“I thought you’d like it,” he answered, quite seriously, and with a look of disappointment.  “Say, I’ve got that razor and I’ve shaved three times already.”

He took the razor from his pocket and drew it from its case and proudly held it up before her.

“Don’t tell anybody,” he warned her.  “They’d laugh at me.  They wouldn’t know how I feel.”

“I won’t say anything,” she answered.  “I reckon I ought to tell you that I don’t love you—­not so much as I did anyway—­not near so much.  I only love you just a wee little bit now.”

It is curious that she should have said just that.  Her former confession had only been conveyed by the look in her eyes at sundry times and by unpremeditated acts in the hour of his peril.

Harry’s face fell.

“Do you—­love—­some other man?” he asked.

“Yes—­a regular man—­mustache, six feet tall and everything.  I just tell you he’s purty!”

“Is it that rich feller from St. Louis?” he asked.

She nodded and then whispered:  “Don’t you tell.”

The boy’s lips trembled when he answered.  “I won’t tell.  But I don’t see how you can do it.”

“Why?”

“He drinks and he keeps slaves and beats them with a bull whip.  He isn’t respectable.”

“That’s a lie,” she answered quickly.  “I don’t care what you say.”

Bim touched her pony with the whip and rode away.

Harry staggered for a moment as he went on.  His eyes filled with tears.  It seemed to him that the world had been ruined.  On his way to the village he tried and convicted it of being no fit place for a boy to live in.  Down by the tavern he met Abe, who stopped him.

“Howdy, Harry!” said Abe.  “You look kind o’ sick.  Come into the store and sit down.  I want to talk to you.”

Harry followed the big man into Offut’s store, flattered by his attention.  There had been something very grateful in the sound of Abe’s voice and the feel of his hand.  The store was empty.

“You and I mustn’t let ourselves be worried by little matters,” said Abe, as they sat down together by the fire.  “Things that seem to you to be as big as a mountain now will look like a mole hill in six months.  You and I have got things to do, partner.  We mustn’t let ourselves be fooled.  I was once in a boat with old Cap’n Chase on the Illinois River.  We had got into the rapids.  It was a narrow channel in dangerous water.  They had to keep her headed just so or we’d have gone on the rocks.  Suddenly a boy dropped his apple overboard and began to holler.  He wanted to have the boat stopped.  For a minute that boy thought his apple was the biggest thing in the world.  We’re all a good deal like him.  We keep dropping our apples and calling for the boat to stop.  Soon we find out that there are many apples in the world as good as that one.  You have all come to a stretch of bad water up at your house.  The folks have been sick.  They’re a little lonesome and discouraged.  Don’t you make it any harder by crying over a lost apple.  Ye know it’s possible that the apple will float along down into the still water where you can pick it up by and by.  The important thing is to keep going ahead.”