e seemed not
so far from his world, and it was long since he had walked fraternally
by the side of some fair girl, and talked freely of himself, his
views, his plans, his vagaries, as men, when very young, are wont to
do, and as they rarely talk to one another. He had so sedulously
sought to content himself with the conditions of his closing existence
that the process of reconciling the habit of better things was lost in
simple acceptance. He was still young, and the sun shone, and the air
was clear and pure and soft, and he walked by the side of a girl, fair
and good and not altogether unwise, and he was happy in the blessings
vouchsafed.

After a moment he replied: "Well, I thought he might have made a lot
of money. I thought I might go partners with him. I had written to
him."

Her face did not change; it was still grave and solicitous within the
white frame of her sunbonnet, but its expression did not deepen. She
did not pity the dead man because he died without the money he had
had a chance to make. She evidently had not even scant knowledge of
that most absorbing passion, the love of gain, and she did not value
money.

"Somehow whenst folks dies by accident, it 'pears ter me a
mistake--somehows--ez ef they war choused out'n time what war laid off
fur them an' their'n by right." Evidently she did not lack
sensibility.

"Yes," he rejoined, "and you know money makes a lot of difference in
people's lives there in the valley towns. Lord knows, 't would in
mine."

He swung his riding-whip dejectedly to and fro in his hand as he
spoke, and she pushed back her sunbonnet to look seriously at him. He
was a miracle of elegance in her estimation, but the fawn-colored suit
which he wore owed its nattiness rather to his own symmetry than the
cut or the cloth, and he had worn it a year ago. His immaculate linen,
somewhat flabby,--for the mountain laundress is averse to starch,--had
been delicately trimmed by a deft pair of scissors around the raveling
edges of the cuffs and collar, and showed rather what it had been than
what it was. His straw hat was pushed a trifle back from his face, in
which the sunburn and the inward fire competed to lay on the tints.
She did not see how nor what he lacked. Still, if he wanted it, she
pitied him that he did not have it.

"Waal, can't you-uns make it, the same way?"

She asked this sympathetically. She was beginning to experience a
certain self-reproach in regard to him, and it ga