olent
separation, for all the old man's companions and contemporaries were
already gone; he was the last.

Another month went by, and another; the dead heats of summer were upon
them. Marion minded them not; scorching air and arctic snows were alike
to her when Lawrence was with her. Poor girl! she had the intense,
late-coming love of her peculiar temperament: to please him she would
have continued smiling on the rack itself until she died. But why, after
all, call her "poor"? Is not such love, even if unreturned, great
riches?

Bro looked at her, and looked at her, and looked at her. He had fallen
back into his old way of life again, and nobody noticed anything unusual
in him save what was attributed to his disappointment.

"You see he had shut himself up there, and worked over that valve for
years," explained Mrs. Manning; "and, not letting anybody know about it
either, he had come to think too much of it, and reckon upon it as
certain. He was always an odd, lonely sort of man, you know, and this
has told upon him heavily."

By and by it became evident that Lawrence was restless. He had sold off
what he could of his inheritance, but that was only the old furniture;
no one wanted the sidling, unrepaired house, which was now little better
than a shell, or the deserted cotton-fields, whose dikes were all down.
He had a scheme for going abroad again; he could do better there, he
said; he had friends who would help him.

"Shall you take Miss Marion?" asked Bro, speaking unexpectedly, and, for
him, markedly. They were all present.

"Oh, no," said Lawrence, "not now. How could I? But I shall come back
for her soon." He looked across at his betrothed with a smile. But
Marion had paled suddenly, and Bro had seen it.

The next event was a conversation at the mill.

Young Vickery wandered over there a few days later. He was beginning to
feel despondent and weary: everything at Wilbarger was at its summer
ebb, and the climate, too, affected him. Having become really fond of
Marion now, and accustomed to all the sweetness of her affection, he
hated to think of leaving her; yet he must. He leaned against the
window-sill, and let out disjointed sentences of discontent to Bro; it
even seemed a part of his luck that it should be dead low water outside
as he glanced down, and all the silver channels slimy.

"That saw makes a fearful noise," he said.

"Come into my room," said Bro; "you will not hear it so plainly there."
I