ore."

Whereupon he and the Virginian shook hands silently, and understood each
other very well.

On the day that the Virginian parted with Molly, beside the weight of
farewell which lay heavy on his heart, his thoughts were also grave with
news. The cattle thieves had grown more audacious. Horses and cattle
both were being missed, and each man began almost to doubt his neighbor.

"Steps will have to be taken soon by somebody, I reckon," said the
lover.

"By you?" she asked quickly.

"Most likely I'll get mixed up with it."

"What will you have to do?"

"Can't say. I'll tell yu' when I come back."

So did he part from her, leaving her more kisses than words to remember.

And what was doing at Bennington, meanwhile, and at Dunbarton? Those
three letters which by their mere outside had so moved Mrs. Taylor,
produced by their contents much painful disturbance.

It will be remembered that Molly wrote to her mother, and to her
great-aunt. That announcement to her mother was undertaken first. Its
composition occupied three hours and a half, and it filled eleven pages,
not counting a postscript upon the twelfth. The letter to the great-aunt
took only ten minutes. I cannot pretend to explain why this one was
so greatly superior to the other; but such is the remarkable fact. Its
beginning, to be sure, did give the old lady a start; she had dismissed
the cow-boy from her probabilities.

"Tut, tut, tut!" she exclaimed out loud in her bedroom. "She has thrown
herself away on that fellow!"

But some sentences at the end made her pause and sit still for a long
while. The severity upon her face changed to tenderness, gradually. "Ah,
me," she sighed. "If marriage were as simple as love!" Then she went
slowly downstairs, and out into her garden, where she walked long
between the box borders. "But if she has found a great love," said the
old lady at length. And she returned to her bedroom, and opened an old
desk, and read some old letters.

There came to her the next morning a communication from Bennington. This
had been penned frantically by poor Mrs. Wood. As soon as she had been
able to gather her senses after the shock of her daughter's eleven pages
and the postscript, the mother had poured out eight pages herself to the
eldest member of the family. There had been, indeed, much excuse for the
poor lady. To begin with, Molly had constructed her whole opening
page with the express and merciful intention of preparing her