"She does know it; she has known it ever since the night we came into Springvale in 1854."

My father turned to the door. Then he put his arms about me and kissed my forehead. "You have your mother's face, Phil." How full of tenderness his tones were!

In the office I saw Judson moving restlessly before the windows. He had been waiting there for some time, and he frowned on me as I passed him. He was a man of small calibre. His one gift was that of money-getting.

By the careful management of the Whately store in the owner's absence he began to add to his own bank account. With the death of Mr. Whately he had assumed control, refusing to allow any investigation of affairs until, to put it briefly, he was now in entire possession. Poor Mrs. Whately hardly knew what was her own, while her husband's former clerk waxed pompous and well-to-do. Being a vain man, he thought the best should come to him in social affairs, and being a man of medium intellect, he lacked self-control and tact.

This was the nature of the creature who strode into Judge Baronet's private office, slamming the door behind him and presenting himself unannounced. The windows front the street leading down to where the trail crossed the river, and give a view of the glistening Neosho winding down the valley. My father was standing by one of these windows when Judson fired himself into the room. John Baronet's mind was not on Springvale, nor on the river. His thoughts were of his son and of her who had borne him, the sweet-browed woman whose image was in the sacredest shrine of his heart.

Judson's advent was ill-timed, and his excessive lack of tact made the matter worse.

"Mr. Baronet," he began pompously enough, "I must see you on a very grave matter, very grave indeed."

Judge Baronet gave him a chair and sat down across the table from him to listen. Judson had grated harshly on his mood, but he was a man of poise.

"I'll be brief and blunt. That's what you lawyers want, ain't it?" The little man giggled. "But I must advise this step at once as a necessary, a very necessary one."

My father waited. Judson hadn't the penetration to feel embarrassed.

"You see it's like this. If you'll just keep still a minute I can show you, though I ain't no lawyer; I'm a man of affairs, a commercialist, as you would say. A producer maybe is a better term. In short, I'm a money-maker."

My father smiled. "I see," he remarked. "I'll keep still. Go on."

"Well, now, I'm a widower that has provided handsome for my first wife's remains. I've earned and paid for the right to forget her."

The great broad-shouldered, broad-minded man before the little boaster looked down to hide his contempt.

"I've did my part handsome now, you'll admit; and being alone in the world, with no one to enjoy my prosperity with me, I'm lonesome. That's it, I'm lonesome. Ain't you sometimes?"

"Often," my father replied.

"Now I know'd it. We're in the same boat barring a great difference in ages. Why, hang it, Judge, let's get married!" He giggled explosively and so failed to see the stern face of the man before him.

"I want a young woman, a pretty girl, I've a right to a pretty girl, I think. In fact, I want Marjory Whately. And what's more, I'm going to have her. I've all but got the widder's consent now. She's under considerable obligation to me."

Across John Baronet's mind there swept a picture of the Chattanooga battle field. The roar of cannon, the smoke of rifles, the awful charge on charge, around him. And in the very heart of it all, Irving Whately wounded unto death, his hands grasping the Springvale flag, his voice growing faint.

"You will look after them, John? Phil promised to take care of Marjie. It makes this easier. I believe they will love each other, John. I hope they may. When they do, give them my blessing. Good-bye." Across this vision Judson's thin sharp voice was pouring out words.

"Now, Baronet, you see, to be plain, it's just this way. If I marry Marjory, folks'll say I'm doing it to get control of the widder's stock. It's small; but they'll say it."

"Why should it be small?" My father's voice was penetrating as a knife-thrust. Judson staggered at it a little.

"Business, you know, management you couldn't understand. She's no hand at money matters."

"So it seems," my father said dryly.

"But you'd not understand it. To resume. Folks'll say I'm trying to get the whole thing, when all I really want is the girl, the girl now. She'll not have much at best; and divided between her and her mother, there'll be little left for Mrs. Whately to go on livin' on, with Mrs. Judson's share taken out. Now, here's my point precisely, precisely. You take the widder yourself. You need a wife, and Mrs. Whately's still good-looking most ways. She was always a pretty, winsome-faced woman.

"You've got a plenty and getting more all the time. You could provide handsome for her the rest of her life. You'd enjoy a second wife, an' she'd be out of my way. You see it, don't you? I'll marry Marjie, an' you marry her mother, kind of double wedding. Whew! but we'd make a fine couple of grooms. What's in gray hair and baldness, anyhow? But there's one thing I can't stand for. Gossip has begun to couple the name of your boy with Miss Whately. Now he's just a very boy, only a year or two older'n she, and nowise able to take care of her properly, you'll admit; and it's silly. Besides, Conlow was telling me just an hour or more ago, that Phil and Lettie was old-time sweethearts. I've nothing to do with Phil's puppy love, however. I'm here to advise with you. Shall we clinch the bargain now, or do you want to think about it a little while? But don't take long. It's a little sudden maybe to you. It's been on my mind since the day I got that memorial window in an' Marjory sang 'Lead Kindly Light,' standing there in the light of it. It was a service for my first wife sung by her that was to be my second, you might almost say. Dr. Hemingway talked beautiful, too, just beautiful. But I've got to go. Business don't bother you lawyers,"—he was growing very familiar now,—"but us merchants has to keep a sharp eye to time. When shall I call?" He rose briskly. "When shall I call?" he repeated.

My father rose up to his full height. His hands were clasped hard behind his back. He did not lift his eyes to the expectant creature before him, and the foxy little widower did not dream how near to danger he was. With the self-control that was a part of John Baronet's character, he replied in an even voice:

"You will come when I send for you."

That evening my father told me all that had taken place.

"You are a man now, and must stand up against this miserable cur. But you must proceed carefully. No hot-headed foolishness will do. He will misjudge your motives and mine, and he can plant some ugly seeds along your way. Property is his god. He is daily defrauding the defenceless to secure it. When I move against him it will be made to appear that I do it for your sake. Put yourself into the place where, of your own wage-earning power, you can keep a wife in comfort, not luxury yet. That will come later, maybe. And then I'll hang this dog with a rope of his own braiding. But I'll wait for that until you come fully into a man's estate, with the power to protect what you love."



CHAPTER XIII

THE TOPEKA RALLY

And men may say what things they please, and none dare stay their tongue. But who has spoken out for these—the women and the young?

—KIPLING.

Henceforth I had one controlling purpose. Mine was now the task to prove myself a man with power to create and defend the little kingdom whose throne is builded on the hearthstone. I put into my work all the energy of my youth and love and hope.

I applied myself to the study of law, and I took hold of my father's business interests with a will. I was to enter into a partnership with him when I could do a partner's work. He forebore favors, but he gave me opportunity to prove myself. Stories of favoritism on account of my father's position, of my wasteful and luxurious habits, ludicrous enough in a little Kansas town in the sixties, were peddled about by the restless little widower. By my father's advice I let him alone and went my way. I knew that silently and persistently John Baronet was trailing him. And I knew the cause was a righteous one. I had lived too long in the Baronet family to think the head of it would take time to follow after a personal dislike, or pursue a petty purpose.

There may have been many happy lovers on these sunny prairies that idyllic summer, now forty years gone by. The story of each, though like that of all the others, seems best to him who lived it. Marjie and I were going through commonplace days, but we were very happy with the joy of life and love. Our old playground was now our trysting place. Together on our "Rockport" we planned a future wherein there were no ugly shadows.

"Marjie, I'll always keep 'Rockport' for my shrine now," I said to her one evening as we were watching the sunset lights on the prairie and the river upstream. "If you ever hear me say I don't care for 'Rockport,' you will know I do not care for you. Now, think of that!"

"Don't ever say it, Phil, please, if you can help it." Marjie's mood was more serious than mine just then. "I used to be afraid of Indians. I am still, if there were need to be, and I looked to you always somehow to keep them away. Do you remember how I would always get on your side of the game when Jean Pahusca played with us?"

"Yes, Marjie. That's where you belong—on my side. That's the kind of game I'm playing."

"Phil, I am troubled a little with another game. I wish Amos Judson would stay away from our house. He can make mother believe almost anything. I don't feel safe about some matters. Judge Baronet tells me not to worry, that he will keep close watch."

"Well, take it straight from me that he will do it," I assured her. "Let's let the widower go his way. He talks about me; says I'm 'callow, that's it, just callow.' I don't mind being callow, as long as it's not catching. Look at the river, how it glistens now. We can almost see the shallows up by the stone cabin below the big cottonwood. The old tree is shapely, isn't it?"

We were looking upstream to where the huge old tree stood out against the golden horizon.

"Let's buy that land, Phil, and build a house under the big cottonwood some day."

"All right, I'm to go out there again soon. Will you go too?"

"Of course," Marjie assented, "if you want me to."

"I am sure I'd never want to take any other girl out there, but just you, dear," I declared.

And then we talked of other things, and promised to put our letters next day, into the deep crevice we had called our post-office these many years. Before we parted that night, I said:

"I'm thinking of going up to Topeka when the band goes to the big political speaking, next week. I will write to you. And be sure to let me find a letter in 'Rockport' when I get back. I'll be so lonely up there."

"Well, find some pretty girl and let her kill time for you."

"Will you and Judson kill time down here?"

"Ugh! no," Marjie shivered in disgust. "I can't bear the sight of his face any more."

"Good! I'll not try to be any more miserable by being bored with somebody I don't care for at Topeka. But don't forget the letter. Good-night, little sweetheart," and after the fashion of lovers, I said good-bye.

Kansas is essentially a land of young politicians. When O'mie took his band to the capital city to play martial music for the big political rally, there were more young men than gray beards on the speakers' stand and on the front seats. I had gone with the Springvale crowd on this jaunt, but I did not consider myself a person of importance.

