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 UCSB LIBRARY 

 
 A
 
 KEEFE BARTLETT AND EDITH. Page 30.
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 VIRGINIA F. TOWNSEND. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 LEE, SHEPARD AND DILLINGHAM. 
 
 1874.
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, 
 
 By LEE AND SHEPARD, 
 In the Office of the Librarian 1 1 Congress, at Washington. 
 
 ItECTttOTTPED AT THS 
 
 BOSTON STK REOTVPB FOUNDS T, 
 
 19 Rj.ring Lane.
 
 Meanwhile the Cardinal Ippolito, in whom all my best hopes were placed, being 
 dead, I began to understand that the promises of this world are, for the most part, 
 vain phantoms, and that to confide in one's self, and become something of worth 
 and value is the best and safest course. 
 
 MICHAEL ASGELO.
 
 ONLY GIRLS.
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 '/HE devil had entered into Keefe Bart- 
 lett's soul that day; and Keefe had .not 
 said, " Get thee behind me, Satan." 
 On the contrary, he had provided wide room 
 and hospitable entertainment; and the devil had 
 not been slow to make himself at home in the 
 inn which he found in Keefe's soul. For that 
 matter, I suspect he never is, anywhere. 
 
 These facts certainly do not make a happy 
 introduction for Keefe ; yet, bad as they are, 
 there is something to be said for him. He had 
 just rounded the point of his seventeenth birth- 
 day, and what a world it had been to him ! 'Such 
 a hard, pinched, cruel face as it had turned 
 towards him from the beginning ! Yet it was 
 the very same world which you and I know is 
 
 9
 
 10 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 full of green fields, and laughter of golden daisies, 
 and birds with bubbling sweetness of song, and, 
 better than all, full of great, warm, soft hearts, 
 and blessed helping hands, which make it God's 
 dear, beautiful, happy world, despite the sin and 
 the misery. 
 
 But the sin and the misery had fallen to 
 Keefe's lot. Yet his history is not an uncom- 
 mon one more's the pity ! If it were something 
 quite out of the ordinary 'run of things, I should 
 not think it worth writing to-day. 
 
 Keefe found himself stranded helpless upon 
 the world before he had mounted his eighth 
 birthday. His father, mate of a merchant vessel, 
 with plenty of native shrewdness and ability, 
 had undermined his constitution by frequent 
 sprees when he was in foreign ports, and at 
 last died in a drunken brawl in Buenos Ayres. 
 
 Keefe's mother, a small, worn, sallow-complex- 
 ioned woman, took her husband's place at the 
 family helm for a couple of years, which means, 
 dropping all metaphor, went out to daily house- 
 cleaning, and kept herself and her son from star- 
 vation, and that was about all. 
 
 The work-woman took cold one day. Exposure 
 and privation aggravated the disease, which at
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 11 
 
 first did not seem serious, and she went out of 
 life in ;i swift consumption, and Keefe was left in 
 the world with his eight birthdays, and his 
 hungry little stomach, and his small fists, to fight 
 his way into boyhood, without a solitary friend or 
 a single dollar. 
 
 He did what he could. Biped or quadruped, 
 the instinct of life is strong. He fought off that 
 old, hungry, wolf of poverty, inch by inch, as 
 shoe-black, horse-currier, news-boy, by turns ; and 
 so, with shoes out at the toes, and ragged coats, 
 and a stomach whose normal condition seemed 
 one of craving a good warm dinner, he managed 
 somehow to keep soul and body together up to 
 that day when the devil entered Keefe Bartlett. 
 
 Two days before, he, with a number of the 
 hands, had been turned off from the Agawam 
 Cotton Mills, a dull season rendering a reduc- 
 tion of the working-corps necessary. 
 
 Keefe had been employed at one of the looms 
 about three months on the whole the happiest 
 of his life. He had steady employment and 
 sufficient food ; clean country air, too, which was 
 something to one whose lungs had been half 
 starved in the close, crowded atmosphere of city 
 lanes and alleys.
 
 12 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 Agawam was a small manufacturing town lying 
 off the main arteries of railroads, with which it 
 was connected by a branch line. It was a drowsy, 
 picturesque old place, some two hundred miles 
 from New York. Its large water-power had at- 
 tracted some enterprising capitalists, and the old 
 farming town had of late burgeoned into a flaming 
 prosperity. Its mills gave work to hundreds of 
 employees, and its quiet old farm-houses afforded 
 shelter to swarms of city people, who alighted 
 here every summer for the tonic of the air, and 
 the great, still, restful greenery of woods and 
 fields. 
 
 Some thirst and longing for these had got into 
 Keefe Bartlett's blood that summer, chafing and 
 stinging him night and day. The dark, swel- 
 tering, noisome alleys, the thud and roar of the 
 great city, deafened and sickened him as it had 
 never done before. He panted for breadth and 
 freedom, as wild animals do shut . up in iron- 
 barred cages. 
 
 He rushed away from all these at last, a good 
 deal as a wild animal might do. He had only 
 his hands and feet, and whatever native pluck 
 there was in him, and whatever shrewdness his 
 education in the city purlieus had developed, to
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 13 
 
 clear a place for himself in the new world of the 
 country. 
 
 Keefe had made his way to Agawam. When 
 he left New York he had no goal in view, hardly 
 any purpose beyond getting away from the hot 
 alleys and the crowded streets. But he had, 
 followed the railroads, and slept under the trees 
 at night, which was no hardship for one who had 
 made his bed in the back yards of old warehouses 
 and under piles of lumber, and dragged his 
 chilled, stiffened limbs out in the morning, with 
 the thermometer at zero. So at last, when his 
 feet were blistered, and his pockets emptied of 
 their last copper, he heard of the Agawam Cotton 
 Mills, and of employment there for a few extra 
 hands. It was only another day's pull for the 
 tired, blistered feet, and Keefe reached Agawam, 
 which opened into Arcadia for him when he - 
 found work in the cotton milk ; and You 
 know the rest, until that day when, as I have 
 told you, the devil came and found the door open, 
 and whisked swiftly into the soul of Keefe 
 Bartlett. 
 
 It happened in this wise: The morning after 
 he had been turned off, he was hanging about the 
 factories, partly from habit, partly from a cling-
 
 14 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 ing fondness for the old place, when one of the 
 partners came up to the office, which supple- 
 mented one side of the building near the corner 
 where Keefe was standing idly, his hands in his 
 pockets, and a dull, hopeless look on his heavy 
 face, which did not improve it. 
 
 The partner, however, did not notice Keefe 
 standing there, a little in the shadow around the 
 corner. If he had, it would have made no differ- 
 ence : the boy would only have been one of " the 
 hands" to the sharp, bustling, prosperous manu- 
 facturer useful when he could be put to service ; 
 when he could not, to be turned off, like any worn 
 out beast of burden : not a bad man, either ur- 
 bane, hospitable, jocose, in his own house. 
 
 " Only," taking, slowly, his Havana out of 
 his mouth, while the smoke hung in little cloudy 
 circles around the handsome iron-gray beard, 
 "you cannot take religion and philanthropy into 
 business no, sir." 
 
 The head proprietor was not alone this morn- 
 ing. He was accompanied by his nephew, a 
 slender, shapely youth, a junior, who had run 
 down to Agawam for a few days, to sniff the 
 mountain air, and boat, and ride horseback, and 
 play croquet with his pretty cousin, Edith Folger,
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 15 
 
 who, falling behind him a birthday or two, had 
 not yet surmounted the equatorial line of her- 
 teens. 
 
 This was the talk which Keefe Bartlett over- 
 heard that morning, standing in the shadow by 
 the corner of the brick factory. It never once 
 occurred to him that he was listening. If it had 
 he would probably have seen nothing to be 
 ashamed of in that act. His education had 
 hardly been of the sort to make his moral sus- 
 ceptibilities very keen. 
 
 "Uncle Bryant, I want some money." 
 
 "I've no doubt of it, Rox" (this name being 
 a happy elision of his mother's maiden one 
 Rochford). " It's a chronic want with young 
 fellows like you," meanwhile fumbling in his 
 pocket for the office key. " How much do you 
 want now ? " 
 
 " O, a couple of hundred will carry me over 
 until I get back to town. You know I'm good 
 for that amount." 
 
 "I hadn't thought of it in that light, Rox," 
 with a pleasant laugh. "You shall have the 
 money, of course. I'll get it for you as soon as 
 the bank opens. Will that do ? " 
 
 " Perfectly, thank you. Indeed, I shall have
 
 16 ONLY GIRLS 
 
 i 
 no use for the money to-day, as I am off on a 
 
 lark with Edith this morning." 
 
 " That foolish picnic business ; yes, I remem- 
 ber. You shall have the money to-morrow. But 
 what was all that talk at breakfast about your 
 starting for the city? You'd better stay at least 
 a fortnight longer." 
 
 " Thank you, sir. Nothing would delight me 
 more. But I'm bound for a rough-and-tumble 
 with some chums among the Adirondacks. I must 
 set off to-morrow, rain or shine, to join my party." 
 
 " Sorry to hear it, Rox. We shall all miss you, 
 especially Edith. Some aggravating business will 
 take me away from home to-night ; but I will 
 bring over the money at dinner, and in case you 
 are not there, leave it in my desk. You'll find it 
 in an envelope addressed to you." 
 
 " Thank you again, uncle Bryant. I shall have 
 no use for the money, as I said, until to-morrow 
 afternoon, when I turn my back on this Arcadia 
 of old Agawam ; so, if you are to be absent, I 
 may not see you again. Shall we say good by ? 
 I half hate the word. Good, round, flavorous old 
 Saxon as it is, it leaves a little bitter tang in one's 
 mouth, or thoughts." 
 
 " Don't say it, then, my boy. But I shall see
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 17 
 
 you again. The train doesn't leave until five 
 o'clock. I expect to be home by that time." 
 
 " I meant to foot the first fifteen miles, though, 
 and must set out early. I must get my limbs in 
 training for the Adirondacks, you see." 
 
 The elder man laughed, and looked at his 
 nephew, half amused, and yet with a touch of 
 sadness, although Bryant Folger was not given 
 to sentimentalizing over anything in the earth 
 or the heavens above it. 
 
 " Ah, Rox," he said, " it's a capital thing to be 
 a young fellow, with sound health, and plenty of 
 money to spend, and not a care in the world. 
 Youth flies, my boy, like Phaeton's steeds. You 
 must make hay while the sun shines." 
 
 " I am doing my best at it, uncle Bryant," 
 answered the young man. " Don't I expect a 
 jolly old time at the Adirondacks, camping out, 
 taking big hauls of trout, and bringing down 
 heaps of birds, and a fat deer occasionally ! " 
 
 " Well, good luck to you, Rox. Look out for 
 your neck. Your talk almost stirs my old blood 
 with a hankering for a gun and a powder-pouch, a 
 fishing-line, and the wilderness." 
 
 " Cut business and civilization for once, and 
 come along with us, uncle." 
 2
 
 18 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 The elder man made a slight but significant 
 gesture towards the mass of dull-red buildings 
 which stared back at him with their long rows 
 of windows, grim and remorseless as that old 
 desert Sphinx we are forever hearing about. No 
 words could have supplemented that gesture with 
 any deeper meanings. 
 
 The most practical people are exquisitely dra- 
 matic once in a while, as was, for one instant, the 
 head partner of the Agawam cotton works. 
 
 " Good by, and good luck to you, Rox." 
 
 The two men shook hands, the elder turning 
 into his office, the younger going down the road, 
 humming some notes of a German air he had 
 heard at the last opera, with* a crispness and 
 "sparkle all through them, like the drops of dew 
 not yet dried from the wilted grass by the road- 
 side. 
 
 All this time the figure in the corner by the 
 office a small stone addition which had been 
 recently added to the main building had not 
 stirred. It had overheard every word of the 
 conversation which had just transpired. It came 
 out now and looked after the youth, going up 
 the road with his careless, jaunty air, and easy 
 half-dominant grace in every movement, like that
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 19 
 
 of one quite assured of his place in the world, and 
 who felt that the best things in it the cake and 
 the wine were his birthright share. The coarser 
 part of the feast the bread and the cold meat 
 might fall to other lots and welcome. 
 
 Look at Keefe Bartlett as he stands there, 
 staring at that slender, graceful figure going up 
 the road. He is not of that mould himself, be- 
 ing heavily built, with a slouch in his shoulders, 
 and coarse, large hands, square, big features, with 
 a tanned, pimply skin, lightish, bristly hair, the 
 shade of leaves that have bleached all winter 
 under the snows ; thick light e} T ebrows, too, and 
 eyes that have a shrewd gleam in them : once 
 get a fair look there, you set a different value 
 afterwards on the dull, heavy features. 
 
 The "turned-off hand" wears a suit of gray, 
 coarse clothes the best he e.ver had in his life. 
 He has earned them since he came to Agawam. 
 Since he came here, too, a great many strange 
 thoughts have been working under the bristly 
 hair. Keefe has listened to the questions astir in 
 his brain, and all the steady whir and thud of 
 the factory wheels could not drown them. He 
 wonders what these differences in human lots 
 nieaii ; why all the hunger, and cold, tuul want,
 
 20 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 the starved, miserable childhood, should have 
 fallen to him, and the life, warmed, and spiced, 
 and fragrant with love, and comfort, and luxury, 
 to others. 
 
 He has brooded over it by night and by day. 
 A bitter sense of wrong and outrage has taken 
 possession of him more and more. He has a feel- 
 ing of bitterness towards all rich men, as though 
 they had robbed him of his birthright, and gloats 
 sometimes over the thought that a day of reckon- 
 ing is to come, he cannot tell when or how ; but 
 it is to be a day of triumph for labor and poverty, 
 when the rich shall no longer grind the poor 
 under their iron heel. 
 
 Keefe talks over this matter more or less with 
 the workmen, when they hang, in the hot sum- 
 mer evemngs, about the piazza of the big factory 
 boarding-house down in the hollow. Not a very 
 attractive place, certainly, but a palace in compar- 
 ison with Keefe's former homes. 
 
 The boy is rather a favorite with the hands. 
 He has a knack at acting, and entertains his 
 companions with comic shows of scenes he has 
 witnessed in the alleys and by-streets of that 
 great Babel, two hundred miles south of Agawam 
 scenes not delicate or refined, perhaps, but
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 21 
 
 touched all through with some strong, native, 
 human life. 
 
 Keefe is always sure of an audience that would 
 have made a study for Hogarth an audience 
 with clay pipes, and loud guffaws, and admiring 
 oaths, when he transforms himself into some 
 street brawler, or shoe-black, or drunken 
 sailor. 
 
 One of the workmen has assured the boy his 
 vocation was the clown of a circus, and another 
 lias recommended the Bowery Theatre; after 
 a while he "might make a big tiling at the 
 comic parts." 
 
 But Keefe had made no plans for the future 
 when he was turned off from the place where, 
 to his credit, considering his previous vagabond 
 life and habits, he had worked steadily all sum- 
 mer. He had not money to pay his board for 
 another week, and the winter was coming ; and 
 the outlook was gloomy enough. 
 
 Keefe thrust his hands into his pockets, and 
 strode away from the factory office that morning 
 with the talk which he had overheard at work in 
 his brain, and his thoughts swelling in a great 
 bitterness against the speakers, especially against 
 the young man, just about his own age, who had
 
 22 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 wealth, and pleasure, and friends at command ; 
 who had only to ask for a couple of hundred 
 dollars, and lo ! it was rained down upon him 
 much as the clouds rained down their showers 
 upon the thirsty grass. 
 
 And here was Keefe, without a dollar in the 
 world, and with the old freezing and starvation he 
 knew so well waiting for him a little way off! And 
 to-morrow, with his two hundred dollars stowed 
 away in his pocket, and his careless, jaunty air, 
 which seemed an insulting defiance to Keefe, this 
 youth would start all alone to walk over the road 
 to the station at Plum Forks, the road by which 
 Keefe had come to Agawam, and which he knew 
 so well. And while his thoughts kept revolving 
 around this central fact, all of a sudden, and so 
 slyly that he did not know it, the devil entered 
 into the soul of Keefe Bartlett. 
 
 A mood half fierce, half sullen, possessed him 
 now. "What right had that ' Rox,' " Keefe 
 kept asking himself, "to this two hundred dol- 
 lars, which he was going to squander in gay 
 carousals, with companions as lazy and lucky 
 as himself, among the mountains? Those deli- 
 cate fingers of his had never earned a dinner or 
 a night's lodging ; " and then Keefe drew his
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 23 
 
 hard, big hands out of his pockets, and stared 
 at them with a smile fierce and bitter enough. 
 
 The boy wandered off by himself. His black 
 thoughts were company enough for that day; 
 and all the while he kept seeing, as in a vision, 
 the slender figure moving rapidly along the track, 
 with its careless, jaunty air. That would all be 
 to-morrow. Keefe had taken in and remembered 
 all the points of the journey. Rox would have to 
 start about one o'clock in order to reach the down 
 train in time. There were long lonely stretches 
 on the road. Keefe knew them ; he knew, too, 
 that he had twice the muscular power of the 
 delicately-bred student, for his vagrant life had 
 toughened his naturally hardy constitution. 
 
 Keefe was not without weapons, too ; he re- 
 membered now the pistol he had bought, for a 
 mere song, of one of the workmen, in order to 
 shoot muskrats. Not that he meant to use that, 
 a cold sweat actually started all over him, of 
 course not ; but, then, how easy it would be, for 
 any one who ' knew what Keefe did, to follow the 
 young student, and come upon him suddenly 
 from behind, in some lonely place on that long 
 stretch of road, deal the fellow a blow that would 
 knock sense and sight out of him for a few
 
 24 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 minutes, and then rob him of that two hundred 
 dollars, to which he had no right ! 
 
 You may be sure, when such thoughts as these 
 stirred in Keefe's soul, the devil was not far 
 behind them. Keefe had had a conscience, not 
 a very sensitive one, of course, with his educa- 
 tion of old wharves and back alleys ; still, he had 
 always had the name of keeping his word among 
 his brother boot-blacks and news-boys .some 
 memory of the pinched, sallow-faced little woman, 
 who had gone to her grave so many years before, 
 holding him back from committing any act which 
 the world agrees to call crime, even when the 
 temptation had been very sharp. 
 
 Even to-day he thought of her sometimes ; but 
 he was hunted, maddened by disappointment, 
 misery, and a burning sense of wrong ; and all day 
 long he kept brooding over the solitary, rapid 
 young figure, on the lonely road, and seeing the 
 two hundred dollars stowed away in his wallet. 
 An evil glitter came into the boy's eyes, and it 
 grew and grew there, until the whole face be- 
 neath seemed to grow heavy and brutal. 
 
 Keefe gloated over that money ; his very blood 
 hankered and tingled for it; and at last, after 
 wandering that whole day among the highways
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 25 
 
 and over the country roads, when the sun shot 
 up one wide purple splendor over the distant hills 
 around Agawam, Keefe set his big jaws together, 
 and, with an awful look darkling all over his 
 face, swore that he would have the two hundred 
 dollars. 
 
 And the devil, sitting in Keefe s soul, laughed 
 to himself! 

 
 26 
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SHY, Rox, you are the most unac- 
 countable being ! How in the world 
 did you contrive to drop down here 
 in this fashion ? " 
 
 She came in from the garden, where she had 
 been gathering flowers honeysuckle, pinks, jes- 
 samine, and sweet, fresh, dainty tilings of that 
 sort, and found him stretched upon one of the 
 lounges in the sitting-room in his usual careless 
 fashion, only, whatever attitude Rox Coventry 
 took, it was never awkward or angular. 
 
 Rox was Edith Folger's own cousin, and she 
 adored him. He stood to her in the place of 
 the brother who had died just within the border- 
 land of her memory, while the remoter relation 
 gave just a relishing spice of romance to their 
 feeling for each other. 
 
 To say that Edith was a fairer flower than any 
 of those fragrant, blossoming things she brought
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 27 
 
 in with her, would be as true as commonplace. 
 She had a wonderfully sweet face, with big, dusky 
 blue eyes, and glossy hair, with a flicker in it 
 like bright live things, and a little tremulous flush 
 in her cheeks ; and her smile well, of all the 
 sweet things about Edith Folger, I think that 
 smile was the sweetest. 
 
 As for the rest, she was an only child, her 
 father's pet and darling, especially since her 
 mother died. 
 
 " Perhaps I dropped down from the clouds, 
 perhaps I came in on some dainty Ariel's back. 
 Don't you know by this time I am not made of 
 common clay, and can navigate earth or air 
 in ways quite unknown to ordinary mortals ? " 
 
 Edith's laugh slipped out, a fresh, silvery thing 
 enough. 
 
 " I am ready to believe almost anything about 
 you, Rox ; but that mouthful is too huge ; I 
 cannot swallow it." 
 
 " Well, you needn't. I walked in like any 
 other human biped, after a splendid swim, to ask 
 for some lunch, and to tell you I must be off in 
 half an hour." 
 
 "Half an hour!" tossing her flowers on the 
 table with so hurried a movement that some
 
 28 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 of them were scattered on the carpet. ' O, Rox, 
 I hoped you had given up that frantic notion 
 of walking over to Plum Point Station." 
 
 "Frantic! Why, child, it is a most sensible 
 and practical conclusion on my part. I need a 
 little breathing for the Adirondacks, you know. 
 Now, be the angel you always are, and order 
 my lunch at once, and help me eat it, for I must 
 devour it and really be off in half an hour." 
 
 " There is nothing to be done, then, but to 
 let you have your own way, I suppose." And 
 she went and touched the bell a little gravely. 
 " What will you have ? " 
 
 " O, a leg of cold chicken, some sandwiches, 
 and to top off with, a glass of fresh cream and 
 some berries." 
 
 It was evident that Rox was quite at home at 
 his uncle Bryant's. 
 
 There was some more light, prankish talk 
 between the two, with little silvery laughters 
 of Edith's between, and an occasional burst from 
 Rox, and then the servant who had received the 
 girl's order brought in the lunch, and two had it 
 in a pretty little alcove on one side of the big 
 room. 
 
 " This is just delectable, Edith," exclaimed
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 29 
 
 Rox, as he piled the girl's plate with raspber- 
 ries which had not yet lost the fresh coolness of 
 morning dews, in which they had hung two hours 
 l.efure. "I pity the poor fellows who haven't 
 cousins to eat lunches with them." 
 
 i-Mith would usually have been awake to the 
 il.i\or of compliment in this remark. She had 
 her little vanities, and liked to be praised, as all 
 girls do ; but she only smiled faintly as she took 
 her saucer of berries, and actually looked grave 
 for a moment before she said, 
 
 " There are so many people in the world who 
 are to be pitied, Rox ! " 
 
 "I've no doubt of it," helping himself to the 
 cold chicken with a crowned contentedness, such 
 as one could fancy the gods might feel at some 
 banquet, talking over the troubles of mortals. 
 
 Perhaps Edith thought something of this kind 
 as she watched her cousin for she had thoughts 
 behind that pretty face of hers. In a minute I? \ 
 looked up from his plate. It was evident that 
 no speculations on human affairs disturbed the 
 appetite which he had brought in from his swim 
 that morning. 
 
 " What kind of people were you thinking of, 
 Edith?"
 
 30 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 "All sorts of folks who are in trouble, and 
 ean't see their way out of it." 
 
 "They're a pretty huge lump, Edith," ex- 
 claimed Rox, cheerfully. Don't think, now, he 
 was hard and selfish ; he was only careless and 
 thoughtless ; but he had a real soft place in his 
 heart, if one could get down to it. " What's put 
 them into your head now ? " 
 
 " I don't know, unless it was something which 
 happened while I was gathering the flowers, just 
 before you came in." 
 
 " Come, let's have it, Edith." 
 
 " It was very curious. I was way off in the 
 corner by the hedge, hunting for some feathery 
 greens to finish up my flowers, when all of a 
 sudden I really can't tell whether I saw him 
 first I knew somebody was watching me out- 
 side. There he was, when I turned round and 
 looked, sitting on the grass, a big, broad-shoul- 
 dered fellow, in a coarse gray suit, and a square, 
 coarse, homely face under a bit of a skull-cap. 
 He was looking at me with a steady, curious gaze, 
 out of such strange eyes ! I can't tell what the 
 look meant; but there was some pain or mystery 
 in it. There he sat, staring at me, like some old 
 roughly-hewn statue "
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 31 
 
 " He'd no business there," exclaimed Rox, with 
 a slight growl. 
 
 " Perhaps not. He turned his eyes away when 
 ours met ; and yet, when I looked again, there 
 the figure sat, watching me with the indescribable 
 look. It gave me a curious feeling; and I was 
 turning to go away, when my curiosity got the 
 better of me, and I just determined the fellow 
 should speak to me ; so I faced right about, and 
 asked what came into my mind first. 
 
 " ' Are you in want of anybody or anything ?. ' ' 
 
 " Bravo, Edith ! That was like you," broke in 
 Rox. 
 
 " He seemed startled and confused at first. 
 
 " ' No ; I don't wan't anything,' he answered, 
 in a hurried way. 
 
 " I turned to go. I can't tell what made me 
 stop and ask the next question ; but I did." 
 
 " ' Is there anything in the world you want ? 
 anything I can do for you ? ' 
 
 " He stared at me a moment before he spoke. 
 
 " ' I should like twenty-five dollars,' he said." 
 
 " Well, that was cool," broke in Rox again, 
 who by this time was a good deal interested in 
 Edith's story. 
 
 "I thought so. If he had asked me for a
 
 32 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 dollar, or even two of them, I would have got. 
 it for him ; but twenty-five was, of course, not 
 to be thought of. It struck me all of a sudden 
 that the fellow might be crazy. I should have 
 run off then, for certain, if the hedge had not 
 been between us. I told him I could not give 
 him anything like that ; and then, feeling that he 
 might possibly be hungry, I added, 
 
 " ' But I will bring you something to eat.' 
 
 " If you had seen the bitter, angry smile that 
 came into his face ! 
 
 "'I ain't a beggar,' he said, roughly; 'I don't 
 want any of your cold pieces ! ' : 
 
 " The brute ! " exclaimed Rox. " I dare say 
 he was prowling round for a chance to help 
 himself." 
 
 " I don't think a real beggar would have acted 
 like that," answered Edith. " At any rate, I 
 told him I had not supposed he was one, and that 
 he must excuse me." 
 
 " You did? " said Rox, with an amused smile. 
 
 " Yes ; for I was afraid I had hurt his feel- 
 ings. His whole face lightened and changed 
 after that. 
 
 " ' You must excuse me, too,' he said, a good 
 deal like a gentleman. * I didn't expect you
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 33 
 
 -would give me the money. The words came 
 out themselves ; and he turned at that and 
 went off. 
 
 "Wasn't it all very curious, Rox?" 
 
 " Hugely so. Fellow either crack-brained or a 
 rogue. Bet you my new gold watch on that." 
 
 " I cannot feel that he was either," answered 
 Edith, with a little grave shake of her glossy 
 head. " Something, Rox, I can't tell what, 
 makes me feel that twenty-five dollars was really 
 a matter of life and death to that boy ; that he 
 wanted it, as you and I have sometimes in our 
 lives wanted something, and for which we would 
 have given all the rest of the world." 
 
 "Ah, Edith, all that comes of your being 
 such a sensitive, soft-hearted little puss. When 
 you get to be as old as I am," here Rox bridled 
 a little, and wiped his budding mustache with an 
 air. " you will learn that it doesn't do to trust 
 too far to one's impressions." 
 
 " Perhaps," said Edith, rather meekly and 
 rather sceptically. " But, Rox, you did not see 
 what I did the look in that boy's eyes. It 
 meant some dreadful trouble." 
 
 Perhaps Rox was slightly impressed by Edith's 
 story. However, he shook the feeling off easily, 
 3
 
 34 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 as ducks do water, and good-naturedly set him- 
 self to work to brighten up Edith. 
 
 " Whatever it was, you and I are not respon- 
 sible, and it will do no good to bother your sen- 
 sitive little soul over it." 
 
 By this time the lunch was finished. They had 
 both left the table, and the girl was looking out 
 of the window, while Rox, restless as usual, had 
 taken to long strides up and down the room. 
 
 " It puzzles me," said Edith, half to herself. 
 
 "What?" asked Rox, coming over to her 
 side. 
 
 " Why God hasn't made things better than 
 they are." 
 
 He smiled a little at that. Her words always 
 went, sabre-like, with clean, smooth stroke, to the 
 core of a thing. 
 
 " Philosophers and theologians have been ask- 
 ing that question ever since the world was 
 made. It's a great boggle, dear. Don't fret 
 over it." 
 
 "But how can one help doing it, Rox? All 
 the plums and the cake falling to our share, and 
 such dry crumbs to the others the bigger half, 
 too." 
 
 "I know it. Sorry for 'cm, poor souls. But
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 35 
 
 I'm not Atlas: I don't carry the world on my 
 shoulders." 
 
 " It seems as though God must love us better 
 than he does them. But, as he is God, he can- 
 not do that, Rox.'' 
 
 " You are right there, Edith. I shouldn't like 
 to believe the seeming was true of him, even 
 though the love was on our side. But you forget 
 that the difference is not mostly his making. It 
 is the fault of the people themselves." 
 
 " There is a great deal in that, I know, Rox. 
 Yet so many of these people have not had a 
 chance ! " 
 
 "Somebody's fault too, may be, in the long 
 run. Things sometimes take generations to work 
 themselves out. But, Edith, if you go on shoot- 
 ing those hard bullets of theology at me, I shall 
 never reach Plum Point Station. I must be off 
 straightway. Clear up your face and bid me 
 a good by that I shall carry over the fifteen miles 
 of road." 
 
