“No!  I do not!  Amazed as I may be, I am content to know that you are here, dear—­here!  But,” he said, looking around on the rudeness of his hut, “oh, what a place to receive you in!  I left you in a palace, surrounded by all the splendors and luxuries of civilization!  I receive you in a log cabin, bare of even the necessaries and comforts of life!” he added, gravely.

“But you left me a discarded, broken-hearted woman, and you receive me a restored and happy wife!” she exclaimed.

“But, oh, Cora! can you live with me here, here?  Look around you, dear!  Look on the home you would share!—­the walls of logs, the chimney of rocks, the floor of stone, the cups and dishes of earthenware, pewter and iron, the—­”

She interrupted him, passionately: 

“But you are here, Rule!  You! you!  And the log hut is transfigured into a mansion of light!  A mansion like the many in our Heavenly Father’s House!  Oh, Rule! you, you are all, all to me! life, joy, riches, splendor, all to me!  Am I all to you, Rule?”

“All of earth and heaven, dear.”

“Oh, happy I am!  Oh, I thank God, I thank God for this happiness!  Rule, we will never part again!—­never for a single day!  But be together, to-day and

    ’To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow,
    To the last syllable of recorded time,’

and through the endless ages of eternity!  Oh, Rule, how could we ever have mistaken our hearts?  How could we ever have parted?”

“The mistake was mine only, dear.  After what you told me on our marriage day, I lost all hope, all interest and ambition in life.  I had toiled and striven and conquered, for the one dear prize; all my battle of life was fought for you; all my victories were won for you, and were laid at your feet.  But when I found that all my love and hope had brought only grief and despair to you—­then, dear, all my triumphs turned into Dead Sea fruit on my lips!  Then I left all and came into the wilderness; left no trace behind me; effaced myself from your life, from the world, as effectually as I could do it; and so—­believing it to be for your good and happiness—­died to the world and died to you!”

“Oh, Rule!  Miserable woman that I was!  I wrecked your life!  I wrecked your career!”

“No, dear, no; the mistake, I said, was mine!  I should have trusted your heart.  I should have given you the time you implored; I should not have fled in the madness of suddenly wounded affection.”

“Oh, Rule? if you could have only looked back on me after you went away, only known the anguish your disappearance caused me and the inconsolable sorrow of the time that followed it.”

“If I could have supposed it possible even, I would have hastened to you, from the uttermost parts of the earth!”

“And then they reported you dead, murdered by the Comanches, in the massacre of La Terrepeur, and sorrow was deepened to despair.”