Dic did not neglect Rita's note, but read it many times after he had lighted the candle in the loft where he and Billy were to sleep. Long after Billy had gone to bed Dic sat up, thinking of Rita, and anon replenishing his store of ecstasy from the full fountain of her note. After an unreasonable period of waiting Billy said:-- "If you intend to sit there all night, I wish you would smother the candle. It's filling the room with bugs. Here is a straddle-bug of some sort that's been trying to saw my foot off." "In a moment, Billy Little," answered Dic. The moment stretched into many minutes, until Billy, growing restive, threw his shoe at the candle and felled it in darkness to the floor. Dic laughed and went to bed, and Billy fell into so great a fit of laughter that he could hardly check it. Neither slept much, and by sun-up Billy was riding homeward. That he might be sure to be on time, Dic was at the step-off by half-past two, and five minutes later Rita appeared. The step-off was at a deep bend in the river where the low-hanging water-elm, the redbud, and the dogwood, springing in vast luxuriance from the rich bottom soil, were covered by a thick foliage of wild grape-vines. "The river path," used only as a "horse road" and by pedestrians, left the river at the upper bend, crossing the narrow peninsula formed by the winding stream, and did not intrude upon the shady nook of raised ground at the point of the peninsula next the water's edge. There was, however, a horse path--wagon roads were few and far apart--on the opposite side of the river. This path was little used, save by hunters, the west side of the river being government land, and at that time a vast stretch of unbroken forest. Rita had chosen the step-off for her trysting-place because of its seclusion, and partly, perhaps, for the sake of its beauty. She and Dic could be seen only from the opposite side of the river, and she thought no one would be hunting at that time of the year. The pelts of fur-giving animals taken then were unfit for market. Venison was soft, and pheasants and turkeys were sitting. There would be nothing she would wish to conceal in meeting Dic; but the instinct of all animate nature is to do its love-making in secret. "Oh, Dic," said the girl, after they were seated on a low, rocky bench under a vine-covered redbud, "oh, Dic, I did so long to speak to you last night. After what happened night before last--it seems ages ago--I have lived in a dream, and I wanted to talk to you and assure myself that it is all true and real." "It is as real as you and I, Rita, and I have brought you something that will always make you know it is real." "Isn't it wonderful, Dic?" said the girl, looking up to him with a childish wistfulness of expression that would always remain in her eyes. "Isn't it wonderful that this good fortune has come to me? I can hardly realize that it is true."