“You’ll have to do that sort of orchard work, I’ll be busy in the house,” answered Rose Mary, with a rapturous, breathless shyness, and she held out her hand to him with the most lovely of all her little gestures of entreaty.  “You promised once to farm for me and—­you won’t ever leave—­ever leave me any more, will you?”

“No, never,” answered Everett as he took both her hands and at arms’ length pressed them against his breast, “I’m not going to enact over again the role of poor chap obliged to be persuaded into matrimony by heiress, but I’m going to take my own and buckle down and see that you people get every cent of that dig-up that’s coming to you.  With the reputation this find gives me I’ll be able to jolly well grubstake with commissions from now on, but I’ll hit no trail after this with a mule-pack that can’t carry double, Mary of the Rose.”

“And that doesn’t always lead back in just a little time to—­to the nesties?” she asked with the dove stars deep in the pools of her eyes, while ever so slightly her hands drew him toward her.

“Always a blazed, short cut when they need—­us,” he answered, yielding, then paused a moment and held himself from her and said, looking deep into the eyes raised to his, “Truly, rose woman, am I that beggar-man who came over the Ridge, cold, and in the tatters of his disillusion?  Do you suppose Old Harpeth has given me this warm garment of ideals that wraps me now for keeps?”

“Of course, he has, for it’s made for you of your—­Father’s love.  And isn’t it—­rose-colored?”

THE END