Chapter IX. And is Granted a Year of Grace

"And so all your privations and hardships went for nothing," said Mildred Wayland, when Boyd had recounted the history of his pilgrimage into the North.

"Yes," he replied; "as a miner, I am a very wretched failure."

She shrugged her shoulders in disapproval.

"Don't use that term!" she cried. "There is no word so hateful to me as 'failure'--I suppose, because father has never failed in anything. Let us say that your success has been delayed."

"Very well. That suits me better, also, but you see I've forgotten how to choose nice words."

They were seated in the library, where for two hours they had remained undisturbed, Emerson talking rapidly, almost incoherently, as if this were a sort of confessional, the girl hanging eagerly upon his every word, following his narrative with breathless interest. The story had been substantially the same as that which, once before, he had related to Cherry Malotte; but now the facts were deeply, intimately colored with all the young man's natural enthusiasm and inmost personal feeling. To his listener it was like some wonderful, far-off romance, having to do with strange people whose motives she could scarcely grasp and pitched amid wild scenes that she could not fully picture.

"And you did all that for me," she mused, after a time.

"It was the only way."

"I wonder if any other man I know would take those risks just for--me."

"Of course. Why, the risk, I mean the physical peril and hardship and discomfort, don't amount to--that." He snapped his fingers. "It was only the unending desolation that hurt; it was the separation from you that punished me--the thought that some luckier fellow might--"

"Nonsense!" Mildred was really indignant. "I told you to fix your own time and I promised to wait. Even if I had not--cared for you, I would have kept my word. That is a Wayland principle. As it is, it was--comparatively easy."

"Then you do love me, my Lady?" He leaned eagerly toward her.

"Do you need to ask?" she whispered from the shelter of his arms. "It is the same old fascination of our girl and boy days. Do you remember how completely I lost my head about you?" She laughed softly. "I used to think you wore a football suit better than anybody in the world! Sometimes I suspect that it is merely that same girlish hero-worship and can't last. But it has lasted--so far. Three years is a long time for a girl like me to wait, isn't it?"

"I know! I know!" he returned, jealously. "But I have lived that time with nothing but a memory, while you have had other things to occupy you. You are flattered and courted by men, scores of men--"

"Oh!"

"Legions of men! Oh, I