 " O, Rox, what a big goose you are making 
 of yourself to take this awful tramp ! But, as 
 you will do it, good by, and God speed." 
 
 She gave him both her hands. He took the 
 soft, white things a moment, and kissed the fair
 
 86 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 cheek with brotherly, cousinly freedom. She 
 stood in the front door and watched him go his 
 way through the dark larches and cedars, until at 
 last he reached the gate, and turning there, lifted 
 his hat to her, and went his way. 
 
 Somebody else watched him, too. It was the 
 boy whom Edith had seen that morning sitting 
 by the hedge, and who had haunted her ever 
 since. 
 
 At some distance from the girl's residence was 
 a small hillock, crowned with half a dozen old, 
 wide-spreading, knarled apple trees. Under their 
 shadow the boy had been crouched for the last 
 hour, watching the road, of which his position 
 commanded a view. From his hiding-place the 
 boy saw the light, alert figure going down to the 
 track. A few minutes afterwards he, too, crept 
 out and followed Rox Coventry. 
 
 About three miles from Agawam the track ran 
 for some distance through a kind of hollow 
 formed by low, wooded hills on either side. 
 There was no more lonely place than this on the 
 whole road, which, twelve miles below, joined the 
 main track at Plum Point Station. 
 
 It was about three o'clock as Rox Coventry 
 reached the hollow. He remembered the time
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 37 
 
 afterwards, because he happened to take out his 
 watch and look at it. The place, as I said, was 
 lonely enough ; a narrow, tunnel-like perspective 
 between the hills ; not a house in sight. 
 
 Rox was no coward. He had walked the three 
 miles briskly ; had been humming college tunes 
 and making all sorts of plans for the grand 
 " lark " among the Adirondacks ; and some- 
 times his last talk with his cousin Edith had 
 pushed in among the other things, and made a 
 little grave background to them. The afternoon 
 was soft and still, one of those when the year 
 seems to hold her breath, and turn her head to 
 listen, as though she caught some hint of frosts 
 and change that were coming. Soft, low clouds 
 hung all over the sky, of a clear pearly-gray ; 
 a hum of insects everywhere, and dreamings of 
 winds among the leaves. 
 
 Suddenly Rox Coventry heard steps close be- 
 hind him. He had always had remarkably keen 
 ears. It flashed across him then, for the first 
 time, that the road was lonely, and that he had 
 brought no weapons with him. He turned 
 suddenly, and encountered a figure only a few 
 feet from him, and evidently approaching stealth- 
 ily , a figure in gray, slouching, heavily-built,
 
 38 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 with a square, heavy face, too, the jaws set grim 
 and hard, the expression just now dark and evil 
 enough ; but of this last Rox did not get the full 
 force, for, as he turned sharply about, a startled, 
 guilty look broke up every other in the boy's 
 face. 
 
 Rox's glance going over the figure recognized it 
 at once as identical with Edith's description. 
 Had not this been the case, there was something 
 so suspicious in the stranger's whole appear- 
 ance at that moment that it must have struck 
 Rox. 
 
 But it never once occurred to him that this 
 stealthy approach and this singular attitude must 
 mean something sinister. He never even sus- 
 pected that the stranger had been silently follow- 
 ing him all the way from Agawam. He only 
 thought it was a curious kind of chance which 
 had brought him face to face with Edith's de- 
 scription. 
 
 The two stood in the road, the soft, yellowish 
 lights from the clouds upon them, the dark hollow 
 stretching beyond. The contrast between the 
 two was worthy an artist that big, slouching, 
 rather overgrown figure, and the slender, well- 
 shaped student, instinct with a certain grace, even
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 39 
 
 in repose : the difference that between a dray- 
 horse and some high-bred courser. 
 
 The two stood a moment looking at each other. 
 They had been brought up in the same city, 
 perhaps not three miles apart ; they had watched 
 the same shapes of clouds, the same stars, played 
 in the same snows, and stammered the same 
 vernacular in their childhood. And yet, what a 
 different world it had been to those two ! 
 
 Then Rox called out, in his cheerful, ringing 
 voice, 
 
 " Is there anything you want to say to me ? " 
 
 Still that surprised, half-guilty look in the boy's 
 eyes. "Was he insane, after all?" remembering 
 his impression on hearing Edith's story, and feel- 
 ing a little uneasy. 
 
 "No, I don't want anything," answered the 
 boy, rather suddenly. 
 
 Rox hesitated a moment ; then he remembered 
 that he had no time to spare, and plunged off into 
 the hollow. 
 
 The boy stood still, staring after the lithe figure 
 going up the road. His hand was in his pocket, 
 and the big, cold fingers were fumbling about 
 a pistol there. His face was livid under the tan 
 and pimples.
 
 40 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 Keefe Bartlett there is no need I should tell 
 you it was he had come all this way to find 
 Rox Coventry. He could not give up his pur- 
 pose now ; and yet, for a moment after the stran- 
 ger's kindly question, which still seemed to linger 
 among the soft humming of the purple bees in the 
 grasses, Keefe was more than half a mind to send 
 the pistol off at his own temples, Then the old 
 evil look came into his face again. 
 
 " I won't turn poltroon now," he muttered, 
 with an oath. "I came out here for that fel- 
 low's money; and I'll have it, or die;" and he 
 started up the road. 
 
 Rox, moving rapidly along, was having his 
 thoughts, with no little sparkling interludes of 
 college airs this time. 
 
 " What if it was all true, that which Edith 
 had said, and the twenty-five dollars was a 
 matter of life and death to this boy ? Curious, 
 how he had turned up in the road at this junc- 
 ture ! " 
 
 Rox thought of the pile of notes stuffed away 
 in his vest pocket. 
 
 " It would be an easy thing to take out twenty- 
 five dollars, and go back and put it into the boy's 
 hands. What if he should make a fool of him-
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 41 
 
 self, and do it now? for, of course, none but a 
 fool would do so absurd a thing! Yet, if Rox 
 were as certain about the matter as his pretty 
 cousin seemed to be, he would try the ex- 
 periment. 
 
 " Suppose he should do it now ? Of course 
 it would be an awful sell ; but then Rox would 
 hardly feel it. There was just time to go back 
 and do the thing, and it was only a little rather 
 expensive fun, after all, and nobody's business 
 but his own." 
 
 These thoughts and a good many more like 
 them went swiftly through the mind of Rox 
 Coventry, underneath all, that soft place which 
 Edith's talk had touched that morning. Rox 
 was half ashamed of it, tried to invest the whole 
 thing with an air of cool fun. But of a sudden 
 the youth whirled about. 
 
 There, close behind him, with his swift, 
 stealthy pace, was the boy again. But Rox was 
 too intent on his errand to be startled a second 
 time. The two were almost in the heart of the 
 hollow, the wooded hills rising darkly on either 
 side, and overhead the gray, smoky-looking 
 clouds. 
 
 Rox walked straight up to the boy, whose
 
 42 - ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 face, just now, hardly improved on acquaint- 
 ance. 
 
 " Are you the boy who told a young girl at 
 Agawam this morning that you wanted twenty- 
 five dollars?" 
 
 The big face was a blank of surprise for a 
 moment or two. The fierce, evil look with which 
 he was approaching his intended victim wholly 
 disappeared. 
 
 " Yes," in a husky, half-frightened voice ; but 
 his eyes held to his questioner's ; "I said that 
 to her." 
 
 "I should like to know I've a reason for 
 asking what do you intend to do with this 
 money, if you could get it." 
 
 A smile, dark and bitter enough, struggled 
 over the big mouth. 
 
 " I don't think it would take long to tell ; 
 but I ain't a beggar," with a sudden fierce- 
 ness. 
 
 " No ; I did not take you for one ; but," with 
 a frank cordiality of manner which made Rox 
 Coventry the favorite he was with everybody, 
 " I wish you would tell me just how much money 
 you have in the world. Don't think I am rude, 
 and, if it does not please you, don't do it."
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 43 
 
 Something in the frank, pleasant manner half 
 compelled Keefe Bartlett against his will. He 
 put his hand into his pocket, he had dropped 
 something in the grass a moment before, and 
 drew out twenty cents. With some vague sense 
 of conscience which haunted the poor, tempted 
 soul, the boy had settled with his landlady before 
 he started out on his errand of crime. 
 
 "Is that all?" exclaimed Rox, touched and 
 shocked. 
 
 " That is all." 
 
 " And you have no way to get any more ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Poor fellow ! Been at work at the cotton- 
 mills?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well, you shall have the twenty-five dol- 
 lars. But, mind, I don't think .you are a beg- 
 gar," giving the turned-off hand a friendly 
 little slap on the shoulder ; and then, taking 
 out his wallet, Rox counted over the money, 
 a couple of tens and a five, and put it 
 in Keefe's hand. "There!" he said; "much 
 good may it do you. Haven't time for another 
 word. Good by." And with the instinctive 
 grace which is apt to follow a good action, Rox
 
 44 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 lifted his hat to the mill hand, and hurried 
 off down the road again, leaving Keefe stand- 
 ing in the hollow, with the purple bees hum- 
 ming in the grasses, and the great, smoke- 
 tinged clouds overhead ; and over all these, 
 I like to think, the glad faces of God's angels 
 on the watch.
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 45 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 COVENTRY, going at a brisk pace, 
 felt a hand suddenly on his shoulder. 
 He was, perhaps, half a mile from the 
 spot where the singular interview had taken 
 place between himself and Keefe Bartlett. He did 
 turn around now with a start, and something much 
 like a shudder, and confronted the youth again. 
 
 This time Keefe's face was white the pal- 
 lor striking through the tan and freckles, while 
 the eyes had a bright, scared stare, as they met 
 Rox Coventry's. 
 
 "Was Did you hear anything telling you 
 to give me that money?" Keefe panted out in a 
 hurried, frightened way. 
 
 " No. I shall take all the credit of that act to 
 myself. No doubt there is many a one I should 
 be glad to slip off, on other shoulders, although 
 mine are tolerably broad," shaking them in his 
 comical fashion.
 
 46 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 " You are sure you didn't hear anything speak- 
 ing to you out of the sky, or woods, or round? " 
 inquired Keefe, in a voice hardly above his 
 breath. 
 
 Rox caught the meaning in a moment. It 
 might be some old ghostly ballad of the streets, 
 or it might be the superstitious element which 
 lurks somewhere in all human souls, was at work 
 in this boy's brain. Rox was touched a little, and 
 a good deal amused. 
 
 " No, there wasn't a whisper of a ghost around, 
 nor so much as the tip end of an angel's feather 
 in sight. What put that absurd notion into your 
 head, my dear fellow? " 
 
 " But what made you give me that money, 
 then?" persisted Keefe, in the strangest kind of 
 voice. I know of no word which precisely de- 
 scribes it, only you felt it was a life-and-death 
 matter to him. 
 
 " On my honor, I can't tell you," said Rox, 
 running his fingers through his hair. " Every- 
 body has his soft streaks, you know. Perhaps this 
 was one of mine. Come, don't stare at me like 
 that. Take the money and have a jolly time 
 with it." 
 
 Then, remembering there was not another
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 47 
 
 breath to lose, Rox wheeled about, without a 
 word more, and set off rapidly for Plum Point 
 Station. 
 
 Keefe stood in the road and watched him until 
 the swift, lithe figure was quite out of sight. The 
 young workman made a picture himself, not 
 a handsome one, certainly, but striking of its own 
 kind, with his lips apart, and his hands fum- 
 bling at each other, and his big, strongly -knit 
 frame standing there in the hot road, like some 
 coarsely-hewn statue. 
 
 Then he wheeled about suddenly, wiping off 
 with his coat sleeve some thick drops of perspira- 
 tion which had gathered among the moles and 
 freckles ; and then it was very curious he 
 turned and went back to the very spot where 
 Rox, ten minutes before, had given him the 
 money, and which he still held tightly clasped in 
 his hand. 
 
 He sank down in the warm sand close by the 
 track ; he spread the notes out on his knee, care- 
 fully smoothing the edges, and counting them 
 over one by one, with eyes that had a strange, 
 bright glitter in them ; then he looked up 
 suddenly into the great, drab masses of clouds 
 overhead.
 
 48 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 "O God," he cried out sharply, "if You are 
 up there, look down and see that You know 
 I meant to kill him, and that it saved me, and 
 saved him, too the kind, generous fellow " 
 
 Keefe broke right off, something that-was like 
 a howl ending in a great, gulping sob. He laid 
 his square face in his big hands, flopped right 
 over, with about as much grace as a polar-bear, 
 stretched himself at full length on the ground, 
 while a great tempest of tears and sobs shook him 
 from head to foot. 
 
 He lay there for a full half hour, wallowing in 
 the warm sand, while that salt rain poured down 
 his cheeks; and some hardness, and pain, and 
 bitterness were wept out of Keefe Bartlett's heart 
 at that time which never got back to it again. 
 
 He might live to be a gray, sodden-faced old 
 man, but he would never forget that hour until 
 the grave shut it away from him in soft, dark 
 silence, and perhaps not then. 
 
 At last Keefe rose up, wiping his red, swollen 
 eyes with his cotton handkerchief, staring all 
 around him, as though it was a new world lie 
 gazed on, or as though he had been suddenly 
 caught up and landed in some corner of the 
 moon.
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 49 
 
 Then Keefe's eyes caught a bright glitter of 
 something lying amongst a fringe of weeds close 
 to the track. He shuddered and drew his 
 breath hard, as though he had caught sight of 
 the scales of some deadly serpent lying in wait 
 there. The next moment he sprang to his feet, 
 snapped his grim jiuvs together, and snatched up 
 the pistol wliich lay there amongst the weeds, and 
 with which he had meant to 
 
 Keefe's thoughts turned away from the black 
 conclusion, and so my pen shall. 
 
 It was a full half mile to the river. Keefe went 
 all the way on a swift run, and when he reached 
 the bank he tossed the pistol into the waters, and 
 a smile of unutterable relief and triumph came 
 into, his face as he saw them close over it and 
 bury the tiling from his sight. 
 
 He did not return to the track afterwards. He 
 took the river road now, which wound through 
 the broad, low pastures, and past old mills, and 
 through belts of .woodlands. 
 
 What a changed world it was to this Keefe 
 Bartlett, late from the city slums and the factory 
 looms ! How new, and fair, and sweet all na- 
 ture smiled on him. It seemed as though she 
 understood all about it, and was glad for him ! 
 
 4 
 f
 
 50 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 He did not feel any longer solitary and shut out 
 from all the beauty and gladness, but as though 
 he had his place and share in it. He heard the 
 twitter of the robins, the happy gurgle of winds 
 among the leaves, as though they broke up and 
 died away in dreams, the hum of insects in the 
 grass, and sometimes the sun almost came out of 
 the clouds overhead to look at him, holding only 
 the thinnest yellow gauze of vapor before her face, 
 and then slipping behind the soft gray masses of 
 cloud. 
 
 All these things Keefe observed curiously ; all 
 made liim strangely happy. The heart within 
 him seemed changed to a child's heart. Some- 
 times he turned somersaults, sometimes he leaped 
 over stone walls, or lay down on the grass, or, 
 springing up, ran and shouted until he was out 
 of breath, and was like a child let loose on its 
 first holiday. But for the most part Keefe was 
 quiet. There was a great, still gladness at his 
 heart, and the tears kept swelling in his eyes, 
 and he would wipe them away with his coat 
 sleeve. 
 
 Every little while, too, he would thrust his 
 hand in his pocket, and feel the small roll there, 
 which meant so much more than money to him.
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 51 
 
 Keefe was just as much alone in the world as 
 ever; the future was precisely the same dark, 
 looming future which it had always been to Keefe 
 Bartlett ; but a new faith and trust had entered 
 into him. He was not troubled or afraid any 
 more. The love which had taken the leaves, 
 and birds, and the great world into its strong, 
 tender care, had taken him also. He felt it all 
 around him. In the blackest moment of his life 
 it had reached out suddenly and snatched him out 
 of the very grasp of the devil. 
 
 And sometimes the pinched, sallow face of his 
 mother rose up before him, and he wondered if 
 she knew and was glad for her boy. 
 
 So Keefe wandered along hour after hour, until 
 the afternoon was nearly gone. He had no ob- 
 ject in view, no aim of any sort that he was con- 
 scious of. He had money to pay for his night's 
 lodging at some country tavern ; or, if the worst 
 came, he could throw himself down in the shelter 
 of some big, motherly tree, and drop into a sleep 
 which many a pampered rich man might envy. 
 
 At last he came where the road forked. He 
 took the right one, went a few rods, and then, 
 without any reason that he was conscious of, 
 suddenly faced about and took the left road. It
 
 52 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 passed pleasant, old-fashioned farm-houses occa- 
 sionally, the smoke curling in blue, vaporous-look- 
 ing clouds above the wide-mouthed chimneys, 
 and hollyhocks and dahlias abloom in the front 
 yards. 
 
 Poor Keefe ! With that twenty-five dollars 
 stowed away in his pocket, he was richer than 
 he had ever been in all his life before ; and he had 
 a feeling that the world belonged to him, which 
 is, perhaps, very much pleasanter than the real 
 ownership would prove. 
 
 He was moving up a long, sloping stretch of 
 hill, with cornfields on either side, when, all of 
 a sudden, Keefe stood still. He had heard a cry, 
 not loud, but there was some sound in it of 
 human pain and fright. 
 
 In a moment he heard the cry again, this time 
 a little louder, and he sprang over the bars and 
 hurried through the cornfields in the direction of 
 the sound. 
 
 An old, broken stone-wall divided the corn- 
 field from a lane, whence the cries proceeded, 
 growing louder and shriller with terror as Keefe 
 approached them. It was the cry of a girl, he 
 was certain of that, as he plunged through the 
 grassy lane and under the deep shadows of the
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 53 
 
 scraggy wild-cherry trees, which had evidently 
 taken root and flourished on their own re- 
 sponsibility. 
 
 At the point where the lane broadened stood a 
 deserted old farm-house. It was a desolate place 
 enough, as, at the best, all country houses are, 
 left to mice and spiders, and given up to the 
 carnival of winds and rains. The blackened 
 roof had fallen in more or less; the doors had 
 been carried away, and the wooden blinds 
 creaked and flapped in the winds which roamed, 
 in a pitying mood, about the lonely premises, 
 and made the rafters and timbers quiver, as 
 though with old, plaintive memories of the hu- 
 man life they had once sheltered and cherished. 
 
 The shrill cries, convulsed with pain or fright, 
 were close at hand now. Keefe made a dive 
 around to the back of the house, his ears keen 
 and strained as a blood -hound's. There was an 
 old well here, and a mouldy worm-eaten curb on 
 one side. A pair of meagre brown hands clutched 
 frantically at the boards, and a bit of glossy 
 brown hair showed just above them. 
 
 Keefe took in the whole with one glance. In a 
 flash he was at the side of the well. It was an 
 awful sight. . There the little girl hung by those 
 
 '
 
 54 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 brown sticks of arms, and twenty feet below, the 
 black, still circle of water waited to take her 
 down into its cold heart. It could not have many 
 moments longer to wait. The child's strength 
 was almost exhausted by this time. Every in- 
 stant threatened to be her last. She clung 
 to the curb with the energy of despair. It 
 was wonderful that her strength had not failed 
 before. 
 
 " There, hold on ! " shouted Keefe, as a 
 louder shriek than ever smote the still air. 
 " Don't you see I'm here ? And I've come to 
 save you." 
 
 The girl looked up as well as she could. Keefe 
 saw a small, thin, freckled face, with a pair of 
 big dark eyes, fiercely bright now with their 
 agony of terror. 
 
 Had a voice from heaven spoken to the girl 
 it could not have sounded sweeter than Keefe's 
 loud, coarse tones, with the pity and the help 
 all through them ; and the square, heavy face, 
 with the world of sympathy in the light deep-set 
 eyes which leaned over the well, looked more 
 beautiful to the child at that moment than any 
 face she had ever seen in her life. 
 
 There was a quick, gasping sob. In the sudden
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 55 
 
 revulsion of feeling, she came very near losing her 
 hold. The small, frightened creature could not 
 utter one word. 
 
 It required steady nerves and swift hands now. 
 Keefe had both. He got down on his knees, 
 leaned his big, shambling body far over the 
 shaking well-curb, which threatened to break 
 every moment with the child's weight, light as 
 that was. It was all the work of an instant. He 
 put his hands under the girl's arms, and grasped 
 them with all his firm strength. 
 
 "Now, let go the boards, and put your arms 
 tight around my neck. Don't be frightened. I'll 
 have you out of this fix before you know it." 
 
 The voice, full of kindly, helpful courage, sent 
 its own confidence to the fluttering heart. "With 
 a last shudder of fright and hope, the girl with- 
 drew one arm and grasped the young man's neck, 
 then the other closed around him, and the warm, 
 meagre arms clung to him as the dying cling to 
 their deliverer. 
 
 The rest was easily done. Keefe lifted the 
 little figure, with all possible care, over the well- 
 curb, and set it down on the grass among the 
 sweet-smelling mint. 
 
 But the strain had been too great. With a little
 
 56 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 moaning gasp, the child's head fell back on the 
 ground. She had fainted quite away. Keefe was 
 terribly frightened for a moment, the white, set 
 lips looked so much like the dead. But his fears 
 took at once the form of practical help. He 
 twisted a big mullein leaf into a cup, and filled 
 this with cool water from a little stream among 
 the weeds, and swabbed the child's forehead in 
 the kindest, clumsiest way. 
 
 When the water trickled down between her 
 lips, she opened her eyes, and saw the face bend- 
 ing over her which had leaned over the well in 
 that moment of awful agony, and which had 
 looked fair in her eyes as though it was the 
 shining face of some angel which God had sent 
 to rescue her. 
 
 "There; you feel better now don't you?" 
 with a smile. If you had seen that, you would 
 have wondered at the mystery of change which 
 the smile wrought in that homely face. 
 
 She stared at him a moment in blank bewilder- 
 ment ; then she lifted up her head, shot a swift 
 glance around her and off to the well, and, with 
 a little shuddering cry, grasped hold of Keefe's 
 arm with her small claws of fingers.
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 57 
 
 " Never mind now ; it's all over, you see, and 
 here you are, safe and sound." 
 
 She was too much exhausted for any stormy 
 burst of feeling, but she kept staring at him with 
 the big dark eyes, out of which the great tears 
 kept oozing and trickling down the thin cheeks ; 
 and still she clung to him with both hands. The 
 sight moved Keefe to the heart. He wiped away 
 the tears with a corner of the child's buff apron, 
 noticing for the first time how nice and tasteful 
 everything was about her. 
 
 " It was lucky I heard you scream wasn't it? 
 I was in the road, across the fields, when I heard 
 the first cry, and, you better believe, I made 
 tracks for it. Wasn't I just in the nick of time, 
 though? Come, now, I wouldn't shed another 
 tear over it." 
 
 " It was so dreadful ! " said the small quivering 
 lips. " I am such a very little girl, you know." 
 
 " Yes, I know ; a very little girl, but a very 
 brave one, too." 
 
 At that a little light came into the tear-filled 
 eyes. 
 
 " But the water looked so dark, shining there 
 below, and I thought I was going to be drowned 
 in it."
 
 58 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 " Well, you wasn't ; so the thoughts wasn't 
 true that time, you see." 
 
 " But they came so close to being ! " 
 
 " If they did, a miss is as good as a mile, 
 you know." 
 
 A bit of an amused smile came out on the child's 
 lips. The big eyes stared in a pleased, trustful 
 way at Keefe. 
 
 "Where did you come from?" she asked, 
 curiously. 
 
 " O, from a place they call Agawam, a great 
 ways off." 
 
 " O, I know. Uncle Richard has business there 
 sometimes at the mills. He is going to take me 
 over to see them some time, and the big looms, 
 and the folks at work at them." 
 
 " You'll find it worth going to see," glad to 
 perceive that her thoughts, like all children's, 
 slipped so easily away from the terror through 
 which she had passed, and noticing the flush com- 
 ing back to the thin lips. 
 
 In a moment, however, her face grew grave 
 again. 
 
 "It was very funny!" 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " That you happened to be passing the corn-
 
 ONLY GIRLS. f>9 
 
 fields, and ho;ird me cry. I think God must have 
 sent yon. Pie does tilings sometimes, yon know." 
 
 " Yes, I know he does," Keefe answered very 
 gravely, remembering what had happened a few 
 hours ago. 
 
 '* Uncle Richard will take me on his knee, and 
 say, it was God did it, for certain, when I come 
 to tell him. But I forgot. You don't know who 
 uncle Richard is." 
 
 A few questions drew from the child some very 
 straightforward passages of autobiography, and 
 the circumstances which had brought her into the 
 peril from which Keefe had rescued her. 
 
 The child was returning from her grand- 
 mother's, with whom she had been to pass the 
 da}*, with a small basket of damsons, and, instead 
 of keeping the main road, she had taken a short 
 cut across the lots and the cornfields. 
 
 An old, ruined building has always a wonderful 
 attraction to a child's imagination. The girl 
 wandered around this a while, and then went 
 to see if she could find her face down in the dark 
 blue mirror of the well. Leaning far over the 
 low curb, she became dizzy, and lost her balance. 
 As she fell over, she clutched the boards, and 
 hung there, probably not more than two minutes,
 
 60 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 although the time seemed hours to her. All 
 things considered, her escape did savor of the 
 miraculous. 
 
 Keefe would not let her dwell 011 it long, for 
 the small face was growing white, and the small 
 figure chilled and shuddering, as she went over 
 with the scene. Keefe found the hat which the 
 child had taken off and dropped in the grass 
 before she surveyed herself in the well. It was 
 very amusing to see the dainty way in which she 
 smoothed the fresh blue ribbons, and the air of 
 anxiety with which, after perching the hat on 
 that glossy brown head, she asked his opinion 
 about its appearance. 
 
 He assured her that it looked as though it 
 had come straight from the show-window of the 
 milliner, on which the child drew a long breath 
 of immense relief and delight. 
 
 "What is your name?" she asked, in a 
 moment. 
 
 "Keefe Bartlett." 
 
 " O, what a funny one ! Where did you 
 get it ? " 
 
 " I got it long before I can remember ; and 
 I hadn't any choice in it. What is your name, 
 little girl?"
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 61 
 
 " Bessie Staines ; nine years old last May." 
 
 " Well, the sun is getting behind the hill, and 
 it will be night before long. Can't you manage 
 to walk now?" 
 
 She got up with Keefe's help ; but once on her 
 feet, she was quite equal to taking care of 
 herself. 
 
 "Have you very far*to walk?" 
 
 " Three quarters of a mile up the road to Creek 
 Furiii. That's where we live." 
 
 " That is my way, too ; so I will go along 
 with you." 
 
 They found the little covered basket, with the 
 great purple damsons inside, under the old apple- 
 tree where the girl had left it. Bessie insisted on 
 Keefe's helping himself to these ; and such juicy, 
 honeyed ripeness had never crossed his lips and 
 cooled his palate before. 
 
 Then they took the basket between them and 
 started off. Bessie had by this time largely re- 
 covered from her fright, and chattered on to her 
 friend as though she had known him all her life. 
 
 In the course of her talk it transpired that her 
 father had died several years before, and that she 
 lived with her mother and her uncle Richard 
 Staines, who was a widower, and had no children
 
 62 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 of his own. But it was evident enough that this 
 uncle had managed to gain a father's full share in 
 the heart and admiration of his little niece, Bessie 
 Staines. 
 
 Somehow, as she talked, Keefe's heart warmed 
 singularly towards this stranger, whose face he 
 had never seen. If he had only had such a father 
 or such an uncle, Keefe fancied it would have all 
 been so different with him ! It did not seem 
 difficult now for Keefe Bartlett to believe there 
 were kind, generous people in the world. 
 
 And the little girl, with her small, thin face, 
 and the wonderful eyes, which had the purplish 
 glow of the damsons in the basket, went on chat- 
 tering to him like the soft rustle of a brook wind- 
 ing and cooing among the reeds. She told him 
 about the wax doll with the wonderful eyes, 
 which uncle Richard had brought from the city 
 last Christmas, and which was quite too large to 
 go in her stocking ; so they had to substitute one 
 of his ; and of the pretty China tea-set white, 
 with a rim of crimson which he had given her on 
 her last birthday ; and the child's voice clung with 
 a dainty lisp to the sibilants, and slipped with 
 a little musical tinkle among the liquids. 
 
 Poor Keefe ! no fresh, innocent child's heart
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 63 
 
 and thought had ever unveiled themselves to him 
 before. It half seemed, as he moved along the 
 old country roads, with the barberry bushes and 
 the flaming plumes of golden-rod on either hand, 
 that an angel was walking by his side. If that 
 small, freckled, spare-faced Bessie Staines, whose 
 only beauty was her wonderful plum-purplish 
 eyes, had blossomed out suddenly with great 
 silver wings, he would hardly have been amazed. 
 
 At last she grew silent, gazing up into his face ; 
 and when he looked down into hers a little smile 
 came about Keefe's lips, and the little girl 
 smiled back in turn, a bright, trusting smile, 
 which went away down into Keefe's heart and 
 warmed it. 
 
 "I was thinking what a good man you must 
 be," she said. 
 
 ""What made you think that, child?" greatly 
 touched and pleased. 
 
 " Because you started right off to find me, just 
 as soon as you heard my cry, and knew somebody 
 was in trouble. If you had been a bad man you 
 would have passed right on and not minded. 
 Don't you see?" 
 
