"For five minutes I got pretty much the same answer, then a little slip of a gal no higher'n my elbow says: 'What d' you want of her? You can't see her for she 's up at Granny's sick of the fever, an' nobody dass n't go near her.' "There 's no use my tellin' you how I found her nor what we said--only 't war n't exactly what I 'd planned all through hayin' time when, noonin's, I 'd stretch out in the shadder of a hayrick an', buryin' my face in the coolin' grass, think how 't would seem to have _her_ hand strokin' my forehead an' smoothin' all care away by her lovin' ways. "Jest as soon as she was strong enough, I took her home; an' without much ceremony, she sittin' in the arm-chair an' I standin' by her side, we was made man an' wife.... Oh, we was happy! an' thet choice of our happiness, for we both knew it war n't for long. I 've sometimes thought we took out a mortgage on our future bliss we was so happy.... Six months from the day I took her home, the church bell tolled nineteen--an' might have tolled a thousand for all I heard." XX There was a long silence; no one cared to break it. As for me, I felt as if stricken dumb by what I was hearing. I knew, intuitively, what I was about to hear. Mrs. Macleod put her hand on Cale's hard brown fist as it lay on his knee. I am sure the sympathetic pressure prolonged the silence. Doctor Rugvie and Jamie were staring into the fire. I could not take my eyes from Cale's face; I was as if fascinated. He, on the contrary, never looked once my way. His voice grew husky towards the last; it was not till he had cleared his throat several times that he could speak. "I ain't said much 'bout Happy,--that's short for Keren-happuch, the name she always went by,--but she was the fust thing I took any interest in after thet. My wife charged me over an' over again to look out fer her, an' I 'd begun ter think 't was time. "There ain't no telling jest what Happy was. She war n't what you 'd call real harn'some, not at fust; but she had a way with her thet was winnin', an' a laugh thet always put me in mind of our old North Crick in August when it goes gurglin' an' winnerin' over its stony bed. She had a smile, too, to match the laugh. There ain't no tellin' what she was like. She was jest Happy, an' there warn't a likely chap this side of the border and t'other, thet knew her, who had n't tried ter get some hold on her. But 't war n't no use; she jest laughed 'em off, fust one, then t' other--but still they kept tryin' till she was twenty-one. "On her birthday she come over to me jest 'bout dusk as I was milkin' in the shed,--I can see her now, standin' by old Speckles' head an' hangin' on tight ter both her horns as if fer support--an' turnin' sudden ter me with a kind o' laugh, thet sounded a good deal more like a choked-down sob, she says: "'Brother Si.'