“Life’s a shadder,
  Never mind it. 
A cloud kivers up the sun
And whar is yer shadder gone? 
  Ye’ll hey to be peart to find it!

“Life’s a ladder—­
  What about it? 
You’ve clim half-way t’ the top,
Down comes yer ladder ke-whop! 
  You can’t scrabble up without it!

“Nothin’s no sadder,
  Kordin to my tell,
Than packin’ yer life around. 
They’s good rest under the ground
  Ef a feller kin on’y die well.”

Charlton, full of ambition, having not yet tasted the bitterness of disappointment, clinging to life as to all, was fairly puzzled to understand the morbid sadness of the Poet’s spirit.  “I’m sorry you feel that way, Gray,” he said.  “But at any rate promise me you won’t do anything desperate without talking to me.”

“I’ll do that air, Mr. Charlton,” and the two shook hands again.

CHAPTER XIX.

STANDING GUARD IN VAIN.

It was Isabel Marlay that sought Albert again.  Her practical intellect, bothered with no visions, dazed with no theories, embarrassed by no broad philanthropies, was full of resource, and equally full, if not of general, at least of a specific benevolence that forgot mankind in its kindness to the individual.

Albert saw plainly enough that he could not keep Katy in her present state of feeling.  He saw how she would inevitably slip through his fingers.  But what to do he knew not.  So, like most men of earnest and half-visionary spirit, he did nothing.  Unbeliever in Providence that he was, he waited in the belief that something must happen to help him out of the difficulty.  Isa, believer that she was, set herself to be her own Providence.

Albert had been spending an evening with Miss Minorkey.  He spent nearly all his evenings with Miss Minorkey.  He came home, and stood a minute, as was his wont, looking at the prairie landscape.  A rolling prairie is like a mountain, in that it perpetually changes its appearance; it is delicately susceptible to all manner of atmospheric effects.  It lay before him in the dim moonlight, indefinite; a succession of undulations running one into the other, not to be counted nor measured.  All accurate notions of topography were lost; there was only landscape, dim, undeveloped, suggestive of infinitude.  Standing thus in the happiness of loving and being loved, the soft indefiniteness of the landscape and the incessant hum of the field-crickets and katydids, sounds which came out of the everywhere, soothed Charlton like the song of a troubadour.

“Mr. Charlton!”

Like one awaking from a dream, Albert saw Isa Marlay, her hand resting against one of the posts which supported the piazza-roof, looking even more perfect and picturesque than ever in the haziness of the moonlight.  Figure, dress, and voice were each full of grace and sweetness, and if the face was not exactly beautiful, it was at least charming and full of a subtle magnetism. (Magnetism! happy word, with which we cover the weakness of our thoughts, and make a show of comprehending and defining qualities which are neither comprehensible nor definable!)