowing I would break with my brother, now quickening my steps that I might sooner wish him all the joy a brother should. A few dogs greeted me and then Tip, calmly smoking as though it were my usual time to be about of a morning.

"You are going over the mountain, Tip?" said I.

"Yes," he answered, throwing open the gate. "This is the last Six Stars will see of me. I'm done. The missus was a-yammerin' and a-yammerin' all day yesterday. If it wasn't this, it was that she was yammerin' about. Says I, 'I'm done. I'm sorry,' says I, 'but I'm done.' At the first peek of day I starts over the mountain. This is as fur as I've got. You've kep' me waitin'."

"Me—I've kept you waiting?" I cried. "Do you think I'm going over the mountain, too?"

"No," said Tip, with a grim chuckle. "You ain't married. You've nothin' to run from, 'less you've been yammerin' at yourself; then the mountain won't do you no good. I didn't figure on your company, but Tim kep' me."

"Is Tim out at this hour?" I asked.

"At this hour?" Tip retorted. "You'll have to get up earlier to catch him. He's gone—up and gone—he is."

I sat down very abruptly on the door-step. "Tim gone?" I said.

"Gone—and he told me to wait and say good-by to you—to tell you he'd set late last night for you, till he fell asleep. He was sleepin' when I come, Mark. I peeped in the window and there he was, in that chair of yours, fast asleep. I rapped on the window and he woke up with a jump. He was off on the early train, he said, and had just time to cover the twelve mile with that three-legged livery horse that brought him out. He was awful put out at not findin' you. He thought you was in bed, but you wasn't, and I told him mebbe you'd gone up to the Warden's to lend a hand with Weston."

For the first time Tip eyed me inquisitively.

"I was up the road," I said evasively. "But tell me about Tim—did he leave no word?"

"He left me," said Tip, grinning. "He hadn't time to leave nothin' else. We figgered he'd just cover that twelve mile and make the train. That's why I'm here. As we was hitchin' he told me particular to wait till you come; to tell you good-by; to tell you he'd watched all night—waited and waited till he fell asleep."

"And overslept in the morning so he had no time to drop me even a line—I understand," said I. "And now, Tip, having performed your duty, you are going over the mountain?"

"To Happy Walley," Tip cried, lifting the stick he always carried in these nights and pointing away toward Thunder Knob. "I'm done with Black Log. I'm goin' where there is peace and quiet."

"You lead the life of a hermit?" I suggested.

"A what?" Tip exclaimed.

"You live in a cave in the woods and eat roots and nuts and meditate," I explained.

"You think I'm a squirrel," snapped the fugitive. "No, sir, I live with my cousin John Shadrack's widder."

"Ah!" I cried. "It's plain now, Tip, you deceiver. So there's the attraction."

"The attraction?" Tip's brow was furrowed.

"Mrs. John Shadrack," I said.

The fugitive broke into a loud guffaw. He leaned over the gate and let his pipe fall on the other side and beat the post violently with his hands.

"I allow you've never seen John Shadrack's widder," said he.

"I'd like to, Tip. Will you take me with you to Happy Valley?"

The smile left Tip's face, and he gazed at me, open-mouthed with astonishment.

"You would go over the mountain?" he said, drawling every word.

Over the mountain there is peace! It is cold and gray there in the early morning, and the hills are bleak and black, but I remember days when from this same spot I've watched the deep, soft blue and green; I've sat here as the hills were glowing in the changing evening lights and our valley grew dark and cold. What a fair country that must be where the sun sets! And we stay here in our dim light, in our dull monotones, when, to the westward, there's a land all capped with clouds of red and gold. There is Tip's Valley of Peace. John Shadrack's widow may not be a celestial being, but that is my sunset country. In journeying to it, I shall leave myself behind; in the joy of the road, in the changing landscape and skyscape, in the swing of the buggy and the rattle of the wheels, I shall forget myself and Mary and Tim for a time, and when I come back it will be with wound unhealed, but the throbbing pain will have passed, and I can face them with eyes clear and speech unfaltering.

"I'll go with you to Happy Valley, Tip," I said, rising and turning to the door. "You hitch the gray colt in the buggy and——"

"We are goin' to ride," cried Tip. He had always made his flights afoot before that, and the prospect of an easy journey caused him to smile.

