Markis-dee, go back an' tell the truth!"

Speaking the word "truth," she vanished across the light to her dark place
of rest.

Next morning the colonel examined and copied the confession while a buggy
waited for him at the door. Respecting the evident wishes of Mrs. Ruggles,
he went away with no attempt to express the feelings that were uppermost
in his heart.

She sleeps beside her husband in the orchard. Her old log-house has been
replaced by a large white box, of which her son the marquis is proprietor.
Each year adds to his acres or his stock. An able-bodied wife, whose
industry and English are equal to his own, sits near him at the door on a
summer evening, while he smokes his pipe, takes an oakum-headed child upon
his knee, and gazes quietly in the direction of the spring and across the
grain-fields where once he saw--or rather heard, without waiting to see--a
forest swept down in a moment. He smokes and gazes as he sees again a
dazzling creature ride down the dreary road, and wonders where on earth
that face can be, and how much it has changed, and whether, through so
many years, any memory of him can linger in her heart. He says nothing.
But he hugs closer the oakum-headed child as he remembers the one romance
in his hard, humdrum life.

CHAUNCEY HICKOX.