"Very well, then--the lid's off to you--and remember you asked for--the rummage, Rose Mary," answered Everett in a tone as light as hers. Then suddenly he rose and stood tall and straight in front of her, looking down into her upraised eyes in the dusk. "You don't know, do you, you rose woman you, what a man's life can hold--of nothingness? Yes, I've worked hard at my profession and thrown away the proceeds--in a kind of--riotous living. Other men's vast fortunes have been built on my brains, and my next year I'm going to enter as a penniless thirty-niner. When I came South three months ago I drew the last thousand dollars I had in bank, I have a couple of hundreds left, and that's all, out of over twenty thousand made in straight fees from mineral tests in the last year. Yes--a bit of riotous living. It's true about those poor flowers plucked off frail stems off frailer bushes--but--if it hadn't been--a sort of fair play all around I wouldn't stand here telling you about it, you in your hedge of briar roses. And now suddenly something has come into my life that makes me regret every dollar tossed to the winds and every cent burned in the fires--and in spite of it all I must make good. I'm going away from you and I don't know what is going to happen--but as I tell you from now on my feet do not stray from Providence Road, my eyes will turn from across any distance to catch a sight of the crown of old Harpeth, and my heart is in your milk-house to be of any kind of humble use. Ah, comfort me, rose girl, that I can not say more and that go I must if I catch my train." And he stretched out his hands to Rose Mary as she arose and stood close at his side, her eyes never leaving his and her lips parted with the quick breathing of her lifted breast. "And you'll remember, won't you, when things go wrong, or you are tired, that the sunny corner in the old farm-house is yours? Always I shall be here in Harpeth Valley with my nest in the Briars, and because you are gone I'll be lonely. But I won't be in the least anxious, for whatever it is that calls you, I know you will give the right answer, because--because--well, aren't you one of my own nesties, and don't I know how strong and straight your wings can fly?" CHAPTER VIII UNCLE TUCKER'S TORCH "And how do you do, Mr. Crabtree? Glad to see you, suh, glad to see you again! How is all Sweetbriar? Any new voters since young Tucker, or a poem or so in the Rucker family? And are you succeeding in keeping the peace with Mrs. Plunkett for young Bob?" And firing this volley of questions through the gently agitated smile-veil the Honorable Gideon Newsome stood in the door of the store, large-looming and jocular.