“Honest little girl,” he spoke at last, “it was like you to tell me that, and now it will be my turn to confess. I have told you of our old plantation life, of the father whom I so well remember, of my little sister, of my mother whose marriage robbed us of all our heritage, but I have not told you of Alicia, my neighbor and playmate. From the time I was a small chap, I always said I would marry Alicia, then when I grew big enough to go away to school and Alicia, too, was sent to boarding-school, when I thought of what vacations would bring me, I thought of Alicia. Her father and mine fought side by side in the Revolution, and their interests were the same. Then my father died, and after a while my mother married again. When I was twenty-one, I found that in lieu of falling heir to a good estate I was practically penniless. My first thought was to take advice from Alicia’s father, and his advice I followed. I came west to carve out my fortune.” He stopped a moment and then went on. “Yet Alicia’s father, to this day, does not know that I followed his advice because I could not hope to win his daughter. Agnes, little brave girl, you would not turn a man, your lifelong companion, away from you because he was poor, would you?” “I? No, oh, no; not if I loved him, and if I knew him to be good and true.” The man pulled up-stream steadily for some time before he spoke again. His thoughts were far away. He saw the fine old plantation, Alicia’s home, its host of slaves, its wide veranda where dainty ladies sipped their tea, its lordly dining hall upon the table of which glittered old silver and cut glass. He saw Alicia herself, stately, fastidious, luxuriously clad, and he looked opposite him at the little pioneer lass, barefooted, bare-headed, her linsey-woolsey petticoat the worse for wear, her kerchief of coarse linen knotted at the throat, her hands sunburnt, but in her eyes the light of truth and innocence, and he smiled a sudden bright and tender smile. “And so, Alicia, I am done with you,” he said aloud. “Forever and aye I am done with you. Float down the stream of time in another current than mine. I wish you no ill, but for me I care no more for exotics. Now, Agnes, you know my story, and you are sole witness of how Alicia and I have at last parted company. I tell you, Agnes, her mother is no more gracious lady than yours; but if ill-fortune befell her, would she throw back her head, as I have seen some one do, and go forth to meet fate face to face, saying, do your worst, I will defy you? She couldn’t do it, Agnes, and even if she could--well, by this time the water has washed her image quite away. So there’s an end of it, Agnes Kennedy, and for the rest of time I am Parker Willett, pioneer, and not Parker Willett, gentleman. Now, Agnes, I will take you home to your mother. This is good-by for a time, too.”