iction over
it--none whatever!"

Immediately she lifted her head and gazed long and questioningly at
him, but Old Jerry's face was only guilelessly grave. It was more than
that--benevolent reassurance lit up every feature, and little by
little her brimming eyes began to clear; they began to glisten with
that baffling delight that had irritated him so before. She slipped
slowly to her feet and stood and gazed down at him. Old Jerry knew
then that he would never again see so radiant a face as hers was at
that moment.

"I wasn't crying because I was worried," she said, and she managed not
to laugh. "I've been doing that every night, all night long, for two
weeks. That was before I understood--things! But today--this afternoon
I found something--read something--that made me understand better.
I--I'm just crying a little tonight because I am so glad."

Old Jerry couldn't quite fathom the whole meaning of those last words
of hers. They surprised him so that all the things he had meant to
tell her right then of Young Denny's departure once more went totally
out of mind. He wondered if it was the red-headlined account of his
first battle that she had seen. No matter how doubtful it was he felt
it was very, very possible, for at each day's end he had been leaving
Denny's roll of papers there just as he had when the boy was at home.

But the rest of it he understood in spite of the wonder of it all.
Whenever he remembered Young Denny asprawl upon the floor it seemed to
him a thing too marvelous for belief, and yet, recalling the light
that had glowed radiant in that girl's eyes, he knew it was the only
thing left to believe.

He talked it over with himself that night on the way home.

"She bought it so's if he ever did want to come back, he'd feel as if
he had come back home," he repeated her words, and he pondered long
upon them. There was only one possible deduction.

"She thought he wouldn't have nothing left to buy it back when he did
come--that he'd be started on the road all the rest of 'em traveled
and pretty well--shot--to--pieces! That's what she thought," he
decided.

He shook his head over it.

"And she didn't know," he marveled. "She didn't know how that old jug
really got broke--because I ain't told her yet! But she's waitin' for
him just the same--just a-waitin' for him, no matter how he comes.
Figurin' on takin' care of him, too--that's what she was doin'--her
that ain't no bigger'n his little finger!"