 "I don't see that I am a good man, Bessie," 
 an unutterable plaintiveness in his voice, as he
 
 64 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 remembered how very near lie had come to one 
 deed that day. 
 
 The child instinctively felt the pain in Keefe's 
 voice. She could not have put her feeling into 
 words, but she unconsciously drew nearer to him, 
 with a vague desire to do something for him, she 
 could not tell what, and her big, bright eyes kept 
 themselves on his face. 
 
 " Well, do I look like a good man ? " 
 
 He was sorry after the words were out. It 
 seemed to him that the child's pure instinct must 
 penetrate to the evil which lay at the bottom of 
 Keefe's soul. He would have shrunk and turned 
 away, but she held him by those wonderful, 
 searching eyes. He half felt as though he stood 
 in the presence of some sibyl, who was to utter 
 his doom, only Keefe had never heard of tripods, 
 and oracles, and things of that sort. 
 
 In a few moments the answer came. The child 
 was not conscious of it ; but she felt the pain and 
 mournfulness in Keefe's eyes as he returned 
 her gaze. 
 
 " Yes, you do look like a good man ; and I 
 know you are one. Nobody in the whole world 
 could make me believe anything else of you," 
 the thin face flushing with excitement.
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 65 
 
 K refe fairly hugged himself with a sudden joy. 
 After all, this child's fine, pure instinct found 
 something good in him. It must be there, then. 
 He, too, would find it for himself. From that 
 hour the Agawam mill-hand rose into some new 
 sense of manliness, courage, self-respect. 
 
 At that moment the two reached the summit 
 of a long hill, and the farm-house stood full in 
 view a wide, ample, gray old homestead, with 
 a blue drift of smoke above the chimney, and the 
 cows in the side-yard, and the orchard at the 
 back, and, a little way off, the steely gleam of the 
 creek, which had given its name to the farm. 
 
 " That's my home," said the child, with a spring 
 of pleasure. " You will come along, too ; and I 
 can tell them what you have done for me, and 
 they will like you so much ! Uncle Richard will 
 lay his hand on your head and bless you." 
 
 How Keefe longed to go I How like Arcadia, 
 how like the very golden gate of Paradise itself, 
 the wide, motherly old farm-house looked to the 
 friendless, solitary youth ! 
 
 But Keefe did not know the hearts inside, and 
 did not suspect he had that day done a deed 
 which would give him a life-long claim on their 
 gratitude.
 
 66 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 " No, Bessie, I can't come now," the voice a 
 little strained and hoarse. "I hope I shall see 
 you again some time ; but now I must keep mov- 
 ing on." 
 
 " But where will you go ? " a shadow of anxiety 
 and trouble in her face. 
 
 " O, I can't tell you. You wouldn't know if 
 I should try. Shake hands and bid me good 
 by now." 
 
 She gave him the small, meagre things. He 
 grasped and held them a moment in his big paws, 
 then let them go, and hung the basket on her 
 arm. 
 
 " Good by," Keefe said. 
 
 " Good by," answered Bessie. 
 
 She was close by the front gate now. She 
 turned back when she had gone a few steps, 
 came close to him, and put up her mouth for a 
 kiss. And Keefe bent his lips down to hers, and 
 gave her not one kiss, but two or three ; and so 
 they parted without another word. 
 
 He went on, while in the west the saffron 
 clouds dulled slowly, and the brown twilight 
 filled the air. He had walked a long way, and 
 he found that he was growing very tired. When 
 the stars came, like conquerors, into the sky, and
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 67 
 
 filled the night with their immortal loveliness, 
 Keefe went into a small grove of pines, which 
 grew, like a dark, solid hem, on the edge of a 
 strip of woodland, and flung himself down on the 
 warm, dry bed of cones and needles, luxurious to 
 his tired muscles as a couch of down. 
 
 The air quivered with strong balsamy fra- 
 grances, the winds rustled with plaintive mur- 
 murs among the pines ; and in a few moments a 
 slumber, whose sound sweetness a king might 
 have envied, fell upon Keefe Bartlett. 
 
 A little way off, at Creek Farm, he would have 
 been welcomed that night as no king could be. 
 Bessie Staines had told the story of her peril and 
 rescue as only a child could have told it, while 
 loving hearts listened with shudders of amazement 
 and horror, and tears of unutterable thankfulness. 
 
 The farm hands were started off in various di- 
 rections to find him and bring him back. But 
 Keefe Bartlett slept on, with the plaintive rustle 
 of the winds in the pines overhead. 
 
 Rox Coventry reached Plum Point Station 
 precisely two minutes in advance of the train. 
 There were not many passengers on board. Rox 
 tstretched his tired muscles at full length on one
 
 68 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 of the seats ; and, thinking over his tramp, the 
 figure, big and shambling, of Keefe Bartlett rose 
 up before him. 
 
 " I've a good mind to write the whole thing to 
 Edith, and let her know the fellow got her 
 twenty-five dollars, after all. Curious, how he 
 acted! It did seem, as Edith fancied, a matter 
 of life and death to him." 
 
 Suddenly Rox whipped a small portfolio out of 
 his pocket, seized some paper and a pencil inside, 
 and wrote rapidly ; then the light faded in the 
 west, and with snort and shriek the train swept 
 him on to New York.
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 69 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FOLGER came up the lane that 
 afternoon with her sun-hat aslant on her 
 head ; in her cheeks a soft red-brown flush, 
 like the streak in some great golden pear when 
 it is ripe to the core ; her eyes just one wide 
 sparkle of happiness you could not have told 
 their color now ; they looked like two round 
 wells of golden light ; her hair, of a dark, chest- 
 nut shade, with golden lustres, waved about her 
 temples ; and her dress was some airy sort of 
 fabric that took to light flutters, in the swells of 
 the breeze, almost as easily as the leaves over- 
 head. 
 
 It was a summer afternoon, the very last one 
 of that year ; but there was no hint of frost or 
 falling away anywhere. There were overflowing 
 warmth, life, ripeness, in everything, in the great 
 pasture meadow on one side, with the cattle in 
 the moist, lush grass, and in the great apple
 
 >(7 ONLY GIRLS; 
 
 orchards on the other, filling the air with a fine, 
 pure sweetness. 
 
 Edith Folger would have been puzzled herself 
 to tell why she was so happy this afternoon. She 
 had been off in the woods for a couple of hours, 
 gathering flowers and things, soft, green pen- 
 cillings of ferns, and swamp-pinks, and wild lilies 
 that looked as though they had gathered and 
 held the summer's heat in their great flaming 
 tubes, and bits of curious mosses and lichens, all 
 heaped together in a bit of curiously woven rustic 
 basket. 
 
 She loves the cool, still woods, with all their 
 mysterious twitter and rustle of sounds ; the 
 ripples of breezes, or sudden tide-like swells of 
 winds ; the wide, solemn breadth and freedom ; 
 the laughters of little brooks that seem forever 
 blundering and catching their breaths among the 
 stones. She likes to sit still under some vast 
 greenery of ash or chestnut, and imagine the 
 branches are the arches and. groves of some 
 Gothic cathedral, or to go dabbling among the 
 short, crisp grass, the sassafras thickets, and ferny 
 hollows, hunting for all kinds of treasures. She 
 ntfver comes home without finding them, too, any 
 than those people who have eyes to see, go
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 71 
 
 down to the shore when the tide- is out, and 
 come back without finding their treasures, shells 
 and sea-weed, with briny pungent scents clinging 
 to them; and to crown all, those delicate, won- 
 derful sea-plants, that seem like the ferns of 
 Fairy-land. 
 
 It is two years since Edith Folger stood in the 
 front door and said good by to her cousin, when 
 he set out for his tramp to Plum Point Station. 
 Looking at her to-day, however, you would 
 hardly perceive that she has grown a week 
 older. It is the same young, delicate face, with 
 the sweetness which goes deeper than the bloom, 
 and seems a kind of "striking through" of 
 the soul. 
 
 Edith Folger has come up here to Bayberry. 
 Hills, for a week or two, just to feast sense and 
 soul with *the beauty and blessedness of the 
 country. Bayberry Hills is a thinly populated, 
 old-fashioned town, a dozen miles from Agawam. 
 It is a wonderful place, at least Edith thinks so, 
 with its delicious old wood-patches, its slopes 
 of pastures, and sea-like sweeps of meadows, its 
 old road-forks, too, that lead to great motherly 
 farm-houses, and past crumbling stone walls, and
 
 72 ONLT GIRLS- 
 
 into such enchanting arcades of cool, green 
 hollows. 
 
 Edith felicitates herself every day, that she 
 came here instead of going to some gay watering- 
 place, which would have swept her into the great 
 orbit of parties and all kinds of fashionable dissi- 
 pations. 
 
 She has just had a week of perfect freedom, 
 like the birds and the striped squirrels she sees 
 darting in and out among the brambles. 
 
 The old country hotel, too, where she has been 
 stopping, with its wide, cool piazzas and its great 
 airy chambers, belongs to a past generation. One 
 of these days, perhaps, it will come out of its dear 
 old shell, and take on the fine airs of a fashion- 
 able resort for city tourists ; but it is not, thus 
 far, infected with any intermittent heats of am- 
 bition. 
 
 It stands broad, and pleasant, and homely be- 
 hind the shades of its great black-heart cherries, 
 where the birds wake up Edith every morning to 
 a day full of blessedness, and peace, and beauty ; 
 to a life a good deal like that old paradise where 
 Eve lost her crown. 
 
 There ar.e other people staying at the hotel, 
 nice, quiet, sensible people ; some of them family
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 73 
 
 acquaintances, who leave Edith to her own moods, 
 and are not perpetually buzzing about and bother- 
 ing her. 
 
 Edith's father comes up every night or two. 
 He was afraid she would be lonely when he 
 brought her out to this dead-and-alive old town. 
 Edith has .smiled to herself a good many tunes, 
 as well she could, thinking of that groundless 
 fear. 
 
 Then such feasts of fresh cream and mountain 
 berries, and bread that seems to hold still some 
 old honeyed flavor of the mellow grain-fields, and 
 cold chicken and crystal spring-water, that makes 
 Edith think of old, wet, mossy rocks, and cool, 
 fresh mint, growing all around. " Papa, it is 
 just food for the gods," Edith says, once in a 
 while, in a burst of enthusiasm, and her little 
 ripple of a laugh at the end. 
 
 So, going up through the lane to-day, with the 
 summer's glow and ripeness all about her, Edith 
 hears suddenly the sound of the stage-horn, the 
 hills and hollows which have been waiting all day 
 seizing hold of the sounds, and shaking them 
 back in sweet wonderful echoes. Edith stands 
 quite still in the broad lane to hear. A few rods 
 beyond, it joins the highway, and less than a
 
 74 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 quarter of a mile below, you can see the broad 
 white piazzas of the hotel. 
 
 Edith Folger likes immensely the sound of that 
 old stage-horn, and the echoes that come rushing 
 after it. These carry her back to the stories her 
 dead grandmother used to tell of life two thirds 
 of a century ago, of the work, and the frolics, 
 and the gossip ; and when the echoes faint, and 
 fall, and fall among the hills, she thinks they are 
 like tender, mournful ghosts of voices out of that 
 old time. And so listening with her sun-hat 
 aslant on her head, and" her willow basket of 
 "wood things" in her hand, the stage comes 
 along, and the two or three passengers inside and 
 the driver catch a sight of the girl standing there, 
 and of the sweet upturned face. 
 
 Edith Folger has the graces and airs of young- 
 ladyhood at command, but she has put them all 
 off at Bayberry Hills, and is as natural as the 
 birds and squirrels which she watches, and that 
 watch her in turn among the branches. So she 
 stands still, and looks up at the stage with a kind 
 of childish curiosity, as it comes rolling and 
 lumbering along. There are faces inside ; that is 
 about all she is conscious of, for her eyes meet the
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 75 
 
 driver's, and somehow they stay there till he is 
 out of sight. 
 
 " It is curious," murmured Edith to herself, as 
 the stage rolls on, churning up a yellow mist of 
 dust with every revolution of the wheels, " but I 
 have seen that face before. I'm sure I have, 
 somewhere." 
 
 It was a large, square, sun-burnt face, that 
 
 " stage-driver's ; he wore a straw hat, the rim a 
 
 good deal spattered with mud from the hollows in 
 
 the road, and a thin, brown coat, well enough in 
 
 its way, and suited to his work. 
 
 Yet Edith Folger had seen in his intent, puz- 
 zled gaze, a half recognition like her o\vn. " It 
 is very funny," she said to herself, two or three 
 tunes. 
 
 Then Edith remembered that it was almost 
 time for the train that stopped at the depot, two' 
 miles away, and which would probably bring her 
 father, who would be set down at the door by the 
 hotel carryall, the stage running down daily from 
 the up-hill country, into which the railroad had 
 not yet been opened. 
 
 Edith, coming out now on the highway, walked 
 at a more rapid gait. On either side lay the
 
 76 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 wheat-fields sunning their brown reaches in the 
 summer's last light. There were stone walls with 
 network of raspberry bushes, and ragged fringes 
 of gnarled apple-trees. 
 
 As Edith went on, there came up to her 
 suddenly, without any link of association that she 
 could find, yet she never thought of that ; things 
 go and come with all of iis without our hunting 
 up their causes and connections, the face she 
 had seen two years before, looking at her from 
 over the hedge. She saw it all the strange, 
 fierce look in the deep-set eyes ; the pain there, 
 too, which had haunted her so afterwards, and 
 made an ache in her own heart. Then the talk 
 with Rox all flashed back as clear as though it 
 had happened yesterday ; and then Edith remem- 
 bered the letter he had written her on the cars, 
 and the strange scene which had occurred on his 
 walk to Plum Point Station. It was singular, too, 
 Edith thought now, that she and Rox Coventry 
 had never alluded to this matter. It was a mere 
 oversight on both sides. They were not young 
 people in whose lives very little was happening. 
 They had change, excitement, variety, more or 
 less; consequently a single incident, though it 
 might be quite absorbing at the moment, soon
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 77 
 
 slipped into the background to make room for 
 others. 
 
 Edith had been immensely interested at Rox's 
 account of that odd interview on the road, but 
 she had not seen him for some tune after this 
 "occurred; and then there was so much else to 
 talk about. She was so intent on all this, that 
 she did not hear the sound of wheels to the 
 right of her. In a moment the carryall swept 
 round into the highway. She was close to the 
 hotel now ; there was a shout, " Halloa, Edith ! " 
 and turning around sharply, she saw her father 
 and Rox Coventry sitting there in the old 
 vehicle, side by side. A few minutes later they 
 were in the' house, and Rox was relating, in his 
 droll way, what a search he had had after Edith, 
 and how like some ancient knight he had followed 
 her all the way from Agawam up to Bayberry 
 Hills, in whose solemn depths she had chosen to 
 bury herself, like some broken-hearted Ophelia, in 
 a brook, he would like to say ; only Rox declared 
 that he had a tender muscle, that would twinge 
 every tune he came to making fun of Ophelia. 
 He never had quite forgiven that handsome, 
 mooning Hamlet for treating her as he did. It
 
 78 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 was very funny the way Rox talked ; all through 
 flashes and ripples of Edith's laughter. 
 
 "I am so glad you< have come, Rox! Won't 
 we have grand times! Such wonderful places 
 as I have to show you ! Rockeries, and pineries, 
 and glens, and deep cavern-like hollows, fair and 
 odorous, where Titania might have built her 
 throne." 
 
 " What a pretty fancy, uncle Bryant ! She has 
 drunk the nectar of these hills, and they have 
 made a poet of her." 
 
 Edith's father laughed. " O, you children," 
 he said, "how long do you suppose it will be 
 before the hard, dull prose of life takes this 
 pretty nonsense out of you?" 
 
 He was used to their talk, and he enjoyed its 
 flash, and sparkle, or sometimes its keen, blade- 
 like glitter, but thought the whole was worth 
 about as much as a handsome soap-bubble ! 
 
 Edith was in a - kind of seventh heaven of 
 ecstasy now that Rox had come, and went on 
 laying plans for to-morrow in a rapturous fashion. 
 He is very little changed from the Rox we left 
 two years ago, trudging down the railroad. Two 
 months since he graduated at college, with a good 
 deal of credit to himself. Everything has gone
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 79 
 
 smoothly and gracefully with him all this time, 
 as of old ; he takes it for granted that it always 
 will. Yet he is silent, and looks at the bright- 
 ness in Edith's face with a kind of grave concern, 
 Avhile she is making her plans for the to-morrows. 
 
 " Won't it be just perfect, Rox? " she ends her 
 pretty flowery programme of woods, and rocks, 
 and " things." 
 
 " It would be, Edith j only I must be off with 
 uncle Bryant to-morrow morning." 
 
 It all had to come out then. Rox was going 
 out west on the plains, up among the awful si- 
 lences and eternal snows of the Rocky Mountains. 
 This was to be no picturesque summer-holiday's 
 campaign among the Adirondack^, but a man's 
 strong, muscular wrestle with the great primeval 
 forests and forces of creation. 
 
 Rox wanted to mingle in the mad rush and joy 
 of the buffalo-hunt, to bivouac on the plains, to 
 steep thirsty soul and sense in that intoxicating 
 freedom of mountain, and wilderness, and prairie. 
 
 There was no use of book-burrowing while this 
 sting and thirst were in his blood, Rox averred. 
 What he must have now was the Avild gallop of 
 the plains -, he must go to sleep at night wrapped 
 in his blanket, with the roar of the winds in tha
 
 SO ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 old pines, and the tramp of the thunder overhead. 
 He would come back after a while, in a year at 
 most, and settle down to civilization and study 
 again ; but his mind was made up. He was to 
 start in a few days with several of his class- 
 mates, who were to accompany him on his ex- 
 pedition. 
 
 " There was a savage in every man. It must 
 have its day," Rox said, epigrammatically. 
 
 Edith had listened to all this with a shadow 
 growing into the brightness of her face. Rox's 
 programme shattered all her pretty flowery one ; 
 but she was a sensible girl. The hills, and woods, 
 and all the wonder and beauty, would be waiting 
 for her still. 
 
 " Papa, what do you think about it all ? " she 
 asked, anxiously, when Rox had slipped out a 
 moment. 
 
 "I don't more than half approve of it," slowly 
 smoothing his whiskers, which had gathered an 
 extra touch of frost in these two years. " It 
 strikes me the whole thing is a hair-brained 
 adventure; but, then, every man must take his 
 own life into his hands, and shape it according to 
 the forces that are in him. This new, wild life 
 will try Rox's mettle. He isn't old enough or
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 81 
 
 steady enough, I fear, and may fall into bad 
 company." 
 
 " O, papa, don't ! You make me shiver," broke 
 in Edith, with the impatient abruptness of a 
 petted child. "If anything should happen to 
 Rox " 
 
 But at that moment the tea bell rang, and he 
 .came back. 
 
 After supper was over, they went out on the 
 veranda, and sat there while a great yellow moon 
 swung slowly up over the hills, and the earth 
 grew beautiful and transfigured with light, and 
 yet it was not the light of the sun. 
 
 On the other side of the veranda Edith's fa- 
 ther talked politics and stocks with some of hi > 
 friends. 
 
 k> What are you thinking about, Edith ? " asked 
 Rox,. at last. 
 
 She had been sitting very still, watching the 
 stars as they slowly drifted bright, golden 
 points among the depths of blue. She turned 
 now, and looked at her cousin, ^ a little grave 
 smile just unbending the line of her lips. 
 
 " I was wondering what would happen before 
 you and I saw another suniiner-moon come up 
 among her stars, and gaze down on us. Ah, 
 6
 
 82 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 Rox, it is a terribly long way to the Rocky 
 Mountains ! " 
 
 " And a jolly time I mean to have of it, going 
 back to primeval things, and living after the 
 pattern of old Father Adam. I doubt whether 
 we have improved much on him. Don't you 
 think it will be glorious, Edith?" getting up, 
 and leaning his head against one of the pillars, 
 where a mass of clematis hung, the dark-green 
 embroidered thickly with its small, pale blossoms, 
 like stars that have dropped from among .their 
 sisters overhead, and grown a little dim before 
 they reached the world. 
 
 " Yes," doubtfully, "I suppose it is glorious. 
 Only so many things might happen, you know ; 
 and if any evil should come to you of any kind, 
 O, Rox, I think that would break my heart ! " 
 
 Rox Coventry looked at the sweet face up- 
 turned to him in the moonlight ; the trouble and 
 the tenderness there spoke to whatever was best 
 in him. He loved his cousin Edith, probably, 
 better than anything in the world. 
 
 "My dear little Queen Mab," this was one 
 of the names he had given her when they were 
 boy and girl together, "nothing harmful is 
 going to happen to me. Don't you let any ab-
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 83 
 
 surd fears get to croaking in your sensitive little 
 soul. Send them packing. Do you know," 
 going with his fine instinct straight to the core 
 of her words, "if I were about to go wrong, do 
 anything that would make the devil have a 
 chuckle over me, the thought of your dear little 
 self would hold me back from all that? " 
 
 " O, Rox, it does me good to hear you say 
 that!" 
 
 " Does it ? Well, then, here goes some more 
 to the same tune. If you were anything but my 
 own cousin, Edith Folger, I should propose to 
 you one of these days, and if you refused me, and 
 took some other man, why, I would just shoot 
 him ! " 
 
 "O, Rox!" 
 
 Perhaps she flushed a little at that speech, but 
 I am not quite sure of it. She was so honest and 
 simple by her very birthright! and then the 
 youth sitting there was just her " cousin Rox," 
 so like a brother to her, that she could hardly 
 conceive of him in the relation of a lover ; but she 
 laughed out a moment later, as the oddness of his 
 speech struck her. 
 
 Somebody, coming out on the side veranda that 
 moment, heard the laugh, that had in it some soft,
 
 84 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 clear sound of billows shaken by the winds. He 
 turned and looked. It was the driver of the 
 Bayberry stage. He had just left the dining-hall, 
 where he had taken his supper with the " hands," 
 and the sight of that great, golden shield of a 
 moon drew him outside. 
 
 That intent, puzzled gaze, with which he had 
 seen Edith standing in the lane that afternoon, 
 came into his eyes again. Then they turned and 
 rested on Rox. He gave a start ; his jaws closed 
 themselves tightly together. You could see that 
 his brown face grew pale in the moonlight. He 
 had recognized Rox Coventry. 
 
 Once or twice the driver half drew forward, as 
 though he was about to address Rox ; then seeing 
 how immersed he was in his talk with Edith, he 
 chopped back again ; but he kept on watching the 
 two, his fingers working nervously together, his 
 breath coming in short, excited gasps, until the 
 tears came into his eyes ; and overhead the moon 
 looked down from her state in the skies, and 
 pulses of wind throbbed and sank among the 
 gleaming stars of the clematis ; and at last, when 
 the blur came into his eyes, and the figures grew 
 dim before him, the stage-driver turned suddenly 
 on his heel, and walked away ; and Rox and his
 
 .'HE STAGE-DRIVER. Page 84.
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 85 
 
 cousin, absorbed in their own affairs, had not so 
 much as known he was there. 
 
 They went on with their talk for an hour or 
 two afterwards. It was to be their last one for 
 a long time, as Rox must take the earliest down 
 train in the morning. In view of this the -talk 
 Avas wonderfully grave, although every little 
 while the old gayety would break through in 
 a glittering spray of jests. 
 
 He made all sorts of fine promises to Edith 
 of what he was to do. However, Rox Coventry 
 Avas a brave, manly fellow. When he made a 
 promise he felt his honor was pledged to it, like 
 those old knights he was rather fond of quoting. 
 He was standing just on the threshold of man- 
 hood ; he was his own master ; he had plenty of 
 money ; and the world was all before him, to 
 make of it what he liked. The horoscope looked 
 very fair, and yet and yet 
 
 After a while Edith's father and some of the 
 house guests came around to the side of the piazza 
 where the cousins sat, and the talk became 
 general. 
 
 At last they all went into the house, and the 
 moon and the stars had the night to themselves. 
 
 Not quite. On one side of the house, under
 
 86 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 the great, cavernous shadows of the black-heart 
 cherries, broken into occasionally by long, stiletto 
 shapes of moonlight, the stage-driver was pacing 
 back and forth in a rapid way. . He took off his 
 hat, and wiped his forehead with a hand not just 
 steady. 
 
 " I know it must be he with the first glance," 
 he murmured to himself. " I should have known 
 that face and that light, jaunty carriage of the 
 head if I'd met them in Gibraltar. Bless him ! 
 How I longed to speak to him, and tell him 
 But I never could tell him all. Part of that 
 must be a secret until we both get where all 
 secrets are laid bare. Yet I should have liked 
 to take his hand, and had him smile on me once, 
 as he did that day. 
 
 " I know, too, I'd seen that girl's face before, 
 when I came on it in the lane. It looks as though 
 it might have dropped right down out of the 
 skies. How softly she spoke to me that day, 
 and what a great pity there was shining in her 
 eyes, as they looked over the hedge at me ! I 
 answered her roughly, too, like a brute, when she 
 only meant to do me good. 
 
 "How strange it's happened that we've all 
 met here under the same roof! It makes me
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 87 
 
 hold my breath thinking how different it all 
 might have been, and there was only one mo- 
 ment between. 
 
 " To-morrow I must see him, get a word, and 
 that shake of the hands ; and, if there's time and 
 a chance for it, I'll tell him what that twenty-five 
 dollars did for me." 
 
 It was Keefe Bartlett, the stage-driver, pacing 
 back and forth in the shadowy depths of the 
 great black-hearts, who had this talk all to 
 himself. 
 
 These two years have wrought a perceptible 
 change in Keefe. Some inward force has been 
 working outward with him. His limbs have knit 
 themselves into firmer shape ; his gait has 
 improved; the old slouch is slowly dropping 
 from his shoulders ; he looks at least five years 
 older ; and his soul has got more and more into 
 his face, and softened and moulded the homeliness 
 there ; the gray deep-set eyes, have an honest look 
 when they answer you, as they are always ready 
 to do with their clear, open gaze. 
 
 These two years have been chiselling out a 
 good many things for Keefe Bartlett besides his 
 face and figure. They have brought him into 
 some very hard places, it is true ; but no hour
 
 88 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 has ever closed around his soul its prison walls of 
 despair; no madness has fired brain and heart, 
 as it did that clay when he sat by the railroad 
 in the hollow and waited, to this day nobody but 
 Keefe knows for what nobody but Keefe Bart- 
 lett and God ! 
 
 He has dipped into a variety of employments 
 during this time; but no money that was not 
 fairly earned has soiled that hard palm of his. 
 He has sold papers on the cars, been porter, 
 errand-boy, office-clerk ; and one time, when he 
 was in great straits, he remembered his old knack 
 at entertaining the Agawam hands with little,- 
 homely, improvised comedies ; and with the 
 friendly advice of one of the applauding crowd, 
 Keefe actually went to the Bowery. Theatre, and 
 made an engagement on one of the minor parts 
 in some old English comedy that happened to be 
 having a popular run at the time. He succeeded 
 so well in his part that it is altogether likely he 
 would have made a further engagement, had not 
 an opportunity to drive an express-wagon turned 
 up at this juncture. 
 
 Keefe thought he was wonderfully in luck now, 
 and had kept at this business a number of months, 
 when it brought another chance in his way. This
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 89 
 
 was, to take charge of the daily stage from Black- 
 Hawk Mountain, a favorite up-country resort, to 
 Bayberry Hills, the distance between the' two 
 being a little less than forty miles. Keefe had 
 passed most of these two years in the city ; but 
 he still had the old longing for broad, green 
 reaches of fields, and springs by the wayside, and 
 cool, sweet scents, and blessed silences of the 
 woods, which had driven him away from the hot, 
 stifling city, and landed hun at last in the 
 Agawam Cotton Mills. 
 
 It was now about two months since Keefe had 
 entered on this stage-driving. He enjoyed it 
 vastly. Besides, it paid better than anything he 
 had ever done in his life before. Then Keefe 
 had an eye for scenery ; and the landscapes on 
 the whole route, with their hill and river views, 
 their farm homesteads, and picturesque forks of 
 roads, and great surging billows of woods, seemed 
 waiting in glad patience for the artist who was 
 so long in coming. They could afford to wait 
 th6se hills, and fields, and wo<3ds of God ! 
 
 There was a point in the stage route from 
 which the distance to Creek Farm could hardly 
 be more than three miles. Keefe never passed 
 this place without thinking of the little girl with
 
 90 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 the thin, childish face, and the wonderful dark 
 eyes, that searched him with their curious, wistful 
 gaze 5 and he seemed to hear again the soft, lisp- 
 ing voice in the warm, brown twilights, as it said, 
 44 O, you are a good man ! I know you are a 
 good man. Nobody could make me believe any- 
 thing else of you." He had heard those very 
 words, with the catch and lisp in them, breaking 
 into the dark and chill of many an hour of his 
 life, and making warmth and glow there. 
 
 Some day, when the chance offered, Keefe in- 
 tended to go over to the old farm-homestead, and 
 have a look at it all. He had a kind of affection 
 for the whole place the wide, ample house, the 
 great barn-yard, set in a green oval of orchards 
 and pastures ; and Keefe had a hope that he 
 might find hanging on the big front gate, or lean- 
 ing out of some window, the little girl with the 
 freckled face and the wonderful eyes, which had 
 looked up at him in such wild terror from out of 
 the old well. If he should see her, the little 
 Bessie Staines that had kissed him good by that 
 night, he must go right up and speak to her ; 
 and Keefe forgot that in these two years she 
 might have changed, like himself. 
 
