CONSTANCE EMORY and her mother, waiting quietly in their own home, heard the cheers when the noise from Dan's shrieking engine reached the crowd of desperate men on the square. Then presently they heard the rattle and clash of the fire-engines as they were dragged through the street, and were aware that the relief train had arrived, but it was not until the doctor came in some time long after midnight that they knew who had been the savior of the town.

“It's all over, dear. The fire is under control,” he said, cheerfully, addressing his wife. “I guess we can go to bed now and feel pretty sure we won't be burned out before morning.”

Constance put down the book she had been trying to read, and rose tiredly and stiffly from her chair beside the table.

“Then the train did come, after all?” she said. “Yes, but not a moment too soon. I tell you we can't be grateful enough. I've been with Oakley and his father; that's what kept me,” he explained.

“Oakley!” Constance cried, in amazement. “You don't mean—”

“Yes. Didn't you know that it was Oakley and his father who brought the relief train? The old man is dead. He was killed on the way. It's a miracle that either of them got through alive. Hadn't you heard?”

Constance put out her hands blindly, for a sudden mist had come before her eyes.

“Father, you don't mean that Mr. Oakley has returned to Antioch—that he is here now?”

“Yes, it seems no one else would come. Oakley was in Chicago when he first heard of the fire, and started immediately for Buckhorn, where he found the relief train. Oddly enough, he found his father there, too.”

“Then there was something to the old man, after all,” said Mrs. Emory, whose sympathies were as generous as they were easily aroused.

“A good deal, I should say. He must have known that he was coming back to arrest and almost certain conviction.”

Constance's glance searched her father's face. She wanted to hear more of Oakley. Her heart was hungering for news of this man who had risked his life to save them. All her lingering tenderness—the unwilling growth of many days—was sweeping away the barriers of her pride. “Mr. Oakley was not hurt?” she questioned, breathlessly, pale to the lips.

“He is pretty badly shaken up, and no wonder, but he will be all right in the morning.”

“Where is he now?” she asked.

Her father turned to her.

“Oakley—You look tired out, Constance. Do go to bed. I'll tell you all about it in the morning.”

“Where is he now, papa?” she questioned, going to his side and clasping her hands about his arm.

“Down at the shop. They carried his father there from the train.”

“Why didn't you have them bring him here?” said Mrs. Emory, quickly. “After this I won't listen to a word against either of them. I would like to show the town just how we feel in the matter.”

“I suggested it, but Oakley wouldn't hear to it. But don't worry about the town. It's gone wild. You should have seen the crowd on the platform when it saw Oakley in the engine-cab. It went stark mad.”

Again Constance's eyes swam with tears. The strike, the murder of Ryder, the fire, had each seemed in turn a part of the tragedy of her life at Antioch, but Oakley's return was wholly glorious.

Her father added, “I shall see Oakley in the morning, and learn if we can be of any service to him.”

A little later, when Constance went to her own room, she drew forward a chair and seated herself by the window. Across the town, on the edge of the “flats,” she saw dimly the long, dark outline of the railroad shop, with its single tall chimney. She thought of Oakley as alone there keeping watch at the side of the grim old murderer, who had so splendidly redeemed himself by this last sacrifice.

Great clouds of black smoke were still rolling over the town, and the woods were still blazing fiercely in the distance. Beyond her window she heard the call of frightened birds, as they fluttered to and fro in the dull red light, and farther off, in the North End, the muffled throbbing of the fire-engines.

If she had had any doubts as to her feeling for Oakley, these doubts were now a thing of the past. She knew that she loved him. She had been petty and vain; she had put the small things of life against the great, and this was her punishment. She tried to comfort herself with the thought that she should see him in the morning; then she could tell him all. But what could she tell him? The time had gone by when she could tell him anything.

It was almost morning when she undressed and threw herself down on her bed. She was disconsolate and miserable, and the future seemed quite barren of hope or happiness. Love had come to her, and she had not known its presence. Yes, she would tell Oakley that she had been little and narrow and utterly unworthy. He had cared for her, and perhaps he would understand. She fell asleep thinking this, and did not waken until her mother called her for breakfast.

“I am waiting for your father. He has gone down to see Mr. Oakley,” Mrs. Emory said when she entered the dining-room. Constance glanced at the table.

“Is he going to bring Mr. Oakley back with him?” she asked, nervously.

“He expected to. I declare, Constance, you look worn out. Didn't you sleep well?”

“No, not very. I wonder if they are coming?”

“You might go look,” said her mother, and Constance hurried into the parlor. She was just in time to see her father enter the gate. He was alone. Constance flew to the front door and threw it open.

“He wouldn't come?” she cried, breathlessly.

“He's gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yes, a train was made up early this morning, and he has returned to Buckhorn—Why, what's the matter, Constance?”

For Constance, with a little gasp of dismay, had slipped down into a chair, with her hands before her face.

