She drew herself
up like a queen, but only that she might look queenlier for his sake,
and, bending, kissed his brow, and whispered back his vows.

And they were married.

The villagers pitied Hartington.

"She's more than a match for him in years--an' in some other ways, as
like as not," they said. "Besides, she ain't much inclined to mention
anything about her past. 'Twon't bear the tellin' probably."

As for the lovers, they laughed as they went about their honest tasks,
or sat together arms encircling each at evening, now under the stars,
and now before their fire of wood. They talked together of their farm,
added a field for winter wheat, bought other cattle, and some horses,
which they rode out over the rolling prairies side by side. He never
stopped to chat about the town; she never ventured on the street without
him by her side. Truth to tell, their neighbors envied them, marvelling
how one could extract a heaven out of earth, and what such perfect joy
could mean.

Yet, for all their prosperity, not one addition did they make to that
most simple home. It stood there, with its bare necessities, made
beautiful only with their love. But when the winter was most gone, he
made a little cradle of hard wood, in which she placed pillows of down,
and over which she hung linen curtains embroidered by her hand.

In the long evenings, by the flicker of the fire, they sat together,
cheek to cheek, and looked at this little bed, singing low songs
together.

"This happiness is terrible, my John," she said to him one night,--a
wondrous night, when the eastern wind had flung the tassels out on all
the budding trees of spring, and the air was throbbing with awakening
life, and balmy puffs of breeze, and odors of the earth. "And we are
growing young. Do you not think that we are very young and strong?"

He kissed her on the lips. "I know that you are beautiful," he said.

"Oh, we have lived at Nature's heart, you see, my love. The cattle and
the fowls, the honey and the wheat, the cot-the cradle, John, and you
and me! These things make happiness. They are nature. But then, you
cannot understand. You have never known the artificial--"

"And you, Elizabeth?"

"John, if you wish, you shall hear all I have to tell. 'Tis a long,
long, weary tale. Will you hear it now? Believe me, it will make us
sad."

She grasped his arm till he shrank with pain.

"Tell what you will and when you will, Elizabeth. Perhaps, some
day--wh