 So at last he came out from the shadows of
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 01 
 
 the trees into that still, saintly moonlight ; and 
 there, because his heart was full with a reverent, 
 overflowing gladness, Keefe instinctively, and for 
 the first time in his life, took off his hat and 
 thanked God. 
 
 The next morning, when he inquired for Rox 
 Coventry, he learned that he had left for the 
 down train an hour before.
 
 92 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 -OW, Brownie, isn't that a supper for a 
 king, instead of a little bit of shiny 
 colt like you?" 
 
 It was a pretty sight, the world is full of 
 just such little homely improvised side scenes, 
 and the artist never gets there at just the right 
 moment, that young girl standing in the deep, 
 grassy side-yard, and a colt close to her ; a small, 
 graceful five-months, with the glossiest chestnut 
 coat, a slender, tapering neck, and a nose tipped 
 with white, as though a great fleck of foam was 
 caught and hung there. 
 
 The girl's hands were full of small summer 
 apples. You could just see, straggling over the 
 barn-yard bars, the tip edges of the tree where she 
 had picked the fruit, sweet, mellow, with a sea- 
 green tint, and an apple-y scent that would just 
 have made your mouth water. 
 
 The girl was right. It was a lucky colt, that
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 93 
 
 was banqueted in that fashion, and he kept run- 
 ning his cold, white-fringed nose into her hands 
 in just that frank, greedy way, which is natural 
 alike to babies and quadrupeds. 
 
 The girl had on a pink gingham dress, which 
 became her rather sallow skin. It would prob- 
 ably clear up into a ruddy olive by the tune she 
 got deep among her teens ; she looked as though 
 she might be skirting their edges now. She was 
 bareheaded, and the wind was taking small liber- 
 ties with her hair, which was a bright? brown, 
 mopped carelessly about her head. 
 
 The sunset light was all around the girl all 
 around Creek Farm, indeed, at this time. It had 
 a way of lying there lovingly before it went down 
 behind the broad, scraggy shoulder of the western 
 hills. The last warmth and light fell now upon 
 meadow and orchard, and broad wheat-fields and 
 up-hill pasture-lands, which all went to make up 
 the great farmstead, and on one side, winding in 
 and out among the hollows and fern-pastures like 
 a big coiled chain, flashed the steely-blue waters 
 of the creek which had given its own name to the 
 whole. | 
 
 There was no artist that time to catch Brownie 
 and his young mistress, and the warm, fading
 
 94 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 light, and turn a square foot of canvas into 
 poetry; but there was a pair of eyes who saw 
 this picture, and who enjoyed it all in a way 
 which no artist could possibly have done. It was 
 only the driver of the stage from Bayberry Hills 
 to Black-Hawk Mountain. He had walked over 
 from the hotel and lost his supper for this little 
 scene, and he would not have grudged the price 
 of a week's suppers for it. 
 
 There he stands, leaning on the stone wall, in 
 the shadow of some big clumps of barberry bushes. 
 His large features are mobile with expression 
 now ; the soul has got up into and quickened 
 the tanned face ; the deep-set eyes brighten and 
 flash. How he watches the girl as she pats the 
 face and smooths the shining coat, and slips the 
 apples deftly into the colt's mouth, talking to the 
 creature, too, in little sentences that slide and 
 ripple softly along her young voice ; the voice the 
 young man out there by the barberry bushes 
 would have known anywhere, because of some 
 words it once said to him, .and that he has been 
 hearing in his soul ever since " O, I know you 
 are a good man ! Nobody in the whole world 
 could make me think you wasn't a good man." 
 
 Keefe Bartlett has come over to Creek Farm
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 95 
 
 to-night, because a longing drew him there. He 
 had no idea of making himself known to anybody. 
 The most he had hoped for was, that he might be 
 lucky enough to get a chance look at the little 
 girl he had pulled out of the well. If she had 
 come plump in his way, he might have shaken 
 hands with her. 
 
 Keefe is greatly amazed at the change in Bessie 
 Staines. These two years seem so very short to 
 him as he stands there and remembers that day 
 the day of all his life ! She has shot up half 
 a head, and the peaked face is plumper and 
 prettier. It will be growing that year by year, 
 as it matures ; but Keefe does not know that ; 
 indeed, he knows very little about girls any 
 way. 
 
 He gazes and gazes, and his face shines with 
 a real gladness. " I'm glad I came over to see. 
 It's all been going right with her, I know," he 
 murmured to himself. 
 
 Brownie has licked up the last apple from 
 Bessie's palm. 
 
 " There isn't another one, you see," holding 
 up her hands before the large, bright eyes, that 
 quiver and flash, showing the high-mettled crea- 
 ture Brownie is, and how, out in the pasture, she
 
 96 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 can dart, and sweep, and scamper, fleet as the 
 winds themselves. 
 
 At that moment somebody came up through 
 the lane into the road, where Kcefe was standing 
 by the barberry bushes. He was a rather tall 
 man, with a broad, generous kind of build, sur- 
 mounted by a large head, whose shape would 
 have struck one used to observing those things. 
 The thick hair was getting very gray. Under it 
 was a sun-browned, shrewd, kindly face, homely, 
 perhaps, but not common. 
 
 You knew, as soon as it turned itself on you, 
 that thought and character were behind. The 
 man was evidently a farmer ; he was in his shirt- 
 sleeves, and had been among his men mowing 
 a three-acre lot that day. He was tired now, for 
 he was not so young as he had been twenty years 
 ago. The feet made no sound as they moved 
 through the long grass of the lane. It is doubt- 
 ful, however, whether Keefe Bartlett would have 
 heard a very solid tramp at that moment. 
 
 The farmer's gray eyes opened wide with a 
 puzzled curiosity, as he caught a full view of the 
 stranger in the shadow of the big barberry clump. 
 He saw, too, the picture of Bessie and Brownie 
 in the side-yard; he had seen it a good many
 
 ONLT GIRLS. !7 
 
 times before, and always thought it a pretty one, 
 but hardly striking enough to draw strangers up 
 on one side of the highway, and hold them there 
 a.s if they were magnetized. 
 
 The light was full on Keefe's face ; the farmer 
 saw the intense, breathless look there, the feel- 
 ings at work in all the features. " What did it 
 mean ? '' 
 
 " Good evening, sir." It was a pleasant, cor- 
 dial voice ; yet Keefe started as though a pistol 
 had gone off at his ear. Then he turned and 
 saw the farmer in Ins shirt-sleeves, and the 
 gray -ing hair, and the kindly, thoughtful face 
 under it. 
 
 " O, very, sir," Keefe stammered, reddening 
 a good deal, as though he had not quite a right 
 to be there. 
 
 The farmer noticed the blush. 
 
 " She's a handsome little creature," he said. 
 " Won't you walk in and take a look at her ? " 
 
 At that moment Brownie turned her head ; she 
 had heard the voices at the gate. A sudden fire 
 quivered in her soft eyes. With a curvet and a 
 bound, and a stretching of the graceful slope of 
 her shoulders, she was off like a scared fawn or 
 a flash of lightning. She dashed through the 
 7
 
 98 ONLT GIJfLS. 
 
 open gate of the orchard. She cleared that in 
 a moment, and the next she was tossing and dart- 
 ing about in the open pastures, glad and free as 
 some wild young creature of plain and forest. 
 . Both the men laughed. Brownie's mistress 
 joined in the fun, clapping her hands. 
 
 "Ah, Bessie, she was too quick for you that 
 time," the farmer called over the wall. 
 
 "It was your talk scared her, uncle Richard." 
 
 When she spoke that name, the young driver 
 turned suddenly, and stared in a curious way at 
 the man in his shirt-sleeves. 
 
 At that moment Bessie caught sight of the 
 stranger by her uncle, and with a child's curiosity 
 she came towards the wall with light, springy 
 
 bounds. 
 
 
 
 As she drew close to Keefe, she stared at him, 
 perceiving he was a stranger. He smiled, and" 
 held out his hand then, not really knowing what 
 he was doing. 
 
 At that a puzzled look came into her eyes ; she 
 gave him her hand, her gaze fastened on his face. 
 "Why, it seems as though I know you!" she 
 said, with a little indrawn breath, half to herself ; 
 then she turned, in her swift, straightforward 
 fashion, "who is it, uncle Richard?"
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 99 
 
 " That's more than I'm able to answer, Bessie," 
 he said, struck with something he could not tell 
 what in the young man's manner. 
 
 Then the girl's gaze went back to Keefe's 
 face. 
 
 " I have seen you before ; I'm sure I have," 
 she said, very positively; "but I can't tell 
 where." 
 
 " Perhaps I can help you," said Keefe. All 
 this time the words had been getting ready in 
 his throat. " Did you ever fall over a well-curb, 
 and hang there ? and did a big fellow, who hap- 
 pened to be going by, hear your screams, and 
 come and pull you out?" 
 
 " O ! " What a break of light there was in the 
 small face ! She clasp*ed his hand with both of 
 hers. . " I knew you would come ; I always said 
 you would. Uncle Richard ! Uncle Richard ! " 
 
 She turned to the man ; but she could get no 
 farther at that moment. The surprise, the joy, 
 and the memory of that old terror, all together, 
 overcame her, and instead of the words there 
 was a sudden stricture at her throat, and the 
 tears swelled in her eyes. 
 
 Uncle Richard saw it all in a flash. He
 
 100 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 grasped Keefe's hand, and wrung it until it 
 ached. 
 
 "My dear fellow, how could you be so cruel 
 as to keep yourself away all this time, so that we 
 couldn't thank you ? " 
 
 Keefe was really quite amazed at this reception. 
 
 "I didn't think I'd done anything worth the 
 thanks," he stumbled out. 
 
 "What! not when you saved this little girl's 
 life? " exclaimed the elder man. " But we'll talk 
 all that over. Come right in now." 
 
 And Keefe went in : there was nothing else for 
 him to do. Bessie Staines went with him, cling- 
 ing to his hands, and with unutterable things in 
 her eyes. 
 
 It was a wide, breezy, old-fashioned " keeping- 
 room" into which they iwjpred the young stage- 
 driver. It was one of those rooms which seem to 
 take you right id^its/'heart, and wrap you all 
 around in its blesse^ home-atmosphere. There 
 was nothing especial to write about. There was 
 an ample, chintz-covered lounge on one side, with 
 a large engraving of Washington gazing serenely 
 at another of Lincoln on the mantel opposite. 
 There were great, cavernous rocking-chairs, with 
 home-made cushions, and at the windows were
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 101 
 
 bushes of sweetbrier, and clumps of quinces, and 
 beaut if id drapings of honeysuckles and creeping 
 vines. 
 
 Keefe Bartlett had never been in a room lik* 
 this before. That made it seem all the iiioro 
 wonderful to him. 
 
 Bessie Staines darted out of the room while he."* 
 uncle was seating their guest. 
 
 " Mother, he's come ! he's come ! " she shouted, 
 bolting into the kitchen, where a small, delicate 
 woman was picking over some raspberries. 
 
 u What in the world do you mean, Bessie ? " 
 holding her hands still over the large white bowl 
 in her lap. 
 
 " Why, you know. The man that pulled me 
 out of the well, and kept me from drowning ! I 
 told you he would come you know I did, 
 mamma ; and so he has ; and there he is right 
 in the other room!" Actually dancing up and 
 down in her delight. 
 
 There was a little cry from the mother. She 
 rose right up, without a single word ; she did 
 not even wait to drop off her kitchen apron, or 
 wipe her ringers, which were a little stained with 
 working amongst the fruit. She went right into
 
 102 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 the room, and up to Keefe. He looked at her, 
 and she locked at him, and she only thought that 
 he had saved the life of her child. She had 
 thought of this every day since that night. 
 
 She was a small, sallow woman, worn with ill 
 health and a good many sorrows. But one thing 
 could be said of her; Mrs. Staines had a motherly 
 face ; and when you have said "that of a woman, 
 it makes very little difference whether she is 
 handsome or homely ; she will be sure to have a 
 beauty of her own. 
 
 She stood there a moment and looked at Keefe, 
 and he thought of his own dead mother, and it 
 almost seemed that she had risen up from her 
 grave, and was looking at him with those sad, 
 tender eyes of hers. 
 
 " Young man," she said, u I'm very glad to 
 see you. I've wanted to thank you for my little 
 
 girl." 
 
 She could not get any farther than that, but 
 in the fulness of her motherly heart and gratitude, 
 she just put her arms around Keefe's neck and 
 kissed him. 
 
 And this was the stage-driver's welcome to 
 Creek Farm. Yet never was mortal more amazed 
 to find himself a hero than Keefe Bartlett. He
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 103 
 
 always insisted that he had done nothing worthy 
 the least praise in rescuing Bessie Staines from 
 her peril. 
 
 But the gratitude was wonderfully pleasant, for 
 all that. What a supper that was, too, which 
 followed, with its delicious brown bread, its cream 
 and berries, and all its homely fresh farm cheer ! 
 Bessie sat next to Keefe, and buzzed away in 
 her bright, childish fashion. He learned, too, 
 what a search they had made for him that nightf, 
 while he was sleeping in the little grove of pines, 
 not dreaming there was in all God's world any- 
 body who cared whether he were dead or alive. 
 
 This uncle of Bessie's, too, proved not the least 
 wonderful of all the things which Keefe found 
 at Creek Farm. He was a man well on the slope 
 of his sixties ; but he had one of those large, ten- 
 der natures, which only get mellower with years. 
 
 "Nature had done her part well at the be- 
 ginning," men of culture said, listening to the 
 talk of Richard Staines, full of mother-wit and 
 shrewdness, with a quaint humor shining over all 
 the large, ripe judgment of the man. " What a 
 pity it was such a man had not early opportu- 
 nities! He would have been sure to make his 
 
 . 
 mark somewhere."
 
 104 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 At least he had made it at Creek Farm, having 
 earned the whole large, breezy, ample homestead 
 with the toil of his own sunburned hands ; keep- 
 ing his faculties alert, too, with reading and ob- 
 servation of one kind and another. 
 
 Richard Staines had been a widower many 
 years, and buried his two children long ago by 
 the side of their mother. Bessie's father had been 
 the man's only brother. There was a sad story 
 there ; but the grave had covered all that over 
 now in her cool, brooding silences. 
 
 Keefe was greatly drawn towards the elder 
 man ; but that was not remarkable. Richard 
 Staines had that personal magnetism which in- 
 heres hi -strong, sympathetic natures. Keefe all 
 the time was thinking how different life would 
 have been to him if his could only have taken 
 root in a home like this. Then there might have 
 been some blossom and fruitage worth having; 
 but now Keefe thought that he had throttled 
 that sigh in time, but Richard Staines heard it. 
 
 "What wonderful things do happen in this 
 world ! " rippled away Bessie's tongue, after they 
 had learned about the stage-driving, and what 
 had brought Keefe to Creek Farm.
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 105 
 
 " Do you think, uncle Richard, the stage- 
 driving was a providence, too?" 
 
 " I hope we shall find everything a providence, 
 my dear, in the long run." 
 
 " But so many things don't seem so now, uncle 
 Richard." 
 
 " No ; you remember that day, last winter, 
 when the thermometer dropped below zero? It 
 was the coldest, darkest, shortest day of the 
 year ; and yet it was the very one I told you 
 on which the sun turned his face towards the 
 earth, towards this very day that lay waiting for 
 her, so far off among green leaves and grasses, and 
 all the summer life and beauty. It was a long 
 road to it, through sleet, and storm, and dark, 
 hut it was a sure one. God's roads always are. 
 And so I think his dark providences are rolling 
 through their wide orbits into the light and the 
 summer at last." 
 
 When uncle Richard said this, a great, indescri- 
 bable sweetness came into his face. 
 
 The family at Creek Farm had their scraps and 
 slices of theology at all sorts of odd times and 
 ways. I think they were better than a good 
 many sermons. 
 
 1 1 put a new thought in Keefe's head. What
 
 106 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 if he should find, some day, the meaning of all 
 that long, dark winter of his childhood, and read 
 its meaning plain in God's light and summer '? 
 
 Richard Staines was a wonderfully shrewd 
 reader of men. " You've had a hard time of it in 
 the world, poor fellow ! I see," his secret thoughts 
 went. " There's some pluck in you, too, or you 
 wouldn't have struggled up through it. A plank 
 of good, solid timber went into your foundations 
 evidently. A good face, too, honest and saga- 
 cious. You'll make your way." 
 
 When the supper was over, they went back 
 into the old keeping-room, and the wind came up, 
 and made a soft buzz at the windows. 
 
 Bessie came and sat down by his side ; indeed, 
 she seemed to regard Keefe as in some sense her 
 especial property. 
 
 They all talked, the girl's voice slipping in and 
 out among the others with a pretty, childish ea- 
 gerness and contrast. There- is no use of telling 
 what they said; only Keefe began to feel that 
 he had known these people this simple, large- 
 scaled farmer and this small, fragile woman with 
 her motherly face all the days of his life. 
 
 The stage-driver told them about his own life, 
 too ; told, in little snatches and glimpses, more
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 107 
 
 than he intended or suspected; for they could 
 piece the bits together, and make the outlines 
 wonderfully like the true pattern. 
 
 AVhen they learned that Keefe had been with- 
 out a relative in the world since his mother died, 
 away off in the dawn of his memory, they all 
 looked at him with a great pity in their eyes, 
 and Mrs. Staines's motherly heart just ached for 
 him, thinking of her own boys, over whose little 
 grass pillows the springs had gone softly, a whole 
 score of them, with tender shadows, and soft 
 winds, and singing birds, as though there were no 
 such things as graves in all the world. 
 
 And so they talked on ; and at last the moon 
 came up, and peeped in curiously through the 
 quivering leaves. It was time for Keefe to be 
 going. 
 
 They quite insisted on his remaining all night, 
 but it could not be. The stage for Black-Hawk 
 Mountain started early in the morning. 
 
 " Is there anything in the world we can do 
 for you, my young friend? " asked uncle Richard, 
 just as they were about shaking hands with their, 
 guest. " One good turn, you know, deserves 
 another ; and what a great ' good turn ' that was 
 you did for us once ! " catching hold of Bessie's
 
 108 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 shoulders, and drawing her suddenly to his heart s 
 that great, warm heart, which probably loved the 
 child a little better than anything else in the 
 world. 
 
 " Thank you, sir, I have been more than paid," 
 Keefe answered, fervently. 
 
 "Well, Bessie, as he won't help us, we will 
 leave it for you to decide. What shall we do for 
 your friend ? ' ' 
 
 Bessie, standing between her uncle and her 
 mother, looked up at Keefe a moment with her 
 bright, puzzled eyes ; then a swift idea danced in 
 them. 
 
 "I think," she said, "we'd better have him 
 come and live here a while. There are so many 
 things to show him, you know ; and there's 
 Brownie ! " 
 
 The child's sudden arrow had gone straight to 
 the mark this time. In all his pinched, starved, 
 lonely life, this poor Keefe Bartlett had never had 
 a home; and now, to dwell under this blessed 
 roof, to have these people about him, to hear 
 them speak, to look in their faces, why, it 
 seemed to him like entering the very gate of 
 heaven. 
 
 Of course Keefe did not expect that such a
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 109 
 
 miracle of good could happen to him ; but his face 
 flushed; there was a sudden hungry gleam in his 
 eyes. Uncle Richard saw it ; so did the mother. 
 
 There were plenty of large, breezy, comfortable 
 chambers in the old farm-house. Keefe should 
 have one of the best. 
 
 They both exclaimed at once that he should 
 come. 
 
 It was all settled in a little while. The sta- 
 ging would only last during the summer travel ; 
 but this would probably continue for a couple 
 of months, and during that time they would take 
 no denial. Keefe Bartlett was to live at Creek 
 Farm. 
 
 The stage-driver went back to Bayberry Hills 
 in the fading moonlight, and it seemed that the 
 whole world was changed to him ; that it had 
 grown suddenly, with its billowy fields, and its 
 dark, rustling woods, and its hills, that seemed 
 to stand and wait forever listening for some great 
 secret, it seemed as though all these had grown 
 suddenly into a great, beautiful, happy home for 
 Keefe Bartlett. 
 
 Two or three days after all this happened, 
 Edith Folger went off into the great huckle- 
 '
 
 110 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 berry pasture, about two miles from the hotel. 
 On the crown there was a broad, generous swell 
 of land, with an outlook of twenty miles ; great 
 seas of meadows, and billowy forests, and dots 
 of farm-houses, and white little sprinklings of 
 villages. Edith was fascinated with it all, and 
 walked about from one point .to another, find- 
 ing a fresh delight in every view. 
 
 At last, however, it grew warm, and the breeze 
 went down. She was about to start for home ; 
 but she felt tired, and there was a tempting little 
 dimple, or hollow, in one corner of the pasture. 
 It was a cool, woodsy place, with a great group 
 of locusts and maples. Edith went in here, and 
 sat down on the grass. How shady and delicious 
 it was, with the soft little gossip of winds among 
 the leaves ! 
 
 The girl did not know how tired she was. 
 She only thought she wanted to look up at the 
 bits of sky through the meshes of boughs, when 
 she laid her head down among the cool, sweet 
 smells and the soft shadows ; but in a few mo- 
 ments the little gossip of winds all ran into a low, 
 drowsy tune, and Edith had fallen fast asleep 
 under the trees. 
 
 She slept for more than an hour. She woke up
 
 ONLT GIRLS. Ill 
 
 at last with a start. It had grown dark, and it 
 took her some time to gather up her wits, and 
 remember where she was. She sprang up, and 
 came out on the edge of the group of trees, and 
 saw that, while she had been fast asleep, the 
 clouds had been at work. They seemed to hang 
 in great flapping banners all around the sky. 
 There were distant, threatening growls of thun- 
 der. The storm was coming. 
 
 Edith Folger was a brave girl, else she would 
 not have gone foraging off into the woods, as she 
 had been doing all these weeks ; but the threat- 
 ening sky rather appalled her. She reflected that 
 she was more than two miles from home, and the 
 storm was hurrying up. She started for the road, 
 and in her haste took the wrong way. 
 
 Once in the highway, the girl and the clouds 
 had a race ; but it was soon evident who would 
 be victor. They came sailing up, those great, 
 black, bellying masses, and there were gusts 
 of wind, and the growls grew longer and louder. 
 
 On a sudden Edith was struck with the un- 
 familiar face of tilings about her. She saw she 
 had mistaken her way, and her heart sank. She 
 looked about her. There was not a house in 
 sight, only a long, hilly road, stretching its neck
 
 112 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 of yellow sand between the stone walls which 
 enclosed the pastures. 
 
 " O, what shall I do ? " cried Edith ; and if she 
 had said one word more she would have sobbed 
 right out. 
 
 Then she caught the sound of rattling wagon- 
 wheels, and they were very musical to her. In 
 a few moments the team came in sight, driven by 
 a man in his shirt-sleeves, some bags of flour 
 behind him. He was evidently returning from 
 the mill below. Edith stood still, and waited 
 for him. 
 
 " If he has a good face," she said to herself, 
 " I shall speak to him." 
 
 The mare came on at a swift trot. She was 
 evidently in a hurry to get home. The driver 
 suddenly caught sight of the figure standing on 
 one side of the road. A look of surprise came, 
 into his face. He drew up sharply, and before 
 Edith could speak, he had accosted her. 
 
 " Can I do anything for you, young lady ? " 
 
 That face, that voice, could be trusted any- 
 where. Edith felt secure in a moment. 
 
 " Thank you," she said. " I have lost my 
 way, and I must be two or three miles from 
 home, and the storm is close on us."
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 113 
 
 The driver was out of the wagon, spry as 
 though he were a young man. 
 
 " Jump right in here," he said. " We can't 
 stop for ceremony, or the . storm will get the 
 better of us. Whoa, old Gray! My home is 
 three quarters of a mile down the road, and 
 the mother and Bessie will be delighted to see 
 you." 
 
 While he was saying this, he had bundled 
 Edith into the mill wagon, sprung in beside her, 
 and seized the reins. Old Gray tossed her im- 
 patient head, and they were skimming over the 
 road. It was all the work of a moment. 
 
 "Now, my child, how did you get here?" 
 asked uncle Richard Staines, turning upon Edith 
 with the smile into which that heart and soul of 
 his had been managing to get all these years in 
 a way that was* truly wonderful. 
 
 She told him about her stopping at Bayberry 
 Hills, and how she had wandered into the huckle- 
 berry pasture, and fallen asleep there, and, wak- 
 ing up bewildered by the gathering storm, had 
 lost her way. She felt as secure by the side of 
 this stranger as though her own father sat there ; 
 besides, she had a real curiosity to see " the 
 mother and Bessie." 
 
 8
 
 114 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 They exchanged names. Edith had heard at 
 the hotel of Creek Farm and its owner ; and he, 
 of course, knew of the proprietor of the Agawam 
 Cotton Mills. 
 
 This time it was the mare and the shower, and 
 old Gray won. 
 
 But just as they got into the side-porch the 
 first drops fell. Bessie let them in, her eyes wide 
 with wonder at sight of the young lady uncle 
 Richard had brought home with him. Where 
 had he picked her up? She looked lovely 
 enough to have dropped right out of the sky. 
 
 Then the mother came. A few words ex- 
 plained the whole, and with that motherly wel- 
 come Edith felt as much at home as Keefe Bart- 
 lett had done under the same roof only a few 
 nights ago. 
 
 What a storm that was, with its sea of smit- 
 ing rain, and its mad hurricanes of winds, that 
 tossed, and wrenched, and tore through the air 
 and over the earth hour after hour ! 
 
 Yet Edith, safely housed in the old keeping- 
 room at Creek Farm, enjoyed it immensely. She 
 liked odd, out-of-the way adventures, like these. 
 I think all fresh souls, old or young, do. 
 
 Uncle Richard Staines and she took a great
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 115 
 
 liking to each other at once ; and Edith, without 
 any mother of her own, was greatly drawn 
 towards the mother-look in Mrs. Staines's face. 
 
 Bessie was very shy at first, and watched the 
 "beautiful young lady" with wide, admiring 
 eyes ; but her uncle brought her out in a little 
 while, and she soon buzzed away in her quaint 
 fashion, which vastly amused Edith. 
 
 At last it began to grow dark. Of course, 
 while the storm continued, Edith's return home 
 was not to be so much as thought of. 
 
 " O, what if you should have to stay all 
 night ! " cried Bessie, her eyes dancing with 
 ecstasy at the thought. 
 
 Just then Mrs. Staines came in, and announced 
 supper ; and the mill-owner's daughter enjoyed 
 that almost, but not quite, as much as poor Keefe 
 Bartlett had done. 
 
 It could not be just the same to her, you know.
 
 116 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 FOLGER did not go home that 
 night. The wind and the rain had all 
 out doors to themselves, and a battle-field 
 they made of it! Young trees were suddenly 
 Lome down in the fury of the storm; branches 
 were snapped off and hurled away ; the fences 
 were laid low, and the house shook in all its 
 strong old ribs. 
 
 In order that no alarm should be felt on Edith's 
 account, uncle Richard had sent by one of the 
 farm-hands a message to Bayberry Hills that she 
 was safely sheltered at Creek Farm ; and the girl 
 settled herself to a pleased enjoyment of the 
 whole adventure, even of the storm outside. 
 
 "What a frightful storm it is, Richard!" ex- 
 claimed Mrs. Staines, with a little shudder, as 
 there came a terrible onset of wind and rain at 
 the windows. "Did you ever know anything 
 like it before? "
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 117 
 
 '* Yes, a few times In my life, Lucy ; but it's 
 what sailors would call an 'old rouser of a 
 gale.'" 
 
 "Are you afraid?" asked Bessie, still flutter- 
 ing about Edith. 
 
 " O, no, child ; I think I rather enjoy it all." 
 
 " So should I, if it were not for Keefe." 
 
 " Who is Keefe ? " asked Edith, whose curiosity 
 was awake at all points. 
 
 " O, he's the stage-driver, and he lives here ; 
 and there's a wonderful story to tell about him 
 isn't there, uncle Richard ? " 
 
 " Yes, my dear." 
 
 " Well, now, supposing you tell it, little Miss 
 Bessie," said Edith. " I like stories immensely." 
 
 Bessie drew a long breath ; then she turned to 
 her uncle. 
 
 "You do it, uncle Richard," she said. 
 
 " No, Bessie ; that belongs to you. Nobody 
 can tell Keefe's story so well as you." 
 
 Once fairly started, Bessie forgot everything 
 else, and fully sustained her uncle's testimony. 
 She set the whole scene, the old well and her- 
 self hanging there by the broken curb, and Keefe 
 as he came to her rescue, in the most vivid, dra-
 
 118 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 matic way before her listeners. You could not 
 help living it all over again. Indeed, Mrs. Staines 
 had to leave the room before the child was half 
 through. 
 
 Edith was greatly impressed by the whole 
 story. It flashed across her, of a sudden, that this 
 " Keefe " must be the very stage-driver whom 
 she had met that afternoon in the lane, and 
 whose face had struck her with such a curious 
 familiarity. Of course, though, she could never 
 have seen him before. 
 
 When Edith came to learn that Bessie's pre- 
 server was actually staying at Creek Farm, and 
 how it had all come about that he was there, she 
 exclaimed, 
 
 " I hope I shall see him ; I'm quite curious to 
 do it." 
 
 " The fellow is really worth knowing, Miss 
 Folger," said uncle Richard. " He will be likely, 
 however, to be very shy with folks like you. 
 Still there is something shrewd, and sturdy, 
 and original about this Keefe Bartlett, if you 
 once get through the crust. He's had a rough 
 time of it thus far poor fellow! but I'm 
 satisfied there is the making of a man in him."
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 110 
 
 Uncle Richard seldom made mistakes in his 
 judgments of men. 
 
