ome?" As he said these words, he stretched out his arms
toward Katie; and she, trembling, afraid to be glad, shadowed by the sad
past, yet trusting in the future, crept into them, and was folded close
to the heart she had so faithfully loved all her life.

"I promised Elspie," she whispered, "that I'd never, never give him to
another."

"Ay," said Donald, as he kissed her. "He's your bairn, my Katie. Ye'll
be content wi' me, Katie?"

"Yes, Donald, if I make you content," she replied; and a look of
heavenly peace spread over her face.

The next morning Katie went alone to Elspie's grave. It seemed to her
that only there could she venture to look her new future in the face. As
she knelt by the low mound, her tears falling fast, she murmured,--

"Eh, my bonny Elspie, ye'd the best o' his love. But it's me that'll be
doin' for him till I die, an' that's better than a' the love."

Dandy Steve.

Everything in this world is relative, and nothing more so than the
significance of the same word in different localities. If Dandy Steve
had walked Broadway in the same clothes which he habitually wore in the
Adirondack wilderness, not only would nobody have called him a dandy,
but every one would have smiled sarcastically at the suggestion of that
epithet's being applied to him. Nevertheless, "Dandy Steve" was the name
by which he was familiarly known all through the Saranac region; and
judging by the wilderness standard, the adjective was not undeserved. No
such flannel shirts, no such jaunty felt hats, no such neckties, had
ever been worn by Adirondack guides as Dandy Steve habitually wore. And
as for his buck-skin trousers, they would not have disgraced a Sioux
chief,--always of the softest and yellowest skins, always daintily made,
the seams set full of leather fringes, and sometimes marked by lines of
delicate embroidery in white quills. There were those who said that
Dandy Steve had an Indian wife somewhere on the Upper Saranac, but
nobody knew; and it would have been a bold man who asked an intrusive
question of Dandy Steve, or ventured on any impertinent jesting about
his private affairs. Certain it was that none but Indian hands
embroidered the fine buckskins he wore; but, then, there were such
buckskins for sale,--perhaps he bought them. A man who would spend the
money he did for neckties and fine flannel shirts would not stop at any
extravagance in the price of trousers. The buckskins, however, were not
t