He saw the wagon. It was now at
the door of the post-office, but no one was in it. With his hip-joint
loose the animal swayed and sagged against one of the shafts, the reins
hanging from his rump to the ground.

"They've stopped to get the mail," Henley said in his tight throat;
"they'll be out in a minute. I'll take one peep at 'im, anyway."

But Dixie emerged from the narrow doorway of the little building alone.
She was reading a letter, and she groped slowly across the sidewalk to
the wagon, where she stood till she had finished it. Even at that
distance Henley could see that she was pale, and he fancied that her
hand and step were unsteady as she mounted to the spring seat and
reached for the reins. Henley receded farther into the store, actuated
by a vague intuition that she might not care to be seen, and he was glad
that he had not intruded upon her, for, as she drove past the store, she
did not glance toward it, but instead looked steadily in the opposite
direction.

"The fellow didn't come, and she's had bad news besides," Henley mused,
and he now stood in the doorway and looked after the shackly vehicle as
it moved slowly away in the beating sunshine. "She's bad hit by
something or other," he said, anxiously. "I've never seen her look like
that before. Some'n has gone wrong."

He did not see her for three days. On the evening of the third day he
was standing at the door of his barn. It was growing dark. The coming
night had robed the mountain-peaks in gray, and put them out of sight.
Old Wrinkle was singing "How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord!"
as he trudged back to the house, swinging his empty swill-pail. The door
of Dixie Hart's cottage opened, and in a narrow frame of firelight she
stood peering out toward him. Then he saw that she was coming. She moved
swiftly, and with a sure step, till she paused at the fence which
separated her land from his.

"I've been wanting to see you, Alfred," she said, in a low, changed
voice. "I had no excuse to go to the store, and--well, I didn't think
that was exactly the place, anyway to--to say what I had to say. You
haven't spoke about what I told you to anybody--I know in reason that
you haven't, but--"

"I'd cut off my right arm first," he declared, earnestly. "What you said
that day was as sacred to me as if it had come from on high and my very
salvation depended on it."

"I knew that," she said, softly. "I only said that to--to sort o' get
started. I