“Yes, you sent him, an’ I waited fer him.  The day he come out I married him.  We had to dig hard.  I’d do it ag’in.  Now his boy’s saved yer girl’s life to pay ye fer puttin’ his father’n State’s pris’n.  Two year ago didn’t Bill Porter—­sick an’ a-dyin’—­hunt till he foun’ me here?  Didn’t he go an’ swear?  Done fer spite.  Didn’t he sen’ me the affydavy?—­an’ I’ve got it safe.  Got it swore to by him, with the justice o’ the peace’s name signed, an’ two witnissis, an’ the judge’s red seal on top o’ that.  Could I go back an’ show that paper’n tell how ’twas?  Too late!  George was dead.  I couldn’t go.  My folks a’most disowned me when I took him.  I said then I never’d step my foot into their doors.  Them that gives me the col’ shoulder once don’t do it no more.  Come to me?—­well an’ good.  Go to them?—­never.”

The bewildered colonel, promising every possible reparation, would have thrown himself at her feet, could he have done so, for the part he had taken in the prosecution.  But she permitted no interruption, and continued:  “He lay by the winder where yer girl lies.  The moon come in on his bed as it does on her’n.  In the night, when I see the light o’ the sky shine there where he died, I feel his sperit in the room.  I moved the bed to this corner, where it’s darker.  I wa’n’t good enough to lie there.  But ’twas on his mind.  He said, ’Becky, if I could prove it to you afore I died!’ An’ I say, George’s sperit sent Bill Porter here, an’ sent you here, an’ sent me into this room to-night.  Now, fer the sake o’him an’ Markis-dee, go back an’ tell the truth!”

Speaking the word “truth,” she vanished across the light to her dark place of rest.

Next morning the colonel examined and copied the confession while a buggy waited for him at the door.  Respecting the evident wishes of Mrs. Ruggles, he went away with no attempt to express the feelings that were uppermost in his heart.

She sleeps beside her husband in the orchard.  Her old log-house has been replaced by a large white box, of which her son the marquis is proprietor.  Each year adds to his acres or his stock.  An able-bodied wife, whose industry and English are equal to his own, sits near him at the door on a summer evening, while he smokes his pipe, takes an oakum-headed child upon his knee, and gazes quietly in the direction of the spring and across the grain-fields where once he saw—­or rather heard, without waiting to see—­a forest swept down in a moment.  He smokes and gazes as he sees again a dazzling creature ride down the dreary road, and wonders where on earth that face can be, and how much it has changed, and whether, through so many years, any memory of him can linger in her heart.  He says nothing.  But he hugs closer the oakum-headed child as he remembers the one romance in his hard, humdrum life.

CHAUNCEY HICKOX.

Under False Colors.

Chapter I.