everything they had except their land.
Then, to make a bad matter worse, the old doctor's name was on a
note, and that fell due about the time the banks failed, and he had to
sell the family place and a good deal o' the land.

"They said when he got through settlin' up his affairs he says, 'Well,
I've lost my money and my lands and my home, but I've saved my good
name.'

"I reckon it must 'a' taken the young doctor a good while to come to
an understandin' of what he'd lost. By the time you're old, losin'
comes natural to you, but it's hard for young folks to take in a big
loss. But as soon as Arthur Pendleton understood that all his father
had was a good name, and all he had was his father's practice, he
wrote to Miss Dorothy and set her free from her promise to marry him.

"The old doctor begged him not to do it. Says he, 'Son, you've lost
pretty near everything, and now you're throwing away the best of
what's left.' Says he, 'Don't strip your life bare of every chance for
happiness. Hold on to love, even if you have lost your money.'

"But the young doctor says, says he, 'When a man's money's gone it's
no time for him to be thinkin' about love.' Says he, 'Unless a man
loves a woman well enough to give her up when he's too poor to take
care of her, his love's not worth much. In her father's house,' says
he, 'she's lived like the lilies of the field, and the man that loves
her mustn't be the one to bring her down to poverty and hard work.' So
he wrote to her and told her to forget him as soon as she could, and
love some other man who could give her what a woman ought to have, and
she told him that if she ever loved anybody else, she'd send back the
ring he'd given her. But, honey, that ring stayed on Miss Dorothy's
finger till her dyin' day, and I reckon it was buried with her. Folks
said they never wrote to each other any more, but every year or so
Miss Dorothy'd come back to visit the Schuylers and the doctor he'd go
to see her, and they used to say that he'd look at her finger before
he'd look at her face, and when he'd see his ring there he'd be too
happy to say a word. He'd take both her hands in his, and his eyes'd
fill up with tears and he'd look down at her face, and she'd look up
at him and laugh and ask him if he didn't want his ring back to give
to some other gyirl.

"Well, things went on this way one year after another, the doctor
workin' and Miss Dorothy comin' and goin' and both of 'em hopin', I
rec