"Yes, she would say anything to humiliate me. I inflicted a mortal wound when I began to study with my Young Master." "Oh, you have studied, have you? That was foolish. I committed the same indiscretion." "If you have studied, then it was glorious to study." "It is bad enough not to be worth your salt, but please don't be a fool." "I can't help it. You would rob a philosopher of his wisdom." She laughed, and I believe that had a lancet pricked an artery my blood would have spurted a mile high. I heard a sharp cry from the child, and it smote my heart, not that the little thing might be suffering, but that I was to be robbed. "I must go," she said. "And shall I stay?" "Yes, if you sleep standing up, like a horse." She was gone, and I stood under the trees, gazing at the cabin lights; and I waited there until the lights began to go out, but the girl did not return. I heard Young Master ride up to the gate, and I went out to take his horse. He walked with me to the stable. He said not a word until we were returning, and then, clutching my arm, he told me that Miss Potter had consented to be his wife. "I am the happiest human being on the face of this broad earth," he said, waving his arm so as to take in the entire universe. "And she says that she will wait till I have made myself famous, for I told her I thought that this would be wise, believing with some of the great thinkers, that while marriage might improve a man's judgment, it might also put out a part of his fire. You know I was born with the idea that I was to become an orator, and I have not run against anything to change my opinion. I feel something surging within me, and all I need is a subject. I can be proud of her, Dan; I am proud of her, and I must make myself worthy of her pride. What are you so glum about to-night?" "You have seen the girl that came with Miss May?" "Yes, she is a beauty. And she has caught you? I'm glad of it. Oh, it seems that old mother Nature is not disposed to let us drift far apart. In common we felt many an emotion, and love came along to teach one of us what the other did not know. But you don't mean that you have fallen in love with her so soon?" "I don't know anything when I think of her, Mars. Bob. More than half my life seems to be compressed into the few hours she has been under our roof." It was getting late, and Bob went to bed soon after we reached the room, to dream of a love that had leaped to meet his own; and I lay there listening to the faint cries of a child, and the almost silent sounds of foot-falls on the floor, down the hall. In the morning I was up before the sun, dodging about among the trees at the east end of the veranda. At last she came down to freshen her eyes with a glimpse of the dawn-couch, purple with the sun's resurrection. "I am almost persuaded that you are determined to earn your salt, you are up so early," she said with a smile brighter than the new day.