"There's Judge Baronet's son; he's just out of Harvard. He's got big influence with the party down his way. His father always runs away ahead of his ticket and has the whole district about as he wants it. That's the boy that saved Springvale one night when the pro-slavery crowd was goin' to burn it, the year of the Quantrill raid."

So, I heard myself exploited in the hotel lobby of the old Teft House.

"What's Tell Mapleson after this year, d'ye reckon? Come in a week ago. He's the doggondest feller to be after somethin', an' gets it, too, somehow." The speaker was a seasoned politician of the hotel lobby variety.

"Oh, he's got a big suit of some kind back East. It's a case of money bein' left to heirs, and he's looking out that the heirs don't get it."

"Ain't it awful about the Saline country?" a bystander broke in here. "Just awful! Saw a man from out there last night by the name of Morton. He said that them Cheyennes are raidin' an' murderin' all that can't get into the towns. Lord pity the unprotected settlers way out in that lonely country. This man said they just killed the little children before their mothers' eyes, after they'd scalped and tomahawked the fathers. Just beat them to death, and then carried off the women. Oh, God! but it's awful."

Awful! I lived through the hours of that night from the time young Tell Mapleson had told of Jean Pahusca's plan to seize Marjie, to the moment when I saw her safe in the shelter of her mother's doorway. Awful! And this sort of thing was going on now in the Saline Valley. How could God permit it?

"There was one family out there, they got the mother and baby and just butchered the other children right before her eyes. They hung the baby to a tree later, and when they got ready they killed its mother. It was the only merciful thing they done, I guess, in all their raid, for they made her die a thousand deaths before they really cut off her poor pitiful life."

So I heard the talk running on, and I wondered at the bluff committeeman who broke up the group to get the men in line for a factional caucus.

Did the election of a party favorite, the nomination of a man whose turn had come, or who would be favorable to "our crowd" in his appointments match in importance this terrible menace to life on our Indian frontier? I had heard much of the Saline and the Solomon River valleys. Union soldiers were homesteading those open plains. My father's comrades-in-arms they had been, and he was intensely interested in their welfare. These Union men had wounds still unhealed from service in the Civil War. And the nation they bore these wounds to save, the Government at Washington, was ignorant or indifferent to this danger that threatened them hourly—a danger infinitely worse than death to women. And the State in the vital throes of a biennial election was treating the whole affair as a deplorable incident truly, but one the national government must look out for.

I was young and enthusiastic, but utterly without political ambition. I was only recently out of college, with a scholar's ideals of civic duty. And with all these, I had behind me the years of a frontier life on the border, in which years my experience and inspiration had taught me the value of the American home, and a strong man's duty toward the weak and defenceless. The memories of my mother, the association and training of my father's sister, and my love for Marjie made all women sacred to me. And while these feelings that stirred the finest fibres of my being, and of which I never spoke then, may have been the mark of a less practical nature than most young men have to-day, I account my life stronger, cleaner and purer for having had them.

I could take only a perfunctory interest in the political game about me, and I felt little elation at the courteous request that I should take a seat in the speakers' stand, when the clans did finally gather for a grand struggle for place.

The meeting opened with O'mie's band playing "The Star-Spangled Banner." It brought the big audience to their feet, and the men on the platform stood up. I was the tallest one among them. Also I was least nervous, least anxious, and least important to that occasion. Perfunctorily, too, I listened to the speeches, hearing the grand old Republican party's virtues lauded, and the especial fitness of certain of its color-bearers extolled as of mighty men of valor, with "the burning question of the hour" and "the vital issue of the time" enlarged upon, and "the State's most pernicious evil" threatened with dire besetments. And through it all my mind was on the unprotected, scattered settlements of the Saline Valley, and the murdered children and the defenceless women, even now in the cruel slavery of Indian captivity.

I knew only a few people in the capital city and I looked at the audience with the indifference of a stranger who seeks for no familiar face. And yet, subconsciously, I felt the presence of some one who was watching me, some one who knew me well. Presently the master of ceremonies called for the gifted educator, Richard Tillhurst of Springvale. I knew he was in Topeka, but I had not hunted for him any more than he had sought me out. We mutually didn't need each other. And yet local pride is strong, and I led the hand-clapping that greeted his appearance. He was visibly embarrassed, and ultra-dignified. Education had a representative above reproach in him. Pompously, after the manner of the circumscribed instructor, he began, and for a limited time the travelling was easy. But he made the fatal error of keeping on his feet after his ideas were exhausted. He lost the trail and wandered aimlessly in the barren, trackless realms of thought, seeking relief and finding none, until at length in sheer embarrassment he forced himself to retreat to his seat. Little enthusiasm was expressed and failure was written all over his banner.

The next speaker was a politician of the rip-roaring variety who pounded the table and howled his enthusiasm, whose logic was all expressed in the short-story form, sometimes witty, sometimes far-fetched and often profane. He interested me least of all, and my mind abstracted by the Tillhurst feature went back again to the Plains. I could not realize what was going on when the politician had finished amid uproarious applause, and the chairman was introducing the next speaker, until I caught my father's name, coupled with lavish praise of his merits. There was a graceful folding of his mantle on the shoulders of "his gifted son, just out of Harvard, but a true child of Kansas, with a record for heroism in the war time, and a growing prominence in his district, and an altogether good-headed, good-hearted, and, the ladies all agree, good-looking young man, the handsome giant of the Neosho." And I found myself thrust to the front of the speakers' stand, with applause following itself, and O'mie, the mischievous rascal, striking off a few bars of "See, the Conquering Hero Comes!"

I was taken so completely by surprise that I thought the earth especially unkind not to open at once and let me in. It must have been something of my inheritance of my father's self-control, coupled with my life experience of having to meet emergencies quickly, which all the children of Springvale knew, that pulled me through. The prolonged cheering gave me a moment to get the mastery. Then like an inspiration came the thought to break away from the beaten path of local politics and to launch forth into a plea for larger political ideals. I cited the Civil War as a crucible, testing men. I did not once mention my father, but the company knew his proud record, and there were many present who had fought and marched and starved and bled beside him, men whom his genius and his kindness had saved from peril, even the peril of death. And then out of the fulness of a heart that had suffered, I pled for the lives and homes of the settlers on our Plains frontier. I pictured, for I knew how to picture, the anguish of soul an Indian raid can leave in its wake, and the duty we owe to the homes, our high privilege as strong men and guardians to care for the defenceless, and our opportunity to repay a part at least of the debt we owe to the Union soldier by giving a State's defence to these men, who were homesteading our hitherto unbroken, trackless plains, and building empire westward toward the baths of sunset.

The effort was so boyish, so unlike every other speech that had been made, and yet so full of a young man's honest zeal and profound convictions from a soul stirred to its very depths, that the audience rose to their feet at my closing words, and cheer followed cheer, making the air ring with sound.

When the meeting had finished, I found myself in the centre of a group of men who knew John Baronet and just wouldn't let his son get away without a handshake. I was flushed with the pleasure of such a reception and was doing my best to act well, when a man grasped my hand with a grip unlike any other hand I had ever felt, so firm, so full of friendship, and yet so undemonstrative, that I instinctively returned the clasp. He was a man of some thirty years, small beside me, and there was nothing unusual in his face or dress or manner to attract my attention. A stranger might not turn to him a second time in a crowd, unless they had once spoken and clasped hands.

"My name is Morton," he said. "I know your father, I knew him in the army and before, back in Massachusetts. I am from the Saline River country, and I came down here hoping to find the State more interested in the conditions out our way. You were the only speaker who thought of the needs of the settlers. There are terrible things being done right now."

He spoke so simply that a careless ear would not have detected the strength of the feeling back of the words.

"I'll tell my father I met you," I said cordially, "and I hope, I hope to heaven the captives may be found soon, and the Indians punished. How can a man live who has lost his wife, or his sweetheart, in that way?"

I knew I was blushing, but the matter was so terrible to me. Before he could answer, Richard Tillhurst pushed through the crowd and caught my arm.

"There's an old friend of yours here, who wants to meet you, Mr. Baronet," and he pulled me away.

"I hope I'll see you again," I turned to Mr. Morton to say, and in a moment more, I was face to face with Rachel Melrose. It was she whose presence I had somehow felt in that crowd of strangers. She was handsomer even than I had remembered her, and she had a style of dress new and attractive. One would know that she was fresh from the East, for our own girls and women for the most part had many things to consider besides the latest fashions.

I think Tillhurst mistook my surprise for confusion. He was a man of good principles, but he was a human being, not a saint, and he pursued a purpose selfishly as most of us who are human do.

The young lady grasped my hand in both of hers impulsively.

"Oh, Mr. Baronet, I'm so glad to see you again. I knew you would come to Topeka as soon as you knew I had come West. I just got here two days ago, and I could hardly wait until you came. It's just like old times to see you again."

Then she turned to Tillhurst, standing there greedily taking in every word, his face beaming as one's face may who finds an obstacle suddenly lifted from his way.

"We are old friends, the best kind of friends, Mr. Tillhurst. Mr. Baronet and I have recollections of two delightful years when he was in Harvard, haven't we?"

"Yes, yes," I replied. "Miss Melrose was the only girl who would listen to my praising Kansas while I was in Massachusetts. Naturally I found her delightful company."

"Did he tell you about his girl here?" Tillhurst asked, a trifle maliciously, maybe.

"Of course, I didn't," I broke in. "We don't tell all we know when we go East."

"Nor all you have done in the East when you come back home, evidently," Tillhurst spoke significantly. "I've never heard him mention your name once, Miss Melrose."

"Has he been flirting with some one, Mr. Tillhurst? He promised me faithfully he wouldn't." Her tone took on a disappointed note.

