pipe and my dogs and my crutches. Had he told me that night when I
came back to the valley that he loved the girl in all truth, I should
have stood aside and cheered him on in his struggle against her, but I
had not measured the depth of his mind nor given him credit for
cunning. Perry Thomas saw it. He had gone away from her and wounded
her by his neglect. In the fabrication of the other girl, the
beautiful Edith, whose charms so outshone all other women, he had hit
at the heart of her vanity; and now he had come back so gayly and
easily to take from me what I might not have won in a lifetime. Losing
her, I cared little that what he had done had been in ignorance that I
loved her and that she was plighted to me. Losing her, I had no
thought of blame for the girl, for when she told me that in all the
world she cared for none so much as me, she meant it, for she believed
that he had passed out of her life.

By the fireplace, so close that I could put my hand upon the arm, was
the rocking-chair I had placed for her, and many a night had I sat
there watching it and smiling, and picturing it as it was to be when
she came. There would Mary be, sewing beneath the lamplight; there the
fire burning, with old Captain and young Colonel, snuggling along the
hearthstone; here I should be with my pipe and my book, unread, in my
lap, for we should have many things to talk of, Mary and I. We should
have Tim. As he played the great game, we should be watching his every
move. And when he won, how she and I would smile over it and say "I
told you so!" When he lost--Tim was never to lose, for Tim was
invincible! Tim was a man of brain and brawn. His arm was the
strongest in the valley; in all our country there was no face so fine
as his; in all the world few men so good and true.

Now he had come! The chair there was empty. So it would always be.