Weston would give her, and
I wished her joy. True, he loved the girl. True, he offered her just
what I did, and with it he gave those fleeting joys that wealth brings.
She should be happy--just as much so as if she had made herself a
fellow-prisoner with me here in the little valley. For what had I to
offer her? The love of a crippled veteran; the wealth of a petty
farmer; the companionship of a crotchety pedagogue. What joy it would
give her ambitious soul as the years went on to watch her husband
develop; to see him growing in the learning of the store; to have him
ranking first among the worthies of the bench; to greet him as he
hobbled home at night after a busy day at nothing! It was better as it
was--aye--a thousand times.

But there was Tim. What a man Tim was, and how blind I had been and
selfish! He stood before me tall and strong, watching me with his
quiet eyes, and as I looked at him I thought of Weston, the lanky
cynic, with his thin, homely face and loose-jointed, shambling walk.
Then I wondered at it all. Then I said to myself, "Is it best?"

"What makes you so quiet, Mark?" asked Tim.

"I was wishing, Tim," I answered, laying a hand on each of his broad
shoulders, "I was wishing you had kept her when you had her."

Tim laughed. It was his clear, honest laugh.

"It is best as it is," he said. "It's best for her and best for us,
for she'll be happy. But supposing one of us had won--would it have
been the same--the same as it was before she came--the same as it is
now?"

"No," I answered.

"No," he cried. "Now for supper--then our pipes--all of us
together--you in your chair and I in mine--and Captain and
Colonel--just as it used to be."

XX

Tim has gone back to the city after his first long vacation and here I
am alone again. He wants me to be with him and live down there in a
brick and mortar gulch where the sun rises from a maze of tall chimneys
and sets on oil refineries. I said no. Some day I may, but that day
is a long way off. In the fall I am to go for a week and we are to
have a fine time, Tim and I, but Captain and Colonel will have to be
content to hear about it when I get back. Surely it will give us much
to talk of in the winter nights, when we three sit by the fire
again--Captain and Colonel and I.

[Illustration: Old Captain.]

Tim says it is lonely for me here. Lonely? Pshaw! I know the ways of
the valley, and there is not a lonely spot in it from t