“No, no!  You are so noble, so forgiving!” sobbed Miss Forester, “and I have made you go and kill the only thing you cared for, that was all your own.”

“No, Miss,—­not all my own, either,—­and that makes it so rough.  For it was only left in trust with me by a friend.  It was her only companion.”

“Her only companion?” echoed Miss Forester, sharply lifting her bowed head.

“Except,” said Jack hurriedly, miscomprehending the emphasis with masculine fatuity,—­“except the dying man for whom she lived and sacrificed her whole life.  She gave me this ring, to always remind me of my trust.  I suppose,” he added ruefully, looking down upon it, “it’s no use now.  I’d better take it off.”

Then Amy eyed the monstrous object with angelic simplicity.  “I certainly should,” she said with infinite sweetness; “it would only remind you of your loss.  But,” she added, with a sudden, swift, imploring look of her blue eyes, “if you could part with it to me, it would be such a reminder and token of—­of your forgiveness.”

Jack instantly handed it to her.  “And now,” he said, “let me carry you down.”

“I think,” she said hesitatingly, “that—­I had better try to walk,” and she rose to her feet.

“Then I shall know that you have not forgiven me,” said Jack sadly.

“But I have no right to trouble”—­

Alas! she had no time to finish her polite objection, for the next moment she felt herself lifted in the air, smelled the bark thatch within an inch of her nose, saw the firelight vanish behind her, and subsiding into his curved arms as in a hammock, the two passed forth into the night together.

“I can’t find, your bracelet anywhere, Amy,” said her father, when they reached the wagon.

“It was on the floor in the lint,” said Amy reproachfully.  “But, of course, you never thought of that!”

*****

My pen halts with some diffidence between two conclusions to this veracious chronicle.  As they agree in result, though not in theory or intention, I may venture to give them both.  To one coming from the lips of the charming heroine herself I naturally yield the precedence.  “Oh, the bear story!  I don’t really remember whether that was before I was engaged to John or after.  But I had known him for some time; father introduced him at the Governor’s ball at Sacramento.  Let me see!—­I think it was in the winter of ’56.  Yes! it was very amusing; I always used to charge John with having trained that bear to attack our carriage so that he might come in as a hero!  Oh, of course, there are a hundred absurd stories about him,—­they used to say that he lived all alone in a cabin like a savage, and all that sort of thing, and was a friend of a dubious woman in the locality, whom the common people made a heroine of,—­Miggles, or Wiggles, or some such preposterous name.  But look at John there; can you conceive it?” The listener, glancing