I earned meself; and that is all I have saved of me wages.  I don’t mind paying for the muff, or the drexing table, or Mrs. Duncan’s things, from that other money, and later the Angel can have every last cent of me grandmother’s, if she’ll take it; but just now—­oh, sir, can’t you see that I have to be buying this stone with what I have in the bank?  I’m feeling that I couldn’t do any other way, and don’t you think the Angel would rather have the best stone I can buy with the money I earned meself than a finer one paid for with other money?”

“In other words, Freckles,” said the Boss in a husky voice, “you don’t want to buy the Angel’s ring with money.  You want to give for it your first awful fear of the swamp.  You want to pay for it with the loneliness and heart hunger you have suffered there, with last winter’s freezing on the line and this summer’s burning in the sun.  You want it to stand to her for every hour in which you risked your life to fulfill your contract honorably.  You want the price of that stone to be the fears that have chilled your heart—­the sweat and blood of your body.”

Freckles’ eyes were filled with tears and his face quivering with feeling.

“Dear Mr. McLean,” he said, reaching with a caress over the Boss’s black hair and his cheek.  “Dear Boss, that’s why I’ve wanted you so.  I knew you would know.  Now you will be looking at these?  I don’t want emeralds, because that’s what she gave me.”

He pushed the green stones into a little heap of rejected ones.  Then he singled out all the pearls.

“Ain’t they pretty things?” he said.  “I’ll be getting her some of those later.  They are like lily faces, turtle-head flowers, dewdrops in the shade or moonlight; but they haven’t the life in them that I want in the stone I give to the Angel right now.”

Freckles heaped the pearls with the emeralds.  He studied the diamonds a long time.

“These things are so fascinating like they almost tempt one, though they ain’t quite the proper thing,” he said.  “I’ve always dearly loved to be watching yours, sir.  I must get her some of these big ones, too, some day.  They’re like the Limberlost in January, when it’s all ice-coated, and the sun is in the west and shines through and makes all you can see of the whole world look like fire and ice; but fire and ice ain’t like the Angel.”

The diamonds joined the emeralds and pearls.  There was left a little red heap, and Freckles’ fingers touched it with a new tenderness.  His eyes were flashing.

“I’m thinking here’s me Angel’s stone,” he exulted.  “The Limberlost, and me with it, grew in mine; but it’s going to bloom, and her with it, in this!  There’s the red of the wild poppies, the cardinal-flowers, and the little bunch of crushed foxfire that we found where she put it to save me.  There’s the light of the campfire, and the sun setting over Sleepy Snake Creek.  There’s the red of the blood we were willing to give for each other.  It’s like her lips, and like the drops that dried on her beautiful arm that first day, and I’m thinking it must be like the brave, tender, clean, red heart of her.”