"Do you think I'll walk?" I growled. "Get the gray colt and I'll give you a lift over the mountain, but I'll bring you back on Monday, too." Tip shook his head sullenly at this threat. "While you hitch, I'll drop a line to Perry Thomas to take the school. Now hurry."

Tip shuffled away to the barn, and I went into the house, and, after making a hasty breakfast and getting together a few clothes, sat down at the table, where Tim had rested his drowsy head all night. I wrote two notes. One was to Perry and was very brief. The other was brief, but it was to Mary. When I took up the pen it was to tell her all I knew and felt. When at last I sealed the envelope it was on a single sheet of paper, bearing a few formal words, while the scuttle by the fireplace held all my fine sentiments in the torn slips of paper I had tossed there. I told Mary that I knew that she did not care for me and had found herself out. If it was her wish, we would begin again where we were that night when I saw her first, and I would guide myself into the future all alone, half happy anyway in the knowledge that it was best for her and best for Tim. Was I wrong, a single word would bring me back. I was to be away for three days, and when I returned I should look by the door-sill for her answer. If none was there, it was all I had a right to expect. If one was there—I quit writing then—it seemed so hopeless.

* * * * * *

Tip and I crossed Thunder Knob at noon. As we turned the crest of the hill and began the descent into the wooded gut, my companion looked back and waved his hand.

"Good-by to Black Log," he cried. "It's the last I'll ever see of you."

He turned to me and tried to smile, but a deep-set frown took possession of his face, and he hung his head in silence, watching the wheels as we jolted on and on.

We wound down the steep way into the gut, following a road that at times seemed to disappear altogether, and leave us to break our way through the underbrush. Then it reappeared in a broken corduroy that bridged a bog for a mile, and lifted itself plainly into view again with a stony back where we began to climb the second mountain. The sun was ahead of us when we reached the crest of that long hill. Behind us, Thunder Knob lifted its rocky head, hiding from us the valley of our troubles. Before us, miles away, all capped with clouds of gold and red was the sunset country, but still beyond the mountains. The gray colt halted to catch his breath, and with the whip I pointed to the west, glowing with the warm evening fires.

"Yonder's Happy Valley, Tip," I said, "miles away still. It will take us another day to reach it."

"It will take you forever to reach it," was the half-growled retort. "I ain't chasin' sunsets. Here's Happy Walley—my Happy Walley, right below us, and the smoke you see curlin' up th'oo the trees is from the John Shadrack clearin'."

A great wall, hardly a mile away, as the crow flies, the third mountain rose, bare and forbidding. Below us, a narrow strip of evergreen wound away to the south as far as our eyes could reach, and at wide intervals thin columns of smoke sifting through the trees marked the abodes of the dwellers of Tip's Elysium. Peace must be there, if peace dwells in a land where all that breaks the stillness seems the drifting of the smoke through the pine boughs. The mountain's shadow was over it and deepening fast, warning us to hurry before the road was lost in blackness. But away off there in the west, where a half score of peaks lifted their summits above the nearer ranges, all purple and gold and red, a heap of cloud coals glowed warm and beautiful over the sunset land. My heart yearned for that land, but I had to turn from the contemplation of its distant joys to the cold, gloomy reality below me.

The whip fell sharply across the gray colt's back, and he jumped ahead. Down the steep slope, over rocks and ruts we clattered, the buggy swinging to and fro, and Tip holding fast with both hands, muttering warnings. The gray colt broke into a run. All my strength failed to check him. Faster and faster we went, and now Tip was swearing. I prayed for a level stretch or a bit of a hill, for the wagon had run away too, and where the wagon and the horse join in a mad flight there must come a sudden ending to their career. The mountain-road offered me no hope. Steeper and steeper it was as we dashed on. Tip became very quiet. Once I glanced from the fleeing horse to him, and I saw that his face was white and set.

"Get out, Tip," I cried. "Jump back, over the seat."

"Not me," said he, grimly. "We come to Happy Walley together, me and you, and together we'll finish the trip."

He lent a hand on the reins, but it was useless, for the wagon and the horse were running away together, and there was nothing to do but to try to guide them.

"Pull closer to the bank at the bend ahead," Tip cried.

