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were sweethearts, but the widow's will was as inflexible as his. They were not enemies; when they met they would bow and sometimes speak, but their spoken words acted as a barrier between them. Thus matters ran along for a year after Yoakum's return. March came, snowy and blustering. The winds were incessant. Yoakum was harnessing his horse for the first plowing'one day when he felt a vio lent blow on the back of the head. He turned to defend himself, but everything swam before bis eyes, and, with the sense of being carried away on a swift river, he lapsed into unconsciousness. He opened his eyes ages later, as it seemed, and the first thing they lit upon was the Widow Wilson. He was lying in bed in a darkened room, and she sat by his side. Her eyes were red from crying. Yoakum endeavored to sit up. "Hush!" she said, gently pressing him backward. "You have been very ill. You must lie still." The widow, in his house! Yoakum had often pictured the possibility of such an occurrence, but now, to his surprise, his sensation was one of shame. He looked at her as well as he could in the obscurity of the room. Except that she was more matronly and that threads of gray showed at her temples, she might have been the same Adeline Farley, and he might ive parted from her a few minutes before. f "Adeline," he said timidly, "it all seems like a dream to me." Adeline was silent, but he could see that she, too, was moved. "It seems as though we hadn't been parted these five and twenty years, A&eline," he resumed. "Do you remember when we went down to the stream that night I asked you, and found a bunch of wild myrtle growing, and how I put it in your hair?" "And then you told me you loved me," said Adeline. "And T'-" loved you ever since, Ad die," he continued, taking her hand. Adeline Wilson made no resistance, but her eyes weer still downcast. f "Why did you marry Wilson," dear?" asked the man. r For the first time she raised her J eyes. "I guess because I was a fool, J Will," she answered. "And you couldn't manage to care , for me just the least bit, could you, r Addie?" he asked. 1 The widow was tracing out the pattern upon the counterpane. "Why' wouldn't you come to see me?" she asked suddenly. "I guess for the same reason that you married Wilson," he answered. "I'm stubborn, as you 'are. But I'm sorry. And when I think that it was you who gave in and came to me, it just makes me feel cheap. Did they get the robbers?" "Robbers? What robbers?" asked Adeline, looking at him curiously. "The men who struck me down. Slick fellows they must have been, too. There was I, sitting beside my plow in broad daylight when they got me and I never so much as saw or heard them." "Where do you think you are, Will?" inquired the Widow Wilson. "Why, at home, of course," he an swered. "Where else should I be? But I see you've changed the furni ture round, haven't you?" The widow Wilson was laughing and crying hysterically. Yoakum looked at her in wonder. "Don't you know that when our fathers built their homes they made them both the same and got the same kind of furniture?" she asked when she had recovered her self-possession. "You mean that I'm ' In your house, Addie?" he cried. "Who brought me here?" You brought yourself, my dear, yesterday morning. There weren't afly robbers, Will, it was a cyclone. Picked you up from your plow and carried you nicely through the air