"I'll promise anybody not to flirt, for I don't do it," I cried. "I came home and found this young educator trying to do me mischief with the little girl I told you about the last time I saw you. Naturally he doesn't like me."

All this in a joking manner, and yet a vein of seriousness ran through it somewhere.

Rachel Melrose was adroit.

"We won't quarrel," she said sweetly, "now we do meet again, and when I go down to Springvale to visit your aunt, as you insisted I must do, we'll get all this straightened out. You'll come and take tea with us of course. Mr. Tillhurst has promised to come, too."

The young man looked curiously at me at the mention of Rachel's visit to Springvale. A group of politicians broke in just here.

"We can't have you monopolize 'the handsome giant of the Neosho' all the time," they said, laughing, with many a compliment to the charming young monopolist. "We don't blame him, of course, now, but we need him badly. Come, Baronet," and they hurried me away, giving me time only to thank her for the invitation to dine with her.

At the Teft House letters were waiting for me. One from my father asking me to visit Governor Crawford and take a personal message of some importance to him, with the injunction, "Stay till you do see him." The other was a fat little envelope inscribed in Marjie's handwriting. Inside were only flowers, the red blossoms that grow on the vines in the crevices of our "Rockport," and a sheet of note paper about them with the simple message:

"Always and always yours, Marjie."

Willing or unwilling, I found myself in the thick of the political turmoil, and had it not been for that Indian raiding in Northwest Kansas, I should have plunged into politics then and there, so strong a temptation it is to control men, if opportunity offers. It was late before I could get out of the council and rush to my room to write a hurried but loving letter to Marjie. I had to be brief to get it into the mails. So I wrote only of what was first in my thoughts; herself, and my longing to see her, of the noisy political strife, and of the Saline River and Solomon River outrages, I hurried this letter to the outgoing stage and fell in with the crowd gathering late in the dining-room. I was half way through my meal before I remembered Rachel's invitation.

"I can only be rude to her, it seems, but I'll offer my excuses, and maybe she will let me have the honor of her company home. She will hunt me up before I get out of the hall, I am sure." So I satisfied myself and prepared for the evening gathering.

It was much on the order of the other meeting, except that only seasoned party leaders were given place on the programme.

I asked Rachel for her company home, but she laughingly refused me.

"I must punish you," she said. "When do you go home?"

"Not for two days," I replied. "I have business for my father and the person I am to see is called out of town."

"Then there will be plenty of time later for you. You go home to-morrow, Mr. Tillhurst," she said coquettishly. "Tell his friends in Springvale, he is busy up here." She was a pretty girl, but slow as I was, I began to see method in her manner of procedure. I could not be rude to her, but I resolved then not to go one step beyond the demands of actual courtesy.

In the crowd passing up to the hotel that night, I fell into step with my father's soldier friend, Morton.

"When you get ready to leave Springvale, come out and take a claim on the Saline," he said. "That will be a garden of Eden some day."

"It seems to have its serpent already, Mr. Morton," I replied.

"Well, the serpent can be crushed. Come out and help us do it. We need numbers, especially in men of endurance." We were at the hotel door. Morton bade me good-bye by saying, "Don't forget; come our way when you get the Western fever."

Governor Crawford returned too late for me to catch the stage for Springvale on the same day. Having a night more to spend in the capital, it seemed proper for me to make amends for my unpardonable forgetfulness of Rachel Melrose's invitation to tea by calling on her in the evening. Her aunt's home was at the far side of the town beyond the modest square stone building that was called Lincoln College then. It was only a stone's throw from the State Capitol, the walls of the east wing of which were then being built.

I remember it was a beautiful moonlit night, in early August, and Rachel asked me to take a stroll over the prairie to the southwest. The day had been very hot, and the west had piled up some threatening thunderheads. But the evening breezes fanned them away over the far horizon line and the warm night air was light and dry. The sky was white with the clear luminous moonlight of the open Plains country.

Rachel and I had wandered idly along the gentle rise of ground until we could quite overlook the little treeless town with this Lincoln College and the jagged portion of the State House wing gleaming up beyond.

"Hadn't we better turn back now? Your aunt cautioned us two strangers here not to get lost." I was only hinting my wishes.

"Oh, let's go on to that tree. It's the only one here in this forsaken country. Let's pay our respects to it," Rachel urged.

She was right. To an Easterner's eye it was a forsaken country. From the Shunganunga Creek winding beneath a burden of low, black underbrush, northward to the river with its fringe of huge cottonwoods, not a tree broke the line of vision save this one sturdy young locust spreading its lacy foliage in dainty grace on the very summit of the gentle swell of land between the two streams. Up to its pretty shadowed spaces we took our way. The grass was dry and brown with the August heat, and we rested awhile on the moonlit prairie.

Rachel was strikingly handsome, and the soft light lent a certain tone to her beauty. Her hair and eyes were very dark, and her face was clear cut. There was a dash of boldness, an assumption of authority all prettily accented with smiles and dimples that was very bewitching. She was a subtle flatterer, and even the wisest men may be caught by that bait. It was the undercurrent of sympathy, product of my life-long ideals, my intense pity for the defenceless frontier, that divided my mind and led me away from temptation that night.

"Rachel Melrose, we must go home," I insisted at last. "This tree is all right, but I could show you a cottonwood out above the Neosho that dwarfs this puny locust. And yet this is a gritty sort of sapling to stand up here and grow and grow. I wonder if ever the town will reach out so far as this."

I am told the tree is green and beautiful to-day, and that it is far inside the city limits, standing on the old Huntoon road. About it are substantial homes. South of it is a pretty park now, while near it on the west is a handsome church, one of the city's lions to the stranger, for here the world-renowned author of "In His Steps" has preached every Sabbath for many years. But on that night it seemed far away from the river and the town nestling beside it.

"I'll go down and take a look at your cottonwood before I go home. May I? You promised me last Spring." Rachel's voice was pleasant to hear.

"Why, of course. Come on. Mr. Tillhurst will be there, I am sure, and glad as I shall be to see you."

"Oh, you rogue! always hunting for somebody else. I am not going to loose you from your promise. Remember that you said you'd let everybody else alone when I came. Now your Mr. Tillhurst can look after all the girls you have been flirting with down there, but you are my friend. Didn't we settle that in those days together at dear old Rockport? We'll just have the happiest time together, you and I, and nobody shall interfere to mar our pleasure."

She was leaning toward me and her big dark eyes were full of feeling. I stood up before her. "My dear friend," I took her hand and she rose to her feet. "You have been very, very good to me. But I want to tell you now before you come to Springvale"—she was close beside me, her hand on my arm, gentle and trembling. I seemed like a brute to myself, but I went on. "I want you to know that as my aunt's guest and mine, your pleasure will be mine. But I am not a flirt, and I do not care to hide from you the fact that my little Springvale girl is the light of my life. You will understand why some claims are unbreakable. Now you know this, let me say that it will be my delight to make your stay in the West pleasant." She bowed her proud head on my arm and the tears fell fast. "Oh, Rachel, I'm a beast, a coarse, crude Westerner. Forgive my plain speech. I only wanted you to know."

But she didn't want to know. She wanted me to quit saying anything to her and her beautiful dark hair was almost against my cheek. Gently as I could, I put her from me. Drawing her hand through my arm, I patted it softly, and again I declared myself the bluntest of speakers. She only wept the more, and asked me to take her to her aunt's. I was glad to do it, and I bade her a humble good-bye at the door. She said not a word, but the pressure of her hand had speech. It made me feel that I had cruelly wronged her.

As I started for town beyond the college, I shook my fist at that lone locust tree. "You blamed old sapling! If you ever tell what you saw to-night I hope you'll die by inches in a prairie fire."

Then I hurried to my room and put in the hours of the night, wakeful and angry at all the world, save my own Springvale and the dear little girl so modest and true to me. The next day I left Topeka, hoping never to see it again.



CHAPTER XIV

DEEPENING GLOOM

A yellow moon in splendor drooping, A tired queen with her state oppressed, Low by rushes and sword-grass stooping, Lies she soft on the waves at rest. The desert heavens have felt her sadness; The earth will weep her some dewy tears; The wild beck ends her tune of gladness, And goeth stilly, as soul that fears.

—JEAN INGELOW.

The easiest mental act I ever performed was the act of forgetting the existence of Rachel Melrose. Before the stage had reached the divide beyond the Wakarusa on its southward journey, I was thinking only of Springvale and of what would be written in the letter that I knew was waiting for me in our "Rockport." Oh, I was a fond and foolish lover. I was only twenty-one and Judson may have been right about my being callow. But I was satisfied with myself, as youth and inexperience will be.

Travelling was slow in those rough-going times, and a breakdown on a steep bit of road delayed us. Instead of reaching home at sunset, we did not reach the ford of the Neosho until eight o'clock. As I went up Cliff Street I turned by the bushes and slid down the rough stairway to the ledge below "Rockport." I had passed under the broad, overhanging shelf that made the old playground above, when I suddenly became aware of the nearness of some one to me, the peculiar consciousness of the presence of a human being. The place was in deep shadow, although the full moon was sailing in glory over the prairies, as it had done above the lone Topeka locust tree. My daily visits here had made each step familiar, however. I was only a few feet from the cunningly hidden crevice that had done post-office duty for Marjie and me in the days of our childhood. Just beside it was a deep niche in the wall. Ordinarily I was free and noisy enough in my movements, but to-night I dropped silently into the niche as some one hurried by me, groping to find the way. Instinctively I thought of Jean Pahusca, but Jean never blundered like this. I had had cause enough to know his swift motion. And besides, he had been away from Springvale so long that he was only a memory now. The figure scrambled to the top rapidly.

