"There's nothing to say," Marjie answered. To his words, "I hoped there might be," she only said gayly, "Good-bye, Bud. Be a good boy, and be sure not to forget Springvale, for we'll always love your memory." And so he left her. He was a good boy, nor did he forget the town where his memory is green still in the hearts of all who knew him. His last thought was of Springvale, and he babbled of the Neosho, and fancied himself in the shallows down by the Deep Hole. He clung to me, as in his childhood, and begged me to carry him on my shoulders when waters of Death were rolling over him. I held his hand to the last, and when the silence fell, I stretched myself on the brown curly mesquite beside him and thanked God that He had let me know this boy. Ever more my life will be richer for the remembrance it holds of him. Bud left Springvale in one of those dripping, chilly, wet days our Kansas Octobers sometimes mix in with their opal-hued hours of Indian summer. That evening Tell Mapleson dropped into Judson's store and O'mie was let off early. The little Irishman ran up the street at once to the Whately home. Mrs. Whately had retired. Eight o'clock was bed time for middle-aged people in our town. Marjie sat alone by the fire. How many times that summer we had talked of the long winter evenings we should spend together by that fireplace in Marjie's cosy sitting-room. And now she was beside the hearth, and I was far away. I might have been forgiven without a word had I walked in that evening and found her, as O'mie did, alone with her sad thoughts. Marjie never tried to hide anything from O'mie. She knew he could see through any pretence of hers. She knew, too, that he would keep sacred anything he saw. "Marjie, I'm lonesome to-night." Marjie gave him a seat beside the fire. "What makes you lonesome, O'mie?" she asked gravely. "The wrongs av the world bear heavily upon me." Marjory looked at him curiously to see if he was joking. "What I need to do is to shrive myself, I guess, and then get up an inquisition, with myself as chief inquisitor." Marjie, studying the pictures in the burning coals, said nothing. O'mie also sat silent for a time. "Marjie," he said at length, "when you see things goin' all wrong end to, and you know what's behind 'em, drivin' 'em wrong, what's your rale Presbyterian duty then? Let 'em go? or tend to somethin' else besides your own business? Honest, now, what's what?"