Steve smiled back at her for he knew she did not think of him as one of these people with whom she could not bear the thought of daily contact.

"Now confess, don't you get dreadfully tired of it all?" she persisted, looking with real appeal into his face as though she would draw him away from it if she could.

"Unspeakably, sometimes," he smiled back again, then looking beyond her over the mountains he added simply, "but I belong here."

And uncomprehending as she would ever be, she turned at last lightly away and walking to the outer door stepped out upon the campus, leaving her sister and Steve for a little talk alone, which she was sure they would like.

When she was gone, Mrs. Polk laid a hand upon Steve's arm and said softly: "Some day, Steve, everything will come right," looking expressively into his eyes, and he knew she meant between himself and Mr. Polk, a subject that had not been mentioned since she came. "I catch beautiful prophecies sometimes of all this human desert blossoming as a rose," she went on with her old gay enthusiasm, "and I am fully persuaded now, as I never have quite been since you left us, that you have chosen your work wisely. I had to come at last and see for myself.

"But are you going to live your life alone, Steve, dear," she asked after a moment wistfully, "with no sweet home ties?"

"I do not know, little mother," he said gravely. His mind went instantly to the old cabin home and little Steve, but he couldn't tell even her of the family life there now,--nor yet of the mystic vision which had intruded upon his brooding thought.

His sudden smile flashed over the seriousness of his face as he replied at last, "I have been too busy and too poor to think about it so far."

She did not smile in return, but catching both his hands in hers she looked up at him with motherly insistence, and asked:

"Have you never loved any dear girl? Is there no sweet face that sometimes steals into the little home which nestles always in every true man's innermost heart?"

Her strong mother-love had surely lent her a mystic's insight and compelling power!

Instantly into the dim outline of the vision of his brooding thought which he had hitherto constantly thrust aside, came with a distinctness that startled him, a childish face framed in yellow curls above a little white pinafore!

He caught his breath with the vividness of it, then pulled himself together and looking down into the dear eyes of the woman who had been more than second mother to him, and who thereby had won the right to question him, he said with a curiously puzzled look:

"Why, I do not know,--perhaps so,"--then, as she still looked intently at him, "you have startled me. I have become such a stupid grind, I guess I need waking up. I will commune with myself, as I have never done before, and let you know what I discover," he ended more lightly.

She knew that a revelation had come to him in that moment and was content without further questioning. With a last gentle, loving pressure for his hands she released them and they walked out together to join Nita.

Their team was soon ready and after another long, pleasant drive Steve was watching the departing train from the little station platform. He felt keen regret as it bore his friends out of sight, but he turned to his team for the homeward drive with a strange exhilaration in his heart. He had hardly been able to wait for that communion with himself, and when the opportunity came there was no uncertainty in its tenor.

"Of course I love Nancy Follet! I have loved her ever since I first set eyes upon her sweet little face,--and it has come before me always in any stress of mind or heart as though to tell me she was always to have part in my life. And yet I have been so dull I did not understand. She preempted my heart from the first and that is why I did not love beautiful Nita Trowbridge,--why I have never been able to look at any girl with a spark of interest since." How he loved to linger over the revelation which had come to him! It was like having emerged from a desert into a land flowing with milk and honey. Little Nancy! She had been so gentle, so confiding, so eager to help him with things,--she would be his dear helper in the work of his life,--and the work would thereby be glorified beyond measure! Under the spell of his tender musing the forty miles again sped by unheeded and he was back once more at the schoolroom door.

It was well that his tasks for the year were well-nigh over, for he at once became consumed with the desire to see Nancy in the maturity of her girlhood. He promptly decided that he would go as soon as school closed and win her promise before he went on that prospecting tour. In the meantime his mind continued to hover over the hours they had spent together as boy and girl. He went to mill once more walking beside a little fairy figure on old Dobbin's back,--he caught the fragrance of shy flowers which nestled in cool woodland depths, and memory let softly down the bars into a holy of holies as the little girl said again in her sweet innocence, "Steve, let's build us a house in this wood and live here always." He mounted the rugged steeps of Greely's Ridge, her strong protector, while she reached down once more a timid little hand to hold his tightly,--and suddenly he was startled with remembrance of the character of that ridge. It must have held minerals! Coal, yes, coal,--he was sure of it! There was the piece of land he had been wanting to find!

