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 little more weightily. She looked out on the drab fields of cotton swaying in the gray day. "I shall miss you, land of my home, however many pains I have known here. I shall miss you beloved woodland, and most of all I shall miss my cave."

Bennet looked down at her, deeply touched. "Never mind, some day perhaps we'll come back and they will be glad to greet us."

"I hate to leave my father in the condition he is. And if your life were not in danger every moment you remained I wouldn't go away. I wonder if he'll ever recover and become reconciled?" Tears filled her eyes.

"Dear Daddy," she said. "I love you and am sorry."

"I'll wait, Lida Mine, while you nurse your father. I'll go away and wait, though I should miss you just as the falls would miss the water if the creek's path were turned away. I should be mighty lonesome. I'd go and wait though."

"I know you would, Truman. But I could not go on without you. Harm would come to me here. What would I do without you now? Heaven only knows what I'd have to endure once you're gone.—No, we must go. I'll have to leave Daddy to the care of the servants and his friends here for a while. Perhaps time will change things. No new land ever has the same reverence that a childhood home has. We must come back—sometime."

"We'll come back, as you wish, whenever you wish, Lida."

They walked along in silence for a few moments when