“What is it, dear?” he questioned, anxiously. But she gave him no answer. She was crying softly, unrestrainedly. It was all over. Oakley was gone, and with him went her only hope of happiness. Yet more keen than her sense of pain and personal loss was her regret that he would never understand that she respected and admired him as he deserved.

“I am sorry, Constance, but I didn't know that you especially wanted to see him,” said the doctor, awkwardly, but with a dawning comprehension of what it all meant. She made no answer.

“What is it, dear?” he repeated.

“Oh, nothing. I wanted to tell him about something; that is all. It doesn't matter now.” She glanced up into his face with a sudden doubt. “You didn't see him—you are quite sure he went away without your seeing him—you are not deceiving me?”

“Why, of course, Constance, but he'll come back.”

“No, he won't, papa,” shaking her head sadly. “He's gone, and he will never come back. I know him better than you do.”

And then she fled promptly up-stairs to her own room.

This was the nearest Constance came to betraying her love for Oakley. She was not much given to confidences, and the ideals that had sustained her in her pride now seemed so childish and unworthy that she had no wish to dwell upon them, but whenever Dan's name was mentioned in her presence she looked frightened and guilty and avoided meeting her father's glance.

It seemed, indeed, that. Oakley had taken final leave of Antioch. A new manager appeared and took formal charge of the destinies of the road. Under his direction work was resumed in the shops, for the strike had died a natural death. None of the hands were disposed to question the ten-per-cent cut, and before the winter was over the scale of wages that had been in force before the strike was inaugurated was voluntarily restored. The town had no criticisms to make of Johnson, the new manager, a quiet, competent official; the most any one said was that he was not Oakley. That was enough. For Dan had come into his own.

Early in October there was a flutter of excitement when Turner Joyce and his wife left for the East to be Oakley's guests. When they returned, some weeks later, they had a good deal to say about him that Antioch was frankly curious to hear.

He had taken his father to Burton, where his mother was buried. Afterwards he had joined General Cornish in New York.

While abroad, the financier had effected a combination of interests which grouped a number of roads under one management, and Dan had been made general superintendent of the consolidated lines, with his headquarters in New York City. The Joyces were but vaguely informed as to where these lines were, but they did full justice to their magnitude, as well as to the importance of Oakley's new connection.

The dull monotony of those fall days in Antioch was never forgotten by Constance Emory. She was listless and restless by turns. She had hoped that she might hear from Oakley. She even thought the Joyces might bring her some message, but none had come. Dan had taken her at her word.

She had made no friends, and, with Ryder dead and Oakley gone, she saw. no one, and finally settled down into an apathy that alarmed the doctor. He, after some deliberation, suddenly announced his intention of going East to attend a medical convention.

“Shall you see Mr. Oakley?” Constance asked, with quick interest.

“Probably, if he's in New York when I get there.”

Constance gave him a scared look and dropped her eyes. But when the time drew near for his departure, she followed him about as if there were something on her mind which she wished to tell him.

The day he started, she found courage to ask, “Won't you take me with you, papa?”

“Not this time, dear,” he answered.

She was quiet for a moment, and then said:

“Papa, you are not going to tell him?”

“Tell who, Constance? What?”

“Mr. Oakley.”

“What about Oakley, dear?”

She looked at him from under her long lashes while the color slowly mounted to her cheeks.

“You are not going to tell him what you think you know?”

The doctor smiled.

“I wish you would grant me the possession of ordinary sense, Constance. I am not quite a fool.”

“You are a precious,” she said, kissing him.

“Thank you. What message shall I give Oakley for you?”

“None.”

“None?”

“He won't want to hear from me,” shyly.

“Why not?”

“Because he just won't, papa. Besides, I expect he has forgotten that such a person ever lived.”

“I wouldn't be too sure of that. What was the trouble, Constance? You'd better tell me, or I may say something I shouldn't.”

“Oh, you must not say anything,” in alarm. “You must promise.”

“Constance, what did Oakley say to you that last day he was here at the house?”

Constance's glance wandered meditatively from her father's face to the window and back again, while her color came and went. There was a faraway, wistful look in her eyes, and a sad little smile on her lips. At last she said, softly, “Oh, he said a number of things. I can't remember now all he did say.

“Did Oakley tell you he cared for you?”

Constance hesitated a moment, then, reluctantly:

“Well, yes, he did. And I let him go, thinking I didn't care for him,” miserably, and with a pathetic droop of her lips, from which the smile had fled. “I didn't know, and I have been so unhappy!”

“Oh!”

Constance left the room abruptly.

When he reached New York, the first thing the doctor did was to look up Oakley. He was quick to notice a certain constraint in the young man's manner as they shook hands, but this soon passed off.

“I am awfully glad to see you,” he had said. “I have thought of you again and again, and I have been on the point of writing you a score of times. I haven't forgotten your kindness to me.”

