--in Uncle Tucker's
care? I--I--really--I need it badly." The raillery in her voice was as
delicious and daring as that of any accomplished world woman out over
the Ridge. It fairly staggered Everett with its audacity.

"No," he answered, coolly disapproving, "no, I'll not leave it; you
might break it."

"I never break the crocks--I can't afford to. And women never break
men's hearts; they do it themselves by keeping a hand on the treasure
so as to take it back when they want it, and so between them both it
sometimes gets--shattered."

"Very well, then--the lid's off to you--and remember you asked
for--the rummage, Rose Mary," answered Everett in a tone as light as
hers. Then suddenly he rose and stood tall and straight in front of
her, looking down into her upraised eyes in the dusk. "You don't know,
do you, you rose woman you, what a man's life can hold--of
nothingness? Yes, I've worked hard at my profession and thrown away
the proceeds--in a kind of--riotous living. Other men's vast fortunes
have been built on my brains, and my next year I'm going to enter as a
penniless thirty-niner. When I came South three months ago I drew the
last thousand dollars I had in bank, I have a couple of hundreds left,
and that's all, out of over twenty thousand made in straight fees from
mineral tests in the last year. Yes--a bit of riotous living. It's
true about those poor flowers plucked off frail stems off frailer
bushes--but--if it hadn't been--a sort of fair play all around I
wouldn't stand here telling you about it, you in your hedge of briar
roses. And now suddenly something has come into my life that makes me
regret every dollar tossed to the winds and every cent burned in the
fires--and in spite of it all I must make good. I'm going away from
you and I don't know what is going to happen--but as I tell you from
now on my feet do not stray from Providence Road, my eyes will turn
from across any distance to catch a sight of the crown of old Harpeth,
and my heart is in your milk-house to be of any kind of humble use.
Ah, comfort me, rose girl, that I can not say more and that go I must
if I catch my train." And he stretched out his hands to Rose Mary as
she arose and stood close at his side, her eyes never leaving his and
her lips parted with the quick breathing of her lifted breast.

"And you'll remember, won't you, when things go wrong, or you are
tired, that the sunny corner in the old farm-house is yours? Always I
shall