; but just now--oh, sir,
can't you see that I have to be buying this stone with what I have in
the bank? I'm feeling that I couldn't do any other way, and don't you
think the Angel would rather have the best stone I can buy with the
money I earned meself than a finer one paid for with other money?"

"In other words, Freckles," said the Boss in a husky voice, "you don't
want to buy the Angel's ring with money. You want to give for it
your first awful fear of the swamp. You want to pay for it with the
loneliness and heart hunger you have suffered there, with last winter's
freezing on the line and this summer's burning in the sun. You want it
to stand to her for every hour in which you risked your life to fulfill
your contract honorably. You want the price of that stone to be the
fears that have chilled your heart--the sweat and blood of your body."

Freckles' eyes were filled with tears and his face quivering with
feeling.

"Dear Mr. McLean," he said, reaching with a caress over the Boss's black
hair and his cheek. "Dear Boss, that's why I've wanted you so. I knew
you would know. Now you will be looking at these? I don't want emeralds,
because that's what she gave me."

He pushed the green stones into a little heap of rejected ones. Then he
singled out all the pearls.

"Ain't they pretty things?" he said. "I'll be getting her some of those
later. They are like lily faces, turtle-head flowers, dewdrops in the
shade or moonlight; but they haven't the life in them that I want in the
stone I give to the Angel right now."

Freckles heaped the pearls with the emeralds. He studied the diamonds a
long time.

"These things are so fascinating like they almost tempt one, though they
ain't quite the proper thing," he said. "I've always dearly loved to be
watching yours, sir. I must get her some of these big ones, too, some
day. They're like the Limberlost in January, when it's all ice-coated,
and the sun is in the west and shines through and makes all you can see
of the whole world look like fire and ice; but fire and ice ain't like
the Angel."

The diamonds joined the emeralds and pearls. There was left a little red
heap, and Freckles' fingers touched it with a new tenderness. His eyes
were flashing.

"I'm thinking here's me Angel's stone," he exulted. "The Limberlost, and
me with it, grew in mine; but it's going to bloom, and her with it, in
this! There's the red of the wild poppies, the cardinal-flowers, and the
little