ng. And I was n't sure that
you really cared anything about me; and how could I have asked you when
I had n't a dollar in the world?"

"There are other things to give a woman besides dollars, Justin."

"Are there? Well, you shall have them all, every one of them, Nancy, if
you can make up your mind to do without the dollars; for dollars seem to
be just what I can't manage."

Her hand was in his by this time, and they were sitting side by side,
in the cushionless, carpetless Wentworth pew. The door stood open; the
winter moon shone in upon them. That it was beginning to grow cold in
the church passed unnoticed. The grasp of the woman's hand seemed
to give the man new hope and courage, and Justin's warm, confiding,
pleading pressure brought balm to Nancy, balm and healing for the wounds
her pride had suffered; joy, too, half-conscious still, that her life
need not be lived to the end in unfruitful solitude. She had waited,
"as some gray lake lies, full and smooth, awaiting the star below the
twilight."

Justin Peabody might have been no other woman's star, but he was
Nancy's! "Just you sitting beside me here makes me feel as if I'd been
asleep or dead all these years, and just born over again," said
Justin. "I've led a respectable, hard-working, honest life, Nancy," he
continued, "and I don't owe any man a cent; the trouble is that no man
owes me one. I've got enough money to pay two fares back to Detroit on
Monday, although I was terribly afraid you would n't let me do it. It'll
need a good deal of thinking and planning, Nancy, for we shall be very
poor."

Nancy had been storing up fidelity and affection deep, deep in the hive
of her heart all these years, and now the honey of her helpfulness stood
ready to be gathered.

"Could I keep hens in Detroit?" she asked. "I can always make them pay."

"Hens--in three rooms, Nancy?"

Her face fell. "And no yard?"

"No yard."

A moment's pause, and then the smile came. "Oh, well, I've had yards and
hens for thirty-five years. Doing without them will be a change. I can
take in sewing."

"No, you can't, Nancy. I need your backbone and wits and pluck and
ingenuity, but if I can't ask you to sit with your hands folded for the
rest of your life, as I'd like to, you shan't use them for other people.
You're marrying me to make a man of me, but I'm not marrying you to make
you a drudge."

His voice rang clear and true in the silence, and Nancy's heart vibrated
at the soun