for Letty Lamson, some thirty years ago, to take her in his sleigh to
singing-school.

"Could what?" he inquired hilariously, out of his dream where the
present made the fire on the hearth and the past lent him figures to sit
by it.

"Why, get along without my old things."

"I s'pose you never so much as thought you couldn't get along without
me," suggested the cap'n, in a kindly rallying.

"Yes," said Miss Letty soberly, "I did think that. I knew I couldn't."

SATURDAY NIGHT

Jerry Norton stopped for a moment swinging his axe and crashing it into
the grain of the tree, and took off his cap to cool his wet forehead. He
looked very strong, standing there, equipped with great shoulders, a
back as straight as the tree its might was smashing, and the vigor
bespoken by red-brown eyes, a sanguine skin, and thick bright hair. He
seemed to be regarding the pine trunks against the snow of the hill
beyond, and again the tiny tracks nearer by, where a winter animal had
flurried; but really all the beauties of the woods were sealed to him.

He was going back five days to his quarrel with Stella Joyce, and
scowling as he thought how hateful she had been in her injustice. It was
all about the ten-foot strip of land the city man had claimed from
Jerry's new building lot through a newly found flaw in the title. Jerry,
Stella mourned, had relinquished the land without question.

"I'd have hung on to it and fought him through every court in the
country," she had declared, in a passion of reproach. "You're so numb,
Jerry! You just go pokin' along from day to day, lettin' folks walk
over you--and never a word!"

Jerry had been unable, out of his numbness, to explain that he gave up
the land because the other man's title to it, he had seen at once, was a
valid one; nor could she, on her side, tell him how her wounded feeling
was intensified because old aunt Bray, come from the West for a visit,
had settled down upon him and his mother, in all likelihood to remain
and go into the new house when it was built. But there was no time for
either of them to reach pacific reasons when every swift word of hers
begot a sullen look from him; and before they knew it they had parted.

Now, while he was retracing the path of their disagreement, lighted by
the flaming lamps of her upbraiding, he heard a movement, light enough
for a furry creature on its way to covert, and Stella stood before him.
She did not look either obstinate or lik