So am I sure of it, if you asked it. No, Patsy, it can't be that way. I
thank you. I may be an awful failure, but I can always fool myself with
hoping for better things. If I was pushed into trade, that would end me."

"Of course you know your limitations better than I do," she coldly said.
"Thanks for the pretty moccasins. I may have a chance to wear them soon."

"Do not wear them over the mountains," I begged. "You were never meant for
the frontier. Good-by."

I had mounted my horse and was galloping back to Richfield almost before I
had realized how definitely I had separated from her. There was so much I
had intended to say. My thoughts grew very bitter as I repeatedly lived
over our short and unsatisfactory meeting. I recalled patches of the
bright dreams filling my poor noodle when I was riding to meet her, and I
smiled in derision at myself.

I had carried her in my heart for three years, and because daily I had
paid my devotion to her I had been imbecile enough to imagine she was
thinking of me in some such persistent way. Patsy Dale was admired by many
men. Her days had been filled with compliments and flattery.

My face burned as though a whip had been laid across it when I recalled
her frank skepticism of my ability to support a wife. I had a rifle.
Several times she had thrust that ironical reminder at me, which meant I
had nothing else. I came to her carrying my rifle. It was unfair to tie a
girl with a promise when the wooer had only his rifle.

The damnable repetition kept crawling through my mind. She wanted to
impress the fact of my poverty upon me. I worked up quite a fine bit of
anger against Patsy. I even told myself that had I come back with profits
derived from peddling rum to the Indians, I might have found her more
susceptible to my approach. Altogether I made rather a wicked game of
viewing the poor girl in an unsavory light.

With a final effort I declared half-aloud that she was not worth a serious
man's devotion. And it got me nowhere. For after all, the remembrance of
her as she stood there, with her slim white neck and the mass of
blue-black hair towering above the upturned face, told me she must ever
fill my thoughts.

I reached Richfield early in the evening. Governor Dunmore had retired
against an early start for Williamsburg. It was Colonel Lewis' wish that I
ride without delay to Charles Lewis' place at Staunton, something better
than eighty miles, and confer with him over the s