The clock was striking ten, and Craig, who knew it was past Uncle Zach’s bed time, signified his wish to retire. He was given his old room, where he had burned the roses and the white and gold book, and as he recalled the pain and humiliation of that night it scarcely seemed possible that he could be as happy and light hearted as he was now. “Thank God, that dream is over,” he said, as he lay down to sleep and dream of what might possibly be on the morrow. The next day he left the hotel, to the great regret of Uncle Zach, who urged him to stay longer and who refused any remuneration. “I’d laugh to see me take anything. No, sir! I ain’t so mean as that. I’m glad to have you here. It does me good to have refined folks round like you. Come again. Give my regards and Dot’s to Miss Alice. Tell her to come here next summer. Shan’t cost her a cent. I don’t s’pose she’s got a great many to spend. I liked her build. I b’lieve she’s a truer one than t’other one, though I liked her amazingly.” Craig nodded and shook hands with his host and hostess and was gone. “It seems funny,—his stoppin’ to see Miss Alice,” Uncle Zach said as he looked after him. “He never seemed to take to her much when she was here. What do you s’pose it’s for?” He turned inquiringly to his wife, who, quicker of comprehension, replied, “I don’t s’pose; I know, and so would you, if you had half an eye.” Rather slowly it dawned upon Uncle Zach, together with the fitness of the arrangement. No two could be better suited to each other than Craig and Alice, and he gave it his sanction at once, with his characteristic, “Wall, I’ll be dumbed! I b’lieve you are right, and I’m glad on’t.” CHAPTER XXV. IN THE RED SCHOOL HOUSE. Craig was entirely cured of his infatuation. Jeff’s revelations had commenced the cure, and time and his own good sense had completed it. A girl who would engage herself to him one night and transfer her vows to another the next was not a wife to be desired, were she ten times as beautiful as Helen Tracy. “Fair and false,” he often said to himself when thinking of her and the summer in Ridgefield, while over and over again there came to him a thought of Alice, with whom he had always felt rested and at his best. In the early stage of his disappointments he had said to himself, “I shall never try love making again.” But he had changed his mind.