 " Do you think he will get through to-night, 
 Richard ? " asked Mrs. Staines, who had returned 
 before this. " It is time he was here two hours 
 ago." 
 
 " Yes ; but he will have to get over the road 
 in the teeth of this gale. I think he will do it, 
 though." 
 
 Less than ten minutes afterwards there came, 
 through howling winds and seas of rain, a thun- 
 derous knock at the side-door. 
 
 " O, it's Keefe ! " shouted Bessie ; and she 
 rushed to answer the knock, anticipating every- 
 body else, and unbolted the door. 
 
 The wind made a grab at her. It took her 
 breath, and would have knocked her down if 
 Kcefe had not broken its force. There he stood, 
 a big, dripping figure in the dark. 
 
 44 That's you, I know," exclaimed Bessie. 
 "The storm hasn't carried you off, after all." 
 
 "O, no not so much as my little finger, 
 though it's fought for me every inch of the 
 last ten miles." 
 
 The voice was loud and hearty. It was won- 
 derful how cheerful Keefe's tones had grown of
 
 120 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 late ; indeed, every hour since he came to Creek 
 Farm had been working some change in him. 
 
 He was in the hall by this time, and uncle 
 Richard came out to find that all was well with 
 the stage-driver ; and he got off his dripping over- 
 coat, and went up to his room, and came down 
 in a few moments, dried and hungry, and feeling 
 only the better for his long, victorious battle with 
 the elements. 
 
 While he sat there before a supper which 
 would have sharpened the appetite of a far less 
 hungry man, Bessie came out to buzz about him 
 with her news. It was so very good, though, she 
 held it back a moment, setting her one grand 
 secret in a bordering of light talk. 
 
 " Uncle Richard said he knew you'd get 
 through, Mr. Keefe." 
 
 " Yes ; I made up my mind I'd hold on to 
 that old Noah's ark of a stage until she went 
 to pieces, or I did. Whew ! how the wind did 
 roar ! A grand thunder of artillery was nothing 
 to it. Roads will be badly Avashed off in places ; " 
 helping himself to huge slices of the huckleberry 
 cake. 
 
 Bessie watched him with the secret a-dance in 
 her radiant eyes. t At last it burst out.
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 121 
 
 " Guess what has happened, Mr. Keefe ! " 
 
 " I can't ; the wind has played the mischief 
 with my wits, as well as with the leaves. Any- 
 thing good?" 
 
 " O, yes, splendidly good." 
 
 ' Well, then, don't be cruel on a fellow ; let's 
 have it." 
 
 Bessie and Keefe were the best of friends. 
 There was nothing in the world he was not 
 ready to do for her. So Bessie told about the 
 beautiful young lady in the other room, and how 
 she had fallen asleep in the huckleberry pasture, 
 and coming out had lost her way, and how uncle 
 Richard had found her in the road, and brought 
 her home in the nick of time, and how she was 
 to pass the night on account of the storm, end- 
 ing with, 
 
 " O, I do want you to see her so ! Make haste 
 and get through with that supper." 
 
 Keefe hardly sympathized with Bessie's eager- 
 ness. Indeed, during her talk his thoughts were 
 much occupied with his stage and horses. It is 
 quite doubtful whether he more than half took 
 in her story. 
 
 But his supper, greatly to the impatient chat- 
 terer's delight, was over at last, and she took hold
 
 122 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 of his hand and led hinj straight into the room 
 where Edith sat with Bessie's uncle and mother, 
 the girl a centre of color, and grace, and loveli- 
 ness that are indescribable. 
 
 Keefe gave a little start. He knew her at the 
 first glance. Bessie introduced him with an amus- 
 ing effort to observe all the proprieties. Edith 
 recognized the stage-driver at once ; but the 
 mysterious familiarity in his face did not strike 
 her as it had that day when he stared at her as 
 she stood in the lane. Keefe saw that she did 
 not remember him, but for all that he could not 
 thaw out of the silence and awkwardness which 
 possessed him. 
 
 Edith did her best to draw him out ; but every 
 time she addressed herself to Keefe, his heart 
 seemed to get painfully close to his throat, and 
 it was as much as he could do to stammer out 
 an intelligent reply. It was like dancing in 
 fetters. 
 
 The others saw his constraint ; so, in a little 
 while, did Edith, and with her fine tact gave 
 over her good-natured attempt to draw the young 
 stage-driver into conversation. 
 
 Uncle Richard came to the rescue, asking Keefe 
 questions about the road and the storm ; and here
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 123 
 
 Keefe got on well enough ; but how could he 
 talk with Edith Folger? How could he, re- 
 membering 
 
 Of a sudden the young lady spoke, more to 
 herself than to anybody else, the thought com- 
 ing out in a breath, 
 
 " O, dear ! I wonder if this storm has got as 
 far as Rox to-night ! " 
 
 " Who is Rox ? " asked Bessie, who had over- 
 heard the name. So had somebody else. 
 
 " He is my own cousin, and just like a brother 
 to me dearer than anybody, indeed, but papa." 
 
 " O, do tell us something about him," cried 
 Bessie. 
 
 Rox was always a pleasant subject to Edith. 
 
 " Well, what is it you want to hear, Miss 
 Bessie?" smiling on the eager little girl. 
 
 " O, something nice a real good story, you 
 know." 
 
 "A story: let me see," answered Edith, med- 
 itatively. " There are a great many good things 
 to tell about Rox , but I don't know as I can 
 think of just the story that will interest you." 
 
 " Didn't he ever do anything good, or gen- 
 erous, or funny ? Those are the kind I like," 
 
 t
 
 124 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 answered Bessie, quite innocent of any missing 
 link in her pronouns. 
 
 Edith considered a moment; then her face 
 flashed up. 
 
 " O, yes, I do remember something Rox did 
 once that was all three," she said. " It happened 
 a good while ago." 
 
 Bessie was all ears and eyes now. The others, 
 too, waited for the commencement. Keefe could 
 not tell why his heart gave that big thump, as 
 though something was coming. But in a minute 
 more he knew, for Edith was describing him as 
 he sat that day just outside the hedge by 
 her father's grounds. You could almost see him 
 there, through the girl's words a big, homely, 
 brown young Caliban. Through all the hot 
 emotion that surged within him, it did strike 
 Keefe with a grim sense of humor, that he 
 should have such a picture of himself held up 
 to his gaze. 
 
 Edith repeated the talk she had had with the 
 stranger. It was wonderful how her memory re- 
 tained every word. And then she carried her 
 listeners into the house, and went over the conver- 
 sation which had transpired between Rox and her- 
 self before he set out for Plum Point Station ; and
 
 AT FARMER STAINES. Page 124.
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 125 
 
 Keefe held his breath so that not a syllable should 
 escape him. 
 
 Afterwards she went over the whole scene on 
 the railroad, making hardly a mistake from begin- 
 ning to end, for Edith told it fresh and vivid, 
 as Rox had written it to her that day on the cars. 
 
 There were tears in the eyes of all her lis- 
 teners when she concluded, all but one, and 
 his bright and dry, seemed to burn like flames 
 in his livid face. They all felt his still agitation, 
 but they only thought he was deeply moved by 
 the story. Bessie drew a deep breath. 
 
 " O, if you could only learn what became of 
 those twenty-five dollars!" she said. 
 
 " I have always been curious to know," added 
 Edith. " I have always felt, too, that there was 
 some history, if one could get down to it, about 
 that money ; that it was really a matter of life 
 and death, as the boy said." 
 
 " I had a feeling of the same sort while you 
 were talking, Miss Folger," added uncle Richard. 
 " It is a remarkable story, and it makes me want 
 to know your cousin Rox. We cannot always 
 follow our good deeds to their results, but some 
 ^time these will come home, bringing their sheaves 
 with them."
 
 126 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 Keefe's breath came hard ; he was losing pos- 
 session of himself. In a moment more it seemed 
 to him that he should spring to his feet and 
 shriek out, 
 
 " It was J, Keefe Bartlett, that sat by the 
 hedge that day; it was I that waited by the 
 railroad ; and when Rox Coventry gave me 
 that money, he saved his own life and me from 
 murder ! " 
 
 Then Bessie Staines's voice slipped softly into 
 the tumult of Keefe's thoughts. 
 
 " O, do tell us some more about Rox ! " 
 
 And Edith went on to describe him the 
 bright, careless, handsome fellow, with his pleas- 
 ant, magnetic ways' and jaunty air, and bringing 
 up one and another little scene of their child- 
 hood, sparkling with fun and comedy, as every- 
 thing seemed to about Rox, he had so much 
 bright, wonderful vitality ; and at last she told 
 about this passion for the hunt and bivouac in 
 the woods and on the plains, which had seized 
 him, and how he had gone off leaving them full 
 of anxieties on his account. 
 
 It was late when Edith got through with Rox ; 
 all the while the silent figure in the corner had 
 been watching her with its bright, dry eyes. It
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 127 
 
 fiad sat motionless as a statue, without making a 
 sound or moving a muscle ; yet the Agawam 
 capitalist's daughter had some vague, faint feel- 
 ing of the emotion which was stirring the soul 
 of the stage-driver. She was not, probably, con- 
 scious of tins feeling herself; nevertheless it lay 
 at the bottom of the last thing Edith Folger 
 did before she went up to her room that evening. 
 
 She had said her good night to the others, and 
 Bessie had hold of Edith's hand, when the young 
 lady turned suddenly to Keefe, who had risen 
 from his chair, saying, - 
 
 " What shall I say to you for what you did 
 one day for this little girl?" drawing Bessie sud- 
 denly to her side. 
 
 She said it in the sweetest, most gracious way, 
 with her fair face uplifted to his. I despair of 
 giving you any idea how pretty she looked at 
 that moment, and how prettily it was done. And 
 as he looked at her that moment, the words came 
 to Keefe, and he could not hold them back. 
 
 " What shall I say to you for what you did that 
 day for the boy on the railroad ? " 
 
 " O, it was not / did that," answered Edith, 
 with her lovely ripple of laughter. " It was Rox, 
 ou know."
 
 128 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 " Yes, I know it was. But Rox would never 
 have done that, you see, if it hadn't been for 
 you ; " and Keefe's eyes shone on the girl with a 
 great light in them. 
 
 She turned to the others with playful archness. 
 
 "Have I been making a heroine of myself?" 
 she asked. " I had no intention of doing so." 
 
 "We all saw that. You only told the truth, 
 my child. But Keefe is right, after all. And 
 I've rounded the point of my threescore years some 
 time ago, but I hardly ever heard of a generous 
 or noble deed without finding that, somehow, 
 some girl or woman it all amounts to the same 
 thing was sure to be at the bottom of it." 
 
 I do not believe that anything more truly beau- 
 tiful and chivalric was ever said of woman than 
 that speech of uncle Richard Staines. Do you ? 
 
 The next morning, when Edith Folger inquired 
 at breakfast for the stage-driver, she learned that 
 he had set off an hour before for Black-Hawk 
 Mountain.
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 129 
 
 UHAPTER VII. 
 
 vf^HL'KE'S a fight going on in there," said 
 the stage-driver. 
 
 "Well, it's lucky for me I can keep 
 out of that row, any way," said the second 
 speaker, mostly to himself, as he sprang into 
 the stage and settled down in a corner for a 
 long nap. 
 
 It Avas as dreary a night as you can imagine, 
 drearier than my pen can possibly paint for you. 
 The tavern at " Bear Ranche " shot out its lights 
 into the wide, yawning blackness. That long, 
 low log building just on the edge of the great 
 " sage desert " of the west was the sole picture 
 of life in all the dreary landscape. The winds 
 growled and shouted over the plains like the 
 roar of distant seas, and shot great angry gusts 
 of rain at the window where the traveller sat 
 in the corner of the eastern-bound stage. The 
 lights from the bar-room flamed out from the 
 9 
 
 '
 
 130 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 small panes, and he could hear the shuffling of 
 feet and the loud, angry voices. 
 
 He listened with a painful kind of interest, 
 yet thankful enough that he was out of it all. 
 He knew what men were when whiskey and 
 rage turned them into demons. 
 
 He is a young man still, but he has learned 
 much in the two years he has been out on the 
 plains, one of the overseers of a large mining 
 company. 
 
 The voices inside grow louder and fiercer. 
 The solitary passenger wishes the stage would 
 start. There are other travellers who will join 
 him at the last moment, but they enjoy the 
 warmth, and probably the tumult going on in- 
 side, too well to leave it before it is necessary, 
 and there is some trouble with the "leader." 
 
 The " overseer " has ridden all day. His 
 bones are stiff and tired, yet the prospect in 
 there is not inviting. He has concluded to go 
 on to the next station, although this involves 
 another weary night in the stage. 
 
 " Passengers, aboard ! " shouts the driver, put- 
 ting his head inside the bar-room, while a gust of 
 rain, which has been watching its chance, makes 
 an angry rush in-doors, slapping at the faces of
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 131 
 
 some of the men there, on which there is a 
 fresh volley of coarse oaths at rain and driver. 
 
 In a moment, and as though he were forced 
 against his will, but drawn by some mysterious 
 impulse which he cannot resist, the solitary pas- 
 senger gets up from his corner of the stage, 
 bounds swiftly out, despite his stiffened limbs, and 
 enters the long, low-ceiled bar-room. 
 
 There are men scattered all around it, mostly 
 in groups miners, and trappers, and hunters 
 from the Hudson Bay Company's posts, hardened 
 and rough from their coarse, wild life of plain 
 and wilderness. Some of them have thrown 
 themselves half across the counter ; others are 
 gathered about the stove, telling over coarse 
 stories about tussles with bears and brushes with 
 Indians, while others are scattered about on boxes 
 and chairs in all sorts of nondescript attitudes, the 
 majority being engaged in pouring down coarse 
 whiskey, smoking vile tobacco, and indulging in 
 loud guffaws. 
 
 The new comer stood still a moment looking 
 over this scene. It did not surprise or horrify 
 him. He was used to just such sights ; yet 
 there was a certain air of cool self-possession in 
 his manner, which showed that he was not in
 
 132 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 sympathy with the coarse, riotous spirit of the 
 place. 
 
 He was a large-framed, solidly-built young 
 man, deep in his twenties. His face was dread- 
 fully sunburned, but the large-moulded features 
 had a certain strength and good-looking homeliness 
 about them. He wears a coarse gray suit and 
 a fur cap just the things for a traveller in 
 those latitudes and at that season it is now on 
 the edge of November. The men around the 
 fire certainly look more picturesque in their 
 red and gray shirts and mud-stained leathern 
 breeches. 
 
 The crowd stared at the new comer with an 
 idle kind of curiosity. Most of the travellers 
 were at the ranche over night, and would take 
 the stages east or west the next morning, and 
 fresh arrivals were nothing remarkable. In one 
 corner was gathered the group which, in the 
 vernacular of that place, were " having a row." 
 There was a table, with piles of money and packs 
 of dirty cards, which told their own story, and 
 the oil lamps flared on fierce, angry faces. 
 
 All of the company carried knives and fire- 
 arms, and were evidently in a dangerous mood. 
 About the disputants some of the loungers had
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 133 
 
 gathered, with pipes in their mouths, "to enjoy 
 the fun." The stranger's gaze went over at 
 once to this group. He knew the signs only 
 too well the rage that flamed up in those 
 dark faces, that rose higher and higher in the 
 angry voices, would end soon in something worse ; 
 there would be a drunken brawl, and somebody 
 would be hurt killed, quite likely. 
 
 The young overseer usually kept himself out 
 of such scenes. He could not tell now what im- 
 pelled him to walk over and join the outside 
 circle of lookers-on with their loud guffaws, and 
 coarse tobacco, and whiskey-tainted breaths ; but 
 he did it. Meanwhile it was high time to be 
 gone, for the room was fast being cleared of the 
 passengers for the night stage, and he had al- 
 ready lost his pre-empted seat in the corner. 
 
 A number of men miners from the gulches, 
 to judge from their appearance were engaged 
 in the quarrel; but it had evidently arisen be- 
 tween two, who formed a contrast to the brawny 
 figures about them. The elder was a tall, dark 
 man, with a heavy beard and a certain foppish 
 smartness in his dress. He had a bad face ; 
 there was something bold and sinister in it; 
 yet he was a man of the world, and lived by
 
 134 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 his wits. The overseer settled that with the 
 first glance. He had found it often necessary 
 to be swift in reading the characters of men 
 since he had been out there among the mines. 
 
 The younger man was slender and not above 
 medium height; his face was a good deal dis- 
 figured by a long, deep gash on one side, which 
 he had received in a fight or a "fall. There were 
 general marks of dissipation about him. He wore 
 an old, slouched cap, and his clothes w r ere soiled 
 and seedy, and his hair and beard, of a chestnut 
 shade, were sadly neglected. Yet, despite all 
 these disfigurements, there was some glimmering 
 of grace in the manner, or it might be in the looks, 
 of the young man, which made the overseer feel 
 instinctively that he had been at some time of 
 his life a gentleman. 
 
 He was in a towering rage ; he . had evidently 
 been drinking deeply, and was insisting that his 
 opponent had cheated him infamously at poker. 
 He had caught more or less of the miners' slang, 
 but there was something in his speech and his 
 tones which at once indicated a higher culture 
 than those around him possessed. 
 
 Despite the excitement partly rage, partly 
 intoxication under which the speaker told his
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 135 
 
 story, it was evident that he believed he was 
 telling the truth, and that he felt he had 
 been outrageously cheated by his antagonist. No 
 need to repeat what he said. I would not have 
 brought you into this atmosphere at all, if I could 
 have helped it ; and we will get away from it as 
 soon as possible. 
 
 There was a sense of rude justice at the core 
 of these men, which made itself felt through all 
 the fumes of tobacco and whiskey. A low mur- 
 mur of sympathy ran around the circle, amid 
 which one rough miner took his clay pipe out 
 of his mouth, and swore he'd see Coventiy had 
 fair play; and another, a backwoodsman, with 
 over six feet of loose joints and raw bones, red- 
 shirted and leathern-breeched, set his half-drained 
 glass of grog on a stool, and swore, " that was an 
 old dodge of the devil's and Denton's ; he knew 
 him!" 
 
 "What did you call that young man?" in- 
 quired . the overseer, turning sharply to the 
 miner with the clay pipe; and he asked the 
 question as though it was a matter of life and 
 death to him. 
 
 " Coventry a young, gingerly brought-up 
 chap, from the east. Pity he ever left it.
 
 136 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 "Tisn't the place for such high-strung fellows; 
 ^frog and gambling getting him down to the 
 foot of the liill double-quick." 
 
 " O, my God! my God!" cried the overseer, 
 not loudly, but there was an awful pain in his 
 words. 
 
 Probably the older gambler felt by tliis time 
 that the popular sentiment was setting strongly 
 against him. He was cool and collected enough 
 himself, and he saw that he must bring matters 
 to a crisis. Let those fierce natures once plunge 
 into a fight, and it would no longer be a ques- 
 tion of right and wrong, but one simply of muscle 
 and luck. 
 
 He turned suddenly and dealt his young an- 
 tagonist a blow that made the latter reel and 
 stagger like a drunken man. 
 
 "You call me a. liar and a villain do you? 
 That's the only answer Jack Denton has for 
 such words," he growled, savagely. 
 
 There was a cry on all sides. Denton had his 
 partisans among the miners. Fists were doubled 
 and knives drawn. 
 
 "We're in for a fight now," shouted the huge 
 backwoodsman with dangerous-looking eyes, as 
 he hastily gulped his glass.
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 137 
 
 As the young man, who had been half stunned 
 by the cruel blow, recovered from its effects, he 
 whipped out a revolver from his pocket. It was 
 all done in a moment. Denton had not suspected 
 his antagonist was armed. Drink and pain had 
 turned the latter for the tune into a madman. 
 You saw the fierce glitter of rage in his eye ; he 
 was bent on wiping out that insult Avith the blood 
 of his foe. There was no tune for any movement 
 on the part of Denton or the crowd about him ; 
 the hand wlu'ch held the pistol was swift as 
 lightning ; it had taken steady aim ; it would 
 have gone off the next moment, when a hand 
 from behind suddenly reached out and struck up 
 the weapon with one strong blow, and the pLstol 
 lay at the owner's feet. 
 
 The surging crowd actually stood still as one 
 man at the audacity of that act. In that breath- 
 less instant the young man had picked up his 
 weapon and turned to confront the new of- 
 fender. 
 
 It was the overseer, who had come in, less 
 than three minutes ago, and who was a stranger 
 to every soul in the room, who had struck up 
 the pistol. There was a deadly gleam in the 
 owner's eyes ; he took deliberate aim at the
 
 138 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 overseer; there was no possibility of escape for 
 the latter, even if he had sought it. He must 
 have known that he was in the power of a 
 madman, and that his life was not worth a dol- 
 lar's purchase. 
 
 But he stood there quite calm, with his arms 
 folded across his chest. He was white to the 
 roots of his hair ; yet there was something really 
 grand in his courage, as he steadily looked the 
 death awaiting him in the face. 
 
 " You intend to blow my brains out, I see," 
 he said, not a quiver in his voice ; and in all 
 that rude crowd you might have heard the tick- 
 ing of a clock. 
 
 " Precisely ! When a man comes across my 
 path as you have done, he must take the con- 
 sequences." 
 
 The voice had a cool, deadly resolution, more 
 trying to the nerves than any exhibition of rage. 
 No doubt that the speaker meant precisely what 
 he said. He had one of those organizations on 
 which vile whiskey acted with sudden, deadly 
 effect. The overseer understood all that. 
 
 " Yet you are a gentleman, I think, and will 
 take a last message for me where I shall 
 send it?"
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 139 
 
 The pistol was still aimed at the overseer ; yet 
 tliis singular request did seem to strike the would- 
 be murderer through all the white heat of his 
 rage. 
 
 "Well, gentleman or not, I shall keep my 
 word, both in the killing and the telling. What 
 is your message?" 
 
 " I want you, Rox Coventry, to tell your cousin 
 Edith Folger, of Agawam, that Keefe Bartlett sent 
 her his love and thanks with his last breath, and 
 said that when he met her in the next world he 
 would tell her what she had done for him in this ; 
 and even there she would be glad to know it." 
 
 This tune the pistol dropped perceptibly. 
 Through the glare of rage a dull amazement 
 seemed to strike slowly. 
 
 "Edith Folger what do you know of her?" 
 staring at the overseer as though he were a risen 
 ghost. 
 
 "Enough to be certain that when she learns 
 the work you have done this night, it will do for 
 her, what she told you it would, the last time 
 you saw her, as you sat in the moonlight on the 
 piazza at Bayberry Hills break her heart ! " 
 
 This tune the shaft struck home. Through 
 all the frenzy of brain and heart the words had
 
 140 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 pierced. That night, five years ago, rose up with 
 its saintly watching moon overhead, and the soft 
 gurgle of winds that lost themselves among the 
 leaves, and the silver light that made the earth 
 divine, and Edith Folger sitting in her young 
 bloom and loveliness by his side. 
 
 The pistol dropped slowly. 
 
 "Edith Folger! Little Edith!" cried Rox 
 Coventry, in a tone whose awful anguish those 
 who heard long remembered ; and then the 
 revulsion had been too great for the strained 
 heart and brain, and Rox Coventry sank in a 
 fit upon the floor. 
 
 The overseer knelt down by his side, and 
 brushed away the long, beautiful hair from the 
 disfigured face ; then he looked up to the crowd 
 of men who stood gaping around, more or less 
 impressed by the scene which had just passed; 
 even that hard, cool villain Denton looking curi- 
 DUS and amazed. 
 
 This time the fight was over. 
 
 " Let me take charge of him," said the over- 
 seer, addressing the crowd about him. 
 
 Nobody objected. The stage had started off 
 some minutes before. Keefe Bartlett took up 
 the limp, unconscious figure, and carried it out
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 141 
 
 tenderly into a room back of the bar, where it 
 was quiet, and a wood fire was dying out on 
 the hearth, and glowing in a soft, fitful light 
 upon the walls. Keefe laid his burden tenderly 
 on an old lounge ; then he stood still and looked, 
 and as he looked, he thought of Rox as he 
 had watched him that day going up the railroad 
 the lithe, slender figure, so alert with life, and 
 strength, and pride ; and seeing him lying there 
 now, helpless, disfigured, ruined in body and soul, 
 an awful sorrow worked in Keefe 's face. 
 
 " O God! " he cried, in a great burst of grief; 
 " to think what he was to see him lying there 
 like this!" 
 
 And then, utterly overcome, he sank on his 
 knees ; and there in that ranche out on the lonely 
 plains, with the loud voices and hoarse guffaws 
 of the bar-room coming through the thin parti- 
 tion, Keefe Bartlett gathered the head of Rox 
 Coventry on his knee, tenderly as his dead 
 mother could have done, and sobbed over it 
 like a child.
 
 142 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 tHREE days had passed since the fight in 
 the bar-room of Bear Ranche. All this 
 time Rox Coventry had lain unconscious 
 on the big lounge where Keefe Bartlett had de- 
 posited him. The former had tended his charge 
 with an untiring zeal and devotion, which ex- 
 cited the inmates' curiosity and amazement. 
 
 One might almost have fancied the overseer's 
 strong, stalwart life was bound up in that of the 
 pallid, wrecked youth who lay there on the 
 lounge, which pillows and blankets had con- 
 verted into a tolerably easy couch even for a 
 sick man, Keefe having levied heavily on the 
 bedding supplies of the ranche. 
 
 For the most part Rox lay in a kind of stupor, 
 the life that hardship and excess had so strained 
 and dissipated either slowly ebbing out, or the 
 hidden springs renewing themselves at their 
 sources. Nobody could tell which; nobody had
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 143 
 
 any especial care, except Keefe Bartlett, and he 
 would sit for hours, watching with hungry, sor- 
 rowful eyes the white, wasted face, which grew 
 more and more into the likeness of Rox Coven- 
 try, as the disfigurement subsided, and sickness 
 chiselled the features. 
 
 He was not always an easy patient, either. 
 There were times when a dreadful madness of 
 fever and delirium would leap suddenly to his 
 brain, and he would spring to his feet with glar- 
 ing eyeballs and frenzied yells. It took all 
 Keefe's strength, physical and moral, to master 
 him at such times. 
 
 One and another of the inmates at Bear Ranche 
 used to come in and stare at the sick man, gener- 
 ally shaking their heads before they went out 
 with a significant, "You won't pull him through," 
 or, " He's done for, this time ; " and the white, 
 wasted face, with the soul coming slowly back to 
 it, added its own silent, pathetic testimony to 
 these gratuitous verdicts. 
 
 One day, just at twilight, Rox opened his 
 eyes suddenly, with the fierce gleam and the 
 glassy dulness gone out of them, and they shone 
 strangely out of their great black hollows. He 
 had been lying so still for several hours, with
 
 144 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 such a gray pallor on his sharpened face, too, 
 that a terrible fear had smitten Keefe's heart, 
 and he had leaned his ear down softly to the 
 other's lips, out of which a thin flicker of breath 
 always came to testify that Rox Coventry was 
 not yet with the dead. 
 
 He looked about him now in a vague, per- 
 plexed way at first, as though he wondered how 
 he came there. He saw the tawdry yellow and 
 blue paper-hangings, the crimsons of the sunset 
 shining in at the small window panes, the huge log 
 in a splendid blaze on the hearth, and, best of all, 
 that stout, well-knit figure sitting near it, reading 
 the paper. 
 
 Keefe did not speak. He knew, all the time, 
 by some subtile magnetism, that Rox's eyes were 
 on him ; knew the very moment they opened, and 
 knew, also, that thought and memory were slowly 
 clearing up out of fog and darkness. But they 
 must take their own time, and that was a long, 
 long one. The sunset had paled, and the wind 
 was beginning to muster for its old riot on the 
 plains, when there came a ghost-like flutter of a 
 sound to Keefe's sharpened ears. 
 
 " I want to look at you." 
 
 Keefe rose up, and went and stood by the
 
 THE OVERSEER AND THE INVALID. Page 145.
 
 ONLT GIRLS. . 145 
 
 lounge, with his large, well-shaped figure, that 
 had wholly sloughed off the shambling awkward- 
 ness of its boyhood, strong and broad-breasted, 
 with his fine, manly face a face to be trusted 
 anywhere. 
 
 "Well, here I am," he said; and his cheerful, 
 hearty voice rung with the true metal of the soul 
 behind ; "a hundred and fifty pounds of good, 
 solid bone and muscle at your service, sir." 
 
 Rox gazed with his great, sad, hollow eyes at 
 the stranger. 
 
 " Who are you?" he asked again, in that 
 feeble, muffled voice of his. 
 
 " For the last two years overseer of the Red 
 Mountain Gold Mines, and thus far on my. way 
 to the east." 
 
 "Your name?" 
 
 He had to be chary of his words yet. 
 
 " It won't mean anything to you, but it's 
 Keefe Bartlett." 
 
 The invalid pondered that a few minutes, but 
 evidently could make nothing of it. He shook 
 his head in a weary way at last. Then he looked 
 up suddenly, and asked, 
 
 "Are you the man I meant to shoot the other 
 night?" 
 
 10
 
 146 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 ." How long have I been lying here ? " 
 
 "Three days." 
 
 " And you have been taking care of me ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " What did you do it for ? " 
 
 " Because you once did a great favor to some- 
 body I happened to know. But never mind; 
 we won't talk about that now. You are out 
 of the woods. You're close to the turnpike, as 
 we miners say." 
 
