“It was all my fault!” sobbed Jess. “Will he ever forgive me? I deserve that he should despise me to the end of his life. If he had died! Oh! oh! oh!” “Never mind conjuring up such a possibility,” declared Lucy. “Be glad that he did not, and never send any human being into such danger again. I hope this will be a warning.” “Don’t say any more,” sobbed Jess, pitifully. “Indeed, I feel bad enough over it. Will you tell him that for me, Lucy?” The farmer’s daughter shrugged her shoulders. The turn affairs had taken was not at all to her liking. Jess and Mr. Moore were getting along altogether too famously in their friendship to suit her. They had not known each other twenty-four hours, and now Mr. Moore owed his life to the girl, and she, in turn, owed hers to him. It was with some little trepidation that Jess entered the presence of Mr. Moore, late that afternoon. The feeling was so strong within her breast that he would hate her for sending him to the death which he missed so narrowly. He held out his strong, white hand to her, with a grave smile which disarmed her fears at once. “I am so sorry it happened,” she faltered. “Do you forgive me?” “Certainly,” he responded. “That should go without saying. I may also add, but for that affair I should never have known what a brave and daring little girl you are, I have to thank you profoundly for the life you have saved to me, useless though I find it, and wish also to add that hereafter it is to be devoted to you and your interests, if you will allow it to be so. If life and living were sweet to me, I should thank you for giving me a chance to continue them.” Jess was puzzled at his words. She was too young, and had too little experience with the world, to comprehend them fully. The entrance of the family interrupted the reply she would have made him. But from that hour the friendship between the two ripened wonderfully. Each hour little Jess fell deeper and deeper under the glamour of a spell which she could not cast off--the glamour of a young girl’s awakened heart, with its sweet throbbings, proclaiming that it had learned its first lesson from the book of love, and the lesson enthraled her. What Mr. Moore’s feelings were it was hard to conjecture. One moment he hated all womankind, for the sake of the one he had found so fair and so false--beautiful Queenie Trevalyn, whom he had loved too well, and to his bitter cost. Then he found himself softening toward one of the hated sex--little Jess, whose heart was as innocent and pure as a little babe’s. He wondered if she would ever have the heart to draw a man on to declare his love, and then, when she found that he was not possessed of wealth, discard him as unconcernedly as she would a withered flower of which she had grown tired.