"I'll guess that's petticoats going up there," I said mentally, "but who's hunting wild flowers out here alone this time of night? Somebody just as curious about me as I am about her, no doubt. Maybe some girl has a lover's haunt down that ledge. I'll have to find out. Can't let my stairway out to the general climbing public."

I was feeling for the letter in the crevice.

"Well, Marjie has tucked it in good and safe. I didn't know that hole was so deep."

I found my letter and hurried home. It was just a happy, loving message written when I was away, and a tinge of loneliness was in it. But Marjie was a cheery, wholesome-spirited lass always, and took in the world from the sunny side.

"There's a party down at Anderson's to-night, Phil," Aunt Candace announced, when I was eating my late supper. "The boys sent word for you to come over even if you did get home late. You are pretty tired, aren't you?"

"Never, if there's a party on the carpet," I answered gayly.

I had nearly reached the Anderson home, and the noisy gayety of the party was in my ears, when two persons met at the gate and went slowly in together.

It was Amos Judson and Lettie Conlow.

"Well, of all the arrangements, now, that is the best," I exclaimed, as I went in after them.

Tillhurst was talking to Marjie, who did not see me enter.

"Phil Baronet! 'The handsome young giant of the Neosho,'" O'mie shouted. "Ladies and gentlemen: This is the very famous orator who got more applause in Topeka this week than the very biggest man there. Oh, my prophetic soul! but we were proud av him."

"Well, I guess we were," somebody else chimed in. "Why didn't you come home with the crowd, handsome giant?"

"He was charmed by that pretty girl, an old sweetheart of his from Massachusetts." Tillhurst was speaking. "You ought to have seen him with her, couldn't even leave when the rest of us did."

There was a sudden silence. Marjie was across the room from me, but I could see her face turn white. My own face flamed, but I controlled myself. And Bud, the blessed old tow-head, came to my rescue.

"Good for you, Phil. Bet we've got one fellow to make a Bothton girl open her eyeth even if Tillhurtht couldn't. He'th jutht jealouth. But we all know Phil! Nobody'll ever doubt old Philip!"

It took the edge off the embarrassment, and O'mie, who had sidled over into Marjie's neighborhood, said in a low voice:

"Tillhurst is a consummit liar, beautiful to look upon. That girl tagged Phil. He couldn't get away an' be a gintleman."

I did not know then what he was saying, but I saw her face bloom again.

Later I had her alone a moment. We were eating water melon on the back porch, half in the shadow, which we didn't mind, of course.

"May I take you home, Marjie, and tell you how sweet that letter was?" I asked.

"Phil, I didn't know you were coming, and Richard Tillhurst asked me just as you came in. I saw Amos Judson coming my way, so I made for the nearest port."

"And you did right, dearie," I said very softly; "but, Marjie, don't forget you are my girl, my only girl, and I'll tell you all about this Topeka business to-morrow night. No, I'll write you a letter to-night when I go home. You'll find it at 'Rockport' to-morrow."

She smiled up at me brightly, saying contentedly, "Oh, you are always all right, Phil."

As we trailed into the kitchen from the water melon feast, Lettie Conlow's dress caught on a nail in the floor. I stooped to loose it, and rasped my hand against a brier clinging to the floppy ruffle (Lettie was much given to floppy things in dress), and behold, a sprig of little red blossoms was sticking to the prickles. These blooms were the kind Marjie had sent me in her letter to Topeka. They grew only in the crevices about the cliff. It flashed into my mind instantly that it was Lettie who had passed me down on that ledge.

"I suppose I'll find her under my plate some morning when I go to breakfast," I said to myself. "She is a trailer of the Plains. Why should she be forever haunting my way, though?"

Fate was against me that night. Judson was called from the party to open the store. A messenger from Red Range had come posthaste for some merchandise. We did not know until the next day that it was the burial clothes for the beautiful young girl whose grave held Dave Mead's heart.

Before Judson left, he came to me with Lettie.

"Will you take this young lady home for me? I must go to the store at once. Business before pleasure with me. That's it, business first. Very sorry, Miss Lettie; Phil will see you safely home."

I was in for the obligation. The Conlows lived four blocks beyond the shop down toward the creek. The way was shadowy, and Lettie clung to my arm. I was tired from my stage ride of a day and a half, and I had not slept well for two nights. I distrusted Lettie, for I knew her disposition as I knew her father's before her.

"Phil, why do you hate me?" she asked at the gate.

"I don't hate you, Lettie. You use an ugly word when you say 'hate,'" I replied.

"There's one person I do hate," she said bitterly.

"Has he given you cause?"

"It's not a man; it's a woman. It's Marjie Whately," she burst out. "I hate her."

"Well, Lettie, I'm sorry, for I don't believe Marjie deserves your hate."

"Of course, you'd say so. But never mind. Marjie's not going to have my hate alone. You'll feel like I do yet, when her mother forces her away from you. Marjie's just a putty ball in her mother's hands, and her mother is crazy about Amos Judson. Oh, I've said too much," she exclaimed.

"You have, Lettie; but stop saying any more." I spoke sternly. "Good-night."

She did not return my greeting, and I heard her slam the door behind her.

That night, late as it was, I wrote a long letter to Marjie. I had no pangs of jealousy, and I felt that she knew me too well to doubt my faith, and yet I wanted just once more to assure her. When I had finished, I went out softly and took my way down to "Rockport." It was one of those glorious midsummer moonlit nights that have in their subdued splendor something more regal than the most gorgeous midday. I was thankful afterwards for the perfect beauty of that peaceful night, with never a hint of the encroaching shadows, the deep gloom of sorrow creeping toward me and my loved one. The town was sleeping quietly. The Neosho was "chattering over stony ways," and whispering its midnight melody. The wooded bottoms were black and glistening, and all the prairies were a gleaming, silvery sea of glory. The peace of God was on the world, the broad benediction of serenity and love. Oh, many a picture have I in my memory's treasure house, that imperishable art gallery of the soul. And among them all, this one last happy night with its setting of Nature's grand handiwork stands clear evermore.

I had put my letter safe in its place, deep where nobody but Marjie would find it. I knew that if even the slightest doubt troubled her this letter would lift it clean away. I told her of Rachel Melrose and of my fear of her designing nature, a fear that grew, as I reflected on her acts and words. I did not believe the young lady cared for me. It was a selfish wish to take what belonged to somebody else. I assured my little girl that only as a gentleman should be courteous, had been my courtesy to Rachel. And then for the first time, I told Marjie of her father's dying message. I had wanted her to love me for myself. I did not want any sense of duty to her father's wishes to sway her. I knew now that she did love me. And I closed the affectionate missive with the words:

"To my father and Aunt Candace you are very dear. Your mother has always been kind to me. I believe she likes me. But most of all, Marjie, your father, who lies wrapped in the folds of that Springvale flag, who gave his life to make safe and happy the land we love and the home we hope to build, your father, sent us his blessing. When the roar of cannon was changing for him to the chant of seraphim, and the glare of the battle field was becoming 'a sea of glass mingled with fire' that burst in splendor over the jewelled walls and battlements of the New Jerusalem, even in that moment, his last thought was of us two. 'I hope they will love each other,' he said to my father. 'If they do, give them my blessing.' And then the night shut down for him. But in the eternal day where he waits our coming and loves us, Marjie, if he knows of what we do here, he is blessing our love.

"Good-night, my dear, dear girl, my wife that is to be, and know now and always there is for me only one love. In sunny ways or shadow-checkered paths, whatever may come, I cannot think other than as I do now. You are life of my life. And so again, good-night."

I had climbed to the rock above the crevice and was standing still as the night about me for the moment when a grip like steel suddenly closed on my neck and an arm like the tentacle of a devilfish slid round my waist. Then the swift adroitness of knee and shoulder bent me backward almost off my feet. I gave a great wrench, and with a power equal to my assailant, struggled with him. It was some moments before I caught sight of his face. It was Jean Pahusca. I think my strength grew fourfold with that glimpse. It was the first time in our lives that we had matched muscle. He must have been the stronger of the two, but discipline and temperate habits had given me endurance and judgment. It was a life-and-death strife between us. He tried to drag me to the edge of the rock. I strove to get him through the bushes into the street. At length I gained the mastery and with my hand on his throat and my knee on his chest I held him fast.

"You miserable devil!" I muttered, "you have the wrong man. You think me weak as O'mie, whose body you could bind. I have a mind to choke you here, you murderer. I could do it and rid the world of you, now." He struggled and I gave him air. There was something princely about him even as he lay in my power. And, fiend as he was, he never lost the spirit of a master. To me also, brute violence was repulsive now that the advantage was all mine.

"You deserve to die. Heaven is saving you for a fate you may well dread. You would be in jail in ten minutes if you ever showed your face here in the daylight, and hanged by the first jury whose verdict could be given. I could save all that trouble now in a minute, but I don't want to be a murderer like you. For the sake of my own hands and for the sake of the man whose son I believe you to be, I'll spare your life to-night on one condition!"

I loosed my hold and stepped away from him. He rose with an effort, but he could not stand at first.

"Leave this country to-night, and never show your face here again. There are friends of O'mie's sworn to shoot you on sight. Go now to your own tribe and do it quickly."

Slowly, like a promise made before high heaven, he answered me.

"I will go, but I shall see you there. When we meet again, my hand will have you by the throat. And—I don't care whose son you are."

He slid down the cliff-side like a lizard, and was gone. I turned and stumbled through the bushes full into Lettie Conlow crouching among them.

"Lettie, Lettie," I cried, "go home."

"I won't unless you will come with me," she answered coaxingly.

"I have taken you home once to-night," I said. "Now you may go alone or stay here as you choose," and I left her.

"You'll live to see the day you'll wish you hadn't said that," I heard her mutter threateningly behind me.