Almost before the warning passed his lips we had shot around the projecting rock, where the road had been cut from the mountain-side. We were near our journey's end then, for at the foot of the embankment that sheered down at our left we heard the swish of a mountain-stream. The horse went down. There was a cry from Tip—a sound of splintering wood—something seemed to strike me a brutal blow. Then I lay back, careless, fearless, and was rocked to sleep.



XVIII

She sat smoking.

Had I never heard of her before, had I opened my eyes as I did that day to see her sitting before me, I should have exclaimed, "It's John Shadrack's widder!"

So, with the crayon portrait, gilt-framed, that hung on the wall behind her, I should have cried, "And that is John Shadrack!"

This crayon "enlargement" presented John with very black skin and spotless white hair. His head was tilted back in a manner that made the great bushy beard seem to stick right out from the frame, and gave the impression that the old man was choking down a fit of uproarious laughter. I knew, of course, that he had been posed that way to better show his collar and cravat. Though Tip had described him to me as a rather gloomy, taciturn person, the impression gained in the long contemplation of his picture as I lay helpless on the bed never changed. To me he was the ideal citizen of Happy Valley, and the acquaintance I formed then and there with his wife served only to endear him to me.

She sat smoking. I contemplated her a very long while and she gazed calmly back. A score of times I tried to speak, but something failed me, and when I attempted to wave my hand in greeting to her I could not lift it from the bed.

At last strength came.

"This is John Shadrack's house?" I said.

"Yes," said she, "and I'm his widder."



She came to my side and stood looking down at me very hard. I saw a woman in the indefinable seasons past fifty. In my vague mental condition, the impression of her came slowly. First it was as though I saw three cubes, one above the other, the largest in the middle. Then these took on clothing, blue calico with large polka dots, and the topmost one crowned itself with thin wisps of hair, parted in the middle and plastered down at the side. So, little by little, John Shadrack's widow grew on me, till I saw her a square little old woman, with a wrinkled, brown face, a perpetual smile and a pipe that snuffled in a homely, comfortable way.

I smiled. You couldn't help smiling when Mrs. John Shadrack looked down at you.

"It's been such a treat to have you," she cried. "I've been enjoyin' every minute of your visit."

This was puzzling. How long Mrs. John Shadrack had been entertaining me, or I had been entertaining her, I had not the remotest idea. A very long while ago I had seen a spire of smoke curling through the trees in Happy Valley, and I had been told that it was from her hearth. Then we had gone plunging madly down the hill to it, Tip, the gray colt and I. We had turned a sharp bend, we had heard the swish of a mountain-stream. There my memory failed me. I had awakened to find myself helpless on a bed, strangely hard, but, oh, so restful! Then she had appeared, sitting there smoking.

"You are the first stranger as has been here since the tax collector last month," she said, beginning to clear away the mystery. "I love strangers."

"How long have I been here?" I asked.

"Since last Wednesday," she answered.

"And this is what?"

"The next Saturday. I've had you three days. You was a bit wrong here sometimes." She tapped her head solemnly. "But I powwowed."

"You powwowed me," I cried with all the spirit I could muster, for such treatment was not to my liking. I never had any faith in charms.

"Of course," she replied. "Does you think I'd let you die? Why, when me and Tip pulled you out of the creek you was a sight, you was, and you was wrong here." Again she tapped her head. "You needn't complain. Ain't you gittin' well agin? Didn't the powwow do it?"

Hardly, I thought. I must have recovered in spite of it. But the old woman spoke with pride of her skill, and if she had not saved me by her occult powers, she had at least helped to drag me from the creek. For that I was grateful, so I smiled to show my thanks.

"What did you powwow for?" I asked, after a long while.

She had seated herself on the edge of the bed and was contemplating me gravely.

"Everything," she answered. "I never had a case like yours. I never had a patient who was run away with, and kicked on the head, and drownded. So I says to Tip, I says, 'I'll do everything. I'll treat for asthmy, erysipelas and pneumony, rheumatism and snake-bite, for the yallers and——'"

"Hold on," I pleaded. "I haven't had all that."

"You mought have had any one of 'em," she said firmly. "You should 'a' seen yourself when we found you down there in the creek. Can't you feel that bandage?" She lifted my hand to my head gently. I seemed to have a great turban crowning me. "That's where you was kicked," she went on. "You otter 'a' seen that spot. I used my Modern Miracle Salve there. It's worked wonderful, it has. I was sorry you had no bones broken so I could 'a' tried it for them, too."