 "I shaU get well, you think?" 
 
 " Sound, and hearty, and jolly in a little 
 while." 
 
 Rox Coventry gave a little, sharp groan. 
 There was a dreadful misery in his eyes, as he 
 turned his head wearily a^ay. All his life for 
 the past two or three years rose up before him, 
 a hateful spectre, which he feared and loathed, 
 and yet which he felt must follow and hunt 
 him through all the days to come, through eter- 
 nities, it might be. He could not wipe those 
 years sweet and clean. They must stand there 
 forever with their folly, and waste, and wicked- 
 ness. 
 
 The overseer guessed at once what was passing
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 147 
 
 in the sick man's mind. He knew that if Rox 
 ever woke up and came to himself again, he could 
 only pass out from the life he had been leading 
 of late into a finer, purer atmosphere through 
 the dark valley of a terrible remorse, self-loathing, 
 and despair. Nobody could help him there. 
 That wine-press must be trodden alone. 
 
 But Keefe did what he could. He insisted on 
 Rox's taking some nourishment, and he talked 
 to him with that cheerful, magnetic voice of his, 
 and he ministered to all the invalid's wants with 
 those large, helpful hands, soft in their touch as 
 though they had been a woman's. 
 
 Rox was still too weak to demur at anything. 
 He had done a good many kindly deeds to one and 
 another in the days of his indolent, good-natured 
 prosperity, scattering abroad, in a thoughtless 
 way, a good deal as some happy May breeze 
 scatters her blossoms broadcast on the dumb, 
 waiting earth. Doubtless he had helped some 
 friend or relative of this man's over a rough 
 place ; but what kind of nature was that which 
 repaid its gratitude with such largess ? 
 
 Rox asked this question to himself a good 
 many times during the next day and night ; but 
 his thoughts groped and fumbled about in a con-
 
 148 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 fused sort of mist, and were always losing their 
 way, and getting into the thick dark. 
 
 Even that tragic scene in the bar-room only 
 shone out upon his memory in vivid glimpses and 
 flashes, and then shut down into the cloud 
 again. 
 
 It seemed to him sometimes that the over- 
 seer had mentioned Edith Folger's name ; but 
 when he tried to recall when, the whole thing 
 eluded him, and he was too weak still to think 
 steadily or intently. 
 
 So a day and a night went by. All this time 
 Keefe Bartlett had watched the invalid with a 
 tender, thoughtful patience, ministering to all 
 his wants, seeing that he had food and drink, 
 and warmth and air, and every possible comfort 
 which that lonely ranche away out there on the 
 edge of the sand barrens could command. The 
 tenderest, most delicate love could have done 
 no more. 
 
 Rox took it all quietly enough, too; the old 
 grace of speech and manner shining through all 
 the feebleness and general wreck of soul and 
 body. The grace was a habit, or rather an in- 
 stinct, with him. He never forgot to thank the 
 overseer for the slightest attention, and once or
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 149 
 
 twice he had a small joke a pale flicker of his 
 old, careless mirth over the trouble he was 
 making. No tears could have held so much 
 pathos. 
 
 But the conversation all this time hardly got 
 beyond monosyllables, and was confined to some 
 present need or feeling of the sick man's. 
 
 But Keefe was waiting. He knew that the 
 talk must come ; and the tune for it, too, came 
 sooner than he expected. 
 
 It was late in the evening now. Rox had 
 been falling into little dreamy, restful dozes 
 for hours. Keefe had been out to see the stars 
 uway up in the blue spaces of the sky, and to 
 drink a few breaths of the cold, crisp ah*, while 
 the night winds sobbed and trembled, and then, 
 taking heart, gathered together, and made a final 
 rush over the wide, dreary horizon. 
 
 Keefe had been gone only a few minutes. 
 When he returned, he found Rox's face turned 
 over on the pillow, with wide-open eyes. 
 
 The sick man looked at the stranger, who had 
 been showing more than a brother's care for him 
 all these days, with a curious wonder, which was 
 a healthful sign. 
 
 Since their last talk, Rox had seemed too feeble
 
 150 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 to take any vivid interest in anything about 
 him. 
 
 The words did not come first, only a groan ; 
 not loud, but there was a throb in it of self- 
 loathing and despair. 
 
 Rox Coventry had sinned against his better 
 self. Wronged, insulted, outraged, it rose up 
 now out of the dark years where he had trampled 
 and wasted it, and stood before him with its stern, 
 silent, reproachful face. No wonder it wrung that 
 groan out of the depths of him. 
 
 Keefe knew what his work was then. It must 
 go deeper than the wasted body he had been 
 tending so carefully all these days, and reach 
 the springs of life which were in Rox Cov- 
 entry's soul. 
 
 He came to the side of the lounge now. 
 
 "What can I do for you?" 
 
 " Nothing, thank you. You've done too much 
 already." 
 
 " Don't say that, I beg of you." 
 
 " It's the truth, though ; and a man who has 
 been doing all these days what you have for me 
 would be likely to want the truth. You've saved 
 my life, I fear!" 
 
 Then the two men looked at each other, Rox
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 151 
 
 with that dreadful, hopeless anguish in his 
 eyes; Keefe with a kind of bright, helpful 
 courage, which made his face that moment the 
 strong, homely, bronzed face a little like the 
 angels. 
 
 " I've meant to," he said, in a half trium- 
 phant, half reverent voice, "and I've had" a 
 kind of feeling all through that God meant I 
 should, too." 
 
 Rox shook his head slowly as it lay there upon 
 the pillow. " It's a wasted, spoiled life," he said. 
 " These last three years have ruined it. It would 
 have been better to let it go, my friend." His 
 voice the dry, hard, hopeless voice quivered 
 with a sudden softness over those last words. 
 
 "No. God and I know better than that. 
 Your life is saved to courage, and help, and man- 
 liness, and honor, Rox Coventry, as you once 
 saved another's." 
 
 He did not even then inquire whose. There 
 still stood before him, like a visible presence, 
 mute, and white, and passionless, with the awful 
 reproach in its face, that wronged, wasted, sin- 
 ning youth of his. 
 
 " You don't know what my life has been," he 
 said, " for the last three years down in all sorts
 
 152 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 of slums. I haven't courage to face it now. I 
 don't want to take it up again. It will only be 
 the old story over. What good is it? What 
 good have I ever done ? " 
 
 These dreadful remorses were the natural 
 reaction of the bright, elastic, finely-strung or- 
 ganization. Rox had sinned against great light, 
 and Nature took a revenge which she would 
 not on a coarser-fibred soul and body. 
 
 " You ask me what good you have ever done 
 me!" said the overseer. His voice was low, 
 and yet it seemed as though his feeling went 
 all through the words, and burned into them al- 
 most like a live flame. 
 
 They penetrated even the blackness of Rox 
 Coventry's mood that night. He did turn now, 
 and look at the speaker with a kind of won- 
 dering sympathy. 
 
 "Was it some woman, mother, sister, or 
 love ? " he asked. 
 
 " O, no, it was a man ! " and the oddness of 
 the question made Keefe Bartlett smile a little, 
 even then. 
 
 " Was he your brother ? " 
 
 " No, but somebody dear to me as my own 
 soul."
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 153 
 
 Then the words came the words for which 
 the other had been waiting so long. " Tell me ! " 
 
 The rushes of wind grew louder outside, like 
 ragged volleys of musketry. Drifts of clouds 
 swayed over, and then dropped away from the 
 sweet, solemn faces of the stars, shining pure 
 and calm up there in the heavens, with some- 
 thing to say to the soul of Rox Coventry, if he 
 would only turn and look at them. 
 
 But he did not now. The overseer had set 
 the kerosene lamp in the shade, and brought 
 the solitary wooden chair in the room close to 
 the low lounge, and had commenced telling his 
 story. 
 
 You knew it long ago ; and yet, if I could 
 only have told it at the beginning as Keefe 
 Bartlett did that night, in that bare, low-ceiled 
 back room of the ranche, told it with the vivid 
 life and the simple, homely pathos of his words, 
 it would be" quite another story to you. He 
 touched on that hard, bitter, grinding childhood 
 just enough to make it a background for what 
 came after ; then he pictured the young factory 
 hand, in his fierce, homeless desolation and de- 
 spair ; and as Keefe talked, it all came back 
 upon his soul, vivid and real as yesterday; and
 
 154 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 once more he stood in the corner by the office, 
 drinking in with sullen, envious greed the 
 talk which transpired that morning between the 
 Agawam Mills proprietor and his nephew. There 
 was a swift thrill, much like an electric shock, 
 all through the figure on the lounge, and 'the 
 sharpened face there suddenly brightened into 
 eager, wondering curiosity. You know the very 
 point at which Rox's memory cleared, and took 
 up the thread of a story in which he was the 
 principal actor. 
 
 He hung breathless upon every word after 
 that. He followed Keefe to the corner by the 
 hedge, where the latter had that strange interview 
 with Edith Folger ; and the half grave, half gay 
 talk with which Rox could have supplemented all 
 that came up now. He sat at the small lunch- 
 table in the alcove, with the soft, pale suuniness 
 coming in at the windows, and little, happy 
 flickers of wind among the honeysuckles, and 
 Edith's sweet face just opposite him. It seemed 
 to Rox like a glimpse into Paradise after the 
 door has been shut. 
 
 But Keefe kept on talking, and Rox soon for- 
 got everything els'e, holding his breath back not 
 to lose a syllable. He went down that lonely
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 155 
 
 track again, on his way to Plum Point Station, 
 and he knew now that Death was following close 
 behind him in the dark-faced, lumpish figure of 
 the factory hand! 
 
 The overseer's face grew white as he talked. 
 There was a husky tremble in his voice sometimes, 
 and once or twice he paused, and pushed back 
 his hair with a swift, agitated motion; but the 
 story kept on for all that, not leaving out a 
 sentence which had passed that noon between 
 the two as they stood in the tunnel-shaped hollow 
 of the hills, until the whole ended, at last, with 
 the factory boy lying alone on the ground, the 
 twenty-five dollars spread out in his palm, and 
 the hum of the bees in the grasses, and the soft, 
 gray-bellied clouds overhead, and Rox rushing 
 gayly down the track, in his youth and pride, 
 not knowing what Shadow had passed close 
 to him! 
 
 Everything had been slowly coming out strong 
 and clear in Rox's memory, as some painting, 
 touched by the dawn, grows slowly out of the 
 dark, until the whole is fresh and perfect. 
 
 Young Coventry saw, as he had seen it that 
 day, the large, lumbering figure of the young 
 workman. It was not singular that he discerned
 
 156 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 no hint of this in the broad-chested, well-built 
 overseer. It had taken years and manhood to 
 set free what grace and elasticity lurked in the 
 boy's heavy, overgrown figure. 
 
 When he paused at last, Rox knew all, even 
 to the throwing the pistol into the river. The 
 speaker was not conscious of it, but quivering in 
 the thick mustache were drops which had fallen 
 from his eyes while he talked. 
 
 Rox put his thin hands over his face. You 
 could see the warm rain of tears through his 
 fingers. The talk had gone where the overseer 
 meant it should to the hurt and despair in 
 the young man's soul. 
 
 "I did not suppose that in all this wasted, 
 ruined life of mine I had ever done so much 
 good. I thought I had lived in vain, utterly 
 in vain," he murmured under his breath. 
 
 " In vain ! " echoed the deep, shaken voice of 
 the overseer. " When you saved that boy from 
 murder ; saved him to courage, and honor, and 
 manhood; to all that he is now, or, ever will 
 be ! and you tell me, Rox Coventry, that your 
 life has been in vain?" 
 
 Rox took away his hands from his face, that 
 handsome, wasted face of his, and the despair
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 157 
 
 which had dulled and sharpened it a little wliile 
 ago was partly gone. 
 
 He looked at the overseer with some grateful 
 wonder in his eyes. "And you have been do- 
 ing all this for me," he said, " because of what 
 I did that day ! How you must have loved 
 him ! " 
 
 "I loved him," said the overseer softly; but 
 I think you might have heard his voice a long 
 way, " as I told you, like my own soul ! " 
 
 "I wish I could see that man your friend 
 once," said Rox, in a kind of sad, weaned voice. 
 " If I could just take his hand, and look into 
 his eyes, and he could tell me what you have 
 done, I am not sure, but it almost seems that 
 would give me courage to take up my life again, 
 and see what I could do with it." 
 
 Then the overseer stood up. He leaned over 
 the low lounge. There was a great joy in his 
 eyes. It grew aud grew until it gathered the 
 whole face up into its light. " Rox Coventry." 
 he said, and his voice had some new, clear 
 ring in it, as though the gladness in liis eyes 
 had somehow got down iuto his tones, " / am 
 the very boy who waited to rob if need were, 
 to murder you that day on the railroad; the
 
 158 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 boy who owes to you all that he is this hour ! 
 Will you shake hands with me ? " 
 
 Rox actually sprang up in bed as though a 
 shot had struck him. He stared at the overseer 
 with his burning eyes set in their great black 
 hollows. Whether any of the old likeness of 
 Keefe Bartlett, as he stood that day on the 
 track, entered ghost-like into Keefe's face, I 
 cannot tell ; but it never entered Rox's thought 
 to doubt one word of all which the overseer had 
 spoken ; not one. 
 
 He tried to speak. He placed both his hands 
 in the warm, brown ones of his friend, and then 
 there were no words the two men cried 
 together. 
 
 There was no sleep for either of them that 
 night. Keefe's story had not ended yet. There 
 was the rescue of Bessie Staines from the old 
 well, where she hung between the quiet sky, 
 that watched above, and the cold, quiet water, 
 that waited beneath ; and when the two years 
 .had slipped between, there was the wonderful 
 night at Bayberry Hills, with Rox and Edith 
 on the veranda, just as he had seen her last ; 
 "just a;s he could never see her again," Rox had 
 often told himself, when the sweet face of his
 
 - GIRLS. 159 
 
 cousin came up before him like a sorrowful, ac- 
 cusing angel, and the silver glory of the moon- 
 light was always around her, as it had been 
 that night at Bayberry Hills. "Poor little 
 Edith," Rox murmured to himself a good many 
 times that night, in his mournful, weak voice. 
 It was more than a year now since he had heard 
 from her. She had written the last letter', to 
 which he had never replied. How that must 
 have hurt her ! 
 
 And now Keefe's story went off to Creek 
 Farm, and told about his first visit there, and 
 the little girl who stood in the back yard feed- 
 ing her colt, and how the grand old farmer had 
 found him watching behind the barberry clumps, 
 and how Bessie had come to meet him, and the 
 joyful welcome that followed, and the happy 
 summer home at Creek Farm, the happiest of 
 his life, with the great, warm-souled man, and 
 
 the little girl with the wonderful purplish eyes, 
 
 
 
 and the sad, mother-faced woman. 
 
 And then there was, to crown all, the night 
 when the storm came, and set Edith Folger under 
 the roof-tree of Creek Farm, and the story she 
 told there to Keefe Bartlett ; and Rox, listening 
 in wondering amazement, forgot to say any more,
 
 160 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 "Poor little Edith!" "but all the time the words 
 ran in his heart. 
 
 It was very late when Keefe stopped talking, 
 and the wind had gone down outside, and all 
 the loud, coarse laughter, the clicking of glasses, 
 the heavy clatter of boots, which, coming from 
 the next room, had mingled with Keefe's talk, 
 was still now. The passengers had mostly dis- 
 appeared in the night stages, and the few who 
 remained had dropped asleep on the floor and 
 benches. 
 
 Keefe Bartlett rose up, and stood once more 
 by the lounge. "Perhaps I've done wrong to 
 tell you all this to-night," he said, seeing the 
 tired, white face on the pillows. 
 
 Rox took the large, brown hand in both his 
 slender ones. " My friend," he said, " how shall 
 I thank you ? " 
 
 " How what ? Do I not stand here the soul 
 that under God you saved?" 
 
 Rox looked up then. There was a sudden 
 light in his eyes, which made him look for the 
 first time like old Rox Coventry. 
 
 " And now, because of what I owe you, I am 
 going to save you, Rox Coventry ! You must let 
 me do it ! "
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 161 
 
 The strong, clear, hopeful voice ! It would have 
 put courage into any soul, it seemed. 
 
 Rox looked up doubtfully. He remembered all 
 the wrong, and weakness, and sin, the slums in 
 which, during these past years, he had mired and 
 trailed his soul. The worst of it all was, the 
 fibre of his will seemed eaten away, his moral 
 energies broken. " I've no faith in myself," 
 said Rox, drearily. " I don't believe I'm worth 
 saving." 
 
 "I'm to be the judge of that," answered the 
 hearty, helpful voice. "/, and beyond that, 
 God!" 
 
 Rox looked once more at the broad, stalwart 
 figure ; at the fine, honest face. A sudden hope 
 swelled in his soul and lit up his eyes. He placed 
 his hands in the overseer's. " If you will help 
 me, my friend, I will tiy ! " 
 
 And as lie said those words, the dawn sent 
 its first cold, gray flicker through the small 
 window-panes into the back room of Bear 
 Ranche. 
 
 There was some hard work for Rox Coventry 
 and Keefe Barllett after this. His own nature, 
 against which he had sinned so deeply, took an 
 11
 
 162 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 awful revenge on the young man. It could not 
 be otherwise. He had sinned against so much 
 light, and now his glooms and remorses were 
 terrible. I do not want to make Rox Coventry's 
 fall any wofse than it had been. He had con- 
 stantly been surrounded by men far more de- 
 praved than himself, and in his deepest lapses 
 he had never quite let go those old instincts of 
 honor and manhood which had shaped the ideal 
 .of Rox Coventry's youth. 
 
 There was no soul of man or woman who 
 could rise up against him in awful witness that 
 he had spoiled it. But after all, when you re- 
 member what Rox Coventry had been, and 
 brought the two likenesses together, it was 
 only to say, with Hamlet, 
 
 " Look here upon this picture, and on this ! " 
 
 For Rox had clear vision. He had discerned the 
 beauty and majesty of goodness ; therefore his sin 
 had been the greater. 
 
 Thrown totally upon himself, surrounded by 
 the coarse, demoralizing influences of a frontier 
 life, he had slowly taken on the complexion of 
 things about him. His indolent, good-natured,
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 163 
 
 absorbent temperament had not resisted the 
 poison of low associations. 
 
 It was no apology for him that only a well- 
 poised, lofty -tempered character could have done 
 this. 
 
 I will do Rox Coventry the credit to say that, 
 in his weakest hours, he never condescended to 
 wrap his sins in any such flimsy garments of excuse. 
 
 He had found the gravitation downward very 
 easy. Drinking and gambling did not seem very 
 bad, after all, where they were the social habit, 
 and at last the tone, the talk, the very atmos- 
 pheres of men whom his soul had loathed at the 
 beginning, became tolerable or agreeable to Rox 
 Coventry. 
 
 Then bad tidings came from the east ruinous 
 financial speculations, and wreck of most of his 
 fortune. 
 
 " The gods mean to desert me ! " muttered Rox 
 Coventry ; and that prophecy is very likely to 
 work out its own fulfilment. 
 
 Keefe Bartlett found .that, during the next 
 week, he had to do some of the hardest work 
 of his life ; and that was, infusing moral tone, 
 hope, courage, into a human soul. 
 
 Lifted up for a time into the warmth and light
 
 164 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 of some higher mood, Rox, with his shaken nerves 
 and impressible temperament, was always sinking 
 down into some dark, cold gulf of self-accusation 
 and despair. It was right .here that Keefe's 
 broad, helpful strength came to the rescue. He 
 argued, entreated, sustained. There was, about 
 all that he said and did, the power of one who 
 had wrestled with evil, and hi the end had not 
 been vanquished. 
 
 This was really the secret of the former factory 
 hand's influence over Rox; Keefe Bartlett was 
 himself a better argument than any he could offer, 
 as character is always mightier than words. 
 
 From time to time he gave Rox glimpses into 
 the misery of his boyhood ; into the struggle 
 and the hard grind of poverty. Rox remembered 
 his own gay, pampered youth with unutterable 
 stabs of self-reproach. 
 
 In his weakness of soul and body, he clung to 
 Keefe as one exhausted in deep water clings to 
 the strong swimmer ; and the overseer proved 
 himself equal to the burden, although Rox's 
 passions of remorse and despair wrung his friend's 
 breast with an aching pity. 
 
 But that friend was strong, helpful, master- 
 ful. And then to think of their relative posi-
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 165 
 
 tions a few years ago ; think out of what place 
 and circumstance Keefe Bartlett had lifted 
 himself ! There was something morally sublime 
 in that fact, before which Rox's soul stood 
 awed and ashamed. How in the face of that 
 great fact could Rox Coventry, even with his 
 weakened forces of body and soul, dare to say 
 still that "the gods were against him"? 
 
 One night, a week after Rox had learned his 
 friend's story, the two young men sat together 
 in the small back room at Bear Ranche. The 
 stage would be along in a little while, and the 
 two were to take it. 
 
 Rox, pale and emaciated enough, seemed little 
 able to endure the fatigue of a stage journey ; 
 but liis hungry eagerness to be off had at last 
 induced his friend to consent to his going. At 
 immense pains, the latter had secured fur skins 
 and warm robes, in which the slender youth was 
 to be buried during the long night ride. Outside 
 it was very clear. Little, tender sobs of wind 
 seemed to haunt the air, and overhead there 
 were countless stars, and among them a small, 
 thin, golden blade of new moon. 
 
 Rox was speaking. There was some freshening
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 in his tones that made them seem like the echo 
 of Rox Coventry's. Of late they had sounded 
 as though they came out of a grave, in their 
 dead-hopefulness. " What a kind, strong, help- 
 ful patience you have shown to me all this time ! 
 What a debt I shall owe you, Keefe Bartlett, if 
 I ever do come back to any life worth the living ! " 
 
 Keefe rose and stood, broad, and strong, and 
 stalwart, before the other. " You seem to forget 
 that what stands in these boots owes you any- 
 thing ; that whatever service I may render you, 
 I must be immeasurably in your debt, Rox 
 Coventry ! " 
 
 "As though you haven't paid that a thou- 
 sand times over! " 
 
 "Can a man pay for his soul?" asked Keefe 
 solemnly, but with a great light in the eyes he 
 benton Rox. 
 
 " Well, whatever good there was in it, I don't 
 deserve half the credit. If it had not been for 
 Edith's talk that morning what a brute I've 
 been to her! the thing never would have 
 entered into my mind. You owe the thanks to 
 her, not to me, Keefe Bartlett." 
 
 " And I owe some other thanks, too," said 
 Keefe, half speaking to himself, in a low, tender
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 167 
 
 tone. " Tliere was that little girl I pulled out 
 of the well. I see her now, with her small, 
 peaked face, and the great, velvety eyes, that 
 seemed the most of it, as they looked up and 
 searched me before she said, * O, I know you 
 are a good man ; nobody in the world could make 
 me believe you were anything but that ! ' I hear 
 the clear, fresh, childish voice, slipping along the 
 words, now. I heard them so often afterwards in 
 the dark and strain. They helped me up and 
 out into the light. I might have gone back, even 
 after what you had done, Coventry, if it had not 
 been for that child's words for her faith in me." 
 
 The tears came into Rox's great, sad eyes. 
 "You grand old fellow!" he said. "What a 
 fight you have had, and how nobly you have 
 won ! " Then he added in a moment, " Only 
 girls ! only girls ! but what do we owe them ! " 
 
 " It comes back again, after all, to that old say- 
 ing of uncle Richard's. There never was a true 
 or noble deed in the world without some woman 
 or girl was at the bottom of it. I believe it." 
 
 Keefe Bartlett drew himself to his full height ; 
 there was a light all over his face ; he did look 
 rather grand as he said this. 
 
 " So do I," added Rox, with a sudden flash of
 
 168 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 his old fire. "And if the miserable wreck which 
 sits here rolled up in your furs and skins, Keefe 
 Bartlett, ever gets to be man enough to go back 
 and face Edith Folger, I shall tell her all this." 
 
 " I wonder if I shall ever see Bessie Staines 
 again, and tell her," said Keefe to himself, hardly 
 above his breath. 
 
 At that moment there was a distant rumble, 
 then a thud of horses' feet, and a clattering, 
 grinding plunge and rush outside. 
 
 The stage had come !
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 169 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 f NCLE RICHARD!" she said. "Uncle 
 Richard ! " 
 
 If you had heard the voice, you would 
 have been likely to pause a moment and listen, 
 as one does when the sweetness of robin or thrush 
 breaks suddenly out of some thicket near by. It 
 was such a pleasant voice, with a clear, soft, silvery 
 ring in it, it could bear to raise its key, too, 
 without getting thin or sharp, as voices are apt 
 to when they mount into the high notes. It 
 seemed as though some real brightness of the 
 heart lingered along the dissyllables and shut 
 itself down with that final dental. 
 
 If you had turned back, as, hearing that voice, 
 you would be most likely to do, and looked up 
 the lane, out of which the words came, you 
 would have seen the speaker. 
 
 She had come up from a little branch-path that 
 led off from the highway, and she was leaning
 
 170 ONLY &IRLS. 
 
 on the stone-wall which enclosed the great apple- 
 orchard. It was a delicious day on the hither 
 side of October, a warm, golden soul of fore- 
 noon glowing deeper and deeper into the hours. 
 The air was full of warm, rich smells. All about 
 the girl were the vast heaps of shade thrown 
 by the wild-cherries great kingly trees, with a 
 few purplish-black globes, still showing amidst 
 the pale-gold of the thinning leaves. A Virginia 
 creeper flashed its crimson flame across the stone- 
 wall close to where the girl was standing. She 
 had gathered some pansies deep, bright gold, 
 with a narrow crimping of maroon at the edges 
 from a bed thick with bloom, a little way off. 
 While she spoke, she quite unconsciously laid the 
 blossoms against the coral of the creeper. The 
 contrasts struck her fine sense of beauty ; but, for 
 all that, the eyes gazing down on leaf and blossom 
 had a far absent-mindedness in their depths. 
 
 And such eyes as they were! The soul and 
 beauty of that girl's face as she leaned over the 
 stone-wall in the brown, warm air of the October 
 morning ! The rest of the face was nothing very 
 remarkable. It had a certain bright piquancy 
 all over its olive-glow. There were red lips with 
 dimples that could flash out prettily among the
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 171 
 
 smiles, and there was the soft roundness of youth 
 on cheek and chin, and hair with a chestnut gloss 
 over all , but the eyes were still, what they had 
 been in its sallow, peaked childhood, the charm 
 and beauty of Bessie Staines's face. They still 
 made you think of pansies, and damsons, and 
 purplish velvety things, in their dark, bright 
 clearness. She wore a cambric this morning, 
 the white ground barred with pink, and a straw 
 hat with a bit of snow-white plume. Everything 
 was fresh and tasteful about her ; the country- 
 bred girl did not aspire to fine ladies' toilets any 
 more than she took on their airs. 
 
 Uncle Richard, in the far corner of the orchard, 
 busy with two or three of the farm-hands in 
 gathering apples for the cider-mill, heard the 
 voice, and came up through the shadows and 
 the fine, fruity scents, and the grass over which 
 the white frosts had crept with a little, saddening 
 chill. These ten years since we saw him have 
 been dealing gently with the man. His hair is a 
 little thinner and grayer, and his step a little 
 heavier, and the great, tender soul of the far- 
 mer has been getting more and more into his 
 face. There is something really grand about him
 
 172 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 as he takes off his hat and wipes the perspiration 
 from his forehead. 
 
 " Well, my child, is it anything this time ? " 
 smiling on her with a tender pleasantness. 
 
 " Yes, it is something really," snapping off the 
 maroons and crimsons of the vine in a nervous 
 way , and then, looking up, she meets the curious, 
 waiting smile in his eyes. " It is very funny, too, 
 and a boggle withal. I want you to help me." 
 
 " Something, and funny, and a boggle. I can't 
 put the three together, child, and make it out." 
 
 "And I can't tell you, though I've walked 
 three quarters of a mile, and left Betty under 
 an avalanche of preserving quinces, and cling- 
 stones, and green-gages ; it was cruel, I know, but 
 I wanted to hear you say, I'd done right, wholly 
 right." Her voice fell a little with some doubt 
 or shyness in these last words; and there was 
 a little 1 thrill of a blush under the olive of her 
 cheeks they were not in the least rosy cheeks ; 
 they never would be. 
 
 Uncle Richard began to have an inkling of 
 what had brought his niece away out here to the 
 apple-orchard in the warm forenoon, right in the 
 heat, too, of a " preserving dispensation." He 
 put his large brown hand over the small, restless
 
 ONLr GIRLS. 173 
 
 one among the blaze of leaves. " Shall I guess ? " 
 he asked, simply. 
 
 " O, yes ; only you never can." 
 
 There was a little amused lifting of his iron- 
 gray eyebrows; and then uncle Richard said in 
 the quietest way, " Has Dr. Fleming been round 
 to inquire after mother's nerves this morning? 
 and after he was through with his professional 
 call, did he ask to have a private interview with 
 the daughter?" 
 
 She gave a start ; a real rose-glow spread all 
 over her face now ; the eyes, with a bright wonder 
 in them, stared in a half-scared way at the man. 
 " Uncle Richard, how did you know ? " she 
 faltered. 
 
 A shrewd light came all over the large, fine 
 face. " O, I am an old man, and I know the 
 weather-signs, Bessie." 
 
 "But you don't think /did? " a sudden grave 
 anxiety in her tones. 
 
 " O, no," in the tenderest voice. "I know my 
 little girl better than that better than that." 
 
