"I'll have you married to the new girl Miss Smith got. I'll do it next week!" Adam rolled his eyes heavenward. "An' the Lord only just took my pore gal, suh! You's not in earnest, suh?" "And if I make you marry the new girl the Lord will have given you a better one." Adam was deftly cooking Durgan's breakfast, moving about the hut with the light step of pride in the new service. There was a silence. Durgan had become absorbed in the newspaper. At last, with another sigh that was cut short ere it had expanded his huge chest, Adam meekly began: "Marse Neil, suh." "Well?" "The minister who visited me in my affliction, he say--sez he--that we ought to take wi' joy all the dealin' of the Lord an' bless His name." And Durgan replied, without raising his eyes, "I believe it. Adam, you are a good nigger. I'll speak to Miss Smith." One day, a while after, the young gardener against whose aspirations Durgan had warned Bertha came up to the mica mine. He had left Deer Cove soon after Bertha had dismissed him, and gone, as the old stories have it, "into the world to seek his fortune." It was a very unusual step for a mountain white, and had given his father so much concern that he had had the son prayed for at the Sunday camp meeting. The errant gardener had roamed as far as Baltimore, and worked awhile in the household of a certain rich man. He had come away from the plutocrat's palace homesick for his mountains, but had brought back one dominant idea. Probably his disappointed love had made his mind peculiarly impressionable, or, true to the traditions of his class, he might, perhaps, not have gained even one. He had now the most exaggerated idea of the elevation to which the "rich and great" were raised. Convinced when he left Deer that Bertha would not receive his addresses, he had found consolation in investing her with a new glamor, as one of an almost princely cast. Upon his return he had heard the talk of the neighborhood--the story which Alden had allowed to go abroad--that the invalid father, who had been leading some kind of dissipated life abroad, had returned, after years of estrangement, to be nursed in his last illness by his daughters. Herein lay the motive of young Godson's errand. "They say that he doesn't like colored men lifting him and moving him about--that Miss Smith's looking for a helper for him." Durgan laid his pick against the rock and stood in silent astonishment. He had seen different emotions work different changes in the habits of men, but never so remarkable a result of love as this cure of petty pride in the stiff-necked mountaineer. He was uncertain how far the young man had interpreted himself aright. "It is for Miss Bertha's sake you wish to do this?" he asked. Godson assented. And having at last satisfied himself, by more interrogation, that the youth had actually no further hope at present than to serve his goddess in some lowly task, Durgan undertook to support his application.