"Extra, oh-h-h, extra! All about the Smash of the Great Wheat Corner! All about the Failure of Curtis Jadwin!" CONCLUSION The evening had closed in wet and misty. All day long a chill wind had blown across the city from off the lake, and by eight o'clock, when Laura and Jadwin came down to the dismantled library, a heavy rain was falling. Laura gave Jadwin her arm as they made their way across the room--their footsteps echoing strangely from the uncarpeted boards. "There, dear," she said. "Give me the valise. Now sit down on the packing box there. Are you tired? You had better put your hat on. It is full of draughts here, now that all the furniture and curtains are out." "No, no. I'm all right, old girl. Is the hack there yet?" "Not yet. You're sure you're not tired?" she insisted. "You had a pretty bad siege of it, you know, and this is only the first week you've been up. You remember how the doctor--" "I've had too good a nurse," he answered, stroking her hand, "not to be fine as a fiddle by now. You must be tired yourself, Laura. Why, for whole days there--and nights, too, they tell me--you never left the room." She shook her head, as though dismissing the subject. "I wonder," she said, sitting down upon a smaller packing-box and clasping a knee in her hands, "I wonder what the West will be like. Do you know I think I am going to like it, Curtis?" "It will be starting in all over again, old girl," he said, with a warning shake of his head. "Pretty hard at first, I'm afraid." She laughed an almost contemptuous note. "Hard! Now?" She took his hand and laid it to her cheek. "By all the rules you ought to hate me," he began. "What have I done for you but hurt you and, at last, bring you to--" But she shut her gloved hand over his mouth. "Stop!" she cried. "Hush, dear. You have brought me the greatest happiness of my life." Then under her breath, her eyes wide and thoughtful, she murmured: "A capitulation and not a triumph, and I have won a victory by surrendering." "Hey--what?" demanded Jadwin. "I didn't hear." "Never mind," she answered. "It was nothing. 'The world is all before us where to choose,' now, isn't it? And this big house and all the life we have led in it was just an incident in our lives--an incident that is closed." "Looks like it, to look around this room," he said, grimly. "Nothing left but the wall paper. What do you suppose are in these boxes?" "They're labelled 'books and portieres.'" "Who bought 'em I wonder? I'd have thought the party who bought the house would have taken them. Well, it was a wrench to see the place and all go so dirt cheap, and the 'Thetis', too, by George! But I'm glad now. It's as though we had lightened ship." He looked at his watch. "That hack ought to be here pretty soon. I'm glad we checked the trunks from the house; gives us more time."