night, and then I waited through the dark hour till the moon, now past
the full, should once more illumine the Neosho Valley. Although I have
always been a lover of nature, that sunset and the purple twilight
following, the darkness of the early evening hour and the glorious
moonrise are tinged with a sorrow I have never quite lost even in the
happier years since then. I sat alone on the point of rock. At last the
impulse to go down below and search for a letter from Marjie overcame
me, although I laughed bitterly at the folly of such a notion. In the
crevice where her letter had been placed for me the night before, I
found nothing. What a different story I might have to tell had I gone
down at sunset instead of waiting through that hour of darkness before
the moon crept above the eastern horizon line! And yet I believe that in
the final shaping-up the best thing for each one comes to all of us.
Else the universe is without a plan and Love unwavering and eternal is
only a vagary of the dreamer.

Early the next morning I left Springvale, and set my face to the
westward, as John Baronet had done a decade and a half before, to begin
life anew where the wilderness laps the frontier line. My father held my
hand long when I said good-bye, and love and courage and trust were all
in that hand-clasp.

"You'll win out, my boy. Keep your face to the light. The world has no
place for the trifler, the coward, or the liar. It is open to homestead
claims for all the rest. You will not fail." And with his kiss on my
forehead he let me go.

* * * * *

Anything is news in a little town, and especially interesting in the
dull days of late Summer. The word that I had gone away started from
Conlow's shop and swept through the town like a prairie fire through a
grassy draw.

No one man is essential to any community. Springvale didn't need me so
much as I needed it. But when I left it there were many more than I
deserved who not only had a good word for me; they went further, and
demanded that good reason for my going must be shown, or somebody would
be made to suffer. Foremost among these were Cam Gentry, Dr. Hemingway,
and Cris Mead, president of the Springvale Bank, the father of Bill and
Dave. Of course, the boys, the blessed old gang, who had played together
and worked together and been glad and sorry with each other down the
years, the boys were loyal to the last limit.

But we had our share of go