But when they had ascended the hill and stood beside the old oak-tree which grew by the road, they looked out across the valley of the Mad River, miles and miles away--across fields now golden with the wheat, or green with the rustling corn that glinted in the sun, off and away to the trees that became vague and dim in the hazy distance. Back whence they had come lay Macochee; they could see the tower of the Court House, the red spire of the Methodist church, the gleam of the sun on some great window in the roof of the car-shops; on the other side of town crawled a train, trailing its smoke behind it. Marley looked at Lavinia--she was leaning against the tree, and as he looked he saw that her blue eyes were filling slowly with tears. "Isn't it beautiful!" he said, looking away from her to the simple scenery of Ohio. "Do you remember that day?" "When we picked out our farm--where was it?" "Wasn't it over there?" "Yes," he said. "We could come and live here when we are old." He knew he was but seeking to console himself for what now could not be. "And there is the old town," he said. "It looks beautiful from here, nestling among those trees, it seems peaceful, and calm, and simple. But it is different when you are in it; for there are gossip and envy and spite, and I can never quite forgive it because it had no place for me. Well," he went on defiantly, in the relief he had been able to make for himself out of his immature reading of Macochee's character; "I don't need it any more; it is little and narrow and provincial, and the real life is to be lived out in the larger world. It's a hard fight, but it's worth it." "Don't you regret leaving it?" asked Lavinia, in a voice that was tenderer than Marley had ever known it. Marley looked at Macochee and then he looked at her. "I regret leaving it, dear heart, because I must leave you behind in it." "Would you never care to come back if it were not for me?" she asked. "I might," he admitted, "when we are old. We could come back here then and settle down on our farm over there." He pointed. "I'm half-afraid of the city," Lavinia said. He turned and took her in his arms. "Dearest," he said, "you must not say that; for the next time I come it will be to take you away from Macochee." "Will it?" she whispered. "Yes; and it can't be long now. How we have had to wait!" "Yes," she repeated, "how we have had to wait!" CHAPTER XXXII AT LAST Marley, in that compensatory pleasure we find in difficulties in the retrospect, was afterward fond of saying that if he had waited until he had the money and the position to warrant his marrying, he never would have married at all.