"It would be great fun," answered Jane, simply, "to have letters from a real cowboy with six-shooters in his belt." "I ’ll take them out when I write to you. Must we go back? Well, if you think we ought--though I ’d like to lie here all day and dream dreams about the great things I ’m going to do. But a fellow can’t dream much in the society of the Bells--he has to be up and doing." "With a heart for any fate," quoted Jane, blithely, as she led the way. "I ’ll tell you a better motto than that, though, fine as it is." "What is it? Give it to me, will you?" "I ’ll write it out for you." "When?" "To-morrow, perhaps." "To-day, please. I ’m an impatient chap." "Very well. You shall have it when we get home. It’s one I can’t talk about, somehow--it gives me a choke in my throat--I don’t know why." Hours later Murray found out why. By the time he and Jane had rejoined the rest of the party the threatening storm-clouds had brought the promised rain. The lunch had to be eaten in Grandmother Bell’s pleasant kitchen, but the guests enjoyed it almost as much as they could have done in the sylvan spot that Peter had picked out. By three o’clock in the afternoon the storm had passed. It had cooled the air a little, so that it was possible for the party to spend three long and delightful hours upon the river before going home. "We three in what was once white," said Murray, as he stood by the trap, "are a pretty sorry-looking crowd to go back all together. Why may I not change places with Peter, and drive the Bell family home?" Ross chuckled as he winked at Jane, and she recalled his prophecy of some days earlier. But it was he and Nancy who took the back seat of the trap, leaving Rufus and Shirley in the surrey, to carry on an acquaintance which had developed to great friendliness in the Townsend tennis-court, where the children had played every evening throughout the summer. Up in his own room Murray took from his pocket a slip of paper Jane had given him as she said good night, and unfolding it as if it were a message from a royal hand, he read it slowly through. The expectation of this message had been warm all through the pleasant drive home in the twilight. The words of Jane’s quotation were these:--and as it happened that he had never seen them before, they came to him at this crisis of his life with peculiar force. "Life is an arrow--therefore you must know What mark to aim at, how to use the bow-- Then draw it to the head, and let it go!" There was a little constriction in Murray’s own throat as he studied the brave words. He saw at a flash their deeper meaning. "Make myself fit to live my life," he thought "and then--whether it’s the life I want to live or not--let it go! Jane, you know how to fit the arrow to my hand--bless you! I will _draw_ it to the head--_and let it go_!" CHAPTER IX SNAP SHOTS