When Steve left Mr. Polk he swung off down the well-remembered mountainside with strange joy in his heart. He had felt a new kinship for his father growing upon him since he could remain at school in the freedom of parental consent, and shy thought had come of reading aloud sometimes in the old Hollow Hut cabin from the pile of books under his arms while his father smoked and listened, as he had in the beautiful days when Miss Grace had tended him. But a few hours later he came slowly back up the same path with a stricken look on his face. "Pappy's dead, too," he said brokenly, when Mr. Polk stepped forward in surprise and alarm to meet him. The boy sat down upon a log, dropping his books in a heap beside him, and his bent shoulders shook with sobs. Mr. Polk comforted him with silent tenderness for a time, then gradually drew out the story of Jim Langly's short illness of a week from a virulent fever and his burial two days before. Together they went again next day to the cabin. Mirandy had married a few weeks previous and she and her husband were beginning family life anew in the old place. She had been stirred somewhat by the events of the year, and looked with interest upon Mr. Polk and Steve, the latter showing plainly to her the touch of new surroundings, and when Mr. Polk told her he wanted to take the boy for his own and educate him, she said with a touch of bitterness: "Tek him erlong; he won't nuver know nothin' here." So the two who had seemed bound from the first by close ties went away together, Steve to spend the summer at the school, where a few were always accommodated during the vacation, and Mr. Polk to wind up his business affairs in the South preparatory to a return to New York. He had formerly been associated with an uncle having large railroad interests in the East, who had often urged his return. He now proposed to do so, taking advantage of opportunities still open to him. These had been thrown away upon the breaking of his engagement with Grace Trowbridge, six years before, to take a position with a southern railroad and wander restlessly among new scenes. X STEVE DEVELOPS A MIND OF HIS OWN In the autumn Mr. Polk's happy plans materialized. There was a wedding in a handsome New York City home, and Steve Langly arrived the day before for the festivities. At the ceremony he and Anita Trowbridge, the little sister of Miss Grace, were the attendants. They came in first, Steve dressed as a page in a velvet suit which went well with his clear, dark complexion, and little Nita, as she was called, tripped beside him in delicate pink as a fairy flower girl. They stood on either side of a beautiful fox-skin rug with a history, upon which the bride and groom, slowly following, took their places to repeat the sacred vows which bound them for life.