A gray mist had crept over the low-hanging moon. The world, so glorious in its softened radiance half an hour ago, was dull and cheerless now. And with a strange heartache and sense of impending evil I sought my home.

The next day was a busy one in the office. My father was deep in the tangle of a legal case and more than usually grave. Early in the afternoon, Cam Gentry had come into the courthouse, and the two had a long conference. Toward evening he called me into his private office.

"Phil, this land case is troubling me. I believe the papers we want are in that old cabin. Could you go out again to-morrow?" He smiled now. "Go and make a careful search of the premises. If there are any boxes, open them. I will give you an order from Sheriff Karr. And Phil, I believe I wouldn't take Marjie this time. I want to have a talk with her to-morrow, anyhow. You can't monopolize all her time. I saw Mrs. Whately just now and made an appointment with her for Marjie."

When he spoke again, his words startled me.

"Phil, when did you see Jean Pahusca last?"

"Last night, no, this morning, about one o'clock," I answered confusedly.

My father swung around in his chair and stared at me. Then his face grew stern, and I knew my safety lay in the whole truth. I learned that when I was a boy.

"Where was he?" The firing had begun.

"On the point of rock by the bushes on Cliff Street."

"What were you doing there?"

"Looking at the moonlight on the river."

"Did you see him first?"

"No, or he would not have seen me."

"Phil, save my time now. It's a matter of great importance to my business. Also, it is serious with you. Begin at the party. Whose escort were you?"

"Lettie Conlow's."

My father looked me straight in the eyes. I returned his gaze steadily.

"Go on. Tell me everything." He spoke crisply.

"I was late to the party. Tillhurst asked Marjie for her company just as I went in. Judson was going her way, and she chose the lesser of two—pleasures, we'll say. Just before the party broke up, Judson was called out. He had asked Lettie for her company, and he shoved her over to my tender mercies."

"And you went strolling up on Cliff Street in the moonlight with her till after midnight. Is that fair to Marjie?" I had never heard his voice sound so like resonant iron before.

"I, strolling? I covered the seven blocks from Anderson's to Conlow's in seven minutes, and stood at the gate long enough to let the young lady through, and to pinch my thumb in the blamed old latch, I was in such a hurry; and then I made for the Baronets' roost."

"But why didn't you stay there?" he asked.

I blushed for a certainty now. My actions seemed so like a brain-sick fool's.

"Now, Phil," my father said more kindly, "you remember I told you when you came to let me know you were twenty-one, that you must not get too old to make a confidant of me. It is your only safe course now."

"Father, am I a fool, or is it in the Baronet blood to love deeply and constantly even unto death?"

The strong man before me turned his face to the window.

"Go on," he said.

"I had been away nearly a week. I sat up and wrote a long letter to Marjie. It would stand as clean evidence in court. I'm not ashamed of what I put on paper, although it is my own business. Then I went out to a certain place under the cliff where Marjie and I used to hide our valentines and put little notes for each other years ago."

"The post-office is safer, Phil."

"Not with Tell Mapleson as postmaster."

He assented, and I went on. "I had come to the top again and was looking at the beauty of the night, when somebody caught me by the throat. It was Jean Pahusca."

Briefly then I related what had taken place.

"And after that?" queried my questioner.

"I ran into Lettie Conlow. She may have been there all the time. I do not know, but I felt no obligation to take care of a girl who will not take care of herself. It was rude, I know, and against my creed, but that's the whole truth. I may be a certain kind of a fool about a girl I know. But I'm not the kind of gay fool that goes out after divers and strange women. Bill Mead told me this morning that he and Bud Anderson passed Lettie somewhere out west alone after one o'clock. He was in a hurry, but he stopped her and asked her why she should be out alone. I think Bud went home with her. None of the boys want harm to come to her, but she grows less pleasant every day. Bill would have gone home with her, but he was hurrying out to Red Range. Dave's girl died out there last night. Poor Dave!"

"Poor Dave!" my father echoed, and we sat in silence with our sympathy going out to the fine young man whose day was full of sorrow.

"Well," my father said, "to come back to our work now. There are some ugly stories going that I have yet to get hold of. Cam Gentry is helping me toward it all he can. This land case will never come to court if Mapleson can possibly secure the land in any other way. He'd like to ruin us and pay off that old grudge against you for your part in breaking up the plot against Springvale back in '63 and the suspicion it cast on him. Do you see?"

I was beginning to see a little.

"Now, you go out to the stone cabin to-morrow afternoon and make a thorough search for any papers or other evidence hidden there. The man who owned that land was a degenerate son of a noble house. There are some missing links in the evidence that our claim is incontestable. The other claimant to the land is entirely under Tell Mapleson's control. That's the way it shapes up to me. Meanwhile if it gets into court, two or more lines are ready to tighten about you. Keep yourself in straight paths and you are sure at last to win. I have no fear for you, Phil, but be a man every minute."

I understood him. As I left the courthouse, I met O'mie. There was a strange, pathetic look in his eyes. He linked his arm in mine, and we sauntered out under the oak trees of the courthouse grounds.

"Phil, do ye remimber that May mornin' when ye broke through the vines av the Hermit's Cave? I know now how the pityin' face av the Christ looked to the man who had been blind. I know how the touch av his hands felt to them as had been lepers. They was made free and safe. Wake as I was that sorry mornin' I had one thought before me brain wint dark, the thought that I might some day help you aven a little. I felt that way in me wakeness thin. To-day in me strength I feel it a hundred times more. Ye may not nade me, but whin ye do, I'm here. Whin I was a poor lost orphan boy, worth nothin' to nobody, you risked life an' limb to drag me back from the agony av a death by inches. And now, while I'm only a rid-headed Irishman, I can do a dale more thinkin' and I know a blamed lot more 'n this blessed little burg iver drames of. They ain't no bloodhound on your track, but a ugly octopus of a devilfish is gittin' its arms out after you. They's several av 'em. Don't forgit, Phil; I know I'd die for your sake."

"O'mie, I believe you, but don't be uneasy about me. You know me as well as anybody in this town. What have I to fear?"

"Begorra, there was niver a purer-hearted boy than you iver walked out of a fun-lovin', rollickin' boyhood into a clane, honest manhood. You can't be touched."

Just then the evening stage swung by and swept up the hill.

"Look at the ould man, now, would ye? Phil, he's makin' fur Bar'net's. Bet some av your rich kin's comin' from the East, bringing you their out-av-style clothes, an' a few good little books and Sunday-school tracts to improve ye."

There was only one passenger in the stage, a woman whose face I could not see.

That evening O'mie went to Judson at closing time.

"Mr. Judson, I want a lave of absence fur a week or tin days," he said.

"What for?" Judson was the kind of man who could never be pleasant to his employees, for fear of losing his authority over them.

"I want to go out av town on business," O'mie replied.

"Whose business?" snapped Judson.

"Me own," responded O'mie calmly.

"I can't have it. That's it. I just can't have my clerks and underlings running around over the country taking my time."

"Then I'll lave your time here whin I go," O'mie spoke coolly. He had always been respectful toward his employer, but he had no servile fear of him.

"I just can't allow it," Judson went on. "I need you here." O'mie was the life of the business, the best asset in the store. "It may be a slack time, but I can't have it; that's it, I just can't put up with it. Besides," he simpered a little, in spite of himself, "besides, I'm likely to be off a few days myself, just any time, I can get ready for a step I have in mind, an important step, just any minute, but it's different with some others, and we have to regard some others, you know; have to let some others have their way once in a while. We'll consider it settled now. You are to stay right here."

"Ye'll consider it settled that I'm nadin' a tin days' vacation right away, an' must have it."

"I can't do it, O'Meara; that's it. I would not give you your place again, and I won't pay you a cent of this quarter's salary."

Judson's foolish temper was always his undoing.

"You say you won't?" O'mie asked with a smile.

"No, I won't. Hereafter you may beg your way or starve!" Judson fairly shouted.

"Excuse me, Mr. Amos Judson, but I'm not to thim straits yit. Not yit. I've a little bank account an' a good name at Cris Mead's bank. Most as good as yours."

The shot went home. Judson had but recently failed to get the bank's backing in a business dealing he had hoped to carry through on loans, and it had cut his vanity deeply.

"Good-bye, Amos, I'll be back, but not any sooner than ye nade me," and he was gone.

The next day Dever the stage driver told us O'mie was going up to Wyandotte on business.

"Whose business?" I asked. "He doesn't know a soul in Wyandotte, except Tell and Jim, who were working up there the last I knew. Tell may be in Fort Scott now. Whose business was it?"

"That's what I asked him," Dever answered with a grin, "and he said, his own."

Whatever it was, O'mie was back again before the end of the week. But he idled about for the full ten days, until Judson grew frantic. The store could not be managed without him, and it was gratifying to O'mie's mischievous spirit to be solicited with pledge and courtesy to take his place again.

After O'mie had left me in the courthouse yard, the evening after the party, I stopped on my way home to see Marjie a moment. She had gone with the Meads out to Red Range, her mother said, and might not be back till late, possibly not till to-morrow. Judson was sitting in the room when I came to the door. I had no especial reason to think Mrs. Whately was confused by my coming. She was always kind to everybody. But somehow the gray shadows of the clouded moon of the night before were chilling me still, and I was bitterly disappointed at missing my loved one's face in her home. It seemed ages since I had had her to myself; not since the night before my trip to Topeka. I stopped long enough to visit the "Rockport" letter-box for the answer to my letter I knew she would leave before she went out of town. There was no letter there. My heart grew heavy with a weight that was not to lift again for many a long day. Up on the street I met Dr. Hemingway. His kind eyes seemed to penetrate to my very soul.

"Good-evening, Philip," he said pleasantly, grasping my hand with a firm pressure. "Your face isn't often clouded."

