Let me think you forgive me before
I go. Grant me this one request."

Did she guess the hurt he had done her? Through all her fright and
blushes, the woman in her spoke out nobly.

"I do not wish to know how you have wronged me. Whatever it be, it was
innocently done. God will forgive you, and I do. There shall be peace
between us, David."

But she did not offer to touch his hand again: stood there, white and
trembling.

"It shall be as you say," said Palmer.

So they were married, Douglas and Dode, in the wide winter night. A few
short words, that struck the very depths of their being, to make them
one: simple words, wrung out of the man's thin lips with what suffering
only he knew.

"Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder." Thus he
shut himself out from her forever. But the prayer for a blessing on them
came from as pure a heart as any child's that lives. He bade them
good-bye, cheerfully, when he had finished, and turned away, but came
back presently, and said good-night again, looking in their faces
steadily, then took his solitary way across the hills. They never saw
him again.

Bone, who had secured two horses by love or money or--confiscation, had
stood mutely in the background, gulping down his opinion of this
extraordinary scene. He did not offer it now, only suggested it was
"high time to be movin'," and when he was left alone, trudging through
the snow, contented himself with smoothing his felt hat, and a
breathless, "Ef dis nigger on'y knew what Mist' Perrine _would_ say!"

A June day. These old Virginia hills have sucked in the winter's ice and
snow, and throbbed it out again for the blue heaven to see in a whole
summer's wealth of trees quivering with the luxury of being, in wreathed
mosses, and bedded fern: the very blood that fell on them speaks in
fair, grateful flowers to Him who doeth all things well. Some healthy
hearts, like the hills, you know, accept pain, and utter it again in
fresher-blooded peace and life and love. The evening sunshine lingers on
Dode's little house to-day; the brown walls have the same cheery whim in
life as the soul of their mistress, and catch the last ray of
light,--will not let it go. Bone, smoking his pipe at the garden-gate,
looks at the house with drowsy complacency. He calls it all "Mist'
Dode's snuggery," now: he does not know that the rich, full-toned vigor
of her happiness is the germ of all this life and beauty. But he does
know tha