, if I come here
and settle on this farm, I cannot live alone; will you be my wife?'

He leaned forward, and took her passive hand. The conscious crimson
rose for one moment to her throat and averted face, crept even to the
finger-tips, then left her of the usual marble paleness again.

'No, Robert,' she answered firmly, withdrawing her hand; 'it cannot be;
I cannot leave my father and Jay.'

To this determination she held fast. For she had known that such an
option might be offered her, as every woman in like circumstances must
know; she had weighed the matter well in the balance of duty, and this
was her resolve. Could she have counted the cost accurately, it might
not have been; but she hid from her eyes the bright side of the possible
future, and tried steadily to do what she deemed right.

Great was Jay's surprise, when she came back with the long division sum
triumphantly proved, to find her writing-master gone, and Edith with her
eyes very tearful. That occurrence was a puzzle to her for some time
afterwards. Crying was so rare with Edith--and what could Robert Wynn
have to do with it? But Jay prudently asked no questions after the first
astonished ejaculation.

When Robert was walking back to the Creek, feeling his pleasant 'castle
in the air' shattered about his ears, blind to the splendour of the
sunlit winter world, and deaf to the merry twit of the snow-birds, young
Armytage came out of the woods and joined him. He, poor fellow, was
preoccupied with his own plans.

'I think, and Edith agrees with me, that my best chance is to get a
small lot of wild land, and begin at the beginning, as you did. I want
the discipline of all the enforced hard work, Bob. My unfortunate
bringing up in every species of self-indulgence was no good education
for a settler; but, with God's help, I'll get over it.'

Robert was lifted out of his own trouble for a time by seeing the manful
struggle which this other heart had to make against the slavery of
habit. He roused himself to speak cheeringly to the young man, and
receive his confidence cordially, in an hour when selfishness would
rather have been alone.

'Perhaps an application for a Governmental free grant of land would be
advisable,' said Reginald. 'I've been thinking of it. You see I would
rather like to be bound down, and forced to stay in one spot, as I must
if I undertake the hundred acres on Government terms.'

'What are the terms?' asked Robert.

'Well, in t