WHEN Gaston reached his home that night St. Clare had gone to bed. It was one o’clock. He could not sleep yet, so he sat in the window and tried to realise his great happiness, as he looked out on the green lawn with its white gravelled walk glistening in the full moon.

“The world is beautiful, life is sweet, and God is good!” he cried in an ecstasy of joy.

He sat there in the moonlight for an hour dreaming of his love and the great strenuous life of achievement he would live with her to inspire him. It seemed too good to be true. And yet it was the largest living fact. Like throbbing music the words were ringing in his heart keeping time with the rhythm of its beat, “I do love you!” And then he did something he had not done for years.—not since his boyhood,—he knelt in the silence of the moonlit room and prayed. Love the great Revealer had led him into the presence of God. The impulse was spontaneous and resistless. “Lord, I have seen Thy face, heard Thy voice, and felt the touch of Thy hand to-day! I bless and praise Thee! Forgive my doubts and fears and sins, cleanse and make me worthy of her whom Thou has sent as Thy messenger!” So he poured out his soul.

Next morning he grasped St. Clare’s hand as he entered the room. “Bob, I’m the happiest man in the world!”

“Congratulations! You look it.”

“She loves me! I’d like to climb up on the top of this house and shout it until all earth and heaven could hear and be glad with me!”

“Well, don’t do it, my boy. See her father first!”

“She says he likes me.”

“Then you’re elected.”

“I’m going to tackle him before I go home.”

“Don’t rush him. There’s a superstition prevalent here that the old gentleman has no idea of ever letting his daughter leave that home, and that he will never give his consent, when driven to the wall, unless his son-inlaw that is to be, will agree to settle down there and take his place in those big mills. He has two great loves, his daughter and his mills, and he don’t mean to let either one of them go if he can help it.”

“Do you believe it’s true?”

“Yes, I do. How do you like the idea?”

“It’s not my style. I’ve a pretty clear idea of what I’m going to do in this world.”

“Well, you’d better begin to haul in your silk sails, and study cotton goods, is my advice.”

“I ’ll manage him.”

“I don’t know about it, but if you’ve got her, you’re the first man that ever got far enough to measure himself with the General. I wish you luck.”

“You the same, old chum. May you conquer Boston and all the Pilgrim Fathers!”

“Thanks. The vision of one of them disturbs my dreams. One will be enough.”

Then followed six golden days on the banks of the Catawba. Every day he insisted with boyish enthusiasm on returning to that rock and seating her on her throne. He called her his queen, and worshipped at her feet.

He had the friendliest little chat with her mother, and told her how he loved her daughter and hoped for her approval. She answered with frankness that she was glad, and would love him as her own son, but that she disapproved of kissing and extravagant love-making until they were ready to be married, and their engagement duly announced.

So he could only hold Sallie’s hand and kiss the tips of her fingers and the little dimples where they joined the hand, and sometimes he would hold it against his own cheek while she smiled at him.

But when they rode homeward one evening he dared to put his arm behind her, high on the phaeton’s leather cushion, as they were going down a hill, and then lowered it a little as they started up the grade. She leaned back and found it there. At first she nestled against it very timidly and then trustingly. She looked into his face and both smiled.

“Isn’t that nice, Sallie?”

“Yes, it is,—I don’t think Mama would mind that, do you?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, I never promised not to lean bac............