“Oh, if you were Pedro, you might understand, but you haven’t any heart at all!” Still he chewed the alder bushes. It was not often that he was allowed to take refreshment when this girl rode him, and he intended to make the best of his advantages. He felt her raise her head after some long moments; but as yet there was no signal for departure. Virginia was reading her letter again through blinding tears. “I have something to tell you, my clear little daughter, which I know will grieve you deeply,” her father had written. It was this that had at first made her heart stand still. “Still, I feel that I should tell you, for sooner or later you must know. Dear old Jim left us last night to begin life over again Somewhere Else. He had been gradually failing for weeks, but he would not give up his work. Yesterday morning Pedro was taken ill, and Jim refused to leave him, saying over and over again that you had always trusted Pedro to him. He worked over him all day, undoubtedly saving Pedro’s life, and refusing to leave him, even though the other men insisted upon his giving place to them. At night the men left him to eat supper, for he still would not leave his post; and when they had finished and went back to the stable, Pedro was quite himself again, but they found Jim—asleep. “I think you will feel as I do, dear, that it was like Jim to go that way—faithful to the end. We laid him to rest this morning in the side of the Spruce Ridge, near the great old tree to which you and he used to climb so often, especially when you were a little girl. You will remember how he loved the sweep of country from there. The morning was beautiful and clear—the very kind of day he loved best; and as we carried him up the hill, and laid him to rest, a meadow-lark sat on the stump of a quaking-asp and sang over and over again. That was the only prayer there was—that and our thoughts—but I am sure Jim would have chosen that for his farewell song.” Virginia could read no more. She pulled the head of the startled black horse away from the alders, and struck him with her spur. He started furiously down the hill, through the pines, and out into the country road. On and on they went, mile after mile, but still in Virginia’s ears rang her father’s words, “Dear old Jim left us last night to begin life over again Somewhere Else.” Jim, the comrade of her life, her trusted friend and adviser, whom she would never see again! Again she struck the black horse with her spur. But the pounding of his feet on the hard road could not drown her father’s words. And no one would understand, she cried to herself—not even Mary and Priscilla. To them Jim was a dear, interesting old man; to Dorothy a “character”; to Imogene a “common hired helper”! They would not be able to comprehend her grief, just as they had never been able to understand her love for him.