I tried to look cheerful. "Oh, it's just the weather and some loss of sleep. Kansas Augusts are pretty trying."

"They should not be to a young man," he replied. "All weathers suit us if we are at peace within. That's where the storm really begins."

"Maybe so," I said. "But I'm all right, inside and out."

"You look it, Philip." He took my hand affectionately. "You are the very image of clean, strong manhood. Let not your heart be troubled."

I returned his hand-clasp and went my way. However much courage it may take to push forward to victory or death on the battle field, not the least of heroism does it sometimes require to walk bravely toward the deepening gloom of an impending ill. I have followed both paths and I know what each one demands.

At our doorway, waiting to welcome me, stood Rachel Melrose, smiling, sure, and effusively demonstrative in her friendship. She must have followed me on the next stage out of Topeka. Behind her stood Candace Baronet, the only woman I have ever known who never in all my life doubted me nor misunderstood me. Somehow the sunset was colorless to me that night, and all the rippling waves of wide West Prairie were shorn of their glory.



CHAPTER XV

ROCKPORT AND "ROCKPORT"

Glitters the dew, and shines the river, Up comes the lily and dries her bell; But two are walking apart forever, And wave their hands in a mute farewell.

—JEAN INGELOW.

The Melrose family was of old time on terms of intimacy with the house of Baronet. It was a family with a proud lineage, wealth, and culture to its credit. Rachel had an inherited sense of superiority. Too much staying between the White Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean is narrowing to the mental scope. The West to her was but a wilderness whereto the best things of life never found their way. She took everything in Massachusetts as hers by due right, much more did it seem that Kansas should give its best to her; and withal she was a woman who delighted in conquest.

Her arrival in Springvale made a topic that was soon on everybody's tongue. In the afternoon of the day following her coming, when I went to my father's office before starting out to the stone cabin, I found Marjie there. I had not seen her since the party, and I went straight to her chair.

"Well, little girl, it's ten thousand years since I saw you last," I spoke in a low voice. My father was searching for some papers in his cabinet, and his back was toward us. "Why didn't I get a letter, dearie?"

She looked up with eyes whose brown depths were full of pain and sorrow, but with an expression I had never seen on her face before, a kind of impenetrable coldness. It cut me like a sword-thrust, and I bent over her.

"Oh, Marjie, my Marjie, what is wrong?"

"Here is that paper at last," my father said before he turned around. Even as he spoke, Rachel Melrose swept into the room.

"Why, Philip, I missed you after all. I didn't mean to keep you waiting, but I can never get accustomed to your Western hurry."

She was very handsome and graceful, and always at ease with me, save in our interviews alone.

"I didn't know you were coming," I said frankly; "but I want you to meet Miss Whately. This is the young lady I have told you about."

I took Marjie's hand as I spoke. It was cold, and I gave it the gentle pressure a lover understands as I presented her. She gave me a momentary glance. Oh, God be thanked for the love-light in those brown eyes! The memory of it warmed my heart a thousand times when long weary miles were between us, and a desolate sky shut down around the far desolate plains of a silent, featureless land.

"And this is Miss Melrose, the young lady I told you of in my letter," I said to Marjie. A quick change came into her eyes, a look of surprise and incredulity and scorn. What could have happened to bring all this about?

Rachel Melrose had made the fatal mistake of thinking that no girl reared west of the Alleghenies could be very refined or at ease or appear well dressed in the company of Eastern people. She was not prepared for the quiet courtesy and self-possession with which the Kansas girl greeted her; nor had she expected, as she told me afterward, to find in a town like Springvale such good taste and exquisite neatness in dress. True, she had many little accessories of an up-to-date fashion that had not gotten across the Mississippi River to our girls as yet, but Marjie had the grace of always choosing the right thing to wear. I was very proud of my loved one at that moment. There was a show of cordiality between the two; then Rachel turned to me.

"I'm going with you this afternoon. Excuse me, Miss Whately, Mr. Baronet promised me up at Topeka to take me out to see a wonderful cottonwood tree that he said just dwarfed the little locust there, that we went out one glorious moonlight night to see. It was a lovely stroll though, wasn't it, Philip?"

This time it was my father's eyes that were fixed upon me in surprise and stern inquiry.

"He will believe I am a flirt after all. It isn't possible to make any man understand how that miserable girl can control things, unless he is on the ground all the time." So ran my thoughts.

"Father, must that trip be made to-day? Because I'd rather get up a party and go out when Miss Melrose goes."

But my father was in no mood to help me then. He had asked me to go alone. Evidently he thought I had forgotten business and constancy of purpose in the presence of this pretty girl.

"It must be done to-day. Miss Melrose will wait, I'm sure. It is a serious business matter—"

"Oh, but I won't, Mr. Baronet. Your son promised me to do everything for me if I would only come to Springvale; that was away last Spring, and my stay will be short at best. I must go back to-morrow afternoon. Don't rob us of a minute."

She spoke with such a pretty grace, and yet her words were so trifling that my father must have felt as I did. He could have helped me then had he thought that I deserved help, for he was a tactful man. But he merely assented and sent us away. When we were gone Marjie turned to him bravely.

"Judge Baronet, I think I will go home. I came in from Red Range this noon with the Meads. It was very warm, coming east, and I am not very well." She was as white as marble. "I will see you again; may I?"

John Baronet was a man of deep sympathy as well as insight. He knew why the bloom had left her cheeks.

"All right, Marjie. You will be better soon."

He had risen and taken her cold hand. There was a world of cheer and strength in that rich resonant voice of his. "Little girl, you must not worry over anything. All the tangles will straighten for you. Be patient, the sunshine is back of all shadows. I promised your father, Marjory, that no harm should come to you. I will keep my promise. 'Let not your heart be troubled.'" His words were to her what the good minister's had been to me.

In the months that came after that my father was her one strong defence. Poor Marjie! her days as well as mine were full of creeping shadows. I had no notion of the stories being poured into her ears, nor did I dream of the mischief and sorrow that can be wrought by a jealous-hearted girl, a grasping money lover, and a man whose business dealings will not bear the light of day.

It has ever been the stage-driver's province to make the town acquainted with the business of each passenger whom he imports or exports. Our man, Dever, was no exception. Judson's store had become the centre of all the gossip in Springvale. Judson himself was the prince of scandalmongers, who with a pretence of refusing to hear gossip, peddled it out most industriously. He had hurried to Mrs. Whately with the story of our guest, and here I found him when I went to see Marjie, before I myself knew what passenger the stage had carried up to Cliff Street.

After the party at Anderson's, Tillhurst had not lost the opportunity of giving his version of all he had seen and heard in Topeka. Marjie listened in amazement but sure in her trustful heart that I would make it all clear to her in my letter. And yet she wondered why I had never mentioned that name to her, nor given her any hint of any one with claim enough on me to keep me for two days in Topeka. After all, she did recall the name—something forgotten in the joy and peace of that sweet afternoon out by the river in the draw where the haunted house was. Had I tried to tell her and lost my courage, she wondered. Oh, no, it could not be so.

The next day Marjie spent at Red Range. It was noon of the day following Rachel's arrival before she reached home. The ride in the midday heat, sympathy for Dave Mead, and the sad funeral rites in the morning, together with the memory of Tillhurst's gossip and the long time since we had talked with each other alone, had been enough to check even her sunny spirit. Gentle Mrs. Whately, willing to believe everybody, met her daughter with a sad face.

"My dear, I have some unwelcome news for you," she said when Marjie was resting in the cool sitting-room after the hot ride. "There's an old sweetheart of Phil's came here last evening to visit him. Mr. Dever, the stage-driver, says she is the handsomest girl he ever saw. They say she and Phil were engaged and had a falling out back East. They met again in Topeka, and Phil stayed a day or two to visit with her after the political meeting was over. And now she has come down here at his request to meet his folks. Marjie, daughter, you need not care. There are more worthy men who would be proud to marry you."

Marjie made no reply.

"Oh, daughter, he isn't worth your grief. Be strong. Your life will get into better channels now. There are those who care for you more than you dream of. And you cannot care for Phil when I tell you all I must tell."

"I will be strong, mother. What else?" Marjie said quietly. In the shadows of the room darkened to keep out the noonday heat, Mrs. Whately did not note the white face and the big brown eyes burning with pain.

"It's too bad, but you ought to know it. Judge Baronet's got some kind of a land case on hand. There's a fine half-section he's trying to get away from a young man who is poor. The Judge is a clever lawyer and he is a rich man. Mr. Judson says Tell Mapleson is this young man's counsel, and he's fighting to keep the land for its real owner. Well, Phil was strolling around until nearly morning with Lettie Conlow, and they met this young man somewhere. He doesn't live about here. And, Marjie, right before Lettie, Phil gave him an awful beating and made him promise never to show himself in Springvale again. You know Judge Baronet could do anything in that court-room he wants to. He is a fine man. How your father loved him! But Phil goes out and does the dirty work to help him win. So Amos Judson says."

"Did Amos Judson tell you all this, Mother?" Marjie asked faintly.

"Most of it. And he is so interested in your welfare, daughter."

Marjie rose to her feet. "Mother, I don't know how much truth there may be in the circumstances, but I'll wait until somebody besides Amos Judson tells me before I accept these stories."

"Well, Marjie, you are young. You must lean on older counsel. There is no man living as good and true as your father was to me. Remember that."

"Yes, there is," Marjie declared.

"Who is he, daughter?"

"Philip Baronet," Marjie answered proudly.

