Was this the reason at the bottom of it? The very bottom? I cannot be certain, because I have never been a girl myself. Perhaps she thought that work is not a stooping, and that marriage may be. Perhaps--But all I really know is that Molly Wood continued cheerfully to embroider the handkerchiefs, make the preserves, teach the pupils--and firmly to reject Sam Bannett. Thus it went on until she was twenty. There certain members of her family began to tell her how rich Sam was going to be--was, indeed, already. It was at this time that she wrote Mrs. Balaam her doubts and her desires as to migrating to Bear Creek. It was at this time also that her face grew a little paler, and her friends thought that she was overworked, and Mrs. Flynt feared she was losing her looks. It was at this time, too, that she grew very intimate with that great-aunt over at Dunbarton, and from her received much comfort and strengthening. “Never!” said the old lady, “especially if you can’t love him.” “I do like him,” said Molly; “and he is very kind.” “Never!” said the old lady again. “When I die, you’ll have something--and that will not be long now.” Molly flung her arms around her aunt, and stopped her words with a kiss. And then one winter afternoon, two years later, came the last straw. The front door of the old house had shut. Out of it had stepped the persistent suitor. Mrs. Flynt watched him drive away in his smart sleigh. “That girl is a fool!” she said furiously; and she came away from her bedroom window where she had posted herself for observation. Inside the old house a door had also shut. This was the door of Molly’s own room. And there she sat, in floods of tears. For she could not bear to hurt a man who loved her with all the power of love that was in him. It was about twilight when her door opened, and an elderly lady came softly in. “My dear,” she ventured, “and you were not able--” “Oh, mother!” cried the girl, “have you come to say that too?” The next day Miss Wood had become very hard. In three weeks she had accepted the position on Bear Creek. In two months she started, heart-heavy, but with a spirit craving the unknown. IX. THE SPINSTER MEETS THE UNKNOWN On a Monday noon a small company of horsemen strung out along the trail from Sunk Creek to gather cattle over their allotted sweep of range. Spring was backward, and they, as they rode galloping and gathering upon the cold week’s work, cursed cheerily and occasionally sang. The Virginian was grave in bearing and of infrequent speech; but he kept a song going--a matter of some seventy-nine verses. Seventy-eight were quite unprintable, and rejoiced his brother cow-punchers monstrously. They, knowing him to be a singular man, forebore ever to press him, and awaited his own humor, lest he should weary of the lyric; and when after a day of silence apparently saturnine, he would lift his gentle voice and begin: