N the middle of the following week some of the young people of Darley gave a picnic at Morley's Spring, a beautiful and picturesque spot about a mile below Bishop's farm. Alan had received an urgent invitation to join the party, and he rode down after dinner.

It was a hot afternoon, and the party of a dozen couples had scattered in all directions in search of cool, shady nooks. Alan was by no means sure that Miss Barclay would be there, but, if the truth must be told, he went solely with the hope of at least getting another look at her. He was more than agreeably surprised, for, just as he had hitched his horse to a hanging bow of an oak near the spring, Frank Hillhouse came from the tangle of wild vines and underbrush on a little hill-side and approached him.

“You are just the fellow I'm looking for,” said Frank. “Miss Dolly's over there in a hammock, and I want to leave somebody with her. Old man Morley promised me the biggest watermelon in his patch if I'd come over for it. I won't be long.”

“Oh, I don't care how long you are,” smiled Alan. “You can stay all day if you want to.”

“I thought you wouldn't mind,” grinned Frank. “I used to think you were the one man I had to fight, but I reckon I was mistaken. A feller in love imagines everybody in creation is against him.”

Alan made no reply to this, but hurried away to where Dolly sat, a new magazine in her hands and a box of candies on the grass at her feet. “I saw you riding down the hill,” she said, with a pretty flush and no little excitement. “To tell the truth, I sent Frank after the melon when I recognized you. He's been threatening to go all the afternoon, but I insisted on it. You may be surprised, but I have a business message for you, and I would have made Frank drive me past your house on the way home if you hadn't come.”

“Business,” Alan laughed, merrily; he felt very happy in her presence under all her assurances of welcome. “The idea of your having a business message! That's really funny.”

“Well, that's what it is; sit down.” She made room for him in the hammock, and he sat beside her, his foolish brain in a whirl. “Why, yes, it is business; and it concerns you. I fancy it is important; anyway, it may take you to town to-night.”

“You don't mean it,” he laughed. She looked very pretty, in her light organdie gown and big rustic hat, with its wide, flowing ribbons.

“Yes, it is a message from Rayburn Miller, about that railroad idea of yours.”

“Really? Then he told you about that?”

“Yes; he was down to see me last week. He didn't seem to think much of it then—but”—she hesitated and smiled, as if over the memory of something amusing—“he's been thinking of it since. As Frank and I drove through the main street this morning—Frank had gone in a store to get a basket of fruit—he came to me on his way to the train for Atlanta. He hadn't time to say much, but he said if you were out here to-day to tell you to come in town to-night without fail, so as to meet him at his office early in the morning. He 'll be back on the midnight train. I asked him if it was about the railroad, and he said it was—that he had discovered something that looked encouraging.”

“I'm glad of that,” said Alan, a thrill of excitement passing over him. “Rayburn threw cold water on my ideas the other day, and—”

“I know he did, and it was a shame,” said Dolly, warmly. “The idea of his thinking he is the only man in Georgia with originality! Anyway, I hope it will come to something.”

“I certainly do,” responded Alan. “It's the only thing I could think of to help my people, and I am willing to stake all I have on it—which is, after all, nothing but time and energy.”

“Well, don't you let him nor any one else discourage you,” said the girl, her eyes flashing. “A man who listens to other people and puts his own ideas aside is unworthy of the brain God gave him. There is another thing”—her voice sank lower and her eyes sought the ground. “Rayburn Miller is a fine, allround man, but he is not perfect by any means. He talks freely to me, you know; he's known me since I was knee-high. Well, he told me—he told me of the talk he had with you at the dance that night. Oh, that hurt me—hurt me!”

“He told you that!” exclaimed Alan, in surprise. “Yes, and it actually disgusted me. Does he think all men ought to act on that sort of advice? He might, for he has made an unnatural man of himself, with all his fancies for new faces; but you are not that kind, Alan, and I'm sorry you and he are so intimate—not that he can influence you much, but he has already, in a way, and that has pained me deeply.”

“He has influenced me?” cried Alan, in surprise. “I think you are mistaken.”

“You may not realize it, but he has,” said Dolly, with gentle and yet unyielding earnestness. “You see, you are so very sensitive that it would not be hard to make you believe that a young man ought not to keep on caring for a girl whose parents object to his attentions.”

