ce against his heart: "Bob--Bob, big boy, I
am going to tell you something truthy true, that I never breathed to
any one. At night--to-night, in just a few minutes--when I go up to
my room--all alone--I get your picture and hold it to me close, and
holding it right next to my very heart, Bob, I pray for you." She
paused a moment, and then continued, "Oh, and--I pray for
us--Bob--I pray for us." Then she ran up the stone walk, and on the
steps she turned to throw kisses at him, but he did not move until he
heard the lock click in the front door.

At the livery-stable he found Watts McHurdie bending over some break
in his buggy. They walked up the street together. At the corner where
they were about to part the little man said, as he looked into the
rapturous face of the lanky boy, "Well, Bob,--it's good-by, John, for
you, I suppose?"

"Oh--I don't know," replied the other from his enchanted world and
then asked absently, "Why?"

"Well, it's nature, I guess. She'll take all his time now." He rubbed
his chin reflectively, and as Bob turned to go Watts said: "My
Heavens, how time does fly! It just seems like yesterday that all you
boys were raking over the scrap-pile back of my shop, and slipping in
and nipping leather strands and braiding them into whips, and I'd have
to douse you with water to get rid of you. I got a quirt hanging up in
the shop now that Johnnie Barclay dropped one day when I got after him
with a pan of water. It's a six-sided one, with eight strands down in
the round part. I taught him how to braid it." He chewed a moment and
spat before going on: "And now look at him. He's little, but oh my."
Something was working under McHurdie's belt, for Bob could hear it
chuckling as he chewed: "Wasn't she a buster? It's funny, ain't
it--the way we all pick big ones--we sawed-offs"? The laugh came--a
quiet, repressed gurgle, and he added: "Yes--by hen, and you
long-shanks always pick little dominickers. Eh?" He chewed a
meditative cud before venturing, "That's what I told her comin' home
to-night." Bob knew whom he meant. The man went on: "But when she saw
them--him so little she'll have to shake the sheet to find him--and
her so big and busting, I seen _her_--you know," he nodded his head
wisely to indicate which "her" he meant. "I saw her a-eying me, out of
the corner of her eye, and looking at him, and then looking at the
girl, and looking at herself, and on the way home to-night I'm damned
if I didn't have t