"Want you?" The wind, drawing from the river, brought a closer booming of the falls. It toned with his pleading undernote like a great minor chord. "Want you? I want you so much that I am not willing to share even your gratitude with any other man. I want you—your best—your love—nothing less will do." They had stopped near a clump of alders, where, in making the clearing, she had preserved an old cedar stump with chairlike arms, overrun now with vines. A little farther on Colonel waited at the meadow bars. She walked a few steps and halted in uncertainty. The Judge moved enough to rest his arms on the flat surface of the trunk, and stood leaning a little, watching her. The noise of the cataract filled the interlude. A branch rustled and a shower of dead leaves fell, slanting from the alders to his feet. Then she turned and came back. "Dear Uncle Silas," she began, and meeting his look, repeated, her voice shaking, "Dear Uncle Silas, I’ve got to tell you. It’s—Paul. It always was—Paul—before I knew it—when I was a small girl and he carried my books to school. But he—he—" Her breast heaved; she turned her face away once more, to the gloom of the park. "You know—what happened. Louise told you—the truth! It changes things, and, if you still want me, I’ll try my best to—get over it, and make you the best wife—that I can." Colonel moved restlessly and she walked the remaining steps to the bars. The Judge followed and dropped the rails and she led the horse through. Then, "It is all right, little girl," he said, slowly; "it is all right; as it should be. But, whatever you heard through Louise, you have made a mistake. My dear—my dear, you should have written me all about it at the start. It could hardly have made me happier, in the end, to know I had spoiled two young lives, that were meant for each other." *CHAPTER XXVII* *LEM CREATES FICTION* Lem’s treble piped above the low of the cows and the answering bawl of the calves outside the corral. He was seated on the top rail of the fence with a short piece of maple in his hand, out of which he was trying to shape a flute. "—An’ I hev be’n frequently so-o-old, an’ I hev be’n frequently sold; I’ve tunneled, hydraulicked, and cradled—an’— Oh, shet up, Shorts, now do." He closed his knife with a snap and, slipping down from his perch, opened the wicket and let the white-faced calf through. Martha poured the foaming milk from her measure into a pail and changed her seat. At the same time she lifted her glance to the county road, winding up northward from the meadow. "I should jedge," she said, shading her eyes, "I should jedge that ther’s Jake’s horse, but it don’t look nothin’ like Jake."