we ever
differed."

"Then you know him?" said Mrs. Hale, lifting her soft eyes to the
Colonel.

"I have that honor."

"Did his appearance, Josephine," broke in Hale, somewhat ostentatiously,
"appear to--er--er--correspond with these qualities? You know what I
mean."

"He certainly seemed very simple and natural," said Mrs. Hale, slightly
drawing her pretty lips together. "He did not wear his trousers rolled
up over his boots in the company of ladies, as you're doing now, nor did
he make his first appearance in this house with such a hat as you wore
this morning, or I should not have admitted him."

There were a few moments of embarrassing silence.

"Do you intend to give that package to Mr. Falkner yourself, Colonel?"
asked Mrs. Scott.

"I shall hand it over to the Excelsior Company," said the Colonel, "but
I shall inform Ned of what I have done."

"Then," said Mrs. Scott, "will you kindly take a message from us to
him?"

"If you wish it."

"You will be doing ME a great favor, Colonel," said Hale, politely.

Whatever the message was, six months later it brought Edward Falkner,
the reestablished superintendent of the Excelsior Ditch, to Eagle's
Court. As he and Kate stood again on the plateau, looking towards the
distant slopes once more green with verdure, Falkner said--

"Everything here looks as it did the first day I saw it, except your
sister."

"The place does not agree with her," said Kate hurriedly. "That is why
my brother thinks of leaving it before the winter sets in."

"It seems so sad," said Falkner, "for the last words poor George said to
me, as he left to join his cousin's corps at Richmond, were: 'If I'm
not killed, Ned, I hope some day to stand again beside Mrs. Hale, at the
window in Eagle's Court, and watch you and Kate coming home!'"

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Snow-Bound at Eagle's, by Bret Harte

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