And so with buoyant, twofold hope he started as soon as school was out towards the Follet home, having deposited in the bank a sum which he felt would be sufficient to purchase the Greely Ridge, should he find it as valuable as he suspected and no one had preceded him in its discovery.

XIII

OLD TIES RENEWED

It was mid-afternoon of a late June day when Steve stopped at Mr.

Follet's store. He wondered if his old friend would be there. Yes, the door was open, and for a moment Steve stood on the platform in front, his tall figure erect, his head bared as he looked reverently towards the little home which had opened the world of books to him. Then Mr.

Follet's high voice rang out from the dark depths where dry-goods and groceries rioted in hopeless confusion as of old.

"h.e.l.lo, stranger, what's the time o' day?"

Steve stepping forward put out an eager hand, and cried:

"Mr. Follet, don't you know me?"

But the man only stared, coming forward into the light of the doorway.

"Never saw you before," he declared at last; "or if I did, can't tell where under the cano_pee_ 'twas."

Steve laughed with keen enjoyment at hearing the familiar old expression, and said eagerly:

"Don't you remember Steve, little Steve Langly who worked for you one summer?"

"Steve!" exclaimed Mr. Follet; "of course I do; n.o.body at my house has forgotten him, not by a jugful,--but this ain't Steve!"

"This _is_ Steve though, Mr. Follet,--the same Steve, with just as grateful a heart for you and Mrs. Follet as I had the day I left you about a dozen years ago."

"Well, this does beat me," said Mr. Follet. "We'll lock right up and go over to the house. My wife and Nancy will be powerful glad to see you if they can ever think who under the cano_pee_ you are." And he stepped briskly about locking up, and then the two walked over to the house.

Mrs. Follet was seated on the piazza with some light sewing when they came up, and to Mr. Follet's excited introduction of Mr. Langly she made polite but unrecognizing acknowledgment, and her husband was too impatient to delay his revelation.

"Why, ma, you don't tell me you don't know Steve," he exclaimed.

"Steve," returned Mrs. Follet bewildered.

"Why, yes! little, old, scrawny, mountain Steve," exclaimed Mr.

Follet, "who did everything that was done here one summer!"

Then Mrs. Follet slowly grasped the astonishing thought that little ignorant Steve and the fine-looking young man before her were one and the same, and gave him gentle, motherly greeting.

"Where's Nancy?" went on Mr. Follet, impatiently.

"She's gone with Gyp for a gallop," returned Mrs. Follet, "but she ought to be back any minute now." And by the time they had exchanged brief accounts of the years that had pa.s.sed since they last met, Nancy was seen swaying gracefully down the road upon her pony's rounded back. She waved gaily as she pa.s.sed the porch not noticing the stranger who was somewhat screened by hanging vines, and then she turned into the lane which led to the stable.

Steve's eyes glistened at the vision of the girl which time had so charmingly matured, and starting up he exclaimed:

"Let me meet her at the stable where I used to help her on and off old Dobbin's back," and with a bound he was off the porch and striding towards the lane.

Nancy had slowed her pace along the shady driveway, and Steve, going noiselessly through the gra.s.s, was at her side when she was ready to dismount.

Smilingly he held out his hand for her to step upon, his glowing eyes lifted to hers. Startled she drew back, her eyes held and fascinated, however, by his intent gaze.

For a long instant they gazed, and then she breathed:

"Oh, Steve!"

Had the meeting occurred otherwise, she probably would never have taken the tall, broad-shouldered, handsome young fellow for the Steve of her childish memory, but she only saw and recognized those brown eyes lifted to hers as they used to be in the old days when he took her from Dobbin's back, with the same tender light in them.

"Yes, Nancy, it's Steve!" he exclaimed joyfully. "And you knew me after all these years!"