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 Youth was with them, also, but laughter seemed to have gone its way out of their hearts that night. Not much was said between them as they sat there, for the thoughts of each were busy as weaving spiders working to stretch their nets before the dawn. But in a quarter of an hour of such halfsilent communion much good or much hurt may come to a pair of young hearts all open for the writing of the Great Adventure.

When Duncan appeared in the door with his pipe and called to Sallie, they started like children out of sleep.

"Come in and sing me my song, Sallie," he requested.

She laughed a soft little protest, but rose at once.

"It sounds better from a distance, the greater the distance the better," she said, putting out her hand to stop Texas when he would have gone with her. "He never wants but that one song—his song, he always calls it. I'll come back when the agony is over."

Presently the prelude to the sweet old melody came to Texas where he waited beneath the cottonwood, his heart almost over at the window, it seemed to him, straining lest he lose one chord. The words of the song came softly: