despair rose breast-high and heart-high, beat against her aching
throat and were just about to dash over her head as she stretched out
one arm to the hills and with a broken cry bent her white forehead in
the curve of the other, but suddenly bent head, tear-blinded eyes,
quivering breast and supplicating arms were folded tight in a strong
embrace and warm, thirsty lips pressed against the tears on her
cheeks as Everett's voice with a choke and a gulp made its way into
her consciousness.

"I feel like shaking the very life out of you, Rose Mary Alloway," was
his tender form of greeting.

"You're squeezing it out," came in all the voice that Rose Mary could
command for an answer. And the broad-shouldered, burden-bearing,
independent woman that was the Rose of Old Harpeth melted into just a
tender girl who crushed her heart against her lover's and clung as
meekly as any slip of vine to her young lord oak. "But I don't care,"
she finished up under his chin. And Everett's laugh that greeted and
accepted her unexpected meekness rang through the hall and brought a
commotion in answer.

The wee dogs, keen both of ear and scent, shot like small electric
volts from Stonie's couch, hurled themselves through the hall and
sprang almost waist-high against Everett's side in a perfect ecstasy
of welcome. They yelped and barked and whined and nosed in a tumbling
heap of palpitating joy until he was obliged to hold Rose Mary in one
arm while he made an attempt to respond to and abate their enthusiasm
with the other.

"Now, now, that's all right! Nice dogs, nice dogs!" he was answering
and persuading, when a stern call from the depths of Miss Lavinia's
room, the door of which Rose Mary had left ajar, abstracted her from
Everett's arm on the instant and sent her hurrying to answer the
summons.

"Is that young man come back? and light the candle," Miss Lavinia
demanded and commanded in the same breath. And just as Rose Mary
flared up the dim light on the table by the bed Everett himself stood
in the doorway. With one glance his keen eyes took in the situation in
the dim room in which the two old wayfarers lay prepared for the
morning journey, and what Miss Lavinia's stately and proper greeting
would have been to him none of them ever knew, for with a couple of
strides he was over by the bed at Rose Mary's side and had taken the
stern old lady into his strong arms and landed a kiss on the ruffle of
white nightcap just over her left ea