"Oh, I'd just ruther stay hyeh in the mountains," he said, carelessly--lying
suddenly like the little gentleman that he was--lying as he knew, and as
Melissa some day would come to know. Then Chad looked at the little girl a
long while, and in such a queer way that Melissa turned her face shyly to the
red star.

"I'm goin' to stay right hyeh. Ain't you glad, Lissy?"

The little girl turned her eyes shyly back again. "Yes, Chad," she said.

He would stay in the mountains and work hard; and when he grew up he would
marry Melissa and they would go away where nobody knew him or her: or they
would stay right there in the mountains where nobody blamed him for what he
was nor Melissa for what she was; and he would study law like Caleb Hazel,
and go to the Legislature--but Melissa! And with the thought of Melissa in
the mountains came always the thought of dainty Margaret in the Bluegrass and
the chasm that lay between the two--between Margaret and him, for that
matter; and when Mother Turner called Melissa from him in the orchard next
day, Chad lay on his back under an apple-tree, for a long while, thinking;
and then he whistled for Jack and climbed the spur above the river where he
could look down on the shadowed water and out to the clouded heaps of rose
and green and crimson, where the sun was going down under one faint white
star. Melissa was the glow-worm that, when darkness came, would be a
watch-fire at his feet--Margaret, the star to which his eyes were lifted
night and day--and so runs the world. He lay long watching that star. It hung
almost over the world of which he had dreamed so long and upon which he had
turned his back forever. Forever? Perhaps, but he went back home that night
with a trouble in his soul that was not to pass, and while he sat by the fire
he awoke from the same dream to find Melissa's big eyes fixed on him, and in
them was a vague trouble that was more than his own reflected back to him.