The newspaper on which he was employed recognized his worth, and at the end of the month he was pleased beyond all expression to find a twenty dollar gold piece in his envelope instead of a ten and a five. The chief artist told him his salary would improve correspondingly with his work. Still, he realized that twenty dollars a week was but little more than it required to keep him "going" in this spendthrift metropolis. The men he met were good fellows and they spent money with the freedom customary among newspaper workers. Jud did not spend his foolishly, yet he found he could save but little. He did not touch liquor; the other boys in the office did. His friend, the chief artist, advised him to save what money he could, but to avoid as much as possible the danger of being called a "cheap skate." He was told to be anything but stingy. The young artist would gladly have eaten at lunch counters and slept in the lowliest of flats if he could have followed his own inclinations. But how could he let the other boys spend money on expensive meals without responding as liberally? It was with joy, then, that he welcomed the increase; and besides, it proved to him that there was promise of greater advancement, and that at no far distant day he could bring Justine to the city. He took a bright twenty dollar gold piece to her on that first and long-expected visit. She met him at the station. All the way out to the little cottage he beamed with the pleasure and pride of possessing such love as came to him from this glowing girl. He forgot to compare her with the visions of loveliness he had become accustomed to seeing in the city. So overjoyed was he that he did not notice her simple garments, her sunburnt hands, her brown face. To him she was the most beautiful of all beings--the most perfect, the most to be desired. "Jud, dear, I am so happy I could die," she whispered as they entered the cottage door after the drive home. He took her in his arms and held her for neither knew how long. "Are you so glad to see me, sweetheart?" he asked tenderly. "Glad! If you had not come to-day I should have gone to Chicago to-night. I could not have waited another day. Oh, it is so good to have you here; it is so good to be in your arms! You don't know how I have longed for you, Jud;--you don't know how lonely I have been all these years." "Years! It has been but a month and a half," he said, smiling. "But each day has been a year. Have they not seemed long to you?" she cried, chilled by the fear that they had been mere days to him when they had been such ages to her.