e, ner
gossip--you hear? Yer to take this yer message. Yer to say 'that it will
be onpossible for me to come back there, on account--on account of--'"

"Important business," suggested Richelieu; "that's the perlite style."

"Ef you like." She leaned over the bed and put her lips to his forehead,
still damp with the dews of sleep, and then to his long-lashed lids.
"Mind Nip!"--the squirrel--he practically suggested. For an instant
their blond curls mingled on the pillow. "Now go to sleep," she said
curtly.

But Richelieu had taken her white neck in the short strangulatory hug of
the small boy, and held her fast. "Ye'll let me put on my best pants?"

"Yes."

"And wear that ring?"

"Yes"--a little sadly.

"Then yer kin count me in, Minty; and see here"--his voice sank to a
confidential whisper--"mebbee some day ye'll be beholden to ME for a lot
o' real jewelry."

She returned slowly to her room, and, opening the window, looked out
upon the night. The same moon that had lent such supererogatory grace to
the natural beauty of The Lookout, here seemed to have failed; as Minty
had, in disguising the relentless limitations of Nature or the cruel
bonds of custom. The black plain of granite, under its rays, appeared
only to extend its poverty to some remoter barrier; the blackened stumps
of the burnt forest stood bleaker against the sky, like broken and
twisted pillars of iron. The cavity of the broken ledge where Richelieu
had prospected was a hideous chasm of bluish blackness, over which a
purple vapor seemed to hover; the "brush dump" beside the house showed
a cavern of writhing and distorted objects stiffened into dark rigidity.
She had often looked upon the prospect: it had never seemed so hard and
changeless; yet she accepted it, as she had accepted it before.

She turned away, undressed herself mechanically, and went to bed. She
had an idea that she had been very foolish; that her escape from
being still more foolish was something miraculous, and in some measure
connected with Providence, her father, her little brother, and her dead
mother, whose dress she had recklessly spoiled. But that she had even so
slightly touched the bitterness and glory of renunciation--as written
of heroines and fine ladies by novelists and poets--never entered the
foolish head of Minty Sharpe, the blacksmith's daughter.

CHAPER IV.

It was a little after daybreak next morning that Mainwaring awoke from
the first unrefreshin