The young man said what a young man usually says when he is looking into trustful brown eyes, filled with tears he has caused and cannot prevent, and at the moment, in the sharp pain of parting, the words of one were not more or less sincere than those of the other. * * * * * The years that followed moved slowly, weighted as they were with hard work and monotony for Marg'et Ann, and by the time the voice of the corn had changed three times from the soft whispering of spring to the hoarse rustling of autumn, she felt herself old and tired. There had been letters and messages and rumors, more or less reliable, repeated at huskings and quiltings, to keep her informed of the fortunes of those who had crossed the plains, but her own letters from Lloyd had been few and unsatisfactory. She could not complain of this strict compliance with her wishes, but she had not counted upon the absence of her lover's mother, who had gone to Ohio shortly after his departure and decided to remain there with a married daughter. There was no one left in the neighborhood who could expect to hear directly from Lloyd, and the reports that came from other members of the party he had joined told little that poor Marg'et Ann wished to know, beyond the fact that he was well and had suffered the varying fortunes of other gold-hunters. There were moments of bitterness in which she tried to picture to herself what her life might have been if she had braved her parents' disapproval and married Lloyd before her mother's death; but there was never a moment bitter enough to tempt her into any neglect of present duty. The milking, the butter-making, the washing, the spinning, all the relentless hard work of the women of her day, went on systematically from the beginning of the year to its end, and the younger children came to accept her patient ministrations as unquestioningly as they had accepted their mother's. She wondered sometimes at her own anxiety to know that Lloyd was true to her, reproaching herself meanwhile with puritanic severity for such unholy selfishness; but she discussed the various plaids for the children's flannel dresses with Mrs. Skinner, who did the weaving, and cut and sewed and dyed the rags for a new best room carpet with the same conscientious regard for art in the distribution of the stripes which was displayed by all the women of her acquaintance; indeed, there was no one among them all whose taste in striping a carpet, or in "piecing and laying out a quilt," was more sought after than Marg'et Ann's. "She always was the old-fashionedest little thing," said grandmother Elliott, who had been a member of Mr. Morrison's congregation back in Ohio. "I never did see her beat." The good old lady's remark, which was considered highly commendatory, and had nothing whatever to do with the frivolities of changing custom, was made at a quilting at Squire Wilson's, from which Marg'et Ann chanced to be absent.