DESTINY



choose the other path.' You said that and then after
a moment you smiled again."
  "It's strange," said the young man. He uncon-
sciously took off his hat, baring the curly hair over
the tanned face. He was very wholesome and honest
and strong, and the girl's eyes lighted into a smile of
pride and love.
  "Yes," she said. "It was you and me in some
other life. I don't know what it means-but somehow
it seems to-to guarantee everything."
  They turned and walked together to the last buggy
hitched against the stone wall under the wild apple
trees.
  After a while she demanded-"After you got well
-why did you stay here" and as promptly as an
echo came his answer-
  "Because you stayed."
    f              
  The moon was up early that night and it flooded
the mountains with a glory of silver mists. The
shoulders of the peaks stood out in blue barriers,
strong, abiding, beautiful. In the valleys it was all
a nocturne of dove grays and dreamlike softness.
The stars, too, shone down in a million splinters of
happy light, but the radiance of the moon paled
them.
  The vines which covered the walls of the Burton
house hung out their lacy tendrils and through the
windows came the soft glow of lamplight.
  There was nothing dreary or poverty-stricken about
the old farm-house now. From its front, where every
shutter, by day, shone in the healthy trim of fresh
paint, to the gate upon the road went rows of flowers,
nodding their bright heads above the waving grass.



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