asked
him his name or his business. Near dusk he was at the head of Little Clover
and looking down on Happy Valley. The rimming mountains were close overhung
with motionless wet clouds. Above and through them lightning flashed, and
thunder cracked and boomed like encircling artillery around the horizon.
The wind came with the rush of mighty wings, and blackness dropped like
a curtain. By one flash of lightning he saw a great field of corn, by
another a big, comfortable barn, a garden, a trim picket-fence, a yard
full of flowers, and a log house the like of which he had not seen in
the hills--and a new light came--Juno's work! A torrent of rain swept
after him as he stepped upon the porch and knocked on the door. A moment
later he was looking at the kindest and most motherly face and into the
kindest eyes he had ever seen.

"I'm Juno's husband," he said simply. For a moment she blinked up at him
bewilderedly through brass-rimmed spectacles, and then she put her arms
around him and bent back to look up at him again. Then, still without a
word, she led him on tiptoe to an open door and pointed.

"She's in thar." And there she lay--his Juno--thin, white, unconscious,
her beauty spiritualized, glorified. He sat simply looking at her--how
long he did not know--until he felt a gentle touch on his shoulder. It
was Juno's mother beckoning him to supper.

Going out he saw Juno's hand in everything--the hand-woven rag carpet,
the curtains at the windows, the andirons at the log fire--for summer
nights in those hills are always cool--saw it in the kitchen, the
table-cloth, napkins, even though they were in rings, the dishes,
the food, the neatness in everything. He could see the likeness of
Juno to the gentle-voiced old woman who would talk of nothing but her
daughter. In a moment she was calling him "Jim," and few others than
his dead mother had ever called him that. And when at bedtime she said,
"Don't let her die, Jim," he leaned down and kissed her--something her
own sons when grown up had never done.

"No, mother," he said, and the word did not come hard.

III

Juno had been delirious since the day she was stricken. Her mutterings
had been disjointed and unintelligible, but that night, while Mother Camp
and the New Englander sat at her bedside, she said again:

"Don't let him come."

"She ain't said that for three days now," said Mother Camp. "Whut d'
you s'pose she means?" The husband shook his head.

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