r sunbonnet began making odd pats at her hair
as girls so frequently do after almost every upsetting situation.

"I didn't faint, I never have fainted in my life," she explained
indignantly. "I did feel a little sick, because as I didn't know my
pistol was loaded I might so easily have----"

"Just so," Ambrose answered gravely, and then without rhyme or reason
both of them laughed, not just for an instant, but for the longest time,
as though one of the funniest things in the world had just taken place;
and afterward, without asking permission, Ambrose walked back with the
girl to the log cabin. He would have gone home immediately, then, but
at her door Emily turned to him with hot cheeks like a child longing to
make a request and yet afraid.

"Would you mind staying and talking to me for a little?" she begged at
length. "You see, it seems to me I haven't laughed for such a long
while, and I like to laugh so much."

And Ambrose's face quivered in its old sympathetic fashion. "Course I
will," he almost added "honey," but stopped himself in time. "Ef you and
I can set a while on this bench by the door I wouldn't be a mite
surprised ef we couldn't think up some way to make livin' in 'Pennyrile'
a heap more of a laughin' matter for you."

CHAPTER X

THE REVELATION

AFTER this it was extraordinary the number of absolutely unassailable
reasons that kept Ambrose so frequently on his way back and forth from
the village to the school-house. Certainly twenty-four hours rarely
passed without his getting up a wholly new idea to assist Miss Dunham,
and therefore Miner, about which it was necessary to ask her advice. And
possibly Emily encouraged him in this, for often she had postponed or
put aside a perfectly good suggestion with the proposition that they
talk the question over later, and that Ambrose come out again to the log
cabin to see if they were of the same mind.

Of course Ambrose was extremely particular not to permit the hours of
his visits to conflict with those of his partner, but as Miner no longer
spent his evenings with him, naturally he concluded that these evenings
were devoted to Emily, and therefore his appearances were usually made
during the long summer twilight. And this not with any idea of hiding or
of disloyalty, but simply that he should not be in his friend's way; for
Ambrose's heart was singularly light these days and the sun shone with
its old glory. Why, even the one little cloud that h