he left home.

"Are you going out West to stay?" Marjie asked.

"I'm going to try it out there. Clate'th got all the law here a young
man can get; he'th gobbled up Dave and Phil'th share of the thing. John
will be the coming M. D. of the town, and Bill Mead already taketh to
the bank like a duck to water. I'm going to try the Wetht. What word may
I take to Phil for you?"

"There's nothing to say," Marjie answered.

To his words, "I hoped there might be," she only said gayly, "Good-bye,
Bud. Be a good boy, and be sure not to forget Springvale, for we'll
always love your memory."

And so he left her. He was a good boy, nor did he forget the town where
his memory is green still in the hearts of all who knew him. His last
thought was of Springvale, and he babbled of the Neosho, and fancied
himself in the shallows down by the Deep Hole. He clung to me, as in his
childhood, and begged me to carry him on my shoulders when waters of
Death were rolling over him. I held his hand to the last, and when the
silence fell, I stretched myself on the brown curly mesquite beside him
and thanked God that He had let me know this boy. Ever more my life will
be richer for the remembrance it holds of him.

Bud left Springvale in one of those dripping, chilly, wet days our
Kansas Octobers sometimes mix in with their opal-hued hours of Indian
summer. That evening Tell Mapleson dropped into Judson's store and O'mie
was let off early.

The little Irishman ran up the street at once to the Whately home. Mrs.
Whately had retired. Eight o'clock was bed time for middle-aged people
in our town. Marjie sat alone by the fire. How many times that summer we
had talked of the long winter evenings we should spend together by that
fireplace in Marjie's cosy sitting-room. And now she was beside the
hearth, and I was far away. I might have been forgiven without a word
had I walked in that evening and found her, as O'mie did, alone with her
sad thoughts. Marjie never tried to hide anything from O'mie. She knew
he could see through any pretence of hers. She knew, too, that he would
keep sacred anything he saw.

"Marjie, I'm lonesome to-night."

Marjie gave him a seat beside the fire.

"What makes you lonesome, O'mie?" she asked gravely.

"The wrongs av the world bear heavily upon me."

Marjory looked at him curiously to see if he was joking.

"What I need to do is to shrive myself, I guess, and then get up an
inquisition, with myself as chief inq