long."

"Perhaps you are right," she answered with her lips; but in her heart
this girl, who was all tenderness and love, prayed God to strike him
dead before Christmas Eve should come.

Williams again took his chair, but Rita said, "I have given you my
promise. I--I am--I fear I am ill. Please excuse me for the rest of the
evening and--and leave me, I beg you."

Williams took his leave, and Rita went into the sitting room, where
father, mother, and Tom were waiting for the verdict.

"You are saved," said Rita, as if she were announcing dinner.

"My daughter! my own dear child! God will bless you!" exclaimed the
tender mother, hurrying to embrace the cause of her joy.

"Don't touch me!" said Rita. "I--I--God help me! I--I fear--I--hate
you." She turned to the stairway and went to her own room. For hours she
sat by the window, gazing into the street, but toward morning she
lighted a candle and told Dic the whole piteous story in a dozen pages
of anguish and love.

* * * * *

After receiving Sukey's letter, Dic left home for a few days to engage
horses to take east with him in the spring. He did not return until late
in the afternoon of the day before Christmas.

On the morning of that day--the day before Christmas--Jasper Yates,
Sukey's father, came to Billy Little's store in great agitation. Tom
Bays had been there the day before and had imparted to Billy the news of
Rita's forthcoming wedding. She had supposed that Dic would tell him and
had not written; but Dic was away from home and had not received her
letter.

I cannot describe to you the overpowering grief this announcement
brought to the tender bachelor heart. It stunned him, crushed him,
almost killed him; but he tried to bear up manfully under the weight of
his grief. He tried, ah, so hard, not to show his suffering, and
Maxwelton's braes, was sung all day and was played nearly all night; but
the time had come to Billy when even music could not soothe him. There
was a dry, hard anguish at his heart that all the music of heaven or of
earth could not soften. Late in the night he shut his piano in disgust
and sat before the fire during the long black hours without even the
comfort of a tear.

When Tom imparted the intelligence of Rita's wedding, he also asked
Billy for a loan of four hundred dollars. As an inducement, he explained
that he had forged the name of Mr. Wallace to a note calling for that
sum, and had negoti