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was not even an hour's visit that the Virginian was able to pay his lady love. But neither had he come a hundred miles to see her. The necessities of his wandering work had chanced to bring him close enough for a glimpse of her, and this glimpse he took, almost on the wing. For he had to rejoin a company of men at once.

"Yu' got my letter?" he said.

"Yesterday."

"Yesterday! I wrote it three weeks ago. Well, yu' got it. This cannot be the hour with you that I mentioned. That is coming, and maybe very soon."

She could say nothing. Relief she felt, and yet with it something like a pang.

"To-day does not count," he told her, "except that every time I see you counts with me. But this is not the hour that I mentioned."

What little else was said between them upon this early morning shall be told duly. For this visit in its own good time did count momentously, though both of them took it lightly while its fleeting minutes passed. He returned to her two volumes that she had lent him long ago, and with Taylor he left a horse which he had