tin he's got enough ter live
fer--he kin kinderly holp nature along right lavish."

That same day Maggard opened his eyes while the girl was sitting by his
bedside.

His smile was less dazzling out of a thin, white face, than it had been
through the tan of health, but such as it was he flashed it on her
gallantly.

"I don't hone fer nothin' else ter look at--when you're hyar," he
assured her. "But when you _hain't_ hyar I loves ter look at ther old
tree."

"Ther old tree," she replied after him, half guiltily; "I've been so
worrited, I'd nigh fergot hit."

His smile altered to a steady-eyed seriousness in which, too, she
recognized the intangible quality that made him seem to her different
from all the other men she had known.

He had been born and lived much as had the men about him. He had been
chained to the same hard and dour materialism as they, yet for him life
had another essence and dimension, because he had been born with a soul
capable of dreams.

"Thet fust night--when I lay a-waitin' fer ye ter come back--an'
misdoubtin' whether I'd last thet long," he told her almost under his
breath, "seemed like ter me thet old tree war kinderly a-safeguardin'
me."

She bent closer and her lips trembled.

"Mebby hit did safeguard ye, Cal," she whispered. "But I prayed fer ye
thet night--I prayed hard fer ye."

The man closed his eyes and his features grew deeply sober.

"I'd love ter know ther pint-blank truth," he said next. "Am I a-goin'
ter live or die?"

She struggled with the catch in her breath and hesitated so long with
her hands clenched convulsively together in her lap that he, still lying
with lids closed, construed her reticence into a death sentence and
spoke again himself.

"Afore I come over hyar," he said, quietly, "I reckon hit wouldn't hev
made no great differ ter me nuther way."

"Ye've got a chanst, Cal, and Uncle Jase 'lows," she bent closer and now
she could command her voice, "thet ef ye wills ter live ... survigrous
strong enough--yore chanst is a better one ... then ef ye ... jist don't
keer."

His eyes opened and his lips smiled dubiously.

"I sometimes lays hyar wonderin' whether I truly does keer or not."

"What does ye mean, Cal?"

He paused and lay breathing as though hardly ready to face so vital an
issue, then he explained:

"Ye said ye wasn't mad with me ... thet night ... under ther tree ...
but yit ye said, too ... hit war all a sort of dream ... like es ef ye