ith his thought of her--and every night before she turned
out her light she could not help lifting her eyes to her once-favourite
picture--even that Hale had remembered--the lovers clasped in each
other's arms--"At Last Alone"--only to see it now as a mocking symbol of
his beaten hopes. She had written to thank him for it all, and not
yet had he answered her letter. He had said that he was coming over
to Lonesome Cove and he had not come--why should he, on her account?
Between them all was over--why should he? The question was absurd in
her mind, and yet the fact that she had expected him, that she so WANTED
him, was so illogical and incongruous and vividly true that it raised
her to a sitting posture on the log, and she ran her fingers over her
forehead and down her dazed face until her chin was in the hollow of her
hand, and her startled eyes were fixed unwaveringly on the running water
and yet not seeing it at all. A call--her step-mother's cry--rang up the
ravine and she did not hear it. She did not even hear Bub coming through
the underbrush a few minutes later, and when he half angrily shouted her
name at the end of the vista, down-stream, whence he could see her, she
lifted her head from a dream so deep that in it all her senses had for
the moment been wholly lost.

"Come on," he shouted.

She had forgotten--there was a "bean-stringing" at the house that
day--and she slipped slowly off the log and went down the path,
gathering herself together as she went, and making no answer to the
indignant Bub who turned and stalked ahead of her back to the house. At
the barnyard gate her father stopped her--he looked worried.

"Jack Hale's jus' been over hyeh." June caught her breath sharply.

"Has he gone?" The old man was watching her and she felt it.

"Yes, he was in a hurry an' nobody knowed whar you was. He jus' come
over, he said, to tell me to tell you that you could go back to New York
and keep on with yo' singin' doin's whenever you please. He knowed I
didn't want you hyeh when this war starts fer a finish as hit's goin'
to, mighty soon now. He says he ain't quite ready to git married yit.
I'm afeerd he's in trouble."

"Trouble?"

"I tol' you t'other day--he's lost all his money; but he says you've got
enough to keep you goin' fer some time. I don't see why you don't git
married right now and live over at the Gap."

June coloured and was silent.

"Oh," said the old man quickly, "you ain't ready nuther,"--h