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ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS
27
ure with, a wistful glance as lie came into the room to meet the Colonel's outstretched hand.
"Sit down, sit down, Mr. Mason," grumbled the old man. "I've been
having a practical talk with my girl Grace here, going over the matter pro and con, and she advises— remarkable head for business, that girl — that I accept the offer of your firm for those coal lands. Her — ah — reasoning was so sound that I — er — have come to her way of thinking. If you want to draw up the papers, well and good." An hour later, Bob Mason came out of the Snowden house into a world several degrees fairer than he
had ever found it before in the course of twenty-seven years. The cloudcrowned mountains piled away before his eager gaze, almost unearthly in their moonlit mystery of shadow and shimmer. The warm, still air was afloat with spring odors, the wild tang of dogwood, the heavy-lidded pink scents of magnolia and the sharp> purple fragrance of the lilacs steeped all day in a burning Tennessee sun. He strode down the path and out of sight of the house, beyond a bloom-starred hedge; but his shadow, flung behind him on the silvered grass, paused a moment and lifted its long arms in a queer gesture of exultation, that was not lost by some one crouching in a darkened window, soft chin cupped in soft palms.
' ' Good work ! ' ' muttered young
Mason; "the boss '11 be pleased,
all right — he never expected I'd
put the deal thru! Oh, I guess
I 'm not so worse ! " he laughed,
boyishly, aloud for sheer joy;
"it'll surely
mean a raise,
and a raise '11
mean "
The sweetness of the thought sent him onward along the mountain street in great leaps and bounds. It was as if only the telegram, informing the firm of his success, lay between him and his heart's desire. And yet, a week ago, he had never seen her, except in his sweet, secret dreams.
The telegraph operator, dozing over his gossipy key, met Bob's cheery greeting with a surly frown. He resented the young "eity feller's" presence in Madison Hills "with the bitter, smoldering resentment of a