ne. Have you ever worn leaky boots
when the snow was banked fence high? Luther Warden's boots never leak.
They are always tight and well tallowed. His horses and his cows
waddle in their fat, and the wool of his flocks is the longest in the
valley. Luther gets up with the sun and goes to bed with it. Some in
our valley think his heavy crops come from his six days of labor, and
some from his one day of preaching. He says that the one day does it
all; but he keeps on getting out with the sun on the other six. I knew
that the poor girl from Kansas must get up with the sun, too, for her
uncle was not the man to brook any dawdling. I knew, further, that
Sunday could not be a day of rest for her, for of all his people she
would have to listen to his preaching.

That was why I murmured in a commiserative tone, "Luther's niece--poor
girl!"

"You needn't pity her," Tim snapped. "She knows a heap more about the
world than you or I do. She--"

"She is not a Dunkard, then?" I interrupted.

"Not a bit," Tim answered. "I don't know what she was in Kansas, but
Luther has preached so much on worldliness and the vanity of fine
clothes that it wouldn't look right for his niece to go flaunting
frills and furbelows about the valley. That plain gray gown is a
concession to the old man. He'd like her to wear a prayer-cap and a
poke bonnet, I guess, but she has a mind of her own. I think she drew
the line there."

She had not given up so much, I thought. Perhaps in her self-denial
there was method, and her simple garb became her best. Even a
prayer-cap might frame her face the fairest; but she must know. And I
had seen that in the flash of her eye and the toss of her head that
told me that a hundred Luther Wardens, a hundred Dunkard preacher
uncles, could not abate her beauty one jot.

"She's rich," said Tim.

He blurted it out. As long as I had seen her and found her beautiful,
this announcement seemed uncalled for. Had she been plain of face and
figure it might have served a purpose, were my brother endeavoring to
excuse the sentimental state of mind he had disclosed to me. He knew
that the place he held in my heart was first. This had always been
true, and in our lonely innocence we had promised it should be true to
the end. There was to be a fair return. He had promised it, and now
he was learning how hard it was to keep faith. His attitude was one of
half penitence, half defiance. Had I not seen the girl