she stopped him, and
stood facing him with level, solemn eyes:

"I give myself to you, Gordon," she said, "gladly and gladly, and I will
go wherever you go, and try all my life to be what you would like." As she
repeated her simple words, erect and brave, with her arms filled with
roses, for a fleeting second he was again conscious of the vague menace
that had towered darkly at her back on the night when she had laid in his
grasp that other rose ... the rose that had faded.

"Let's get along," he urged. The whip swung out across the roan's ears,
and the horse started forward with a vicious rush. The dewy fragrance of
the flowers trailed out behind the buggy, mingling with the swirling dust,
then both settled into the empty road, under the burning brightness of the
sun, the insensate beauty of the azure sky.

TWO

I

In the clear glow of a lengthening twilight of spring Gordon Makimmon
sauntered into Simmons' store. The high, dusty windows facing the
Courthouse were raised, and a warm air drifted in, faint eddies of the
fragrance of flowering bushes, languorous draughts of a countryside newly
green.

A number of men idling over a counter greeted him with a familiar and
instantly alert curiosity. The clerk behind the counter bent forward with
the brisk assumption of a business-like air. "Certainly," Gordon replied
to his query, pausing to allow his purpose to gain its full effect; "I
want to order a suit of clothes."

"Why, damn it t'ell, Gord!" exclaimed an individual, with a long, drooping
nose, a jaw which hung loosely on a corded, bare throat; "it ain't three
weeks ago but you got a suit, and it ain't the one you have on now,
neither."

"Shut up, Tol'able," Buckley Simmons interposed, "you'll hurt trade.
Gordon's the Dandy Dick of Greenstream."

"Haven't I a right to as many suits of clothes as I've a mind to?" Gordon
demanded belligerently.

"Sure you have, Gord. You certainly have," a pacific chorus replied.

"I want one like the last drummer wore through here," he continued; "a
check suit with braid on all the edges."

The clerk dropped a bulky volume heavily on the counter. "The Chicago
Sartorial Company," he asserted, "have got some swell checks." He ran
hastily over the pages, each with a sample rectangle of cloth pasted
within a printed gold border, and a cabalistic sign beneath. Finally,
"How's that?" he demanded, indicating a bold, mathematical design in pale
orange, blue and grey.