Before this solemn little speech was finished, Susie was crying and biting her bonnet-strings in a most undignified manner.  “Hush, Al Golyer!” she burst out.  “You mustn’t talk so.  You are too good for me.  I am kind of promised to that fellow.  I ’most wish I had never seen him.”

Allen sprang to her and took her in his strong arms:  she struggled free from him.  In a moment the vibration which his passionate speech had produced in her passed away.  She dried her eyes and said firmly enough, “It’s no use, Al:  we wouldn’t be happy together.  Good-bye!  I shouldn’t wonder if I went away from Chaney Creek before long.”

She walked rapidly down to the river-road.  Allen stood fixed and motionless, gazing at the light, graceful form until the blue dress vanished behind the hill, and leaned long on his spade, unconscious of the lapse of time.

When Susan reached her home she found Leon at the gate.

“Ah, my little rosebud!  I came near missing you.  I am going to Keokuk this morning, to be gone a few days.  I stopped here a minute to give you something to keep for me till I come back.”

“What is it?”

He took her chubby cheeks between his hands and laid on her cherry-ripe lips a keepsake which he never reclaimed.

She stood watching him from the gate until, as a clump of willows snatched him from her, she thought, “He will go right by where Al is at work.  It would be jest like him to jump over the fence and have a talk with him.  I’d like to hear it.”

An hour or so later, as she sat and sewed in the airy little entry, a shadow fell upon her work, and as she looked up her startled eyes met the piercing glance of her discarded lover.  A momentary ripple of remorse passed over her cheerful heart as she saw Allen’s pale and agitated face.  He was paler than she had ever seen him, with that ghastly pallor of weather-beaten faces.  His black hair, wet with perspiration, clung clammily to his temples.  He looked beaten, discouraged, utterly fatigued with the conflict of emotion.  But one who looked closely in his eyes would have seen a curious stealthy, half-shaded light in them, as of one who, though working against hope, was still not without resolute will.

Dame Barringer, who had seen him coming up the walk, bustled in:  “Good-morning, Allen.  How beat out you do look!  Now, I like a stiddy young man, but don’t you think you run this thing of workin’ into the ground?”

“Wail, maybe so,” said Golyer with a weary smile—­“leastways I’ve been a-running this spade into the ground all the morning, and—­”

“You want buttermilk—­that’s your idee:  ain’t it, now?”

“Well, Mizzes Barringer, I reckon you know my failin’s.”

The good woman trotted off to the dairy, and Susie sewed demurely, waiting with some trepidation for what was to come next.