she knew the worst!"

"But the larkspurs said I wouldn't marry you, Captain Dick Stanchon!"
she cried, half laughing, half displeased, for she couldn't bear him to
question what she said.

The Major got up at that and walked away, and I left them, too, as was
quite correct for a promised pair.

It might have been an hour later that I walked to the cedar grove to
find my thimble and saw Miss Lisbet hurrying there ahead of me. I
slackened a bit, and when I caught her up I saw she was talking with
the Major--he must have been waiting there for her. I thought it odd,
but stooped over and looked through the grass, and all of a sudden they
were level with me, the other side the hedge.

"You sent for me?" said she, breathless like.

"Yes. Can you guess why?" said he, and my knees began to shake.

"N-no, Major La Salle," said she, still breathing strangely.

"I sent for you to tell you that the larkspur told you true,
Elizabeth," he said, very deep. "You will never marry Dick Stanchon,
you will marry me."

"Why--why..." she began, and I couldn't move then, try as I might.

"As sure as that little star belongs in the moon's arms, Elizabeth, you
belong in mine!" said he. "Don't you know it?"

"But, Dick," she said, still breathing as I had never heard her.

"Dick is a boy," he said. "You are fit for a man. I loved you when I
first took off my cap before you. But I would never court an heiress.
Could you come to a western army post and live on a Major's pay?"

"It's not me--I could live on nothing, almost--it's how to tell Dick!"
she began, crying and breathing that strange way, both together--and
then I knew it was all over, of course.

"My star!" I heard him say, and I crept away, somehow.

Well, that was all. One week, she was a great heiress and engaged to a
bright young fellow with life opening out before him; the next she was
married to a poor widower, fifteen years her elder, and off to some
place in the western prairies, with only a chest of linen and silver
and some old mahogany and her clothes! It was like a dream. But only
to see her look at him, you'd know she'd met her master. Before, she
hadn't sensed things rightly, she told me.

I was wild to go with her, but no such thing as a maid for his wife,
the Major said, and anyway, mother was near doubled with the rheumatism
and I couldn't be spared. So I kissed her on the station platform and
cried myself blind that night. And Master Dick w