?"

Elijah Clifford looked at Lucy Gray strangely. And then he said very,
very quietly:

"Miss Gray, do you think you ought to ask me such a question? Answer it
out of your own heart. I have no business to advise you in such a
matter."

Lucy Gray gave him one searching look, as her face flamed.

"Give me the letter," was all she said.

Elijah handed it to her, and in some way their fingers touched as Lucy
took the letter, and then she deliberately tore it into bits and
scattered the pieces down upon the top of the log.

A sudden light came into Elijah Clifford's eyes.

"Is that your answer to it?" he said, moving over on the log a little
nearer to Lucy.

"Yes," she answered, and it is a historical fact that she did not move
back any. But she said afterwards that she was sitting near the end of
the log and couldn't have moved far without falling off and that Elijah
knew it.

"Then you don't need my advice? What made you ask for it?"

Lucy Gray, prim school ma'am as she had called herself, answered between
crying and laughing, "Oh, I don't care for him. Why, he is only
twenty-four and I am twenty-eight. And I can never leave these people
here. I am so in love with them."

"With all of them?" asked Elijah desperately.

"Yes. But with some more than others."

Again a light came into Clifford's face as he moved up a little nearer.
The bits of paper which had been poor Walter's letter began to fall over
the sides of the log. But Elijah Clifford was pale as he said:

"Lucy, I don't want to make another mistake. I have not been able to
conceal my feeling for you and I realise the great distance between us
when it comes to education. I'm not college bred. And no one feels it
more than I do. But I'm not too old to learn. I'm only thirty. And I
find my brain works pretty well when I have a motive. I can almost read
Herrmann und Dorothea. And I've committed no end of Heine. I can say
'Die schonste die Jungfrauen sitszet, Dort oben wunderbar' and a lot
more. But--I don't dare ask you again to be my wife unless--unless--I
can be sure that the differences between us will not make you unhappy.
But, oh, if this happiness could be mine! You cannot love these people
more than I do. Or yearn over them more. And we are not so far apart
after all."

"I'm sure," said Lucy Gray, looking up at him, tears flowing down her
cheeks. "I'm sure, Elijah, that we are not so very far apart in any way.
And if you want to be happy I am