had too much older brothering to suit me. But now I am doing well being
in full sight of prosperity and not too old and very strong my health
having stood the sundries it has been put through. She shall teach
school no more when she is mine. I wish I could make this news easier
for you Mrs. Wood. I do not like promises I have heard so many. I will
tell any man of your family anything he likes to ask one, and Judge
Henry would tell you about my reputation. I have seen plenty rough
things but can say I have never killed for pleasure or profit and am not
one of that kind, always preferring peace. I have had to live in places
where they had courts and lawyers so called but an honest man was all
the law you could find in five hundred miles. I have not told her about
those things not because I am ashamed of them but there are so many
things too dark for a girl like her to hear about.

I had better tell you the way I know I love Miss Wood. I am not a boy
now, and women are no new thing to me. A man like me who has travelled
meets many of them as he goes and passes on but I stopped when I came
to Miss Wood. That is three years but I have not gone on. What right has
such as he? you will say. So did I say it after she had saved my life.
It was hard to get to that point and keep there with her around me all
day. But I said to myself you have bothered her for three years with
your love and if you let your love bother her you don't love her like
you should and you must quit for her sake who has saved your life. I did
not know what I was going to do with my life after that but I supposed
I could go somewhere and work hard and so Mrs. Wood I told her I would
give her up. But she said no. It is going to be hard for her to get used
to a man like me--

But at this point in the Virginian's letter, the old great-aunt could
read no more. She rose, and went over to that desk where lay those faded
letters of her own. She laid her head down upon the package, and as her
tears flowed quietly upon it, "O dear," she whispered, "O dear! And this
is what I lost!"

To her girl upon Bear Creek she wrote the next day. And this word from
Dunbarton was like balm among the harsh stings Molly was receiving. The
voices of the world reached her in gathering numbers, and not one of
them save that great-aunt's was sweet. Her days were full of hurts; and
there was no one by to kiss the hurts away. Nor did she even hear from
her lover any more now. She only