"I'm satisfied with what I have," said I quietly. "It was pretty lucky I got off as well as I did after a runaway, and the creek and the kick." Then, to myself, I added, "And the powwowing and the salve."

I tried to lift my head, but could not. At first I thought it was the turban, but a sharp pain told me that there was a spot there that might be well worth seeing. For a long time I lay with my eyes closed, trying not to care, and when I opened them again, John Shadrack's widow was still on the edge of the bed, smoking.

"Feel better now?" she asked calmly.

"Yes," I answered. "The ache has gone some."

"I was powwowin' agin!" she said. "Couldn't you hear me saying Dutch words? Them was the charm."

"I guess I was sleeping," I returned a bit irritably.

How the store would have smiled could it have seen me there on the bed, in that bare little room in John Shadrack's widow's clutches! Many a night, around the stove, Isaac Bolum, and Henry Holmes and I had had it tooth and nail over the power of the powwow. In the store there was not always an outspoken belief in the efficacy of the charm, but there was an undercurrent of sentiment in favor of the supernatural. Against this I had fought. Perhaps it was merely for the joy of the argument that so often I had turned a fire of ridicule on the dearest traditions of the valley. Time and again, when some credulous one had lifted his voice in honest support of a silly superstition, I had jeered him into a grumbled, shamefaced disavowal. Once I sat in the graveyard at midnight, in the full of the moon, just to convince Ira Spoonholler that his grandfather was keeping close to his proper plot. And here I was, prone and helpless, being powwowed not for one ailment, but for all the diseases known in Happy Valley. How I blessed Tip! When we started he should have told me of the powers of our hostess. I would rather have undergone a hundred runaways than one week with that old woman muttering her Dutch over my senseless form. But I liked the good soul. Her intentions were so excellent. She was so cheery. Even now she was offering me a piece of gingerbread.

I ate it ravenously.

Then I asked, "Where is Tip?"

"He's gone down the walley to my brother-in-law, Harmon Shadrack's. He's tryin' to borry a me-yule."

"A what?"

"A me-yule. The colt was dead beside you in the creek. Him and me fixed up the buggy agin, and he's gone to borry Harmon's me-yule so as you uns can git back to Black Log."

"Tip's left Black Log forever," I said firmly.

Then John Shadrack's widow laughed. She laughed so hard that she blew the ashes out of her pipe, and they showered down over my face, and made me wink and sputter.

"There—there," she said solicitously, dusting them away with her hand. "But it tickled me so to hear you say Tip wasn't goin' back. Why, he's been most crazy since you come. He's afraid his wife'll marry agin before he gits home. I've been tellin' him how nice it was to have you both, and that jest makes him roar. He's never been away so long before."

"He thinks maybe Nanny will give him up this time?"

"Exact."

The old woman smoked in silence a long while. Then she said suddenly, "She must be a lovely woman."

"Who?" I asked.

"Tip's wife."

"Who told you?" I demanded.

"Tip."

This was strange in a fugitive husband, one who had fled across the mountains to escape a perpetual yammering.

"Tip!" I said.

"Yes, Tip," she answered. "Him and me was settin' there in the kitchen last night, and you was sleepin' away in here, and he told me all about Black Log. It must be a lovely place—Black Log—so different from Happy Walley. There's no folks here, that's the trouble. There's Harmonses a mile down the walley, and below him there's the Spinks a mile, and up the walley across the run there's my brother, Joe Smith, and his family—but we don't often have strangers here. The tax collector, he was up last month, and then you come. You have been a treat. I ain't enjoyed anything so much for a long time. There's nothin' like company."

"Even when it can't talk?" I said.

"But I could powwow," she answered cheerily. "Between fixin' up the buggy, and cookin' and makin' you and Tip comfortable and powwowin' you, I ain't had a minute's time to think—it's lovely."

"What has Tip been doing all this while?"

"Talkin' about his wife. She must be nice. Did you ever hear her sing?"

"I should say I had," I answered.

The whining strains of "Jordan's Strand" came wandering out of the past, out of the kitchen, joining with the sizzle of the cooking and the clatter of the pans.

"I should say I had," I said again.

