my foam!"

"Cobalt, if you care to know," answered Everett with an excited laugh,
"the richest deposit in the States I found out--beats a gold mine all
hollow. I came on it almost accidentally while testing for the allied
metals up the creek. Your money will grow in bunches now, for the
biggest and the best mining syndicate in New York has taken it up.
You can just shake down the dollars and do what you please from now
on."

"You'll have to do that sort of orchard work, I'll be busy in the
house," answered Rose Mary, with a rapturous, breathless shyness, and
she held out her hand to him with the most lovely of all her little
gestures of entreaty. "You promised once to farm for me and--you won't
ever leave--_ever_ leave me any more, will you?"

"No, never," answered Everett as he took both her hands and at arms'
length pressed them against his breast, "I'm not going to enact over
again the role of poor chap obliged to be persuaded into matrimony by
heiress, but I'm going to take my own and buckle down and see that you
people get every cent of that dig-up that's coming to you. With the
reputation this find gives me I'll be able to jolly well grubstake
with commissions from now on, but I'll hit no trail after this with a
mule-pack that can't carry double, Mary of the Rose."

"And that doesn't always lead back in just a little time to--to the
nesties?" she asked with the dove stars deep in the pools of her eyes,
while ever so slightly her hands drew him toward her.

"Always a blazed, short cut when they need--us," he answered,
yielding, then paused a moment and held himself from her and said,
looking deep into the eyes raised to his, "Truly, rose woman, am I
that beggar-man who came over the Ridge, cold, and in the tatters of
his disillusion? Do you suppose Old Harpeth has given me this warm
garment of ideals that wraps me now for keeps?"

"Of course, he has, for it's made for you of your--Father's love. And
isn't it--rose-colored?"

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's Rose of Old Harpeth, by Maria Thompson Daviess

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