That afternoon Richard Tillhurst called and detained Marjie until she was late in keeping her appointment with Judge Baronet. Tillhurst's tale of woe was in the main a repetition of Mrs. Whately's, but he knew better how to make it convincing, for he had hopes of winning the prize if I were out of the way. He was too keen to think Judson a dangerous rival with a girl of Marjie's good sense and independence. It was with these things in mind that Marjie had met me. Rachel Melrose had swept in on us, and I who had declared to my dear one that I should never care to take another girl out to that sunny draw full of hallowed memories for us two, I was going again with this beautiful woman, my sweetheart from the East. And yet Marjie was quick enough to note that I had tried to evade the company of Miss Melrose, and she had seen in my eyes the same look that they had had for her all these years. Could I be deceiving her by putting Rachel off in her presence? She did not want to think so. Had Judge Baronet not been my father, he could have taken her into his confidence. She could not speak to him of me, nor could he discuss his son's actions with her.

But love is strong and patient, and Marjie determined not to give up at the first onslaught against it.

"I'll write to him now," she said. "There will be sure to be a letter for me up under 'Rockport.' He said something about a letter this afternoon, the letter he promised to write after the party at Anderson's. He couldn't be deceiving me, I'm sure. I'll tell him everything, and if he really doesn't care for me,"—the blank of life lay sullen and dull before her,—"I'll know it any how. But if he does care, he'll have a letter for me all right."

And so she wrote, a loving, womanly letter, telling in her own sweet way all her faith and the ugly uncertainty that was growing up against it.

"But I know you, Phil, and I know you are all my own." So she ended the letter, and in the purple twilight she hastened up to the cliff and found her way down to our old shaded corner under the rock. There was no letter awaiting her. She held her own a minute and then she thrust it in.

"I'll do anything for Phil," she murmured softly. "I cannot help it. He was my own—he must be mine still."

A light laugh sounded on the rock above her.

"Are you waiting for me here?" a musical voice cried out. It was Rachel's voice. "Your aunt said you were gone out and would be back soon. I knew you would like me to meet you half way. It is beautiful here, you must love the place, but"—she added so softly that the unwilling listener did not catch her words—"it isn't so fine as our old Rockport!"

Quickly came the reply in a voice Marjie knew too well, although the tone was unlike any she had ever heard before.

"I hate Rockport; I did not tell you so when I left last Spring, but I hated it then."

Swiftly across the listener's mind swept the memory of my words. "If you ever hear me say I don't like 'Rockport' you will know I don't care for you."

She had heard me say these words, had heard them spoken in a tone of vehement feeling. There was no mistaking the speaker's sincerity, and then the quick step and swing of the bushes told her I had gone. The Neosho Valley turned black before her eyes, and she sank down on the stone shelving of the ledge.

My ride that afternoon had been a miserable one. Rachel was coy and sweet, yet cunningly bold. I felt indignant at my father for forcing her company on me, and I resented the circumstance that made me a victim to injustice. I detested the beautiful creature beside me for her assumption of authority over my actions, and above all, I longed with an aching, starved heart for Marjie. I knew she had only to read my letter to understand. She might not have gone after it yet, but I could see her that evening and all would be well.

I did not go near the old stone cabin. My father had failed to know his son if he thought I would obey under these hard conditions. We merely drove about beyond the draw. Then we rested briefly under the old cottonwood before we started home.

In the twilight I hurried out to our "Rockport" to wait for Marjie. I was a little late and so I did not know that Marjie was then under the point of rock. My rudeness to Rachel was unpardonable, but she had intruded one step too far into the sacred precincts of my life. I would not endure her in the place made dear to me from childhood, by association with Marjie. So I rashly blurted out my feelings and left her, never dreaming who had heard me nor what meaning my words would carry.

Down at the Whately home Richard Tillhurst sat, bland and smiling, waiting for Miss Whately's return. I sat down to wait also.

The August evening was dry and the day's hot air was rippling now into a slight breeze. The shadows deepened and the twilight had caught its last faint glow, when Marjie, white and cold, came slowly up the walk. Her brown hair lay in little curls about her temples and her big dark eyes were full of an utterable sorrow. I hurried out to the gate to meet her, but she would have passed by me with stately step.

"Marjie," I called softly, holding the gate.

"Good-evening, Philip. Please don't speak to me one word." Her voice was low and sweet as of yore save that it was cold and cutting.

She stood beside me for a moment. "I cannot be detained now. You will find your mother's ring in a package of letters I shall send you to-morrow. For my sake as well as for your own, please let this matter end here without any questions."

"But I will ask you questions," I declared.

"Then they will not be answered. You have deceived me and been untrue to me. I will not listen to one word. You may be very clever, but I understand you now. This is the end of everything for you and me." And so she left me.

I stood at the gate only long enough to hear her cordial greeting of Tillhurst. My Marjie, my own, had turned against me. The shadows of the deepening twilight turned to horrid shapes, and all the purple richness with that deep crimson fold low in the western sky became a chill gloom bordered on the horizon by the flame of hate. So the glory of a world gone wrong slips away, and the creeping shadows are typical only of pain and heartache.

I turned aimlessly away. I had told Marjie she was the light of my life: I did not understand the truth of the words until the light went out. Heavily, as I had staggered toward her mother's house on the night when I was sure Jean Pahusca had stolen her, I took my way now into the gathering shadows, slowly, to where I could hear the Neosho whispering and muttering in the deep gloom.

It comes sometimes to most of us, the wild notion that life, the gift of God alone, is a cheap thing not worth the keeping, and the impulse to fling it away uprears its ugly suggestion. Out in a square of light by the ford I saw Dave Mead standing, looking straight before him. The sorrows of the day were not all mine. I went to him, and we stood there silent together. At length we turned about in a purposeless way toward the open West Prairie. How many a summer evening we had wandered here! How often had our ponies come tramping home side by side, in the days when we brought the cows in late from the farthest draw! It seemed like another world now.

"Phil, you are very good to me. Don't pity me! I can't stand that." We never had a tenor in our choir with a voice so clear and rich as his.

"I don't pity you, Dave, I envy you." I spoke with an effort. "You have not lost, you have only begun a long journey. There is joy at the end of it."

"Oh, that is easy for you to say, who have everything to make you happy."

"I? Oh, Dave! I have not even a grave." The sudden sense of loss, driven back by the thought of another's sorrow, swept over me again. It was his turn now to forget himself.

"What is it, Phil? Have you and Marjie quarrelled? You never were meant for that, either of you. It can't be."

"No, Dave. I don't know what is wrong. I only wish—no, I don't. It is hard to be a man with the heart of a boy still, a foolish boy with foolish ideals of love and constancy. I can't talk to-night, Dave, only I envy you the sure possession, the eternal faith that will never be lost."

He pressed my hand in his left hand. His right arm had had only a limited usefulness since the night he tried to stop Jean Pahusca down by the mad floods of the Neosho. I have never seen him since we parted on the prairie that August evening. The next day he went to Red Range to stay for a short time. By the end of a week I had left Springvale, and we are to each other only boyhood memories now.

Out on the open prairie, where there was room to think and be alone, I went to fight my battle. There was only a sweep of silver sky above me and a sweep of moonlit plain about me. Dim to the southwest crept the dark shadow of the wooded Fingal's Creek Valley, while against the horizon the big cottonwood tree was only a gray blur. The mind can act swiftly. By the time the moon had swung over the midnight line I had mapped out my course. And while I seemed to have died, and another being had my personality, with only memory the same in both, I rose up armed in spirit to do a man's work in the world. But it cost me a price. I have been on a battle field with a thousand against fifty, and I was one of the fifty. Such a strife as I pray Heaven may never be in our land again. I have looked Death in the face day after day creeping slowly, surely toward me while I must march forward to meet it. Did the struggle this night out on the prairie strengthen my soul to bear it all, I wonder.

The next morning a package addressed in Marjie's round girlish hand was put before me. Forgetful of resolve, I sent back by its bearer an imploring appeal for a chance to meet her and clear up the terrible misunderstanding. The note came back unopened. I gave it with the bundle to Aunt Candace.

"Keep this for me, auntie, dear," I said, and my voice trembled. She took it from my hand.

"All right, Phil, I'll keep it. You are not at the end of things, dearie. You are only at the beginning. I'll keep this. It is only keeping, remember." She pointed to a stain on the unopened note, the round little blot only a tear can make. "It isn't yours, I know."

It was the first touch of comfort I had felt. However slender the thread, Hope will find it strong to cling to. Rachel's visit ended that day. Self-centred always, she treated me as one who had been foolish, but whom she considered her admirer still. It was not in her nature to be rejected. She shaped things to fit her vanity, and forgot what could not be controlled. I refused to allow myself to be alone with her again. Nobody was ever so tied to a woman's presence as I kept myself by Aunt Candace so long as I remained in the house.

My father, I knew, was grieved and indignant. With all my fair promises and pretended loyalty I seemed to be an idle trifler. How could my relation to Lettie Conlow be explained away in the light of this visit from a handsome cultured young lady, who had had an assurance of welcome or she would not have come. He loved Marjie as the daughter of his dearest friend. He had longed to call her, "daughter," and I had foolishly thrown away a precious prize.

Serious, too, was my reckless neglect of business. I had disregarded his request to manage a grave matter. Instead of going alone to the cabin, I had gone off with a pretty girl and reported that I had found nothing.

"Did you go near the cabin?" He drove the question square at me, and I had sullenly answered, "No, sir." Clearly I needed more discipline than the easy life in Springvale was giving me. I went down to the office in the afternoon, hoping for something, I hardly knew what. He was alone, and I asked for a few words with him. Somehow I seemed more of a man to myself than I had ever felt before in his presence.

"Father," I began. "When the sea did its worst for you—fifteen years ago—you came to the frontier here, and somehow you found peace. You have done your part in the making of the lawless Territory into a law-abiding State, this portion of it at least. The frontier moves westward rapidly now."

"Well?" he queried.

