The Trail of the Lonesome Pine Part 41

"G.o.d! Not that--no--no!"

"Listen, Jack!" As suddenly his arms dropped. She had controlled her tears but her lips were quivering.

"No, Jack, not that--thank G.o.d. I came because I wanted to come," she said steadily. "I loved you when I went away. I've loved you every minute since--" her arms were stealing about his neck, her face was upturned to his and her eyes, moist with gladness, were looking into his wondering eyes--"and I love you now--Jack."

"June!" The leaves about them caught his cry and quivered with the joy of it, and above their heads the old Pine breathed its blessing with the name--June--June--June.

x.x.xV

With a mystified smile but with no question, Hale silently handed his penknife to June and when, smiling but without a word, she walked behind the old Pine, he followed her. There he saw her reach up and dig the point of the knife into the trunk, and when, as he wonderingly watched her, she gave a sudden cry, Hale sprang toward her. In the hole she was digging he saw the gleam of gold and then her trembling fingers brought out before his astonished eyes the little fairy stone that he had given her long ago. She had left it there for him, she said, through tears, and through his own tears Hale pointed to the stricken oak:

"It saved the Pine," he said.

"And you," said June.

"And you," repeated Hale solemnly, and while he looked long at her, her arms dropped slowly to her sides and he said simply:

"Come!"

Leading the horses, they walked noiselessly through the deep sand around the clump of rhododendron, and there sat the little cabin of Lonesome Cove. The holy hush of a cathedral seemed to shut it in from the world, so still it was below the great trees that stood like sentinels on eternal guard. Both stopped, and June laid her head on Hale's shoulder and they simply looked in silence.

"Dear old home," she said, with a little sob, and Hale, still silent, drew her to him.

"You were _never_ coming back again?"

"I was never coming back again." She clutched his arm fiercely as though even now something might spirit him away, and she clung to him, while he hitched the horses and while they walked up the path.

"Why, the garden is just as I left it! The very same flowers in the very same places!" Hale smiled.

"Why not? I had Uncle Billy do that."

"Oh, you dear--you dear!"

Her little room was shuttered tight as it always had been when she was away, and, as usual, the front door was simply chained on the outside.

The girl turned with a happy sigh and looked about at the nodding flowers and the woods and the gleaming pool of the river below and up the s.h.i.+mmering mountain to the big Pine topping it with sombre majesty.

"Dear old Pine," she murmured, and almost unconsciously she unchained the door as she had so often done before, stepped into the dark room, pulling Hale with one hand after her, and almost unconsciously reaching upward with the other to the right of the door. Then she cried aloud:

"My key--my key is there!"

"That was in case you should come back some day."

"Oh, I might--I might! and think if I had come too late--think if I hadn't come _now!_" Again her voice broke and still holding Hale's arm, she moved to her own door. She had to use both hands there, but before she let go, she said almost hysterically:

"It's so dark! You won't leave me, dear, if I let you go?"

For answer Hale locked his arms around her, and when the door opened, he went in ahead of her and pushed open the shutters. The low sun flooded the room and when Hale turned, June was looking with wild eyes from one thing to another in the room--her rocking-chair at a window, her sewing close by, a book on the table, her bed made up in the corner, her washstand of curly maple--the pitcher full of water and clean towels hanging from the rack. Hale had gotten out the things she had packed away and the room was just as she had always kept it. She rushed to him, weeping.

"It would have killed me," she sobbed. "It would have killed me."

She strained him tightly to her--her wet face against his cheek: "Think--_think_--if I hadn't come now!" Then loosening herself she went all about the room with a caressing touch to everything, as though it were alive. The book was the volume of Keats he had given her--which had been loaned to Loretta before June went away.

"Oh, I wrote for it and wrote for it," she said.

"I found it in the post-office," said Hale, "and I understood."

She went over to the bed.

"Oh," she said with a happy laugh. "You've got one slip inside out," and she whipped the pillow from its place, changed it, and turned down the edge of the covers in a triangle.

"That's the way I used to leave it," she said shyly. Hale smiled.

"I never noticed that!" She turned to the bureau and pulled open a drawer. In there were white things with frills and blue ribbons--and she flushed.

"Oh," she said, "these haven't even been touched." Again Hale smiled but he said nothing. One glance had told him there were things in that drawer too sacred for his big hands.

"I'm so happy--_so_ happy."

Suddenly she looked him over from head to foot--his rough riding boots, old riding breeches and blue flannel s.h.i.+rt.

"I am pretty rough," he said. She flushed, shook her head and looked down at her smart cloth suit of black.

"Oh, _you_ are all right--but you must go out now, just for a little while."

"What are you up to, little girl?"

"How I love to hear that again!"

"Aren't you afraid I'll run away?" he said at the door.

"I'm not afraid of anything else in this world any more."

"Well, I won't."

He heard her moving around as he sat planning on the porch.

"To-morrow," he thought, and then an idea struck him that made him dizzy. From within June cried:

"Here I am," and out she ran in the last crimson gown of her young girlhood--her sleeves rolled up and her hair braided down her back as she used to wear it.

"You've made up my bed and I'm going to make yours--and I'm going to cook your supper--why, what's the matter?" Hale's face was radiant with the heaven-born idea that lighted it, and he seemed hardly to notice the change she had made. He came over and took her in his arms:

"Ah, sweetheart, _my_ sweetheart!" A spasm of anxiety tightened her throat, but Hale laughed from sheer delight.

"Never you mind. It's a secret," and he stood back to look at hen She blushed as his eyes went downward to her perfect ankles.

"It _is_ too short," she said.