rk
hair is so much more beautiful; but we must make allowance for Tim.
Let us see--'fair hair and blue eyes and the sweetest face'--I do
believe that brother of mine is out of his head to write such stuff."

"He certainly is," said Mary, very quietly.

"Poor Tim! But go on."

"'We played cards together for a while, till old Mr. Parker went asleep
in his chair, and then Edith and I had a chance to talk. You know,
Mark, I've always been a bit afraid of women, and awkward and ill at
ease around them. But Edith is different from the girls of Black Log.
We were friends in a minute. You don't know what it is to talk to
these girls who have been everywhere, and seen everything, and know
everything. They are so much above you, they inspire you. For a girl
like that no sacrifice a man can make is too great. To win a girl like
that a man must do something and be something. Now up in Black
Log----'"

"Yes, up in Black Log the women are different," said Mary in a quiet
voice. "They have to work in Black Log, and it's the men they work
for. If they sat on thrones and talked wisdom and looked beautiful,
the kitchen-fires would die out and the children go naked."

"Tim doesn't say anything disparaging to the people of our valley," I
protested. "He says, 'in Black Log the girls don't understand how to
dress. They deck themselves out in gaudy finery. Now Edith wears the
simplest things. You never notice her gown. You only see her figure
and her face.'"

"Do I deck myself out in gaudy finery, Mark?" Mary's appeal was direct
and simple.

A shake of the head was my only answer. I wanted to tell her that Tim
was blind. I wanted to tell her the boy was a fool; that Edith, the
tall, thin, pale creature, was not to be compared to one woman in our
valley; that I know who that woman was; that I loved her. I would have
told her this. With a sudden impulse I leaned toward her. As suddenly
I fell back. My crutches had clattered to the floor!

A battered veteran! A pensioner! A back-woods pedagogue! That I was.
That I must be to the end. My place was in the school-house. My place
was on the store bench, set away there with a lot of other broken
antiquities. That I should ask a woman to link her life with mine, was
absurd. A fair ship on a fair sea soon parts company with a
derelict--unless it tows it. A score of times I had fought this out,
and as often I had found but one course and had set myself to follow
i