“Ah!” He had caught her drift.

There was a pause. At the foot of the hill a little brook ran merrily over the water-browned stones, and its monotonous lapping could be heard distinctly. Under the trees across the open some of the couples had drawn together and were singing:

“I see the boat go 'round the bend,

Good-bye, my lover, good-bye.”

Dolly had said exactly what he had never hoped to hear her say, and the fact of her broaching such a subject in such a frank, determined way sent a glow of happiness all over him.

“I don't think,” he began, thoughtfully, “that Rayburn or any man could keep me from”—he looked into her full, expectant eyes, and then plunged madly—“could keep me from caring for you, from loving you with all my heart, Dolly; but it really is a terrible thing to know that you are robbing a girl of not only the love of her parents but her rightful inheritance, when, when”—he hurried on, seeing that an impulse to speak was urging her to protest—“when you haven't a cent to your name, and, moreover, have a black eye from your father's mistakes.”

“I knew that's what he'd said!” declared the girl, almost white with anger. “I knew it! Oh, Alan, Rayburn Miller might be able to draw back and leave a girl at such a time, but no man could that truly loves as—as I believe you love me. I have known how you have felt all this time, and it has nearly broken my heart, but I could not write to you when you had never even told me, what you have to-day. You must not let anybody or anything influence you, Alan. I'd rather be a poor man' s wife, and do my own work, than let a paltry thing like my father's money keep me from standing by the man I love.”

Alan' s face was ablaze. He drew himself up and gazed at her, all his soul in his eyes. “Then I shall not give you up,” he declared; “not for anything in the world. And if there is a chance in the railroad idea I shall work at it ten times as hard, now that I have talked with you.”

They sat together in blissful ignorance of the passage of time, till some one shouted out that Frank Hill-house was coming with the watermelon. Then all the couples in sight or hearing ran to the spring, where Hillhouse could be seen plunging the big melon into the water. Hattie Alexander and Charlie Durant, who had been perched on a jutting bowlder high up on the hill behind Dolly and Alan, came half running, half sliding down, catching at the trees to keep from falling.

“Better come get your teeth in that melon,” Hattie said, with a knowing smile at Dolly. They lived next door to each other and were quite intimate.

“Come on, Alan.” Dolly rose. “Frank will never forgive me if I don't have some.”

“I sha 'n' t have time, if I go to town to-night,” replied Alan. “I have something to do at home first.”

“Then I won't keep you,” Dolly smiled, “for you must go and meet Rayburn Miller. I'm going to hope that he has had good luck in Atlanta.”

The world had never seemed so full of joy and hope as Alan rode homeward. The sun was setting in glorious splendor beyond the towering mountains, above which the sky seemed an ocean of mother-of-pearl and liquid gold. Truly it was good to be alive. At the bars he met Abner Daniel with a fishing-cane in his hands, his bait-gourd under his arm.

“I know right whar you've been,” he said, with a broad smile, as he threw down the bars for Alan to pass through. “I seed that gang drive by in all the'r flurry this mornin', the queen bee in the lead with that little makeshift of a man.”

Alan dismounted to prevent his uncle from putting up the bars, and they walked homeward side by side.

“Yes, and I've had the time of my life,” said the young man. “I talked to her for a solid hour.”

“I could see that in yore face,” said Abner, quietly. “You couldn't hide it, an' I 'll bet she didn't lose time in lettin' you know what she never could hide from me.”

“We understand each other better now,” admitted Alan.

“Well, I've certainly set my heart on the match—on gittin' her in our family,” affirmed Abner. “Durn-ed ef—I declare, sometimes I'm afeerd I'm gone on 'er myse'f. Yes, I want you 'n' her to make it. I want to set an' smoke an' chaw on yore front porch, an' heer her back in the kitchen fryin' ham an' eggs, an',” the old man winked, “I don't know as I'd object to trottin' some 'n' on my knee, to sorter pass the time betwixt meals.”

“Oh, come off, Uncle Ab!” said Alan, with a flush, “that's going too far.”

The old man whisked his bait-gourd round under his other arm. His eyes twinkled, and he chuckled. “'Tain' t goin' as fur as havin' one on each knee an' both pine blank alike an' exactly the same age. I've knowed that to happen in my day an' time, when nobody wasn't even lookin' fer a' increase.”