I saw you on the way to his house last night, and understood what it meant. I was squatting down behind a fence at the side of the road. I saw you pass, and followed you clean to the gate, and then turned back, at every step exulting over my triumph. The very sky overhead was ablaze with the fire of your fall to my level. But at my gate I was halted suddenly. Virginia—to go back a bit—there is a certain young man in this world that I reckon is the only human being that I love. I love him, I reckon, because he always seemed to love me, and believe me better than I am, and, more than that, he was the only person that ever pointed out a higher life to me. He was the poor boy that I educated, and who went off and done well, and has just come back to this country." "Luke King!" Virginia exclaimed, softly, and then she impulsively placed her hand on her lips and sat staring at the speaker, almost breathlessly alert. "Yes, Luke King," said Ann, with feeling. "Strange to say, he has always said the day would come when I’d rise above hatred and revenge; he has learned some queer things in the West. Well, last night when I met him he said he’d come up to see his mother, who he heard was a little sick, but he finally admitted that her sickness wasn’t all that fetched him. He said he was worried. He was more downhearted than I ever saw him before. Virginia Hemingway, he said he was worried about _you_." "About _me_? Oh no," Virginia gasped. "Yes, about you," Ann went on. "The poor fellow sat down on the door-step and laid bare his whole young heart to me. He’d loved you, he said, ever since you was a little girl. He’d taken your sweet face off with him on that long stay, and it had been with him constantly. It was on your account he yielded to the temptation to locate in Georgia again, and when he come back and saw you a full-grown woman he told me he felt that you and he were intended for one another. He said he knew your beautiful character. He said he’d been afraid to mention it to you, seeing you didn’t feel the same way, and he thought it would be wiser to let it rest awhile; but then he learned that Langdon Chester was going with you, and he got worried. He was afraid that Langdon wouldn’t tote fair with you. I may as well tell you the truth, Virginia. I never was so mad in all my life, for there I was right at that minute gloating over your ruin. I was feeling that way while he was telling me, with tears in his eyes and voice, that if—if harm came to a hair of your bonny head he’d kill Langdon Chester in cold blood, and go to the gallows with a smile on his lips. He didn’t know anything wrong, he was just afraid—that was all, just afraid—and he begged me—just think of it, _me_, who was right then hot with joy over your plight—he begged me to see you some day soon and try to get you to care for him. I was so mad I couldn’t speak, and he went off, his last word being that he knew I wouldn’t fail him."