true and you thought to hoodwink Mary Jane and me also by a trick like
that, then you're a bad lot and not worth your keep to any man. But all
that matters to me be this: you disobeyed me on your own showing and
risked a valuable jewel, messing about on the moor for vanity, or some
worse reason. And them that be careless of a lover's wishes before
marriage won't care a cuss for 'em after. In a word, I've done with you.
This is the last of a lot of pin-pricks you've given me lately, and I've
caught ideas and opinions from you during the past month that made me ask
myself some difficult questions. It's off, you understand."

'Twas true she'd been saying things to shake up James pretty frequent; but
this was better than her highest hopes, of course. She hid her joy,
however, and put her apron up to her eyes and shook her slim shoulders a
bit; then, as he was going, she told him a thing that astonished him.

"Whether or no," said Cora, "the amber heart, trash though it is, be mine,
not yours, James, and I'll thank you to return it to the lawful owner.
Since you be going to say 'good-bye,' we'll part friends, but thicky
necklace is mine, whatever your godless intentions."

He glared at her, stuffed the toy in his pocket and went back to his pony
without a word. But she followed him down the pathway and smiled at him as
he mounted, and even dared to rub the pony's nose, for she'd often been
suffered to ride the creature herself.

"If you won't give me the amber heart, Jimmy, I'll have you up for
breach," she said. And then he let fall a few crooked words and drove his
heels into the beast and galloped off in a proper fury of rage, cussing
the whole sex to hell and Cora Dene in particular.

With that she went in and told her aunt the tale; but now she was all
shame and grief, and after she'd given the details and said how James
White had cast her off, she vowed that her last day on earth had dawned.

"I'd call on the hills to cover me if they would do so," sobbed Cora. "But
as they will not, I'll call on the river, and I'll go and drown myself
to-night, for I can't face Little Silver no more after this downfall."

And Mrs. Dene, who had always thought a lot of James White and been proud
of the match, weren't particular helpful, nor yet comforting. In fact, she
was very disappointed about it and lost her temper with Cora. So the
bedraggled maiden went out of her sight and looked as never she'd looked
before. And on the eve