 "And you know I meant to do right always, 
 and never dreamed of this?" 
 
 " I know it, Bes-ir." 
 
 " But it came so sudden ! and it's flurried and
 
 174 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 worried me. Mother is so shaken and easily 
 excited now, that I did not dare to go to her 
 with it, and I wanted to tell somebody, and so I 
 had to rush with my secret over to the apple- 
 orchard and you." 
 
 That little monosyllabic ending was touched 
 with such unutterable trust and tenderness, though 
 the fingers still shook nervously, fumbling at the 
 running flames of vine. * 
 
 She had come to the best and strongest sue 
 knew for help in her young doubt and tremulous- 
 ness ; the man saw that, and, what was better 
 still, he saw the kind of help she needed. 
 
 " Suppose you tell me," he said. " Or what if 
 we should change positions a moment, and I should 
 tell you?" 
 
 There were little wavy breezes of laughter all 
 through her answer. " O, you can't make me 
 believe you can do that, you old necromancer." 
 
 " Will you let me try, then ? " 
 
 " Yes," a little breathlessly. 
 
 "I think it must have happened very much in 
 this way. Dr. Fleming made a very proper, 
 gentlemanly, dignified speech about the friendly 
 regard which had deepened into admiration, and 
 at last affection, and ended wilh some fine ex-
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 175 
 
 pressions of devotion, and an offer of whatever 
 was included in himself, heart and hand ; worldly 
 possessions, of course, thrown in ; it was all done 
 in the most faultless manner. Dr. Fleming 
 knows how, and he is a gentleman." 
 
 The large, purplish eyes had been growing 
 dark with amazement. The girl broke out now 
 " Uncle Richard, you take my breath away. 
 How did you know?" 
 
 " O, I've seen it coming a good while." 
 
 " And not told me put me upon my guard ? " 
 There was just a hint of grieved reproach in her 
 voice. 
 
 " It could do no good ; only embarrass my little 
 girl, and I could trust her instincts to do right 
 when the time came. Thank God for that." 
 
 She drew a long breath, with a little ache or 
 doubt in it. 
 
 " Suppose I try again, I succeeded so well at 
 first?" 
 
 " Well, you may, uncle Richard." 
 
 " I think the little girl I know sitting in the 
 west parlor blushed and fluttered with a good 
 many feelings, hearing all this ; but when it was 
 through, and her tune had come to speak, I sus- 
 pect that she looked at Dr. Fleming with her
 
 176 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 honest face, and said with a quiver, it may be, in 
 her voice, but for all that with a straightforward- 
 ness which left no doubt of her meaning, said 
 something very much like this : ' You have done 
 me a great honor, Dr. Fleming. I shall never 
 cease to be grateful to you. I never dreamed 
 of it ; you must know that, and I am very sorry 
 that I can give you in return only liking and re- 
 spect; but I do these so thoroughly that I can 
 never allow you to marry a woman who does not 
 give you her whole heart.' ' 
 
 Not the girl's eyes alone this time, but her 
 whole face, seemed actually to have a scared thrill 
 of amazement. " Uncle Richard," she said, under 
 her breath, " what does it mean ? One would 
 think you must have been listening in the china 
 closet." 
 
 The older man laughed the round, mellow 
 laugh which could only come out of a soul true 
 and sweet with the seasoning of the years. 
 "On my honor, I wasn't," he said. "I was out 
 here getting my russets ready for the cider-mill." 
 
 She did not laugh in turn this time. There 
 was a little doubt or tremble in her voice as 
 she asked, "And you think I did right, uncle 
 Richard?"
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 177 
 
 The answer came, solemn and prompt, and very 
 tender, " Just right, my darling." 
 
 She brightened up quickly at that. 
 
 " I was a little afraid," she said. " It always 
 seems to me that a woman is more or less re- 
 sponsible for her offers ; but Dr. Fleming is so 
 much older than I, and always seemed so im- 
 mensely my superior, that I've joked and chatted 
 with him much as I should with you. Anything 
 like a flirtation is just horrible to me." A little 
 fiery gesture of scorn supplemented the words. 
 
 " lie will never think you meant that be 
 at ease there, Bessie." 
 
 At the calm, reassuring words, a mist of tears 
 flashed visible across her eyes. " O, it does me 
 good to hear you say that. I have been thinking 
 it might seem to him I was to blame for what 
 had happened." 
 
 " Set your sensitive little soul at peace there." 
 
 " It seems as though it must all be a dream ; 
 a great deal more than the one I had last nighfc. 
 To think Dr. Fleming, with his position, and his 
 culture, and his handsome middle-age, should 
 have taken a fancy to just little me ! Why, think 
 of the brilliant, accomplished women who would 
 be proud to marry him ! I don't deny I am very 
 12
 
 178 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 much flattered, but I am honestly a great deal 
 more astounded, uncle Richard." 
 
 " I see you are. Suppose we settle it all with 
 the old adage that ' there is no accounting for 
 men's tastes.' I will not express my private 
 opinion about the doctor's." 
 
 There were some more little breezes of laugh- 
 ter waving about the air, and she pulled his 
 gray beard with a sudden playfulness. Seeing 
 that, you would hardly have wondered at the 
 doctor's tastes, although her pretty playfulness 
 formed a very small part of the real attractions 
 of Bessie Staines. 
 
 Her uncle leaned with a sudden impulse over 
 the wall, drew the girl to his heart, and kissed 
 her cheeks. 
 
 " She wasn't ready to leave her old uncle was 
 she ? " he said ; and if you had heard the words, 
 you would have had some -new sense of what 
 that girl was to him. 
 
 "No; I don't believe she ever will be, uncle 
 Richard!" 
 
 There was no need she should add anything 
 to that. In a moment she spoke again. 
 
 " I think my wits were a little dazed by my 
 dream last night, and this morning's experience
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 179 
 
 quite upset them. Ordinarily I should have be- 
 haved better." 
 
 "You've no reason to reflect on yourself, my 
 dear. But- what was the dream ? " . 
 
 "It is sure to come once in a great while ; I 
 fear it will as long as I live. I am a little girl 
 again, and hanging in that old horror on the 
 well curb, and the sky looks down on me just 
 as it did that day, with its calm, pitiless blue, 
 and the water waits below with its bright, deadly 
 gleam, and there I hang ; and it is all so dread- 
 fully real ; and all of a sudden I hear the swift, 
 loud rush of steps, and a voice is shouting to 
 me to hold on, and I shall be saved ; and, looking 
 up, I see that boy's face leaning over the curb. 
 I suppose it was a dreadfully homely one, uncle 
 Richard, but it always looks beautiful to me, as it 
 did that day ; and then with a shock of gladness 
 and terror I am sure to wake up precisely at that 
 point. But the dream or the reality I don't 
 know which is sure to haunt me for days after- 
 wards. 
 
 " I don't like to have it, my child. Try and 
 push the whole behind with pleasanter memories." 
 
 " That's precisely what I do. But the dream 
 always brings that Keefe Bartlett poor fellow!
 
 180 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 up to me with singular vividness. "What do 
 you suppose has become of him ? " 
 
 " I should extremely like to know. I've always 
 had a feeling we should learn some time. There 
 was the making of a man in that youth." 
 
 "I have a kind of instinct," and now the 
 girl's small, rather brown fingers played with less 
 nervous touches with some of the bright vermilion 
 leaves of the creeper, " that no harm has come 
 to him, and that some time we shall see him. 
 It is singular, though, that he has never written 
 in all this time." 
 
 " Yes ; and the poor fellow seemed so grateful 
 when he was with us. I've an instinct, as you 
 say, however, that he will come back some time, 
 and justify himself." 
 
 " O, uncle," the girl burst out at this point, 
 " I could stay here in this delicious morning and 
 talk with you forever ; but there's the preserv- 
 ing." 
 
 There was a glint of humor in the gray 
 eyes. 
 
 "From proposing to preserving, Bessie! It's 
 a .heavy plunge, but I see it's not going to 
 swamp you." 
 
 " O, no ; you've steadied and strengthened
 
 ONLT GIRLS.- 181 
 
 me. What do girls do who have no uncle 
 Richards ? " 
 
 " And what do uncle Richard's do who have 
 no Bessies?" 
 
 She had gone down the lane a little way, when 
 he called that out to her, gone with the last 
 loving brightness of her smile, turned Lack 
 
 to him, with the soft golden air of the October 
 
 
 
 morning all around her. She heard the autumn 
 sounds, the humming hush of insects, the low, 
 
 I 
 
 clear gurgle of springs about stumps and stones, 
 the tender rustle of falling leaves, and faint 
 breezes, that seemed like the still steps of wor- 
 shippers. All around her were the glory and 
 splendor of a year, perfected and transfigured. 
 There was a still, unutterable gladness at her 
 heart. She forgot all about her dream, all about 
 the disturbing trouble of the morning. 
 
 Richard Staines leaned in his shirt-sleeves on 
 the stone-wall, and gazed after the rapid figure, 
 pink and white bars showing finely against the 
 dark greens of the lane. 
 
 The man's eyes were full of ineffable tender- 
 ness as he murmured, 
 
 " What a wife the woman would make who 
 t.ikes a proposal like this as that girl has done ! "
 
 182 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 I have held up this little side-scene to you be- 
 cause I know of no better way to show you what 
 kind of woman had burgeoned out of the tawny, 
 peaked child, whom Keefe Bartlett, twelve years 
 before, had drawn out of the well. 
 
 And if, in this half hour by the stone-wall, you 
 have not seen the real, vital woman shining 
 through all light disguises of speech and manner 
 you never will I
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 183 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 PAPA, it only proves the immortal truth 
 of the old song, ' There is no place 
 like home.' ' 
 Her voice fell from its young brightness into 
 the dear old sweetness of the tune. 
 
 It was Edith Folger's own voice. If you had 
 heard it when it said its good by to Rox Coventry 
 on the door-stone, you would have recognized the 
 bright, silvery quality still. Twelve years ago ! 
 and yet it did not seem possible, looking at that 
 girl as she sat there before the fire-light. If I 
 were going to describe her, I should have to do it 
 in the very words which I used at the beginning. 
 How gently these silent, mighty magicians of years 
 which had been dealing hardly with so many faces, 
 deepening the wrinkles and frosting the hair, had 
 dealt with hers ! They had only added a finer 
 charm to the wonderful sweetness of the face, 
 and the big, dusky blue eyes, and the glossy hair
 
 184 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 with flickers as though bright live things were 
 lost in it, and the pretty, unsteady flush of the 
 cheek were all here to-night as she turned to 
 her father with a smile. 
 
 And then you did see some change. The 
 sweetness had not been lost, only the years had 
 added something to it something of feeling, 
 tenderness, sadness. 
 
 There must have been some griefs or aches in 
 her life, all lives have those, you know, but 
 when the pain touches soul and smile as they 
 had touched Edith Folger's, they never do any 
 harm I mean vital harm. 
 
 There she sat in a sky-blue jacket, with a golden 
 vine in bright, heavy embroidery around the 
 edges of sleeves and lapels. She was in the 
 library, a small, cosy room which opened out of 
 the large one where so long ago she and Rox 
 had eaten their lunch before he started for Plum 
 Point Station, not suspecting what was lying in 
 wait for him on the road. 
 
 There was a wood-fire on the hearth, with 
 great, brass fire-dogs which had belonged to 
 Edith's grandmother. 
 
 There was one wide, beautiful cloud of flame. 
 It swept back-log and fore-stick into its golden
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 185 
 
 splendor, and rolled up the chimney after the 
 wind in a grand triumph of blaze. It shed a 
 bright glory over the whole room, and seemed 
 to quite put out the pale, silvery gleam of the 
 gas-lights. Opposite Edith sat her father, with 
 his papers ; the owner of Agawam Cotton Mills, 
 more prosperous and portly than ever. 
 
 The years Had not dealt quite so gently with 
 him as they had with his daughter ; still they 
 have not been hard on the great man of 
 Agawam. 
 
 You would know him at once for the brisk, 
 prosperous manufacturer, who had that pleasant 
 talk with his nephew so long ago on the office 
 doorsteps. His movements are a thought slower 
 now, and his hair has turned quite gray, and he 
 is in his own house, the " urbane, hospitable, 
 jocose ' ' gentleman we first knew. 
 
 The two had only returned the day before from 
 a year's tour in Europe. Mr. Folger had gone 
 abroad partly for his health, partly for his daugh- 
 ter's sake. London and Paris, Rome and Venice, 
 the Alps and the Rhine, cathedrals and picture- 
 galleries had engrossed their thought and time 
 during the last year, and yet both felt a supreme, 
 restful satisfaction in tilting, that frosty October
 
 186 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 night, in that small, dark, wainscoted library 
 before that glowing wood-fire. 
 
 Mr. Folger put down his paper. "There may 
 be just as good places in the world as Agawam," 
 he said, " but I have never found them." 
 
 " Nor I, papa, in all our rushings." 
 
 He looked at her and smiled with a fond pride. 
 " I'm afraid it will seem a little humdrum, after 
 the first novelty has worn off, to settle down into 
 the old ways and places." . 
 
 " It's a groundless fear, papa. The dear old 
 ways and places ! All that grand Europe across 
 the sea has nothing like them." 
 
 He smiled on her again with affectionate pride. 
 " I had a fear, sometimes, they might make my 
 little girl think the contrary." 
 
 She understood what he meant. The flush in 
 her cheek was like a school-girl's. Evidently the 
 world had not spoiled her. " Papa," with a 
 kind of swift annoyance in her voice, "I did 
 not suppose you could be so absurd. As though 
 anything would ever be to me like you and 
 Agawam ! " 
 
 " Well, so long as you are in that frame of mind, 
 I shall be absolutely satisfied," laughed the gentle- 
 man ; and ho returned to his paper.
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 187 
 
 Edith sat a good while very still, watching 
 the swift, golden current of flame. Shadows of 
 thoughts and memories came into her face, and 
 made a tender sadness there. 
 
 At last she drew out a long, sighing " O, 
 dear ! " 
 
 "What is it?" said her father, putting down 
 his paper again. 
 
 " Old things come up so, papa ! " a kind of 
 plaintiveness in her voice. 
 
 "What things?" 
 
 " Lojjg ago things. Tunes and scenes. I've 
 been all around the house and rooms to-day ; and 
 in every path, and covert, and corner, the old, 
 happy days started up and haunted me. Poor 
 Rox!" 
 
 Her father was always impatient when she 
 mentioned that name. He had been dreadfully 
 disappointed and angry at the way his sister's 
 son had "turned out," and his condemnation of 
 his nephew's course had been so severe, that 
 Edith had, of late years, almost forborne to men- 
 tion her cousin's name; the sharp blame hurt 
 her so. 
 
 Her father moved uneasily in his arm-chair.
 
 188 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 She knew what was coming, and hastened to 
 avert it. 
 
 " Everything brings him back to me," she said. 
 " It seems as though he had left hints and re- 
 minders of himself in every place : there are the 
 stag's antlers above my chamber door, that he 
 placed there on my birthday, and brackets in the 
 corners, and engravings on the walls ; and outside 
 it is just the same: shrubs and vines that he 
 planted, and the pretty rockery he made, with 
 that lovely group of Dryads to crown it, and they 
 all seem a part of himself. He was such a grand, 
 generous, noble 'fellow, until he went out west, 
 and I loved him instead of the brother I never 
 had. Poor Rox ! " and the dusky-blue eyes glim- 
 mered through tears. 
 
 " I can't have any patience with the fellow," 
 said Bryant Folger, in a tone where you could 
 feel the grief struggling with the strong man's 
 disappointment, " when I remember "what his op- 
 portunities were, and what he has thrown away. 
 
 " What right had he, with his gifts and culture, 
 to set off .for the frontiers, and sink himself into 
 vagabondage amongst rough miners, hunters, and 
 rascals in general ! 
 
 " Wrecked his fortune, too, when he might
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 189 
 
 have staid at home and saved the bulk. I had 
 a plan of taking him into the mills, giving him 
 a grand berth there ; but if a man's once bent 
 on going to the devil, you can't stop him." 
 
 " But maybe the Lord can ! " exclaimed Edith, 
 with some feeling that seemed almost defiance 
 kindling in her face, " and I don't believe lie has 
 done with Rox. I know that bit of a letter I got 
 more than a year ago, might be only what you. 
 called it, a " thin streak of remorse ; " but there 
 were some words which had a true ring in them 
 ' I have come to the grief which you said, that 
 last night when we sat in the moonlight, the 
 night I have never forgotten, would break your 
 heart ! 
 
 " ' Don't let me do that, Edith. I haven't much 
 faith in myself; but if I ever get to be a man 
 again, I shall come back and ask you to forgive 
 me, and then 3-011 will know all the share you 
 have had in -saving me." 
 
 She knew the words by heart. She went over 
 them now in a soft, tender undertone, almost 
 as one might last loving words from the dead. 
 
 " Such a letter seems, I know, a very frail 
 reed to lean on ; but I can't help feeling what he 
 says is true, and I cannot give him up, papa
 
 190 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 the old Rox I was so proud of that I loved and 
 trusted so." 
 
 " Well, child, you needn't. I hope the young 
 rascal will come to his senses yet. There was 
 such good stuff in him, if it had only been well 
 seasoned, before he took that mad fever of play- 
 ing savage much good has it done him. But let 
 him go for to-night ; and, my dear, I should like 
 to hear you play ' Sweet Home ' again, and then 
 it will be bed-time." 
 
 She rose up at once, and went to the piano on 
 one side of the library, running her fair fingers 
 over the familiar keys. A sudden sweetness of 
 sounds thrilled the air, and then there was a 
 knock at the door. 
 
 Edith half paused and answered, thinking it 
 was one of the servants. The door opened, and 
 the figure of a man stood there ; rather slender 
 and young, with a thick, brown beard. 
 
 He stood quite still a moment, when his gaze 
 met the girl at the piano. As for her, she stared 
 a moment, and then a swift change came over 
 her ; she grew very white. 
 
 "Edith!" he said, "Edith!" 
 
 Then she knew it was he, and not a ghost in 
 the doorway, staring at her. She sprang to her
 
 ONLY GIRLS, 
 
 feet, her whole face in a radiant, unutterable 
 gladness. 
 
 "Rox! O, Rox!" she faltered. 
 
 " t l have come back, Edith, as I told you I 
 would, if I ever grew to be a man again ; but I 
 have no right here until I have heard you say 
 you forgive me." 
 
 She did not say it, because she could not ; but 
 she put out her arms, and he took her into his 
 and kissed her. 
 
 All this time Bryant Folger had stood by the 
 mantel in dumb amazement. The nephew had 
 not seen his uncle, but of a sudden, Edith lifted 
 her head and drew him over to her father. 
 " Papa," she said, and there rang through her 
 low, clear voice a bright, ineffable gladness, as 
 though an angel was speaking out of some long 
 waiting and doubt that ended hi joyful certainty, 
 "it is the old Rox come back again." 
 
 Her father looked a moment at the fine, manly 
 face, at the figure, heavier and broader now, but 
 still carrying itself with the old slender grace of 
 the youth ; then he, too, put out his hands, and 
 grasped and wrung his nephew's. 
 
 " Rox, my boy," he said, " welcome home 
 again."
 
 192 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 What a night they had! sitting up through 
 the whole of it to talk. The silent frosts at work 
 meanwhile outside, and at last, a cold, gray-blue 
 dawn creeping up across the dark before they 
 separated. 
 
 The talk went everywhere, except to that black 
 past, which Rox would never hold up to human 
 gaze. That was between himself and God ! 
 
 The dark gulf lay in his life, with all its awful 
 remorses, and bitter memories, and out of their 
 despair the old Rox Coventry had come, a wiser, 
 tenderer, nobler man than the generous, luxuri- 
 ous, careless youth could ever have made him. 
 
 What touched him deepest of all was that there 
 were no reproaches, no hints of anything gone 
 wrong from any side. It was as though he had 
 been absent for a day, and returned at night to 
 the heart of the old home at Agawam. 
 
 He had something, however, to say to Edith 
 alone ; he could not confide it even to the gener- 
 ous forbearance of his uncle. 
 
 He said it next day, as they two sat together 
 in the warm, golden noon by a great bay-window, 
 with the broad, green terraces just below, and 
 the flower-beds beyond, in all the splendid blaze 
 of their autumn bloom.
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 193 
 
 
 
 " Edith, I want to tell you something about it." 
 
 She understood. "Don't do it, if it must be 
 a pain, Rox." 
 
 " It would be if I kept it to myself. This part 
 belongs to you." 
 
 And then he told her about that night 
 at the stage station on the plains. She wax A 
 woman now. She knew there were wrong and 
 sin in the world ; she could bear to look at them, 
 when need were, with her pure, pitying eyes. 
 
 Rox, it is true, did not paint the whole scene 
 which had transpired that evening, four years 
 ago, in the bar-room of Bear Ranche. 
 
 Uut he told his cousin how the wild, rough 
 life, the varied hardships, the companionship of 
 coar.se, bad men, above all, the vile drink, had 
 done their evil work on soul and body ; how a 
 friend had found him in the midst of low com- 
 panions, frenzied with rum and rage, and saved 
 Rox, at the very last moment, from commit- 
 ting murder ; how, when consciousness and life it- 
 self had almost ebbed, this friend staid behind in 
 that lonely ranche, nursing him back to life and 
 hope, with more than a mother's tenderness ; how 
 at last they had gone away together; how this 
 friend, strong, uplifting, brave, patient as Rox 
 13
 
 194 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 t 
 
 had thought none but God could be, had borne 
 with him, revising his previous intention of re- 
 turning east, in order that he and Rox might 
 remain together; and his example, and love, 
 and helpful courage had shamed, and urged, and 
 at last brought back young Coventry to his old 
 better self, to some manhood stronger and nobler 
 than that, he hoped, to God. 
 
 Rox had been with this friend for the most 
 part during the last four years, as book-keeper at 
 first, later as assistant superintendent of the 
 mines. 
 
 Edith was greatly moved with the whole 
 story, though she listened quietly, with her 
 hand shading her eyes, and a tremble about 
 her lips. 
 
 "If I could only once see and thank that 
 man, your friend, Rox." 
 
 " My friend yes, Edith, more than that ;. my 
 preserver, without whom I should not be sitting 
 here to-day." 
 
 There was a little solemn, beautiful silence. 
 
 " But you forget, Rox, you haven't told me 
 his name." 
 
 " Keefe Bartlett just ! " 
 
 " Keefe Bartlett!" She repeated it once or
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 195 
 
 twice. " It seems as though I must have heard 
 it before. I am sure I have ! " 
 
 He let her ponder for a while, watching her 
 with a curious, pleased look. At last it all cleared 
 up in a flash. There was the fierce gale outside, 
 and the pleasant sitting-room at Creek Farm, 
 with the grand old master, and the sad, kindly- 
 faced mother ; and there was Bessie Staines with 
 her wonderful eyes, and the dark-faced silent 
 young stage-driver, who had dragged her out 
 of the well , and Edith herself was sitting in 
 their midst telling the story of Rox's walk to 
 Plum Point Station, and the strange thing that 
 happened on the way. 
 
 " Did he remember ? " she faltered. 
 
 " Yes, Edith, if it had not been for you, Keefe 
 Bartlett w^ould never have known me that night 
 at Bear Ranche station." 
 
 This was strictly true." There was more be- 
 yond, but that involved another's secret. Perhaps 
 Edith would know some time. 
 
 She believed now it was her story, that night, 
 which had awakened this profound interest for 
 her cousin in Keefe Bartlett's soul, ending at last 
 in his long, beautiful service. 
 
 " How wonderful it all is ! " she murmured.
 
 196 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 "And he had had no chances, I remember, of 
 any sort; he was only a stage-driver." 
 
 "No matter he is a real hero; the grandest, 
 noblest fellow in the world ! " said Rox, enthu- 
 siastically. 
 
 But Edith was crying ; tears that were more 
 than words in their silent, unutterable, prayer- 
 ful joy. 
 
 At last she looked up with her glad, wet face. 
 "This friend of yours, Rox, where is he?" 
 
 "At Creek Farm if not now, in a day or 
 two." 
 
 " You will take me out there, Rox ? It seems 
 the fitting place to thank him." 
 
 "Yes."
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 197 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 r HERE it was ! Somebody at the front 
 door ! Bessie Staines was sorry to hear 
 the loud, sharp, twanging sound of the 
 old brass knocker which had done duty at Creek 
 Farm for half a century. The summons came like 
 a harsh, intrusive voice from that outer world 
 which seemed to have no rights here to-night. 
 She wanted to shut every foreign thing out from 
 the heart of this beautiful home quiet, and warmth, 
 and brooding joy, for this one evening, just. The 
 other claims should have their time and place ; 
 but this night seemed to belong solely to them- 
 selves ; the trio about the wide old hearthstone 
 uncle Richard, her mother, and herself. 
 
 Any new entrance there must be like a jan- 
 gliug discord in the harmony. 
 
 Some such thoughts went half consciously 
 through the girl's mind in the instant or two 
 before she rose up after hearing the knocker.
 
 198 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 Just at this flash of time I want you should 
 glance inside the room ; it is the very one 
 where, long ago, Edith Folger sat in a little 
 heart of peace and shelter, while the great 
 summer-storm raged outside, and told her story 
 to breathless listeners ; above all, to that strange, 
 brown, silent youth in one corner. 
 
 To-night it is very quiet outside. The late 
 frosts are busily at work. The summer has gone 
 softly away at last, and left them to have their 
 own will with her beauty of grasses, and leaves, 
 and blossoms. 
 
 Yet those black, devouring things come as 
 soft and tenderly as her spring sunshine and her 
 summer rains as softly, uncle Richard says, "as 
 old age does, stealing along with white hairs and 
 deepening wrinkles, so quietly, that one does not 
 feel the ringers until at last he finds the old worn- 
 out body is done with, and the soul is ready and 
 waiting for the larger blessedness." And if you 
 had seen the old man's face when he said this, 
 the words would seem to have quite another mean- 
 ing from the one they have reading them here. 
 
 There was a wood fire on this hearth also ; 
 a great birch log supported by maple and chest- 
 nut, and all taken up in one wide, surging pplen-
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 199 
 
 * 
 
 dor of flame, that rushed into the great, black- 
 throated chimney. 
 
 Mrs. Staines sat on one side of the fire. She 
 has grown pale and worn in these years, but 
 pain and the slow failing of the life-springs have 
 spared the motherliness in her face. She will 
 carry that down to the grave which awaits her, 
 not many years off. She is almost a confirmed 
 invalid now, and the daughter has fairly taken 
 the mother's place as mistress of the household. 
 
 There she sits, quite idly, by the globe of the 
 great kerosene lamp. She has been cracking 
 walnuts. A tempting heap lies in an old-fash- 
 ioned, blue-rimmed, China urn on the small table, 
 and close to them is a glass dish piled with 
 great, beautiful pears, brown, with streaks and 
 dashes of red ; the summer's ripe, wine-like 
 juices bottled in those glowing rinds. Uncle 
 Richard, in his green dressing-gown, which be- 
 comes his fine gray head, has a wonderfully pa- 
 triarchal look to-night. He is reading scraps of 
 news from the daily paper, which finds its way 
 up to Creek Farm every night from the distant 
 city. 
 
 So the knock comes jarring and intrusive into 
 this homely peace and warmth.
 
 200 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 " Perhaps it is somebody in trouble," Bessie 
 thinks, with a little prick of conscience, as she 
 slips off the buff apron and goes to the door. 
 
 She wears a dress of some dark crimson wool, 
 with a bit of snowy frilling about the neck ; the 
 light from the hanging lamp falls upon her as 
 she opens the front door and looks up at the 
 stranger standing there, with those damson-pur- 
 ple eyes of hers ; he has seen them before ; he 
 thinks of the time now. 
 
 The stranger lifts his cap to the girl, and she 
 flushes under the olive of her cheeks, and decides 
 that he is a gentleman. 
 
 " Does Mr. Richard Staines live here ? " in a 
 clear, manly kind of voice. 
 
 " Yes ; will you walk in, sir ? " says the girl ; 
 and the stranger enters the hall and follows his 
 hostess into the light and warmth of the old sit- 
 ting-room a wonderful contrast to the chill and 
 darkness outside, where the frosts are having it 
 all their own way. 
 
 Uncle Richard looks up, and then rises as the 
 stranger enters. He sees a broad-shouldered, 
 sturdy, well-built young man, with thick, brown- 
 ish hair and beard ; a pleasant, shrewd, manly 
 face, too. He wonders if he ever saw it before.
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 201 
 
 Mrs. Staines, too, in her thickly-padded inva- 
 lid's chair, looks at the stranger with the motherly 
 face he remembers so well. He comes forward ; 
 he puts out his hand to uncle Richard, and as 
 he looks at the kingly old farmer, his whole face 
 lights up with a glad, reverential joy. 
 
 " Mr. Staines uncle Richard," says the stran- 
 ger, in a voice that you rather feel than hear 
 has a shake in it, "won't you find a name 
 for me ? " 
 
 Uncle Richard settles his glasses and gazes 
 very earnestly at the stranger. The mellow 
 sweetness of the old man's smile comes into 
 his face. " My friend," he says, shaking his 
 gray head, " I'm afraid you will have to help 
 me." 
 
 But Bessie has been standing just behind her 
 uncle, where the lamp shines full upon the 
 stranger. She has been gazing with a breathless 
 intentness; suddenly a great light shoots into 
 her eyes, and takes up her whole face, and th& 
 words come in a kind of amazed cry " Keefe 
 Bartlett ! " 
 
 He turns, his whole face full of a bright glad- 
 ness, and gives his hands to the girl. Then they 
 all know.
 
