tumultuous and revengeful. Each
breast contained a strange disturbing secret that either would have
died before confessing, but nevertheless, it was there and had taken
ineradicable root within the past days and weeks.

Felix Brush, as the reader knows, had been the instructor of Nellie
Dawson from infancy. He was the medium through which she had gained an
excellent book education. He had held many long confidential talks
with her. She, in her trusting innocence, had told him more of her
inmost thoughts, her self communings, her dim, vague aspirations, than
she imparted to anyone else.

And he could not but notice her wonderful budding beauty. Surely, he
thought, such a winsome creature was never born. He had begun to ask
himself in a whispered, startled way: "Why may I not possess this
mountain flower? True, I am much her senior, but I will nourish,
protect and defend her against the world, as no younger man could or
would. She believes in my goodness, far more than I deserve. I will
cultivate the affection within her of whose nature she has as yet no
comprehension. By and by, when she is a few years older, perhaps I may
claim her. More extraordinary things have happened and are happening
every day. I have but to keep her uncontaminated from the world, of
which I have told her so much, so that when she goes forth, she shall
be under my guardianship--the most sacred guardianship of all for it
shall be that of husband."

"Aye," he added, his heart throbbing with the new, strange hope, "all
this, please heaven, shall come to pass if things go on as they are,
and no younger man with better looks crosses my path."

And now that younger and better looking man had crossed his path.

The knowledge seemed to rouse all the dormant resentment of his
nature, and to undo the good that the girl herself had done in the
years that were gone. He felt that if he lost her, if his cherished
dream was to be rudely dissipated, he would go to perdition.

And somewhat similar in range and nature were the communings of Wade
Ruggles, who until this eventful evening, had cherished a hope, so
wild, so ecstatic, so strange and so soul-absorbing that he hardly
dared to admit it to himself. At times, he shrank back, terrified at
his presumption, as does the man who has striven to seize and hold
that which is unattainable and which it would be sacrilege for him to
lay hands upon.

"I'm three months younger than the parson," he would reflect