st get a good sleep," he said kindly, and with his usual firmness
that was wont to preclude argument. "You are worn to death. I'll have
your supper sent to your room." The girl felt the subtle change in his
manner and her lip quivered for a vague reason that neither knew, but,
without a word, she obeyed him like a child. He did not try again to
kiss her. He merely took her hand, placed his left over it, and with a
gentle pressure, said:

"Good-night, little girl."

"Good-night," she faltered.

* * * * * * *

Resolutely, relentlessly, first, Hale cast up his accounts, liabilities,
resources, that night, to see what, under the least favourable outcome,
the balance left to him would be. Nearly all was gone. His securities
were already sold. His lots would not bring at public sale one-half of
the deferred payments yet to be made on them, and if the company brought
suit, as it was threatening to do, he would be left fathoms deep in
debt. The branch railroad had not come up the river toward Lonesome
Cove, and now he meant to build barges and float his cannel coal down to
the main line, for his sole hope was in the mine in Lonesome Cove.
The means that he could command were meagre, but they would carry his
purpose with June for a year at least and then--who knew?--he might,
through that mine, be on his feet again.

The little town was dark and asleep when he stepped into the cool
night-air and made his way past the old school-house and up Imboden
Hill. He could see--all shining silver in the moonlight--the still crest
of the big beech at the blessed roots of which his lips had met June's
in the first kiss that had passed between them. On he went through the
shadowy aisle that the path made between other beech-trunks, harnessed
by the moonlight with silver armour and motionless as sentinels on watch
till dawn, out past the amphitheatre of darkness from which the dead
trees tossed out their crooked arms as though voicing silently now his
own soul's torment, and then on to the point of the spur of foot-hills
where, with the mighty mountains encircling him and the world, a
dreamland lighted only by stars, he stripped his soul before the Maker
of it and of him and fought his fight out alone.

His was the responsibility for all--his alone. No one else was to
blame--June not at all. He had taken her from her own life--had swerved
her from the way to which God pointed when she was born. He had given