the valley, to
which his daughter listened at night in skeptical silence. Now and then
his voice fell from some overhanging crag in a torrent of religious
rapture, penetrating the cabin walls and trying Mrs. Dysart's pious soul
beyond endurance.
"Now listen to that, Emeline!" said John, exultantly, during one of
these vocal inundations. "He's a-singin' the doxology. Now _I_ believe
he's a Christian."
Mrs. Dysart averted her face with a sigh of long-suffering patience.
"Singin' is the easiest part of the Christian religion, Jawn. As for
that,"--she jerked her head toward the source of vocal supply,--"it's
soundin' brass; that's what I'd say if I was settin' in judgment, which
I thank our heavenly Fawther I'm not."
"Well, there goes Mr. Palmerston and the girl, anyway," said John, with
eager irrelevance; "they seem to be gettin' pretty thick."
Mrs. Dysart moved toward the open window with piously restrained
curiosity.
"I'm sorry for that girl," she said; "she's got one man more'n she can
manage now, without tacklin' another."
"Oh, well, now, Emeline, young folks, will be young folks, you know."
There was in John's voice something dangerously near satisfaction with
this well-known peculiarity of youth.
"Yes; and they'll be old folks, too, which most of 'em seems to forget,"
returned Mrs. Dysart, sending a pessimistic glance after the retreating
couple.
Mrs. Dysart was right. Sidney Palmerston and his companion were not
thinking of old age that winter day. The mesa stretched a mass of purple
lupine at their feet. There was the odor of spring, the warmth of
summer, the languor of autumn, in the air. As they neared the canyon the
path grew narrow, and the girl walked ahead, turning now and then, and
blocking the way, in the earnestness of her speech. They had long since
ceased to talk of the tunnel; Sidney had ceased even to think of it. For
weeks he had hardly dared to think at all. There had been at first the
keen sense of disappointment in himself which comes to every confident
soul as it learns the limitations of its own will; then the
determination, so easy to youth's foreshortening view, to keep the
letter of his promise and bury the spirit out of his own sight and the
sight of the world forever; then the self-pity and the pleading with
fate for a little happiness as an advance deposit on the promise of
lifelong self-sacrifice; then the perfumed days when thought was lulled
and duty became a memory
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