-a golden, great
chance. Not for lack of courage would he let it pass, he reflected; but
let it pass he must. He wanted to tell her that he would be a different
man if he could remain near her all the rest of his years; he longed to
say that he desired dearly to help her smooth the rough land and plant
the trees and draw the water in that place which she dreamed of and
called home.

But there was nothing in his past to justify her confidence in his
future. Women worth having did not marry forlorn hopes in the
expectation of making a profit out of them by and by. He had no hearth
to offer her; he had no thatch; he had not a rood of land to lead a
mountain stream across and set with the emerald and royal purple of
alfalfa; not a foot of greensward beside the river, where a yeaning ewe
might lie and ease the burden of her pains. He had nothing to offer,
nothing to give. If he asked, it must be to receive all and return
nothing, except whatever of constancy time might prove out of his
heart.

If he had even a plan to lay down before her and ask her to share, it
would be something, he thought; or a brave resolve, like her own. But
there was emptiness all around him; his feet could not find a square
yard of solid earth to shape his future upon. It was not that he
believed that she cared for money or the material rewards of success,
for she had spoken bitterly of that. The ghosts of money's victims were
behind her; she had said as much the first time they had talked of their
hopes in that new land.

There must be something in that place for him, as she had said; there
must be an unimproved opportunity which Fate had fashioned for his hand.
Hope lifted its resilient head again. Before the morning he must have a
plan, and when he had the plan he would speak.

"We'll have to be breaking up camp in a day or two more," Agnes said,
disturbing the long silence which had settled between them.

"I suppose so," he responded; "but I don't know what the plans of the
others are."

"Mr. Strong is going to Meander in the morning," she told him; "and
Horace Bentley is going with him, poor fellow, to look around, he says.
William Bentley told me this evening that he would leave for home in a
day or two, and Mrs. Reed and her charges are waiting to hear from a
friend of June's who was in school with her--I think she is the
Governor's daughter, or maybe he's an ex-governor--about a long-standing
invitation to visit her in her summer home