fe of Lincoln.
Maybe he's trying to imitate Lincoln."

"Imitate Lincoln----"

The sound of her voice as she said these words I think will never go
quite out of my memory: it was so soft and deep, so tremulous.

And then something happened that I cannot fully explain, nor think of
without a thrill. Anthy turned quickly toward me, looked at me through
shiny tears, and put her head quickly and impulsively down upon my
shoulder.

"Oh, David," she said, "I love you!"

But I knew well what she meant. It was that great moment in a woman's
life when in loving the loved one she loves all the world. She was not
thinking that moment of me, dear though I might have been to her as a
friend, but of Nort--of Nort.

It was only a moment, and then she leaned quickly back, looking at me
with starry eyes and a curious trembling lift of the lips.

"But David," she said, "I don't _want_ him like Lincoln."

The thought must have raised in her mind some vision of the sober-sided
Nort of the last few weeks, for she began to laugh again. I cannot
describe it, for it was a laughter so compounded of tenderness, joy,
sympathy, amusement, that it fairly set one's heart to vibrating. There
was no part of Anthy--sweet, strong, loving--that was not in that laugh.

"I don't _want_ him like Lincoln," she said.

"What do you want him like?" I asked.

"Why exactly like himself, like Nort."

"But I thought you rather distrusted his flightiness."

She was hugging herself with her arms, and rocking a little back and
forth. An odd wrinkle came in her forehead.

"David, I did--I do--but somehow I like it--I love it."

She paused.

"It seems to me I like _everything_ about Nort."

Do you realize that such beautiful things as these are going on all
around us, in an evil and trouble-ridden old world? That in nearly all
lives there are such perfect moments? Only we don't remember them. We
grow old and wrinkled and sick; we bicker with those we love; it grows
harder to remember, easier to forget.

I was going to say that this was the end of the story of the _Star_ of
Hempfield, but I know better, of course. It was only the beginning.

"Nort, my boy, I knew it, I knew it!" said the old Captain, when Anthy
and Nort told him, though as a matter of fact he had never dreamed of
such a thing until two minutes before.

[Illustration: Fergus stuck his small battered volume of Robert Burns's
poems in his pocket--and going out of the back door struck