No need to fire the little pistol by her window, as he had once thought to do! She was outside before he could leap to the ground. And as he held her, she could only laugh, and cry, and say "Forgive me! Oh, why have you been so long?" She took him back to the room where his picture was, and made him sit, and sat herself close. "What is it?" she asked him. For through the love she read something else in his serious face.

So then he told her how nothing was wrong; and as she listened to all that he had to tell, she, too, grew serious, and held very close to him.

"Dear, dear neighbor!" she said.

As they sat so, happy with deepening happiness, but not gay yet, young Billy burst open the door. "There!" he cried. "I knowed Lin knowed you were a girl!"

Thus did Billy also have his wish. For had he not told Jessamine that he liked her, and urged her to come and live with him and Lin? That cabin on Box Elder became a home in truth, with a woman inside taking the only care of Mr. McLean that he had known since his childhood: though singularly enough he has an impression that it is he who takes care of Jessamine!

IN THE AFTER-DAYS

The black pines stand high up the hills, The white snow sifts their columns deep, While through the canyon's riven cleft From there, beyond, the rose clouds sweep.

Serene above their paling shapes One star hath wakened in the sky.

And here in the gray world below Over the sage the wind blows by;

Rides through the cotton-woods' ghost-ranks, And hums aloft a st.u.r.dy tune Among the river's tawny bluffs, Untenanted as is the moon.

Far 'neath the huge invading dusk Comes Silence awful through the plain; But yonder horseman's heart is gay, And he goes singing might and main.