ky
with a wealth of glory.

Plaintively across the fields could be heard the call of sheep, mellowed
by the tinkle of their leader's bell. She could see them--little moving
mushrooms on the pasture slope--and to her ears came the sound of
someone letting down the stable bars. It suggested someone watching for
her coming; someone letting down the bars and calling her into a place
where she might be for all time safe.

"The days are getting short," he murmured, watching the last red segment
slip from sight. "It won't be so very long before these old oaks are as
red as that sky."

"I don't like to think of winter," she, too, spoke dreamily. "And see!
It's sunset! Don't you think we should be getting home?"

"I suppose we should," he gloomily answered, though his heart was
beating madly. "And in a few days I must think of hurrying home, too--of
leaving this, all this," his hand waved toward the crimson west. "It
will be as if I were emerging from a wonderful dream--from a crystal
palace which will fall in little pieces; and I'll search and search for
the rest of my life and never find it again! I shall miss my crystal
palace!"

For a moment neither dared to speak. It was very still in the fragrant
lane and their horses, which all this while had been walking slower, now
stopped as though in obedience to some whispered voice. Leaning gently
toward her, trembling before a depth of feeling which had never until
this time been so stirred, he said hoarsely:

"I won't lose it! I can't lose it, Jane!"

Distantly--yet almost out of the air about them, as if it were the
spirit of Kentucky speaking with ineffable gentleness through the
gathering twilight--a quintette of negroes, somewhere across the valley,
sang in mellow, minor harmonies:

"Weep no moh, mah lady;
Oh, weep no moh, today!"

He could see that her eyes were swimming in an adorable moisture, and
her face, touched by the dying day, seemed to be whispering out to him
through a glorified mist.

"I can't live without it--now!" he was pleading desperately.

"Neither can I," she whispered.

Half an hour later, Mac was still sitting in the road, his head tilted
inquiringly up at them: while the horses, still shoulder to shoulder,
stood patiently champing their bits.

CHAPTER XXXIX

TRIUMPH

When Dale had parted with Jess the westering sun was still half an hour
from setting. As he strode powerfully on, his heart bounded with the
thought of reope