There was nothing to do now but to go. As he passed down the stairs he saw Crosman and Mamie standing anxiously in the parlour doorway. “Did they say anything about our coming up?” said Crosman. Halloran stopped short. “By Jove!” he said; and then: “Say, I'm sorry, but I clean forgot you. It comes to the same thing, anyhow; I never could have said a word. I guess it's up to you.” He stood aside. Mamie looked at Crosman. “Well, say, Mamie, where is she?” “In her room, I guess.” “You go up ahead, Mamie, and find out if I can see her.” So with a dejected expression, Mamie piloting him, Crosman started up the stairs just as Halloran left the house. CHAPTER VIII--Leveling Down Margaret and Halloran were married in the late spring. For their honeymoon they went back to the mountains at the time when the apple buds were bursting into billows of pink and white in hillside orchards. The song-sparrows and robins sang for them as they drove up from the village; the brook, boisterous with a burden drained from higher slopes where the snow still lingered under northern ledges, brawled almost at the carriage wheels; millions of violets dotted the roadside, and white strawberry blossoms and the first daisies, and forget-me-nots that had escaped from some old-time garden. The smell of spring was in the air, the intoxicating sense of youth and health and happiness. And as they rolled comfortably along behind the jogging white horses they could only look at each other and draw in deep breaths of the fragrant, buoyant air, and be glad. Their first climb was up to the blackberry patch, under the maples. As they sat there on a well-remembered log, and looked out on the green wonder of the opposite slope, where the cloud-shadows were mounting as on that day of the autumn before, Margaret slipped her hand into Halloran's. “Listen,” she said. Far back in the hollow of the mountain a winter wren was caroling, welcoming them back to the highlands with all the melody in his little throat. His neighbours took it up, and piped their shrillest; and all along the slope chirped the dainty babel of welcome. “John,” she murmured. “Yes, Margaret.” “They can't send you any telegrams now?” “It wouldn't do them any good if they did. I've ordered the station agent to hold all messages until I call for them, and I'm not going to call.” She smiled; and again they were silent, listening to the merry strains behind them and to the far-off sounds from the valley, and watching the men at work in the fields below.