"She must be a splendid singer," John Shadrack's widow exclaimed with much enthusiasm. "Tip says she has one of the best tenor voices they is. He says sometimes he can hear her clean from his clearin' down to your barn."

"Farther," said I. "All the way to the school-house."

"Indeed! Now that's nice. I allow she must be very handsome."

"Handsome?" said I, a bit incredulous.

"Why, Tip says she's the best-lookin' woman in the walley, and that she's a terrible tasty dresser."

"Terrible," I muttered.

"Indeed! Now that's nice. And is she spare or fleshy?"

"Medium," I said. "Just right."

"That's nice. But what'll she run to? It makes a heap of difference to a woman what she runs to. Now I naterally take on."

"I should say Nanny Pulsifer would naturally lose weight," I answered.

"That's nice. It's so much better to run to that—it's easier gittin' around. Tip says she has a be-yutiful figger. There's nothin' like figger. If there's anythin' I hate to see it's a first-class gingham fittin' a woman like it was hung there to air. But about Tip's wife agin—she must have a lovely disposition?"

"Splendid," I said.

"That's what Tip says. He told me that oncet in a while when he was kind of low-down she'd git het-up and spited like, but ordinarily, he says, she's jest a-singin' and a-singin' and makin' him comf'table and helpin' the children. And them children! I'm jest longin' to see 'em. They must be lovely."

"From what Tip says," I interjected.

"From what Tip says," she went on. "He was tellin' me about Earl and Alice Eliza, and Pearl and Cevery and the rest of 'em. He says it's jest a pickter to see 'em all in bed together—a perfect pickter."

"A perfect picture," said I sleepily.

"Tip must have a lovely home. Why, he tells me they have a sewin'-machine."

"Lovely," said I. "And a spring-bed."

"And a double-heater stove," said she.

"And an accordion," said I.

"And a washin'-machine," said she.

"And two hogs."

"And he tells me he's going to git her a melodium."

"Indeed," said I. "Why, I thought he was never going back."

"To sech a lovely home?" The old woman held up her hands. "He's goin' jest as soon as he gets that me-yule and you're able." She laid her hand on my forehead. "There," she cried, "it's painin' you again, poor thing—that terrible spot."

It was hurting, despite the Modern Miracle, and I closed my eyes to bear it better. Over me, away off, as if from the heavens, I heard a sonorous rumble of mystery words. I felt a hand softly stroking my brow. But I didn't care. It was only Dutch, a foolish charm, a heritage of barbarity and ignorance, but I was too weary to protest. It entertained John Shadrack's widow, and I was going to sleep.

Tip was waiting for me to awake.

"I've got the mule," he said, when I opened my eyes, "and I thought you was never goin' to quit sleepin'; I thought the widder was joshin' me when she said you was all right; I thought mebbe she had drumpt it, she sees so much in dreams."

"What day is this?" I asked.

"Sunday," Tip answered. "I 'low we'll start at daybreak to-morrow, and by sundown we'll be in Six Stars."

"In Six Stars!" said I. "I thought you'd left Six Stars forever."

"That ain't here nor there," he snapped. "I've got to git you back."

"Then you won't go to-morrow," said I. "Look here—I can just lift my hands to my head—that's all. It'll take a whole week's powwowing to get me to sit up even."

"What did I tell you, Tip?" cried John Shadrack's widow. She handed me a piece of gingerbread just to chew on till she got some breakfast for me, and while I munched it, Tip and I argued it out.

"Nanny'll think I've left her," Tip said.

"You did, Tip," said I. "You ran away forever."

"She'll be gittin' married agin," pleaded Tip.

"Serves you right," said I. Then, to myself, "Not unless the other man's an utter stranger."

"She hasn't enough wood chopped to last a week," said Tip.

"She chopped the last wood-pile herself," said I.

"There's Cevery," pleaded Tip. "Cevery never done me no harm, and who'll dandle him?"

"The same good soul that dandled him the day you rode over the mountain," I answered.

"But it's a good half mile from our house to the spring," Tip said, "and who'll carry the water?"

"Earl and Pearl and Alice Eliza," I replied. "They've always done it; why worry now?"

"Well, I don't care nohow," Tip cried, stamping the floor. "I want to go back to Black Log."

"So do I, Tip," I said; "but—there's that bad spot on my head again."

