f
laughed back in his old way.

"Ye look jest like ye used ter, Tom--jest like ye used ter," cried Jake
Doty. "Ye hain't changed a durned bit!"

* * * * *

How did the day pass? Who knows? What does it matter? It was full of
strange beauty, and strange happiness, and strange life for two young
souls at least. People came and went, congratulating, wondering,
rejoicing. Talbot's Cross-roads felt that it had vicariously come into
the possession of wealth and dignity of position. Among the many
visitors, Mrs. Stamps rode up on a clay-bank mare. She was attired in the
black calico riding-skirt and sunbonnet which represented the mourning
garb of the mountain relict.

"I'm a widder," she said to big Tom, in a tone not unresigned. "Ye got
yer claim through, but Stamps hadn't no influence, an' he was took off by
pneumony. Ketched cold runnin' to Linthicum, I guess. His landlady was a
honest enough critter. She found a roll o' five hundred dollars hid in
his bed when she went to lay him out, an' she sent it back to me. Lord
knows whar he got it from--I don't. But it come in mighty handy."

By sunset the welcoming crowd had broken up and melted away into the
mountains. Horses and ox-waggons had been mounted and ridden or driven
homeward. The Post-office was closed; no one was to be seen in the porch.
No one was to be seen anywhere except in the garden among the blossoms
where Rupert and Sheba walked under the fragrance of the trees, talking
to each other in low, softly broken words.

Tom sat in the porch and watched the moon rise in a sea of silver. The
scents the wind wafted to him, the occasional sound of a far-off
night-bird, the rustle of the leaves brought things back to him--things
he had felt in his youth. There had been nights like this in the days
when he had been a big, clumsy young fellow, wild with hopeless love for
Delia Vanuxem. On such nights the air had been full of this night breath
of flowers, the birds had stirred in their nests with just such sounds,
the moon had mounted, as it did to-night, higher and higher in a sky it
thrilled a man's soul to lift his face to.

"Yes, it was all like this," he said, leaning back and clasping his big
hands behind his head. "Just like this! And those two out there are
living it over again, only they've been fairly treated, and they are
trembling with the joy of it. They're pretty safe," he ended. "They're
pretty safe. They've