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 "Yes."

"Can you wonder that her promise, given to-night, to accept me as such sends my wits 'wool-gathering'?"

Hernando grasped his friend's hand and wrung it warmly, but in silence.

"Do you know," Elisha went on with his eyes on the floor, "I have sometimes thought that you cared for her and I did not wish to cast a straw in your way, so waited this long to speak for that reason."

'I should never have asked her to be my wife," said Hernando, in a voice so unlike his own that Elisha looked quickly into his face, "and the fact of her having accepted you proves her heart is yours. No, Vedder, I congratulate you and from the bottom of my heart wish you the happiness so richly deserved."

The ice once broken, Elisha unfolded plan after plan for their future, little dreaming of the misery thereby inflicted on one who would have exchanged worlds for the obliteration of one year of his life.