 202 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 " Welcome back again. We've lost you for all 
 these years," said uncle Richard, as he wrung 
 Keefe's hand ; and then it was Mrs. Staines's 
 turn. When it came to her, the young man put 
 his face right down to the thin, withered cheek 
 and kissed it, remembering the time when she 
 had put her arms about his neck in that moth- 
 er-way. They made him welcome as though 
 it was to his own home he had come that 
 night. 
 
 There was so much to tell and to hear ! Keefe 
 had written several times, but the overland mails 
 were slow and uncertain, and Keefe's letters had 
 never gained Creek Farm. It was ten years 
 since he had left them, going west to seek his 
 fortunes the very autumn that he gave up stage- 
 driving. 
 
 He had at first found employment and gained 
 experience in Chicago before a tempting offer 
 took him out to the mines, where they had all 
 lost sight of him. 
 
 But Keefe's face and voice spoke more for him 
 than his own story did that night. He was 
 rather modest and reticent when it came to 
 talking of his own fortunes ; he hardly made 
 himself the central figure of scenes and places ;
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 203 
 
 but they knew that it had been well with him 
 in that deep sense in which it can alone be 
 well with any of us. 
 
 There was that in Iris whole air and bearing 
 which told of the brave, masterful soul of the 
 manly heart and mind which had struggled and 
 conquered. 
 
 In the course of the talk Keefe touched on 
 Rox Coventry ; said that he had met him out 
 west, when he was sunk low in sickness and 
 trouble of various kinds ; that he had it in his 
 power to render the young man a good deal of 
 service, for which Coventry had been extrava- 
 gantly grateful. Business had brought them 
 into close companionship during the last four 
 years, and a deep mutual respect and attach- 
 ment had been the result. Keefe knew young 
 Coventry for a generous, noble fellow, who had 
 struggled and conquered where the odds were 
 greatly against him. Rox was now at Agawam 
 with his uncle. He knew Keefe was expecting 
 to visit Creek Farm, and it was likely the former 
 might be over the following day. 
 
 The hearers were all curious and interested 
 in Rox's fortunes, remembering Edith's story ;
 
 204 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 but he slipped quite into the background before 
 Keefe Bartlett. Then there, too, was the little 
 girl he had dragged out of the well on that 
 memorable day. It must have been in the 
 thoughts of both to-night, although neither al- 
 luded to it. 
 
 Yet the young man could hardly believe that 
 this fair flower of womanhood had burgeoned out 
 of the small, peaked, sallow-faced child he had 
 dragged over the well-curb ; but the eyes held 
 their purplish radiance still; he had never seen 
 any eyes like those, Keefe thought, in all his 
 wide wanderings. 
 
 They were searching his face too, a little shyly, 
 the bronze, striking face, to find some li ken ess 
 to that of the boy's who had leaned over the 
 well in the child's strait of agony, with help and 
 pity in his looks and words ; and the halo which 
 the coarse, heavily-moulded features wore then 
 to the girl's gaze, still lingered around the strong, 
 manly ones which thought and time, and his 
 own soul, had been chiselling for Keefe Bartlett. 
 Yet there was no restraint in the talk of the 
 young man and woman. 
 
 It was simple and bright, like the old pleasant
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 205 
 
 friendship of the youth and the child, and its 
 swift current flowed through grave moods or 
 gay ones far past the hour of midnight, and 
 outside the silent black frosts were at their 
 work, and over all the shining stars of God.
 
 208 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 next day, just in the warm, mellow 
 noon-sunniness, Rox Coventry came. He 
 did not come alone. He had brought his 
 cousin with him on the noon-train, which, during 
 the last month, had stopped at the junction, not 
 more than half a mile below Creek Farm. 
 
 Edith had not been under the roof since the 
 summer-tempest, years ago, had driven her there. 
 She was always planning to return to Bayberry 
 Hills, but something was sure to break up her 
 rustic little programme, and sweep her off in 
 some gay current of life. But she had come 
 back now, with her heart very full of the old 
 visit, very full of a great deal else too. 
 
 She wore some soft, silky fabric, of a tender 
 violet shade, with dark-blue knots at her throat, 
 and a simple native grace shining in every move- 
 ment. You could not have looked at the girl 
 without loving her, and in a different way one
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 207 
 
 might say the same of Bessie Staines, who camo 
 to meet her ne\v guests in the pretty alpaca with 
 a bright ainher glow in all its folds, which she 
 wore in honor of KeeiVs arrival. 
 
 It is true one of the young women had had 
 every possihle advantage which wealth, culture, 
 and travel could bestow, while the farmer's niece 
 had hardly been a hundred miles from home in 
 her life, yet she had a bright, graceful charm of 
 her own, that did not suffer when it was brought 
 face to face with the Agawam proprietor's beauti- 
 ful, high-bred daughter. 
 
 Bessie Staines made you always think of some 
 delicious little waterfall that sings and sparkles 
 in cool, green depths of the forest. 
 
 The first greetings were hardly over when 
 Edith turned of a sudden and held out her hand 
 to Keefe Bartlett. Her soul was in her face. It 
 was in that very room, too, where, long before, 
 she had thanked liim for what he had done to 
 Bessie Staines. 
 
 The gesture now reminded all who witnessed 
 it of that other scene in this very room. 
 
 "Ah, my friend,'' she said, ' he has told me all ! 
 How shall I thank you ? ? ' Her voice broke here,
 
 208 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 and there was a flash of tears across the blue of 
 her eyes. 
 
 Keefe turned to his friend, with a question and 
 reproach in his looks. Rox made a little, sig- 
 nificant, negative sign, which Keefe interpreted, 
 and which the others did not see. 
 
 Keefe held the hand which Miss Folger had 
 given him. " I don't deserve any thanks, and 
 therefore if you offer them, they will only make 
 me uncomfortable." 
 
 They were very simple words, but some quiet, 
 reserved force of character had been all these 
 years growing more and more into Keefe 's speech 
 and whole bearing. 
 
 Edith could not comprehend the look of tender, 
 half reverential gratitude which shone on her, 
 but she did perceive that the young man shrank 
 from any allusion to the subject of which her 
 own heart was so full. 
 
 Uncle Richard had come in with Keefe to 
 greet his guests, the two men being out-doors 
 surveying the changes on the farm-grounds, at 
 the time of the young people's arrival. 
 
 Edith was delighted to see her old friend, and 
 told him he had grown handsomer than ever;
 
 ONL r GWLS. 209 
 
 age improved him ; which was true enough. It 
 is apt to be of men like Richard Staines. 
 
 The visit which followed was as delightful as 
 possible. Even the pale, patient, invalid mother 
 forgot her feebleness as she entered into the 
 bright, magnetic time. 
 
 The day had a tender, brooding softness, as 
 though it was doing its best to make up for the 
 loss and ravage of the night's black frosts. 
 
 We all know such days; dim, quiet, restful. 
 They have not the wide-spread splendor, the 
 varied glories of color, that have gone before; 
 but what a still, divine peace broods through 
 those warm, golden hours, glowing between the 
 chill, late mornings, and the black selvages of 
 frosty nights ! 
 
 It was singular how much they all found to 
 talk about, precisely as though they had known 
 each other all their lives, instead of meeting now 
 for the first or second time. 
 
 They loitered in doors and out, these four 
 young people with uncle Richard ; they feasted 
 on the brown golden pears, and the purple wine 
 of great clusters of late grapes; they flashed up 
 sometimes in the merriest jokes ; and the young 
 men, especially Rox, sketched bright, strong, 
 14
 
 210 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 dramatic pictures of scenes of life out on the 
 frontiers. 
 
 He had far finer gifts of expression than his 
 friend, but there was a quiet force, a latent 
 strength in Keefe's very presence, which made 
 itself felt even when he was quite silent. 
 
 Edith was immensely struck with the change 
 which the years had wrought in the stage- 
 driver. She would never have known him for 
 the shy, crude, lumbering youth who had driven 
 the Black Hawk Mountain stage, any more 
 than she would the bright, graceful, charming 
 girl for the curious, peaked, sallow, large-eyed 
 child who had hung around her that night of 
 the summer gale. 
 
 But the soul of this visit that which gave it 
 power and significance never to be forgotten by 
 any of these people, was what happened after the 
 supper was over, and they had all gathered in 
 the warm, old keeping-room which was really 
 the heart of the homestead of Creek Farm ; and 
 outside the frosts were getting ready for their 
 work again. 
 
 Another .great chestnut log, and birch boughs 
 around it, waved a splendid orinamme in the 
 chimney.
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 211 
 
 Behind them the kerosene burned tinder its 
 soft ground shade, and they all sat in a crescent 
 between the two lights. 
 
 Rox's gaze went from one face to the other. 
 " I'm so unutterably glad we came, Edith ! " he 
 said. " It's good to be here." 
 
 Bessie's laugh flashed out like sunshine at that 
 speech. " Why, Mr. Coventry, that is precisely 
 what Peter said to the Lord on the Mount of 
 Transfiguration," she said. 
 
 " So it was, Miss Bessie, but I was not think- 
 ing of Peter, only of the present fact." 
 
 In a moment Rox's gaze had gone over to his 
 Mend who sat just opposite. There was a 
 great seriousness in young Coventry's face, a 
 tender light in his eyes. 
 
 " Bartlett," he said, " I want to tell them to- 
 night. We are all friends, and they ought to 
 know." 
 
 Keefe moved uneasily. He knew he would be 
 the central figure in Rox's story. " I would 
 rather you did not, Coventry," a kind of dep- 
 recating appeal in his voice. 
 
 " But it is my right. I feel as though I ought 
 to do this," urged the other; and after that 
 Keefe said no more.
 
 212 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 So Rox told the story of that night at Bear 
 Ranche Station to these people of Creek Farm. 
 Its darkest features were fresh, even to Edith 
 Folger ; for this time he disguised nothing, threw 
 no veil over the sin and shame, and the vivid 
 horror of the ending. The only thing he left out 
 was the last clause of the message which the 
 overseer had sent to Edith Folger. One saw 
 the young man standing there, calm, brave, Un- 
 flinching, waiting with folded arms for the 
 murder which Rox, in his madness, was bent 
 on, and afterwards young Coventry told the 
 of the long, tender, helpful patience of his 
 friend, which Rox said had given himself a new 
 sense of God's pity and love, and they learned 
 how Keefe had remained by him, nursing, cheering, 
 strengthening the sick body and soul, and never 
 left him for years, until the work was done, and 
 Rox had regained his lost honor and manhood. 
 
 When he paused there were no dry eyes in 
 the crescent between the kerosene and the coals. 
 
 It was very hard for Keefe, though. He did not 
 at all relish sitting still and seeing himself held 
 up a hero to everybody's eyes. 
 
 He flushed all over his face, not with the 
 bright vividness of a girl, of course, for he was
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 213 
 
 a strong man, but with a dark redness under his 
 brown skin. 
 
 There was a little silence when Rox ceased 
 speaking. His last words had been, " I have 
 made this confession because it seemed a duty 
 I owed to your friend and mine the best friend 
 a man ever had." 
 
 Then Keefe spoke : "So my turn has come 
 for confession, I see ! You have driven me to 
 it, Rox." 
 
 " I did not mean to. There is no need, 
 Keefe." 
 
 " Yes, there is, though. I must make as clean 
 a breast of it as you, or never look you in the 
 face again." 
 
 Keefe turned now to the others and said, 
 very earnestly, " I can bear witness, as nobody 
 else can, to the courage and patience with which 
 Rox Coventry fought that hard battle with him- 
 self. He had everything to struggle against ; 
 hardships, exposure ; while all that roughing it on 
 the frontiers, for which his previous life had so 
 unfitted him, had broken his health and shattered 
 his nerves. His strength of body and soul 
 seemed paralyzed ; his fancies were diseased ; 
 and he who fights his battle against such odds
 
 214 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 and wins the victory, is the real hero. Be- 
 sides " 
 
 Keefe stopped there a moment. Rox alone 
 knew what was coming. The young man turned 
 to Edith ; his voice shook a little. " Your cousin, 
 Miss Folger, has not repeated the whole of the 
 message I sent you that evening he and I met 
 at Bear Ranche. There was a last clause like 
 this : ' When I meet her in the next world, I 
 shall tell her what she has done for me in this.' 
 You don't know what that means do .you?" 
 
 " No, Mr. Bartlett," faltered Edith, trying to 
 take in the meaning of the words, and utterly 
 bewildered. She had supposed, as they all did, 
 that the story she had told years ago in that 
 very room, was the first knowledge Keefe Bart- 
 lett had of Rox Coventry, and that all this had 
 recurred to the overseer when he overheard the 
 name that night, in the bar-room of the western 
 ranche, and that hi her story lay the secret of 
 all the beautiful service and friendship that 
 followed. 
 
 " Well, I am going to tell you now," said 
 Keefe. 
 
 Then he commenced. His short, strong sen- 
 tences had not the picturesque grace of Rox
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 215 
 
 Coventry's talk ; but through them one saw the 
 lonely, friendless factory boy, as he hung sullen 
 and desperate around the buildings at Agawam 
 in the pale autumn morning, until he wandered 
 off to the office building, where, just behind the 
 corner, he had overheard the conversation, on 
 the doorstep, betwixt the proprietor and his 
 nephew. 
 
 It was wonderful how Keefe retained every 
 word, almost every inflection, of that talk. As 
 you listened, you understood the secret of his 
 old dramatic power, and its attraction for the 
 factory hands. 
 
 Then he went on to the interview betwixt 
 Edith Folger and the boy she found huddled 
 up in the corner by the hedge that forenoon, 
 and whose rudeness almost frightened her away. 
 Here again he went over the whole dialogue, as 
 though he had learned it by heart from the actors 
 themselves. 
 
 He told, too, how the devil had been at work 
 all that day in the young workman's soul ; how, 
 in his mad despair, the evil purpose had grown 
 and grown, until he had watched Rox leave the 
 house at Agawam, and dogged his steps, and 
 followed him down the railroad, and he broke
 
 216 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 off right there ; " they all knew the rest," he 
 said. "Edith had told it, sitting in that very 
 room, the night of the summer gale, so many 
 years ago." 
 
 "But how did you know about the other?" 
 she cried out breathlessly. 
 
 They had all been listening in a dead silence 
 to the talk ; the soft, happy humming of the fire 
 making a low, murmurous sound, like the pleasant 
 rustling of leaves in summer winds. 
 
 Keefe turned to the girl now : a great light 
 shone in his deep eyes. " Because, Miss Folger," 
 he said, "the very boy who answered you like 
 such a brute that day, who followed Rox Coven- 
 try from your door, and who would have robbed 
 or shot him in the lonely hollow of the railroad, 
 was the man who has told you this story to- 
 night ! Do you wonder, now, at anything I did 
 for Rox Coventry, knowing from what he had 
 saved me ? " 
 
 It was growing towards midnight, and hours 
 since Keefe had finished his story. When the first 
 overwhelming surprise with which his hearers 
 had heard the denouement of his tale had in 
 some degree subsided, there had been a few 
 touches to add to the picture, of the pistol
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 217 
 
 which Keefe had thrown in the river, of the 
 new, happy, child-like heart which had entered 
 into him, and with which he had gone on his 
 way through the pleasant, peaceful country roads 
 to find Bessie Staines, and rescue her from the 
 old well. 
 
 It was long past midnight, and they were all 
 about retiring, Rox and his cousin having come 
 with the intention of remaining at Creek Farm 
 until the next day. 
 
 The evening had been one which could never 
 be forgotten, which must lift itself like a great 
 mountain height in the landscape of all their 
 Imemories. 
 
 What they had said, and felt, and done in all 
 these hours, you can imagine, placing yourselves 
 in their case ; but if I tried to tell you, it 
 would only be with Hamlet's " Words ! words ! 
 words ! " That would fail, after all, to hold 
 the truth. One little jest only flashed out across 
 the grateful, solemn joy of that evening's mood. 
 
 It was just before they separated for the night, 
 that Edith went up to Keefe Bartlett, and with a 
 sudden playfulness sinning through the tears 
 which had been in her eyes all the evening, 
 said, "To think you were sitting here, and
 
 218 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 quietly listening to that shocking portrait I 
 was drawing of the boy behind the hedge! 
 Won't you forgive me ? " 
 
 "How can I do that, Miss Folger, when you 
 only drew the portrait faithful to the original ? " 
 
 And Keefe's pleasant, tender smile beamed 
 full upon the young lady. 
 
 " But you have changed so in all these years. 
 I am too conscientious merely to flatter any man, 
 least of all, 'you! But I certainly do not find 
 the faintest hint of likeness to the boy I remem- 
 ber sitting behind the hedge that morning. Are 
 you quite sure, after all, you are he ? " 
 
 Just then they heard uncle Richard speaking. 
 " I cannot tell ; but it seems to me that human 
 souls when they talk with God, must like oftenest 
 to be alone. Yet I am an old man I have 
 never seen a night like this. It may be I can 
 say something from all your hearts to him." 
 
 And uncle Richard did. But what I could 
 no more write it here than he could say it to 
 the world.
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 219 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 was a spring day now such a glory of a 
 day ! There had been a long, dreary wait- 
 ing, mournful rains, with chill and barren- 
 ness everywhere, and little angry squalls of 
 snow flapping out white war-banners away down 
 to the very edge of May. 
 
 But at last it had come the great electrical 
 thrill of the awakening to that wide, dumb, wait- 
 ing earth. It was as though, in one moment, the 
 soul had entered into it. The whole land glowed 
 with fresh, tender green ; the soft, radiant air 
 was full of the spicy sweetness of all sprouting 
 things. Everywhere the leaves were bursting in 
 a great joyous fullness of life. The peach-trees 
 began to run out red lances of blossoms, and the 
 apple-boughs were already creamed over with 
 white. 
 
 On such a morning, Bessie Staines went out to 
 the barn to find some fresh eggs, and pat Brownie's
 
 220 ONLT GIRLS. 
 
 nose. She carried a small willow basket, and 
 she had on a new buff print morning gown, 
 which became her better than a good many costly 
 silks would. She did not even wear a hat; but 
 her hair was shade enough, with its brown silky 
 curves, for the soft wind to play with daintily as a 
 lover might. 
 
 She was not thinking of lovers, though ; she was 
 thinking of Brownie, to whom she went straight- 
 way. The colt was now a magnificent horse, 
 with its beautiful curve of neck, and its shining 
 heap of mane, and its glossy chestnut hue. 
 Bessie could sit her finely. She had a dark-green 
 riding suit, and Brownie and his young mistress 
 might often be seen dashing along the up-hill 
 roads, or over the broad, level meadows. Alto- 
 gether it was a pretty sight. The people would 
 come to the farm windows to stare after it. 
 
 Bessie Staines was very glad in the warmth, and 
 sunniness, and all the fresh broadcast life of the 
 new May. 
 
 " We'll have a wonderful ride before the day 
 is over, you and I, Brownie," she said, stroking 
 the white nose, that still looked as though a fleck 
 of sea-foam was caught there ; and the creature 
 neighed a low, joyful assent.
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 221 
 
 They two, the girl and the horse, were alone 
 that moment, in the long, pleasant, country 
 barn. Everything was bright and still about 
 them. In the next room, beyond the mangers, 
 was the great, warm, broken haymow, where the 
 eggs were ; on the brown rafters overhead were 
 flickers of sunshine, like golden wings of birds. 
 
 In that moment's hush uncle Richard's gray 
 mare, with a man on her back, rode suddenly into 
 the barn. 
 
 Bessie looked up with a little surprised bright- 
 ness in her face. 
 
 "Why, Mr. Bartlett, are you back already?" 
 she said. 
 
 " Yes, I've had a brisk five-mile trot on the up- 
 roads. What a magnificent morning it is, Miss 
 Bessie ! " springing off his horse. 
 
 " Yes ; Brownie and I have been promising 
 ourselves a treat before the day is many hours 
 older." 
 
 I may as well say here that Keefe Bartlett had 
 now the general eastern management of several 
 prosperous western mining companies. This 
 made it necessary for him to reside in New York ; 
 but whenever he could get a breathing-space 
 during the last winter, he had run up to Creek
 
 222 ONLY GTRLS. 
 
 Farm. This visit was what he called one of 
 these breathing-spaces. 
 
 He came now and stood by the girl's side. 
 " What a splendid creature Brownie is ! " he said, 
 as he stroked the shining cataract of mane. 
 
 " She has no rival in the county, uncle 
 Richard says," the girl answers, " with a look as 
 proud and pleased as though he had paid her a 
 personal compliment," Keefe thinks. 
 
 " I remember that night I saw Brownie for the 
 first time, while I was skulking- behind the bar- 
 berry-clumps, and watching you both, as you stood 
 in the front yard. It was a very pretty sight, 
 Miss Bessie ; " and Keefe Bartlett's gray eyes 
 smile on the girl. 
 
 There is a hint, and no more, of a blush, under 
 the olive skin. 
 
 " I think you treated us very unhandsomely to 
 run off as you did after that day at the well." 
 
 Her voice dropped a little on the five mono- 
 syllables. 
 
 They seldom alluded to that time, now. 
 
 " If I had known precisely the kind of people 
 you were, I might have gathered courage to come 
 in that night I turned and left you at the great 
 gate. But how could I know there were such
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 223 
 
 folks in the world ! Besides," his voice falling 
 suddenly, " the thought of what I had come so 
 near being that day must have held me back." 
 
 She felt the pain in his voice. "Ah, Mr. 
 Bartlett, as though that could have made any 
 difference with us, with anybody ! " 
 
 She looked up at him with her great lustrous 
 eyes, full of a kind of indignation of pity as she 
 said these words. 
 
 The sight moved him strangely. The man's 
 strong heart swelled and thrilled with a sudden, 
 mighty tenderness for the girl standing there in 
 her youth and fairness. 
 
 " I believe you, Miss Bessie," he said, with his 
 eyes upon her. "I believe, if you had known 
 all, it could have made no difference with you, 
 only ' He paused there. " /must have felt it, 
 you know, /must always feel it." 
 
 "It is a shame that you should, Mr. Bartlett. 
 Such a grand, true, noble man as you are ! " She 
 stopped right there ; a passion of pity had hurried 
 out her adjectives. This time it was no hint of a 
 blush ; it was a rosy, glowing one, which spread 
 all over her face. 
 
 Keefe Bartlett saw it. Then, for the first time,
 
 224 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 he was conscious that he loved this Bessie Staines. 
 She had in a certain way been sacred and apart to 
 him from that hour when he lifted her out of the 
 well, and his feeling had been so natural, so much 
 a part, of his life, that he had never questioned it ; 
 and now, in a moment, it thrilled into a great 
 yearning and joy, as he looked at the girl and 
 thought of all her charm and brightness, of her 
 warm heart and sparkling wit, and of her simple, 
 beautiful household ways, that she carried gracious- 
 ly as a queen through all the homely, every-day 
 living at Creek Farm. 
 
 But a great doubt and fear came behind. They 
 forced the next words out of him, against the 
 strong will which would have held them back. 
 " But if I should ever ask any woman to be my 
 wife, I should first have to tell her all that I 
 would not ask her until she knew it, as you do, 
 and it might make a difference." 
 
 She spoke again in a glowing passion of gener- 
 ous scorn. " Not if she were a woman worthy of 
 the name worthy of you." 
 
 Then he turned and faced her. " If I were 
 to ask you, would it make no difference, Bessie ? " 
 
 She gave him one proud, fond glance from
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 225 
 
 those great, damson-colored eyes, but not a word 
 for answrr. He did not need one. 
 
 Then, in the sunshiny stillness of the old barn, 
 he drew her to him, and kissed her. " Years 
 ago," he said, "a little girl put up her face to 
 be kissed, standing out there by the farm-yard 
 gate. I think it was that child's kiss which 
 saved me from going down in all the dark and 
 struggles which were to come ; only a little girl, 
 but she saved me ! " 
 
 " O, Keefe ! " She was clinging to him and 
 sobbing. 
 
 " And this is the first young face I have kissed 
 since that time," drawing his hand tenderly over 
 her cheek's wet brightness. 
 
 They went into t-Le house together. Mrs. 
 Staines sat knitting by the window, in the 
 warm May sun. The winter and the long, wet 
 spring ha*d shaken her dreadfully; she looked 
 paler and thinner, and more peaceful than ever. 
 
 Uncle Richard sat a little way off, reading 
 fiorne news to his sister-in-law out of last night's 
 paper. 
 
 Nothing is changed about him. It is the 
 same fine gray head, the patriarchal face and 
 air, of last autumn. 
 15
 
 226 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 "Uncle Richard mother " falters Bessie; 
 and the two look up, and see her and Keefe 
 standing there, and then they know ! 
 
 "What is there more to tell ? The mother's glad 
 tears, the old man's solemn blessing, and the 
 warm, beautiful, May sunniness, like a tender 
 thought of God, over and around them all. 
 
 It is May still, though just on the edge of 
 June now. Some time ago, there was a magnifi- 
 cent sunset, and Rox Coventry and Edith Folger 
 were out on the veranda watching it. There is 
 a brown, lustrous twilight in the air, and little 
 breezy sounds of fresh leaves all through the 
 grounds, and overhead stars coming and coming 
 into the blue, until it will be full of them. 
 
 Edith puts her head out of the window. " What 
 a delicious night it is ! " she says, drinking in 
 the fresh fragrance of sprouting and Wossoming 
 things : "we shall have a beautiful day for our 
 trip to dear old Creek Farm to-morrow. It is 
 to be a visit of congratulations, you know." 
 
 "Yes," Rox answers, pacing just as his 
 old habit was up and down the great, hand- 
 some sitting-room ; " and it has all turned out 
 so happily. Bessie Staines is just the kind of
 
 ONLY GIRLS. 227 
 
 wife Keefe ought to have bright and sweet, 
 with a transparent honesty, and a subtle, tanta- 
 lizing charm of look or manner I never could 
 quite make out which ; but I had half a mind to 
 fall in love with her myself, only " 
 
 " Only what ? " 
 
 He came and stood before her with all his old, 
 easy grace of manner. 
 
 " There were you, Edith ! " 
 
 She lifted her hands, with the old, arch play- 
 fulness. " Was I the ogress who stood in the 
 way? " she asked. 
 
 " Yes, you were ; and what is worse, that ' OTVH 
 cousin ' stands like a grim Fate in the way, and 
 waves me off from proposing to you." 
 
 " You ought to be thankful, Rox, it spares 
 you from such a misfortune," says the girl half 
 gayly, half gravely. 
 
 " I'm not ; but a fellow must make the best of 
 circumstanc.es, and I am thankful enough that no 
 masculine biped, this or the other side of the ocean, 
 swooped up my pet. If he had you know my 
 old threat I should certainly have shot him!" 
 
 Her laugh broke again merrily. 4< Well, I shall 
 give you no chance to do that, Rox. To think 
 it is all so nicely settled at last, and that you
 
 228 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 are to live with papa and me always, and be just 
 my brother ! That has always been so much 
 dearer name to me than lover ! " 
 
 "I don't deserve all this, Edith." 
 
 " Don't say that, Rox. It hurts me.'* 
 
 " I wouldn't do that for the world, Edith ; but 
 a fellow must remember sometimes. I'm glad, 
 however, that uncle Bryant knows all ' you do 
 now. I never could have accepted this generous 
 offer, this fine berth in the mills, if I had not 
 made ample confession beforehand." 
 
 " He does not respect or love you the less, 
 Rox, now that he knows all. He said to me 
 yesterday morning, after the matter was finally 
 arranged, ''I have done by Rox, Edith, as J would 
 have done by my own son.' I was glad to hear 
 that." 
 
 " Dear Edith ! All that son and brother could 
 possibly have been to him and to you, I mean, 
 God helping me, to be to you both." 
 
 He said it in a low, solemn voice, as though 
 it was between God and his soul, and he laid 
 his hand softly on her bright hair. They both 
 were silent a few moments. 
 
 Then she said, " I never saw papa so touched 
 and moved by anything as he was by your story,
 
 ONLT GIRLS. 229 
 
 Rox. He talked it over with me for hours, and 
 the tears were in his eyes more than once. He is 
 very curious to see Keefe Bartlett, too." 
 
 " That noble Keefe ! His young, manly 
 strength and shrewd sense are just what is 
 needed at Creek Farm, now uncle Richard i& 
 getting old, and the mother so feeble. The 
 burdens will drop gradually on his strong 
 shoulders. The household needs him. He has 
 found his place." 
 
 " And so another household needs you, and 
 you have found your place, Rox." 
 
 He looked at her with a great tenderness 
 shining in his face. " I owe it all to you, Edith, 
 my cousin, niy -sister." 
 
 " Rox ! " 
 
 " It is true ! God's own truth ! Your talk 
 that morning put the thought into my mind, 
 roused the generous impulse in my heart. If it 
 had not been for you, I should never have turned 
 back that day on the railroad, and given Keefe 
 Bartlett the money ; and you know how pivotal 
 that act of mine has been in the fate of both. 
 Only a girl, Edith, but you saved me ! " 
 
 You remember it was what Keefe Bartlett had 
 
 
 
 said to Bessie Staines that morning in the barn.
 
 230 ONLY GIRLS. 
 
 What more can I say, except that a little far, 
 golden rina of new moon came just then over the 
 distant hill-top, and looked at the two sitting 
 there by the window at Box Coventry, with the 
 tender shining in his face, and at Edith Folger, 
 with the awed joy in hers ; and that it seemed as 
 though that young moon was a smile of God, 
 leaning out upon both of them?
 
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