oped away, The Witch
clattering stolidly at his stirrup.

Already the primrose light lay over hill and valley; already the
delicate purple net of night had snared forest and marsh; and the wild
ducks were stringing across the lakes, and the herons had gone to the
forest, and plover answered plover from swamp to swamp, plaintive,
querulous, in endless reiteration--"Lost! lost! she's lost--she's
lost--she's lost!"

But it was the first time in his life that he had so interpreted the
wild crying of the killdeer plover.

* * * * *

There was a gown that had been packed at the bottom of a trunk; it was a
fluffy, rather shapeless mound of filmy stuff to look at as it lay on
the bed. As it hung upon the perfect figure of a girl of twenty it was,
in the words of the maid, "a dhream an' a blessed vision, glory be!" It
ought to have been; it was brand-new.

[Illustration: "THERE WAS THAT IN BURLESON'S EYES THAT SOBERED HER"]

At dinner, her father coming in on crutches, stared at his
daughter--stared as though the apparition of his dead wife had risen to
guide him to his chair; and his daughter laughed across the little
table--she scarcely knew why--laughed at his surprise, at his little
tribute to her beauty--laughed with the quick tears brimming in her
eyes.

Then, after a silence, and thinking of her mother, she spoke of
Burleson; and after a while of the coming journey, and their new luck
which had come up with the new moon in September--a luck which had
brought a purchaser for the mare, another for the land--all of it,
swamp, timber, barrens--every rod, house, barn, garden, and stock.

Again leaning her bare elbows on the cloth, she asked her father who the
man could be that desired such property. But her father shook his head,
repeating the name, which was, I believe, Smith. And that, including the
check, was all they had ever learned of this investor who had wanted
what they did not want, in the nick of time.

"If he thinks there is gas or oil here he is to be pitied," said her
father. "I wrote him and warned him."

"I think he replied that he knew his own business," said the girl.

"I hope he does; the price is excessive--out of all reason. I trust he
knows of something in the land that may justify his investment."

After a moment she said, "Do you really think we may be able to buy a
little place in Florida--a few orange-trees and a house?"

His dreamy eyes smiled across at