"Stop right there, Emmy! You needn't push no harder. I can let go whenever
you say so. But--do _you_ understand, little girl? Man and wife it will
have to be."

Emmy did not shrink at the words. Her face grew set, her dark eyes full of
mystery fixed themselves on the slow-moving ice-floe grinding along the
shore.

"I know," she assented slowly.

"I can't give you no farm, nor horses and carriages, nor help in the
kitchen. It's bucklin' right down with our bare hands--me outside and you
in? And you only eighteen. See what little hands--If I could do it all!"

"Your promise is broken," she whispered. "I made you break it. You will
have to tell him now, or--we must go."

"So be!" said Adam solemnly. "And God do so to me and more also, if I have
to hurt my little girl,--Emmy--wife!"

He folded her in his great arms clumsily--the man she had said was like a
mother. He was almost as ignorant as she, and more hopeful than he had
dared to seem, as to their worldly chances. But the love he had for her
told him it was not love that made her so bold. The first touch of such
love as his would have made her fear him as he feared her. And the subtle
pain of this instinctive knowledge, together with that broken promise,
shackled the wings of his great joy. It was not as he had hoped to win the
crown of life.

Paul, it may be supposed, had never liked to think of his mother's