"Now see what you've done with your argyin', Tip Pulsifer," cried the old woman, running to me. "Poor thing—ain't the Miracle workin'?"

"I guess it is, but that's an awful bad spot—that's right, Widow, powwow it."

* * * * * *

For ten long days more Mrs. Tip Pulsifer chopped her own wood, Cevery went undandled, and Earl and Pearl and Alice Eliza carried the water that half mile from the spring. For nine long days more John Shadrack's widow entertained the two strangers who had sought a refuge in Happy Valley, and found it. Rare pleasure did John Shadrack's widow have from our visit. There seemed no way she could repay us. It did her old heart good to have someone to whom she could recount the manifold virtues of her John—and a wonderful man John was, I judge. Had I not come, she might have lost the Heaven-given gift of powwowing, for there is no sickness in Happy Valley—the people die without it. It was a pleasure to have Mark settin' around the kitchen; it was elevatin' to hear Tip tell of his home and his wife and children; and as for cooking, it was no pleasure to cook for just one.

"You must come agin," she cried, on the morning of that ninth day, as she stood in the doorway of her little log-house and waved her apron at us. "It's been a treat to have you."

So we went away, Tip and I, with Harmon Shadrack's mule and the battered buggy. Our backs were turned to the Sunset Land. Our faces were toward the East and the red glow of the early morning. When we saw Thunder Knob again, Happy Valley was far below us, and only the thin spire of smoke drifting through the pines marked the Shadrack clearing. I kissed my hand in farewell salute to it. Perhaps John's widow saw me—she sees so much in her dreams.

"There's no place like Black Log," said Tip, as we turned the crest of Thunder Knob. "Mind how pretty it is—mind the shadders on the ridge yon—and them white barns. Mind the big creek—there by the kivered bridge—ain't it gleamin' cheerful? There's no place like our walley."



XIX

It was dark when I reached home. Opening the door, I groped my way across the room till I found the lamp and lighted it. Then I sat down a minute to think. Two weeks is a very short time, but when you have been over the mountains and back, when you have hovered for days close to the banks of the Styx, when you have huddled for days close to the Shadrack stove, listening to the widow's stories of her John and Tip's praise of his wife, then a fortnight seems an age. But everything was as I had left it. Even the pen leaned against the inkwell and the scraps of paper littered the floor where I had tossed them that morning, when Tip and I started over the mountain. Those scraps were part of the letter I did not send to Mary. They flashed to me the thought of the one I had sent, and of the answer I never expected. It was foolish to look, but I had told her to slip her note under the door, if she did send it, and I was taking no chances. Seizing the lamp, I hobbled to the kitchen, and laughing to myself at the whole absurd proceeding, leaned over and swept the floor with the light.

Right on the sill it lay, a small white envelope! I did not waste time hobbling back to my chair and the table. I sat right down on the floor with the lamp at my side, and tore open the note and read it.

"Dear Mark. Please come to me."

That was all she said. It was enough. It was all I wanted in the world.

Once I had been disappointed, but now there was no mistaking it. Upside down, backward and forward I read it, right side up and criss-cross, rubbing my eyes a half a hundred times, but there was her appeal—no question of it. After all, all was well. And when Mary calls I must go, even if I have crossed two mountains and am supperless. All the bitterness had gone. All those days of brooding were forgotten, for I could go again up the road, my white road, to the hill, and the light there would burn for me.

Then Tim came!



I was still sitting on the floor when he came, reading the note over and over, with the lamp beside me.

With Captain and Colonel at his heels he burst in upon me.

"Well, Mark, you scoundrel," he cried, laughing, as he caught me by the arm and lifted me up. "Where have you been?"

"Travelling," I answered grimly. "And you—what are you doing here?"

"I came to find you," he said. "Do you suppose you can disappear off the face of the earth for two weeks and that I will not be worried? Why, I came from New York to hunt you up—just got here this afternoon and was over at Bolum's when we saw the light. Now give an account of yourself."

"It isn't necessary," said I, smiling complacently. I put the lamp on the table and picked up my hat. "I'll be back in a while," I said. "I'm going up to see Mary."

"To see Mary?" Tim cried.

"Yes, to see Mary," I answered.

Then, with a little flourish of triumph, I handed him her note.

