of her old coquetry.

She saw his long shadow on the pavement bend forward and recoil
suddenly. She did not look at him.

"An' so ter-night," she went on briskly,--she had truly thought it a
very good joke,--"whilst you-uns war a-star-gazing an' sech, Wat an'
me jes stepped inter the register's office thar, an' the Squair
married us. We 'lowed ye didn't see nothin' of it through the
tellingscope, did ye? So Wat said I must tell ye, ez _he_ didn't want
ter tell ye."

She could not see his face, the light was dulling so, and he had
replaced his wide hat. There was a moment's silence. Then his voice
rang out quite strong and cheerful, "Why, then thar's no more to be
said."

He stood motionless an instant longer. Then suddenly he turned with a
wave of his hand that was like a gesture of farewell, and she marked
how swiftly his shadow seemed to slink from before him as he walked
away, and passed the corner of the house, and disappeared from view.

She gazed silently after him for a moment. Then, leaning against the
column, she burst into a tumult of tears.

* * * * *

Daylight found Justus Hoxon far on the road to the mountains. In the
many miles, as he fared along, his thoughts could hardly have been
pleasant company. As he sought to discover fault or flaw in himself,
search as he might, he could find naught that might palliate the
flippant faithlessness of his beloved, or the treachery of his
brother. His ambition might have been too worldly a thing, but not a
pulse of that most vital emotion beat for himself. He realized it
now--he realized his life in looking back upon this completed episode,
as he might have done in the hour of death. He had so expended himself
in the service of others that there was naught left for him. He had no
gratulation in it, no sense of the virtue of unselfishness, no
preception of achievement; it only seemed to him that his was the most
flagrant folly that ever left a man in the world, but with no place in
it. A sorry object for pride he seemed to himself, but he quivered,
and scorched, and writhed in its hot flames. His one object was to
take himself out of the sight and sound of Colbury, till he might have
counsel within himself, and perfect his scheme of revenge--not upon
the woman. Poor Theodosia, with her limitations, could hardly have
conceived how she had shattered the ideal to which her image had
conformed in his mind, as she had stood on the porc