"I made the others ride on, and I got Sally to meet you just as she
was when I left her to go East." He spoke with a touch of the
mountaineer's over-sensitive pride. "I wanted you first to see my
people, not as they are going to be, but as they were. I wanted you to
know how proud I am of them--just that way."
That evening, the four of them walked together over to the cabin of
the Widow Miller. At the stile, Adrienne Lescott turned to the girl,
and said: "I suppose this place is preempted. I'm going to take Wilfred down
there by the creek, and leave you two alone."
Sally protested with mountain hospitality, but even under the moon she
once more colored adorably.
Adrienne turned up the collar of her sweater around her throat, and,
when she and the man who had waited, stood leaning on the rail of the
footbridge, she laid a hand on his arm.
"Has the water flowed by my mill, Wilfred?" she asked.
"What do you mean?" His voice trembled.
"Will you have anything to ask me when Christmas comes?"
"If I can wait that long, Drennie," he told her.
"Don't wait, dear," she suddenly exclaimed, turning toward him, and
raising eyes that held his answer. "Ask me now!"
But the question which he asked was one that his lips smothered as he
pressed them against her own.
Back where the poplar threw its sooty shadow on the road, two figures
sat close together on the top of a stile, talking happily in whispers.
A girl raised her face, and the moon shone on the deepness of her eyes,
as her lips curved in a trembling smile.
"You've come back, Samson," she said in a low voice, "but, if I'd
known how lovely she was, I'd have given up hoping. I don't see what
made you come."
Her voice dropped again into the tender cadence of dialect.
"I couldn't live withouten ye, Samson. I jest couldn't do hit." Would
he remember when she had said that before?
"I reckon, Sally," he promptly told her, "I couldn't live withouten
you, neither." Then, he added, fervently, "I'm plumb dead shore
I couldn't."