ote crept into the words.
"Why, it--it took me almost a month--even to buy these!"

He in turn reached out and laid a hand upon the bundle behind her. But
she only laughed straight back into his face--a short, unsteady laugh
of utter derision.

"Old?" she echoed. "Work! But I--I'd have you, Denny, wouldn't I?"
Again she laughed in soft disdain. "Clothes!" she scoffed. And then,
more serious even than before: "Denny, is--is that the only reason,
now?"

The gleam that always smoldered in Denny Bolton's eyes whenever he
remembered the tales they told around the Tavern stove of Old Denny's
last bad night began to kindle. His lips were thin and straight and as
colorless as his suddenly weary face as he stood and looked back at
her. She lifted her hands and put them back upon his shoulders.

"I'm not afraid--any more--to chance it," she told him, her lips
trembling in spite of all she could do to hold them steady. "I'm never
afraid, when I'm with you. It--it's only when I'm alone that it grows
to be more than I can bear, sometimes. I'm not afraid. Does it--does
it have to stay there any longer, in the corner, Denny? Aren't we sure
enough now--you and I--aren't we?"

He stopped back a pace--his big body huge above her slenderness--stepped
away from the very nearness of her. But as she lifted her arms to him
he began to shake his head--the old stubborn refusal that had
answered her a countless number of times before.

"Aren't we?" she said again, but her voice sounded very small and
bodiless and forlorn in the half dark room.

He swung one arm in a stiff gesture that embraced the entire valley.

"They're all sure, too," his voice grated hoarsely, "They're all sure,
too--just as sure as we could ever be--and there's a whole town of
them!"

She was bending silently over the table, retying the bundle, when he
crossed back to her side, a lighted lantern dangling in one hand.

"I don't know why myself," he tried to explain. "I only know I've got
to wait. And I don't even know what I'm waiting for--but I know it's
got to come!"

She would not lift her head when he slipped his free arm about her
shoulders and drew her against him. When he reached out to take the
package from her she held it away from him, but her voice, half
muffled against his checkered coat, was anything but hard.

"Let _you_ carry them?" she murmured. "Why--I wouldn't trust them to
any other hands in the world but my own. You can't even see them
aga