When Blakely turned again to Angela she, too, was gone. He found her a
little later, her arms twined about her pony's neck, her face buried
in his mane, and sobbing as though her heart would break.
On a soft, starlit evening within the week, no longer weeping, but
leaning on Blakely's arm, Angela stood at the edge of the bluff,
looking far out over the Red Rock country to the northeast. The sentry
had reported a distant signal fire, and several of the younger people
had strolled out to see. Whatever it was that had caused the report
had vanished by the time they reached the post, so, presently, Kate
Sanders started the homeward move, and now even the sentry had
disappeared in the darkness. When Angela, too, would have returned,
his arm restrained. She knew it would. She knew he had not spoken that
evening at the willows because of her tears. She knew he had been
patient, forbearing, gentle, yet well she knew he meant now to speak
and wait no longer.
"Do you remember," he began, "when I said that some day I should tell
you--but never your aunt--who it was that came to my quarters that
night--and why she came?" and though she sought to remove her hand
from his arm he would not let it go.
"You did tell me," she answered, her eyelids drooping.
"I did!--when?"
Though the face was downcast, the sensitive lips began to quiver with
merriment and mischief.
"The same day you took me for--your mother--and asked me to sing for
you."
"Angela!" he cried, in amaze, and turning quickly toward her, "What
can you mean?"
"Just what I say. You began as though I were your sister, then your
mother. I think, perhaps, if we'd had another hour together it would
have been grandmother." She was shaking with suppressed laughter now,
or was it violent trembling, for his heart, like hers, was bounding.
"I must indeed have been delirious," he answered now, not laughing,
not even smiling. He had possessed himself of that other hand, despite
its fluttering effort. His voice was deep and grave and tremulous. "I
called you anything but what I most longed to call you--what I pray
God I may call you, Angela--my wife!"
L'ENVOI There was a wedding at Sandy that winter when Pat Mullins took his
discharge, and his land warrant, and a claim up the Beaver, and Norah
Shaughnessy to wife. There was another, many a mile from Sandy, when
the May blossoms were showering in the orchard of a fair old homestead
in the distant East, and then Neil Blakely took his bride to see "the
land of the leal" after the little peep at the lands that now she
shared with him. There is one room in the beautiful old Colonial
mansion that they soon learned to call "father's," in anticipation of
the time when he should retire and come to hang the old saber on the
older mantel and spend his declining years with them. There is
another, sacred to Aunt Janet, where she was often welcomed, a woman
long since reconciled to Angela's once "obnoxious," but ever devoted
admirer. There were some points in which Aunt Janet suffered sore. She
had views of her own upon the rearing and management of children, and
these views she did at first oppose to those of Angela, but not for
long. In this, as in her choice of a husband, Angela had to read her
declaration of independence to the elder woman.