The youth looked at her with wide, worried eyes.  He had not thought the situation out in any very careful detail; but he had, at no time, contemplated her immediate departure.  Now that it seemed imminent it brought his feelings to a focus, showed him, instantly, that he could not bear to have this mountain maiden who had done so much for him thus vanish from his life.  A realization that he loved her deeply, tenderly, unchangeably rushed over him.  That she was a child of nature, uneducated and unaccustomed to the world he knew became a matter of but small importance to him as he stood there watching her, while, sadly but deliberately, she kept on with her work of packing in the carpet-bag her small possessions and the many gifts which she had purchased in the city for the children of her “mountings.”  That the world which he had ever thought his world might laugh at her and ridicule him if he married her he knew, but, suddenly, this seemed of little consequence.  The errors in her education could be readily corrected and her heart and instincts were more nearly right, already, than those of any lowland girl whom he had ever known.

“Madge,” he cried, “I cannot give you up!  I love you!”

The girl’s hands stopped their busy work among the bundles.  Her cheeks paled and her lips parted to a gasping little intake of breath.  It had not, once, occurred to her modest, self-sacrificing mind that, even as the bluegrass gentleman had found her heart and taken it forever and forever to be his own, no matter where she was or how great might the distance be which separated them, so, also, had his heart really and forever passed to her, the simple, unlettered and untrained little maiden of the wilderness.  It seemed impossible, incredible.

“You love me!”

“Yes, I love you as I never have, as I never can love any other woman.  Madge, dearest, I want you for my wife!”

The great desire, the certainty that if he did not win her then all other triumphs would be empty, meaningless, had come suddenly upon him, but it had come with overwhelming force.  His voice was vibrant with a passion which surprised himself.

“No, no; it can never be!” she said tremulously.  Her heart was in a turmoil, her hands trembled with excitement.  Ah, it was hard for her to put away from her the brilliant vista which had opened there before her startled eyes!  But she was sure that she must do it; that if she loved this man she must forswear him for his own dear sake.  What right had she, a mountain-girl, to come down there to the bluegrass to shame him in the face of friends and foes by her ignorance and awkwardness?  Her heart yearned toward him with a warmth and fervor which she had not known as possible to human longings, but—­no, no, for his sake she must give him up, as, for his sake, she had made the long, desperate journey from the mountains to save him from Joe Lorey’s bullet, as, for his sake, shrinking and dismayed, conscious