ion by a tall, powerful man with
steadfast, glowering eyes, but quite another thing to be carried down
again by the same man, who has been crying, and when you are conscious
that you are going to cry too, and your tears may be apt to mingle. So
Miss Amy Forester said: "Oh, wait, please! Sit down a moment. Oh, Mr.
Tenbrook, I am so very, very sorry," and, clapping her hand to her eyes,
burst into tears.

"Oh, please, please don't, Miss Forester," said Jack, sitting down on
the end of the bunk with frightened eyes, "please don't do that! It
ain't worth it. I'm only a brute to have said anything."

"No, no! You are SO noble, SO forgiving!" sobbed Miss Forester, "and
I have made you go and kill the only thing you cared for, that was all
your own."

"No, Miss,--not all my own, either,--and that makes it so rough. For it
was only left in trust with me by a friend. It was her only companion."

"HER only companion?" echoed Miss Forester, sharply lifting her bowed
head.

"Except," said Jack hurriedly, miscomprehending the emphasis with
masculine fatuity,--"except the dying man for whom she lived and
sacrificed her whole life. She gave me this ring, to always remind me of
my trust. I suppose," he added ruefully, looking down upon it, "it's no
use now. I'd better take it off."

Then Amy eyed the monstrous object with angelic simplicity. "I certainly
should," she said with infinite sweetness; "it would only remind you of
your loss. But," she added, with a sudden, swift, imploring look of her
blue eyes, "if you could part with it to me, it would be such a reminder
and token of--of your forgiveness."

Jack instantly handed it to her. "And now," he said, "let me carry you
down."

"I think," she said hesitatingly, "that--I had better try to walk," and
she rose to her feet.

"Then I shall know that you have not forgiven me," said Jack sadly.

"But I have no right to trouble"--

Alas! she had no time to finish her polite objection, for the next
moment she felt herself lifted in the air, smelled the bark thatch
within an inch of her nose, saw the firelight vanish behind her, and
subsiding into his curved arms as in a hammock, the two passed forth
into the night together.

"I can't find, your bracelet anywhere, Amy," said her father, when they
reached the wagon.

"It was on the floor in the lint," said Amy reproachfully. "But, of
course, you never thought of that!"

*****

My pen halts with some diffidence between two