But Thomas still stood staring at her. Then her heart failed her. She
thought that he did not care, and she had been mistaken. She felt as
if it were the hour of her death, and turned to go. And then he
caught her in his arms.

"Oh," he cried, with a great sob, "the Lord make me worthy of thee,
Evelina!"

There had never been so much excitement in the village as when the
fact of the ruined garden came to light. Flora Loomis, peeping
through the hedge on her way to the store, had spied it first. Then
she had run home for her mother, who had in turn sought Lawyer Lang,
panting bonnetless down the road. But before the lawyer had started
for the scene of disaster, the minister, Thomas Merriam, had
appeared, and asked for a word in private with him. Nobody ever
knew just what that word was, but the lawyer was singularly
uncommunicative and reticent as to the ruined garden.

"Do you think the young woman is out of her mind?" one of the deacons
asked him, in a whisper.

"I wish all the young women were as much in their minds; we'd have a
better world," said the lawyer, gruffly.

"When do you think we can begin to move in here?" asked Mrs. Martha
Loomis, her wide skirts sweeping a bed of uprooted verbenas.

"When your claim is established," returned the lawyer, shortly, and
turned on his heel and went away, his dry old face scanning the
ground like a dog on a scent. That afternoon he opened the sealed