d cry, "Oh,
Phil!" and nodded sagely to herself. "He's come instead of writing, just
as I thought he would. Wise man!"

CHAPTER VIII

HOW IT ALL ENDED

When Mary's letter with the ring reached Phil, he was making
preparations to leave New York that very day. Mr. Sherman had offered
him a partnership in one of his enterprises, with headquarters in
Louisville. It was a very flattering offer, still Phil hesitated.
Personally, he preferred the position in the far West, which his former
chief had been urging him all winter to accept. His previous training
fitted him for one as well as the other, but he had always loved the
West, always felt its lure.

It was when he considered Mary, that Mr. Sherman's offer appealed to him
most. When he thought of the radiant delight with which she would
receive the news that they could cross over and take possession of her
long-desired land, he was almost persuaded to choose Kentucky, for that
one reason alone. He was fully persuaded the morning her letter arrived,
and had just telegraphed Mr. Sherman that he was starting for
Louisville to arrange matters at once.

It was well for both Phil and Mary that he had known her so long and
understood so thoroughly the ins and outs of her honest little heart.
This was not the first time that he had known her to make some
renunciation for conscience' sake, and although the letter, in his own
forcible parlance, "gave him a jolt" for an hour or so, after several
readings he folded it up with a smile and slipped it into the package
with the others marked "From the Little Vicar."

He hadn't the faintest intention of being "renounced." Moreover, he was
positive that he had only to see her and urge a few good arguments in
his favor, which would convince her that he would never be in the way of
what she considered her duty.

But a very tender regard lay under his smile of amusement, for the
attitude she had taken, and a feeling of reverence possessed him as he
saw her in the new light which this revelation of her spiritual life
gave him. "Nobody is good enough for little Mary Ware," he had said
once, when she was a romping child. He was thinking of her
unselfishness, her sturdy sincerity, her undaunted courage. Now he
repeated it, thinking of her as this letter revealed her, a
white-souled vestal maiden who took the stars as a symbol of her duty,
and who would not swerve a hair's-breadth from the orbit which she
thought was heaven appoint