tally with the heavy end of it we had to tote. He was rebellious against circumstances and his lazy old step-father’s conduct towards him, and he finally kicked over the traces and went West. Well, he had his eyes open out there, and came back with the blaze of spiritual glory in his manly face. He started in to practise what he was preaching, too. He yanked out of his pocket the last dollar of his savings and forked it over to the last people on earth to deserve it. That made me so mad I couldn’t speak to him for a while, but now I’m forced to admit that the sacrifice hasn’t harmed him in the least. He’s plunging ahead down there in the most wonderful way, and content—well, content but just for one thing. I reckon you know what that is?" Ann paused. Virginia was looking out through the open doorway, a flush creeping over her sensitive face. She started to speak, but the words hung in her throat, and she only coughed. "Yes, you know as well as I do," Ann went on, gently. "He come over here the other night after he left your house. He hitched his horse at the gate and come in and sat down. I saw something serious had happened, and as he was not due here, and was overwhelmed with business in Atlanta, I thought he had met with money trouble. I made up my mind then and there, too, that I’d back him to the extent of every thimbleful of land and every splinter of timber in my possession; but it wasn’t money he wanted. It was something else. He sat there in the moonlight that was shining through the door, with his head on his breast plumb full of despair. I finally got it out of him. You’d refused him outright. You’d decided that you could get on without the love and life-devotion of the grandest man that ever lived. I was thoroughly mad at you then. I come in an inch of turning plumb against you, but I didn’t. I fought for you as I’d have fought for myself away back in my girlhood. I did it, although I could have spanked you good for making him so miserable." "You know why I refused him," Virginia said, in a low voice. "You, of all persons, will know that." "I don’t know as I do," Ann said, with a probing expression in her eyes. "I don’t know, unless, after all, you have a leaning for that young scamp, who has no more real honor than a convict in his stripes. Women are that way, except in very rare cases. The bigger the scoundrel and the meaner he treats them the more they want him. If it’s that, I am not going to upbraid you. Upbraiding folks for obeying the laws of nature is the greatest loss of wind possible. If you really love that scamp, no power under high heaven will turn you." "Love him? I loathe him!" burst passionately from Virginia’s lips. "Then what under the sun made you treat Luke King as you did?" asked Ann, almost sternly. "Because I could not marry him," said the girl, firmly. "I’d rather die than accept the love and devotion of a man as noble as he is after—after—oh, you know what I mean!"