"Yes, sir, but robbery isn't like stealing. It's more--more--it's braver." "Braver? Possibly. And you really consider robbery an honorable business?" "Oh, yes." "And I can help him," said Ruth; "we would work together." Mr. Heywood looked from the cherubic lips of the groom into the clear eyes of his superlatively conscientious little daughter and murmured: "Yes, you would be of great assistance." Then, after a pause: "Now, Cyrus, you and Ruth come to me twenty years hence and if we are all alive and Ruth still wants you I have no doubt we can arrange a wedding." "Twenty years!" exclaimed Ruth. "Why, father, we shall all be dead!" "Oh, no! I trust not." "Or too old--too awful old!" "No, indeed! You will be twenty-seven. Call it fourteen years, then you will be only twenty-one." "But," said Cyrus, "we may forget all about it in fourteen years." "Then it will be no disappointment to you if you can't marry. But run along now, children, I have no more time for you." He spoke with such decision as he began reading the letter in his hand that the unmarried couple turned about and slowly vanished. When they passed out into the open air, a stranger might have thought, from the manner in which Zac bounced with joy and lifted up his voice, that Cyrus was emerging from the Valley of the Shadow of Death. As they stood again on the porch, the corners of Ruth's mouth were drooping. There were tears in her irresistible eyes. Cyrus laid his hands on her shoulders. "Now don't you feel bad, Ruthy. If you want to be married, we just will." The maiden shook her head. "He said not." "No, he didn't. He only said he was busy." "He said only grown people got married." "But he didn't say children couldn't if they wanted to." In the maiden's face came a brighter look. "Yes, that is true, isn't it?" "'Course it is! And we will be doing something new and different. It makes folks famous to be the first to do things. Look at Christopher Columbus, and look at Benjamin Franklin, the first man to fly a kite and steer lightnin' and make it mind him." "Was he married when he was a child?" "Nobody knows. But if you and I are the first children to get married--the very first, why our pictures might be in history books." Ruth laughed. "That would be funny, wouldn't it?" "Yes, wouldn't it! And under it would be printed Mr. and Mrs. Ruth Heywood." "Oh, no! It would be Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus Alton. It's always that way." "Then we'll be the first ones to do it the new way. We needn't do just like everybody else. But who's going to wait fourteen years. Not us! If your father is too busy to do it, we'll get somebody else." "Who?" "I dunno." And he looked away toward the common and became thoughtful.