ure, and clothes him with
any image whom she chooses. She chose yours. Live up to her thought
of you, if you can."

Burr dropped his cousin's hand, and surveyed him with that impatient
wonder which he always felt when he used his favorite symbolic
speech. "There's no question of my living up to the thought of any
woman's but my wife's," he said, bitterly, and turned away.

"There's no knowing to what stature even a Dorothy Fair may raise a
man in her mind. You may not be able to grow to that."

"It is all I shall attempt."

Then Lot spoke again, in that short-breathed voice of his, straining
between the syllables. "Be sure--that you do--what--you will
not--regret. Honor is not--always what we--think it."

"I have my own conception of it at least, and that I live up to. 'Tis
high time," said Burr, with a kind of proud scorn of himself in his
voice.

"Madelon Hautville--loves--you."

"She does not, after all this."

"She does!"

Burr stood straight and firm before his cousin, like a soldier. "If
she does," said he, "and if she loved me with the love of ten lives
instead of one, and I her, as perhaps I do, this last word of mine I
will keep!" Then he went out with not another word, and presently
returned with the deed of his little wooded property, which, however,
his cousin Lot finally persuaded him to keep, as Margaret Bean
gathered at the door, whither she had ventured again.

The loafers knew it all by nightfall, the news having been brought to
the store by old Luke Basset, who had gotten it from Margaret Bean's
husband. In a day or two they knew more from the same source. Lot
Gordon had engaged his cousin to improve the Gordon acres which had
been lying fallow for the last ten years. He had offered him a good
salary. He wanted to carry out some new-fangled schemes which he had
got out of books. Burr was going right to work; he had hired a man
from New Salem to help him.

People began to think better of Lot Gordon than they had ever done,
and they looked at Burr with more respect. Many had considered that
Dorothy Fair was not going to "do very well." "Guess if it wa'n't
for her father, and the chance of Lot's dying, she'd have a pretty
poor prospect," they had said. Now they agreed that "Maybe Burr
Gordon won't turn out so bad after all. Maybe he'll settle right down
and go to work, and pay off his mortgage, when he gets married, and
get a good living, even if Lot should hold out some time to come."