y, at the door.

"Merry, m' gal! Pap needs his breakfast."

There was no reply, and the old man's face stiffened into a wild
surprise. He knocked heavily again and got no reply, and, with a white
face and shaking hand, he flung the door open and gazed at the empty
bed. His hand dropped to his side; his head turned slowly from the bed
to the open window; he rushed forward and looked out on the ground,
where he saw the tracks of a man.

He fell heavily into the chair by the bed, while a deep groan broke from
his stiff and twitching lips.

"She's left me! She's left me!"

For a long half-hour the iron-muscled old man sat there motionless,
hearing not the songs of the hens or the birds far out in the brilliant
sunshine. He had lost sight of his farm, his day's work, and felt no
hunger for food. He did not doubt that her going was final. He felt that
she was gone from him forever. If she ever came back it would not be as
his daughter, but as the wife of Gilman. She had deserted him, fled in
the night like a thief; his heart began to harden again, and he rose
stiffly. His native stubbornness began to assert itself, the first great
shock over, and he went out to the kitchen, and prepared, as best he
could, a breakfast, and sat down to it. In some way his appetite failed
him, and he fell to thinking over his past life, of the death of his
wife, and the early death of his only boy. He was still trying to think
what his life would be in the future without his girl, when two
carriages drove into the yard. It was about the middle of the forenoon,
and the prairie-chickens had ceased to boom and squawk; in fact, that
was why he knew, for he had been sitting two hours at the table. Before
he could rise he heard swift feet and a merry voice and Marietta burst
through the door.

"Hello, Pap! How you makin' out with break--" She saw a look on his face
that went to her heart like a knife. She saw a lonely and deserted old
man sitting at his cold and cheerless breakfast, and with a remorseful
cry she ran across the floor and took him in her arms, kissing him again
and again, while Mr. John Jennings and his wife stood in the door.

"Poor ol' Pap! Merry couldn't leave you. She's come back to stay as long
as he lives."

The old man remained cold and stern. His deep voice had a relentless
note in it as he pushed her away from him, noticing no one else.

"But how do you come back t' me?"

The girl grew rosy, but she stood proudly up