Here she paused, and began fingering the unwritten leaves of the diary, wondering if the time would ever come when they would hold the record of other engagements.  Nearly a third of the pages were still blank.  How many nice things she could think of that she would like to be able to write thereon.  Maybe they would hold the date of a visit to Oaklea some day, to Mrs. Rob Moore.  How odd that sounded.  Or what was more probable, since he had already mentioned it in his letters to Jack, a visit from Phil, if he went back to California with his father and Elsie on their return.

And maybe, it might hold the news of Joyce’s engagement, some day, or Betty’s, and maybe—­some far, far-off day, it might hold her own!  That seemed a very unlikely thing just now.  Princes were an unknown quantity in Lone-Rock.  And yet—­she looked dreamily away across the hills—­there were the words of that song: 

     “And if he come not by the road, and come not by the hill,
      And come not by the far seaway, yet come he surely will. 
      Close all the roads of all the world, love’s road is open still.”

Seizing her pen, she wrote just below her last entry, “It is five months since that dismal day on the train, when I closed the record in this book, as I thought, forever, and wrote after the last of my good times, The End.  But it wasn’t that at all, and now, no matter how dark the outlook may be after this, I shall never believe that I have reached the end to happiness.”

THE END.