"I have lost—not by the sea—but, well, I've lost. I want to go to the frontier too. I must get away from here. The Plains—somewhere—may help me."

"But why leave here?" he asked. After all, the father-heart was yearning to keep his son.

"Why did you leave Massachusetts?" I could not say Rockport. I hated the sound of the name.

"Where will you go, my boy?" He spoke with deepest sorrow, and love mingled in his tones.

"Out to the Saline Country. They need strong men out there. I must have been made to defend the weak." It was not a boast, but the frank expression of my young manhood's ideal. "Your friend Mr. Morton urged me to come. May I go to him? It may be I can find my place out in that treeless open land; that there will come to me, as it came to you, the help that comes from helping others."

Oh, I had fought my battle well. I was come into a man's estate now and had put away childish things.

My father sitting before me took both my hands in his.

"My son, you are all I have. You cannot long deceive me. I have trusted you always. I love you even unto the depths of disgrace. Tell me truly, have you done wrong? I will soon know it. Tell me now."

"Father," I held his hands and looked steadily into his eyes. "I have no act to conceal from you, nor any other living soul. I must leave here because I cannot stay and see—Father, Marjie is lost to me. I do not know why."

"Well, find out." He spoke cheerily.

"It is no use. She has changed, and you know her father's firmness. She is his mental image."

"There is no stain somewhere, no folly of idle flirtation, no weakness? I hear much of you and Lettie."

"Father, I have done nothing to make me ashamed. Last night when I fought my battle to the finish, for the first time in my life I knew my mother was with me. Somehow it was her will guiding me. I know my place. I cannot stay here. I will go where the unprotected need a strength like mine."

The stage had stopped at the courthouse door, and Rachel Melrose ran up the steps and entered the outer office. My father went out to meet her.

"Are you leaving us?" he asked kindly.

"Yes, I had only a day or two that I could spend here. But where is Philip?"

John Baronet had closed his door behind him. I thanked him fervently in my heart for his protection. How could I meet this woman now? And yet she had seemed only selfishly mischievous, and I must not be a coward, so I came out of the inner room at once. A change swept over her face when I appeared. The haughty careless spirit gave place to gentleness, and, as always, she was very pretty. Nothing of the look or manner was lost on John Baronet, and his pity for her only strengthened his opinion of my insincerity.

"Good-bye, Philip. We shall meet again soon, I hope. Good-bye, Judge Baronet." Her voice was soft and full of sadness. She smiled upon us both and turned to go.

My father led her down the courthouse steps and helped her into the stage. When he came back I did not look up. There was nothing for me to say. Quietly, as though nothing had occurred, he took up his work, his face as impenetrable as Jean Pahusca's.

My resemblance to my mother is strong. As I bent over his desk to gather up some papers for copying, my heavy dark hair almost brushed his cheek. I did not know then how his love for me was struggling with his sense of duty.

"I have trusted him too much, and given him too free a rein. He doesn't know yet how to value a woman's feelings. He must learn his lesson now. But he shall not go away without my blessing."

So he mused.

"Philip," his voice was as kind as it was firm, "we shall see what the days will bring. Your mother's spirit may be guiding you, and your father's love is always with you. Whatever snarls and tangles have gotten into your threads, time and patience will straighten and unravel. Whatever wrong you may have done, willingly or unwillingly, you must make right. There is no other way."

"Father," I replied in a voice as firm as his own. "Father, I have done no wrong."

Once more he looked steadily into my eyes and through them down into my very soul. "Phil, I believe you. These things will soon pass away."

In the early twilight I went for the last time to "Rockport." There are sadder things than funeral rites. The tragedies of life do not always ring down the curtain leaving the stage strewn with the forms of the slain. Oftener they find the living actor following his lines and doing his part of the play as if all life were a comedy. The man of sixty years may smile at the intensity of feeling in the boy of twenty-one, but that makes it no easier for the boy. I watched the sun go down that night, and then I waited through the dark hour till the moon, now past the full, should once more illumine the Neosho Valley. Although I have always been a lover of nature, that sunset and the purple twilight following, the darkness of the early evening hour and the glorious moonrise are tinged with a sorrow I have never quite lost even in the happier years since then. I sat alone on the point of rock. At last the impulse to go down below and search for a letter from Marjie overcame me, although I laughed bitterly at the folly of such a notion. In the crevice where her letter had been placed for me the night before, I found nothing. What a different story I might have to tell had I gone down at sunset instead of waiting through that hour of darkness before the moon crept above the eastern horizon line! And yet I believe that in the final shaping-up the best thing for each one comes to all of us. Else the universe is without a plan and Love unwavering and eternal is only a vagary of the dreamer.

Early the next morning I left Springvale, and set my face to the westward, as John Baronet had done a decade and a half before, to begin life anew where the wilderness laps the frontier line. My father held my hand long when I said good-bye, and love and courage and trust were all in that hand-clasp.

"You'll win out, my boy. Keep your face to the light. The world has no place for the trifler, the coward, or the liar. It is open to homestead claims for all the rest. You will not fail." And with his kiss on my forehead he let me go.

* * * * *

Anything is news in a little town, and especially interesting in the dull days of late Summer. The word that I had gone away started from Conlow's shop and swept through the town like a prairie fire through a grassy draw.

No one man is essential to any community. Springvale didn't need me so much as I needed it. But when I left it there were many more than I deserved who not only had a good word for me; they went further, and demanded that good reason for my going must be shown, or somebody would be made to suffer. Foremost among these were Cam Gentry, Dr. Hemingway, and Cris Mead, president of the Springvale Bank, the father of Bill and Dave. Of course, the boys, the blessed old gang, who had played together and worked together and been glad and sorry with each other down the years, the boys were loyal to the last limit.

But we had our share of gossips who had a tale they could unfold—a dreadful tale! Beginning with my forging my father's name to get money to spend on Rachel Melrose and other Topeka girls, and to pay debts I had contracted at Harvard, on and on the tale ran, till, by the time the Fingal's Creek neighborhood got hold of the "real facts," it developed that I had all but murdered a man who stood in the way of a rich fee my father was to get out of a land suit somewhere; and lastly came an ominous shaking of the head and a keeping back of the "worst truth," about my gay escapades with girls of shady reputation whom I had deceived, and cruelly wronged, trusting to my standing as a rich man's son to pull me through all right.

Marjie was the last one in Springvale to be told of my sudden leave-taking. The day had been intolerably long for her, and the evening brought an irresistible temptation to go up to our old playground. Contrary to his daily habit my father had passed the Whately house on his way home, and Marjie had seen him climb the hill. I was as like him in form as Jean Pahusca was like Father Le Claire. Six feet and two inches he stood, and so perfectly proportioned that he never looked corpulent. I matched him in height and weight, but I had not his fine bearing, for I had seen no military service then. I do not marvel that Springvale was proud of him, for his character matched the graces Nature had given him.

As Marjie watched him going the way I had so often taken, her resolve to forget what we had been to each other suddenly fell to pieces. Her feelings could not change at once. Mental habits are harder to break up than physical appetites. For fourteen years my loved one had known me, first as her stanch defender in our plays, then as her boy sweetheart and lastly as her lover and betrothed husband. Could twenty-four hours of distrust and misunderstanding displace these fourteen years of happy thinking? And so after sunset Marjie went up the slope, hardly knowing why she should do so or what she would say to me if she should meet me there. It was a poor beginning for the new life she had carefully mapped out, but impulse was stronger than resolve in her just then. Just at the steep bend in the street she came face to face with Lettie Conlow. The latter wore a grin of triumph as the two met.

"Good-evening, Marjie. I s'pose you've heard the news?"

"What news?" asked Marjie. "I haven't heard anything new to-day."

"Oh, yes, you have, too. You know all about it; but I'd not care if I was you."

Marjie was on her guard in a moment.

"I don't care for what I don't know, Lettie," she replied.

"Nor what you do, neither. I wouldn't if I was you. He ain't worth it; and it gives better folks a chance for what they want, anyhow."

Lettie's low brows and cunning black eyes were unendurable to the girl she was tormenting.

"Well, I don't know what you are talking about," and Marjie would have passed on, but Lettie intercepted her.

"You know that rich Melrose girl's gone back to Topeka?"

"Oh, yes," Marjie spoke indifferently; "she went last evening, I was told."

"Well, this morning Phil Baronet went after her, left Springvale for good and all. O'mie says so, and he knows all Phil knows. Marjie, she's rich; and Phil won't marry nobody but a rich girl. You know you ain't got what you had when your pa was alive."

Yes, Marjie knew that.

"Well he's gone anyhow, and I don't care."

"Why should you care?" Marjie could not help the retort. She was stung to the quick in every nerve. Lettie's face blazed with anger.

"Or you?" she stormed. "He was with me last. I can prove it, and a lot more things you'd never want to hear. But you'll never be his girl again."

Marjie turned toward the cliff just as O'mie appeared through the bushes and stepped behind Lettie.

"Oh, good-evening, lovely ladies; delighted to meet you," he hailed them.

Marjie smiled at him, but Lettie gave a sudden start.

"Oh, O'mie, what are you forever tagging me for?" She spoke angrily and without another word to Marjie she hurried down the hill.

"I tag!" O'mie grinned. "I'd as soon tag Satan, only I've just got to do it." But his face changed when he turned to Marjie. "Little girl, I overheard the lady. Lovely spirit that! I just can't help dancin' attendance on it. But, Marjie, I've come up here, knowin' Phil had gone and wasn't in my way, 'cause I wanted to show you somethin'. Yes, he's gone. Left early this mornin'. Never mind that, right now."

He led the way through the bushes and they sat down together. I cannot say what Marjie thought as she looked out on the landscape I had watched in loneliness the night before. It was O'mie, and not his companion, who told me long afterwards of this evening.