wanting if I married you, and
you thought I ought to have and you'd seem to be marrying me to get. If I
ever have an estate, I'll leave it to foreign missions. I'd like to make
trouble for the cuss that got me at the Rio Grande. Money might do it,"
Thaine declared.

Leigh did not laugh.

"You are right, Thaine. I was so unhappy about it all. For since I first
came to Uncle Jim's, I knew I ought not have Miss Jane's love and the farm
that you would have had if she knew you."

"You've known this all these years and never told even me. You silent
little subsoiler!" Thaine exclaimed.

"It grew in my mind from an almost babyhood impression to a woman's
principle," Leigh declared. "I never thought of telling anybody. But
there was another thing that kept me firm that day on the Purple Notches.
Years ago, when I was a baby girl, I remember dimly seeing two men in an
awful fight one night just at dusk down on the railroad track by Clover
Creek in Ohio. I thought one of them was my father. Miss Jane would never
tell me anything about it, and made me promise never to speak of it. So I
grew up sure that my father had committed some dreadful crime, and,
Thaine, until I knew better, I couldn't take the risk of disgracing your
name, the proud name of Aydelot."

"Oh, Leigh, it is no matter what our forefathers do--they were all a bad
lot if we go back far enough. It's what we do that counts. It's what I do
as Thaine Aydelot, not as Asher Aydelot's son, that I must stand or fall
by. It's how far we win our wilderness, little girl, not the wilderness
our fathers won or lost."

Thaine was sitting beside Leigh now, under the perfumy white honeysuckle
blossoms.

"But, Thaine, the bans are all lifted now."

Leigh sat with face aglow. "Your grandfather wouldn't let his property go
to a child of Virginia Aydelot, so Miss Jane couldn't give it to you. She
left it to me--all her property, provided, or hoping, I would--you
should--"she hesitated.

"Yes, we should, and we will," Thaine finished the sentence. "Bless her
good soul! I've always been rather fond of her, anyhow!"

"And Darley Champers found out that my father was accidentally drowned
long ago in Clover Creek. Uncle Jim says he never could swim, and so that
burden is lifted. But, Thaine, will you want to go back to Ohio to the
Aydelot homestead? I could sell it for a club house to the Cloverdale
Country Club, but I waited till you should come, to know what to do."

There