Tim read it. His face became very grave, and he looked from it to me, and then turned and, with an elbow resting on the mantel, stood gazing down into the empty fireplace.

"Well?" I exclaimed, angered by his mood.

"This is two weeks old, Mark," he said, handing me the paper.

"What of it?" I cried querulously, putting on my hat and moving to the door.

My hand was on the knob turning it, when Tim said, "Mary has left the valley."

It did not bother me much when he said that. I was getting so used to being knocked about that a blow or two more made little difference. The knob was not turned though. It shot back with a click, and I leaned against the door, staring at my brother.

"And when did she go?" I asked. "And where—back to Kansas?"

"To New York," Tim answered, "and with Weston—she has married Weston."

I was glad the door was there, for that trip over the mountain, with the creek, and the powwowing and all that, had left me still a little wobbly. Tim's announcement was not adding to my spirit. Long I gazed at his quiet face; and I knew well enough that he was speaking the truth. And, perhaps, after all, the truth was best. It was all over, anyway, and we were just where we started before she came to the valley.

I was just where I was before I found that note lying on the door-sill. I had been foolish, sitting there on the floor reading that message of hers that she had belied. But that was only for a minute, and I would never be foolish again. Trust me for that.

"She has married Weston," I said. "Well, the little flirt!"

Tim got down on the hearth and began piling paper and kindling and logs in the fireplace. He started the blaze, and when it was going cheerily he looked up to find me in my old chair by the table, with Captain beside me, his head on my knee as I stroked it.

"The little flirt!" I said again, bound that he should hear me.

He heard. He took his old chair, and resting his elbows on the table, resting his chin in his hands, a favorite attitude of his, he sat there eying me quietly.

"The little what, Mark?" he said at last.

"Flirt," I snapped.

It was simply a braggart's way. I knew it. Tim knew it, too. He seemed to look right through me. I was angry with him, I was jealous of him, because she had cared for him. I knew she had. I knew why she had. Tim and I were far apart. But he had made the breach. All the wrong wrought was his, and yet he sat there, calmly eying me, as though he were a righteous judge and I the culprit.

"Why did you say flirt?" he asked quietly.

"She promised to marry me," I said.

"Yes."

"She loved you, Tim."

"Yes—and how did you know it?"

"Perry Thomas saw you that night when you went to stay a minute."

The color left Tim's face and he leaned back in his chair, away from the light into the shadow, and whistled softly.

"You knew it, then," he said, after a long while. "I didn't intend you should, Mark. I didn't intend you ever should."

"Naturally," said I in an icy tone.

"Naturally," said he. His face came into the light again, and he leaned there on the table, watching me as earnestly as ever.

"Naturally," he said again. "I was going away, Mark, never to bother you nor her. Did I know then that you loved her? Had you ever told me? Was I to blame for that moment when I knew I loved the girl and that she loved me?"

"No. I never told you—that's true," I said.

"And yet I knew you cared for her, Mark. I could see that. I saw it all those nights when you would leave me to go plodding up the hill. That's why I went away."

"Why did you go away?" I cried. "You went to see the world and make money——"

"I went because I loved the girl and you did, too," said Tim. And looking into those quiet eyes, I knew that he spoke the truth and I had been blind all this time. "Weston knew it," he went on. "He saw it from the first. That's why he helped me."

"You are not at all an egotist," I sneered, trying to bear up against him.

"Entirely so," he said calmly. "I even thought that I might win, Mark. But then I had so much and you so little chance, I went away to forget. Weston knew that. He knew, too, that there was no Edith Parker."

"And what has Edith Parker to do with all this?" I asked more gently, for he was breaking down my barriers.

"She might have done much for you had I not come back when Weston was shot. Couldn't you see, Mark, how angry Mary was with me for forgetting her? But Weston knew it. And that night—that minute—I only wanted to explain to Mary, and she saw it all, Mark, and I saw it all—and we forgot. Then she told me of you."

"She told you rather late," said I.

"But she would have kept her promise. Couldn't you forgive her, Mark, for that one moment of forgetting? It was just one moment, and I left her then forever. We thought you'd never know."

"And thinking that, you came whistling down the road that night," I sneered. "You came whistling like a man mightily pleased with his conquest—or, perhaps you sang so gayly from sheer joy in your own goodness. It seems to me at times like that a man would——"