o the play.

Meantime, inside the school-house, the play went gloriously on to the
finish, and Gardley as Nick Bottom took the house by storm. Poor absent
Jed's father, sent by the sufferer to report it all, stood at the back
of the house while tears of pride and disappointment rolled down his
cheeks--pride that Jed had been so well represented, disappointment that
it couldn't have been his son up there play-acting like that.

The hour was late when the play was over, and Margaret stood at last in
front of the stage to receive the congratulations of the entire
countryside, while the young actors posed and laughed and chattered
excitedly, then went away by two and threes, their tired, happy voices
sounding back along the road. The people from the fort had been the
first to surge around Margaret with their eager congratulations and
gushing sentiments: "So sweet, my dear! So perfectly wonderful! You
really have got some dandy actors!" And, "Why don't you try something
lighter--something simpler, don't you know. Something really popular
that these poor people could understand and appreciate? A little farce!
I could help you pick one out!"

And all the while they gushed Jasper Kemp and his men, grim and
forbidding, stood like a cordon drawn about her to protect her, with
Gardley in the center, just behind her, as though he had a right there
and meant to stay; till at last the fort people hurried away and the
school-house grew suddenly empty with just those two and the eight men
behind; and by the door Bud, talking to Pop and Mom Wallis in the
buckboard outside.

Amid this admiring bodyguard at last Gardley took Margaret home.
Perhaps she wondered a little that they all went along, but she laid it
to their pride in the play and their desire to talk it over.

They had sent Mom and Pop Wallis home horseback, after all, and put
Margaret and Gardley in the buckboard, Margaret never dreaming that it
was because Gardley was not fit to walk. Indeed, he did not realize
himself why they all stuck so closely to him. He had lived through so
much since Jasper and his men had burst into his prison and freed him,
bringing him in hot haste to the school-house, with Bud wildly riding
ahead. But it was enough for him to sit beside Margaret in the sweet
night and remember how she had come out to him under the stars. Her hand
lay beside him on the seat, and without intending it his own brushed it.
Then he laid his gently, reverently, down