Through the doorway she saw the young
willow tree trembling in the storm and felt curiously akin to it.
Dan came slowly back to the hearth, and leaning against the crumbling
mortar of the chimney, looked thoughtfully down upon her. "Do you know what
I thought of when I saw you with your hair down, Betty?"
She shook her head, smiling.
"I don't suppose I'd thought of it for years," he went on quickly; "but
when you took your hair down, and looked up at me so small and white, it
all came back to me as if it were yesterday. I remembered the night I first
came along this road--God-forsaken little chap that I was--and saw you
standing out there in your nightgown--with your little cold bare feet. The
moonlight was full upon you, and I thought you were a ghost. At first I
wanted to run away; but you spoke, and I stood still and listened. I
remember what it was, Betty.--'Mr. Devil, I'm going in,' you said. Did you
take me for the devil, I wonder?"
She smiled up at him, and he saw her kind eyes fill with tears. The
wavering smile only deepened the peculiar tenderness of her look.
"I had been sitting in the briers for an hour," he resumed, after a moment;
"it was a day and night since I had eaten a bit of bread, and I had been
digging up sassafras roots with my bare fingers. I remember that I rooted
at one for nearly an hour, and found that it was sumach, after all. Then I
got up and went on again, and there you were standing in the moonlight--"
He broke off, hesitated an instant, and added with the gallant indiscretion
of youth, "By George, that ought to have made a man of me!"
"And you are a man," said Betty.
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