things and tried to tell them.

"That strange man that said he was the Bishop of Alden told my father
that he would see that I got a chance. My father called him the White
Horse Chaplain and said that he had been sent here just on purpose to
look after me. I didn't know there were bishops in this country. I
thought it was only in books about Europe."

"What did they say?"

"My father said that I would want to go out and see things and know
things; that I mustn't be married to a--a lumber jack. He said it was
no place for me in the hills."

"And this man, this bishop, is going to send you away somewhere, to
school?" he guessed shrewdly.

"I don't know, I suppose that was it," said the girl slowly.
"Yesterday I wanted to go so much. It was just as father said. He had
taught me all he knew. And I thought the world outside the hills was
full of just the most wonderful things, all ready for me to go and see
and pick up. And to-day I don't care."

She looked down at the cap in her hands, at the dog at her feet, and
down the hillside to the little cabin in the hemlocks. They were all
she had in the world.

The boy, watching her eagerly, saw the look and read it rightly.

He got up and stood before her, saying pleadingly:

"Don't forget to count me, Ruth. You've got me, you know."

Perhaps it was because he had so answered her unspoken thought.
Perhaps it was because she was afraid of the bare world. Perhaps it
was just the eternal surrender of woman.

When she looked up at him her eyes were full of great, shining tears,
the first that they had known since she had kissed Daddy Tom and run
out into the night.

He lifted her into his arms, and, together, they faced the white,
desolate world all below them and plighted to each other their untried
troth.

When Tom Lansing had been laid in the white bosom of the hillside, and
the people were dispersing from the house, young Jeffrey Whiting came
and stood before the Bishop. The Bishop's sharp old eyes had told him
to expect something of what was coming. He liked the look of the boy's
clean, stubborn jaw and the steady, level glance of his eyes. They
told of dependableness and plenty of undeveloped strength. Here was
not a boy, but a man ready to fight for what should be his.

"Ruth told me that you were going to take her away from the hills," he
began. "To a school, I suppose."

"I made a promise to her father," said the Bishop, "that I would try
to see that she