e your will, whether I approve of it or not.
There will be no proof of it, however, and I could not make over your
property to my sister, should there be other heirs with a natural and
rightful claim to it. But you are not going to make your will just yet,
Harris; so, good-by. You'll be home on Christmas?"

"I reckon I will."

John Edwards turned back to the house, and to banter his sister on Jim
Harris's will, while that individual went about the business of his
journey. His spirits were in a strange state of half-elation,
half-depression. The depression was a natural consequence of the talk
about a will, and the elation was the result of a strong and sudden
faith which had sprung up in him in the success of his undertaking, and
of the achievements of every kind it would render possible.

"She's my 'wishin' fairy,' she said, an' she wished me luck twice. I got
the first stroke of it when John Edwards called to me across the field.
I've got him strong on that; an' I war a leetle surprised, too. He
wanted to make me look sharp, that's clar as mud. I'll look sharp, you
bet, John Edwards! Didn't her hand look purty when she wrote her name?
I've got her name to look at, any way." And at this stage of his
reverie, Jim drew from an inner breast-pocket the bond which Miss
Edwards had witnessed, and, after gazing at the signature for a moment
with moveless features, gave a shy, hasty glance all round him, and
pressed his parched and puckered lips on the paper.

The sentiment which caused this ebullition of emotion in Sandy-haired
Jim was one so dimly defined, so little understood, and so absolutely
pure in its nature, that had Miss Edwards been made aware of it, she
could only have seen in it the touching tribute which it was to abstract
womanliness--to the "wimmen nater," of which Jim was so frank an
admirer. The gulf which was between them had never yet been crossed,
even in imagination, though it is presumable; that, unknown to himself,
Jim was trembling on the verge of it at this moment, dragged thither by
the excitement of prospective wealth and the possibilities involved in
it, and by the recollection of the pleasant words and smiles of this, to
him, queen of women.

After this gush of romance--the first and only one Jim had ever been
guilty of--he returned the document to his pocket, and, with his
customary deliberation, proceeded to catch and mount his horse, and
before noon was on his way across the valley, toward