“Nonsense, Oakley. I liked you, and it was a pleasure to me to be able to show my regard,” responded the doctor, with hearty good-will.

“How is Mrs. Emory—and Miss Emory?”

“They are both very well. They were just a little hurt that you ran off without so much as a goodbye.”

Oakley gave him a quick glance.

“She is—Miss Emory is still in Antioch?”

The doctor nodded.

“I didn't know but what she might be in the city with you,” Dan explained, with evident disappointment.

“Aren't we ever going to see you in Antioch again?” inquired the doctor. He put the question with studied indifference. Dan eagerly scanned his face. The doctor fidgeted awkwardly.

“Do you think I'd better go back?” he asked, with a perceptible dwelling on the “you.”

The doctor's face became a trifle red. He seemed to weigh the matter carefully; then he said:

“Yes, I think you'd better. Antioch would like mightily to lay hands on you.”

Dan laughed happily. “You don't suppose a fellow could dodge all that, do you? You see, I was going west to Chicago in a day or so, and I had thought to take a run on to Antioch. As a matter of fact, Cornish wants me to keep an eye on the shops. They are doing well, you know, and we don't want any falling off. But, you understand, I don't want to get let in for any fool hysterics,” he added, impatiently.

Notwithstanding the supposed confidence in which telegrams are transmitted, Brown, the day man at Antioch, generally used his own discretion in giving publicity to any facts of local interest that came under his notice. But when he wrote off Dr. Emory's message, announcing that he and Oakley were in Chicago, and would arrive in Antioch the last of the week, he held it for several hours, not quite knowing what to do. Finally he delivered it in person, a sacrifice of official dignity that only the exigencies of the occasion condoned in his eyes. As he handed it to Mrs. Emory, he said:

“It's from the doctor. You needn't be afraid to open it; he's all right. He'll be back Saturday night, and he's bringing Mr. Oakley with him. I came up to see if you had any objection to my letting the town know?”

Mrs. Emory saw no reason why the knowledge of Oakley's return should be withheld, and in less than half an hour Antioch, with bated breath, was discussing the news on street corners and over back fences.

That night the town council met in secret session to consider the weighty matter of his reception, for by common consent it was agreed that the town must take official action. It was suggested that he be given the freedom of the city. This sounded large, and met with instant favor, but when the question arose as to how the freedom of the city was conferred, the president turned, with a slightly embarrassed air, to the member who had made the motion. The member explained, with some reserve, that he believed the most striking feature had to do with the handing over of the city keys to the guest of honor. But, unfortunately, Antioch had no city keys to deliver. The only keys that, by any stretch of the imagination, could be so called, were those of the court-house, and they were lost. Here an appeal was made to the Hon. Jeb Barrows, who was usually called in to straighten out any parliamentary tangles in which the council became involved. That eminent statesman was leaning dreamily against a pillar at the end of the council-chamber. On one of his cards he had already pencilled the brief suggestion: “Feed him, and have out the band.” He handed the card to the president, and the council heaved a sigh of relief. The momentous question of Oakley's official reception was settled.

When Dan and Dr. Emory stepped from No. 7 Saturday night the station platform was crowded with men and boys. The brass-band, which Antioch loved with a love that stifled criticism, perspiring and in dire haste, was turning the street corner half a block distant. Across the tracks at the railroad shops a steam-whistle shrieked an ecstatic welcome.

Dan glanced at the doctor with a slightly puzzled air. “What do you suppose is the matter?” he asked, unsuspiciously.

“Why, man, don't you understand? It's you!”

There was no need for him to say more, for the crowd had caught sight of Dan, and a hundred voices cried:

“There he is! There's Oakley!”

And in an instant Antioch, giving way to wild enthusiasm, was cheering itself black in the face, while above the sound of cheers and the crash of music, the steam-whistle at the shops shrieked and pealed.

The blood left Oakley's face. He looked down at the crowd and saw Turner Joyce. He saw McClintock and Holt and the men from the shops, who were, if possible, the noisiest of all. He turned helplessly to the doctor.

“Let's get out of this,” he said between his teeth. The crowd and the noise and the excitement recalled that other night when he had ridden into Antioch. As he spoke he swung himself down from the steps of the coach, and the crowd closed about him with a glad shout of welcome.

The doctor followed more slowly. As he gained the platform, the Hon. Jeb Barrows hurried to his side.

“Where is he to go, Doc?” he panted. “To your house, or to the hotel?”

“To my house.”

“All right, then. The crowd's spoiling the whole business. I've got an address of welcome in my pocket that I was to have delivered, and there's to be a supper at the Rink to-night. Don't let him get away from you.”

Meanwhile, Dan had succeeded in extricating himself from the clutches of his friends, and was struggling towards a closed carriage at the end of the platform that he recognized as the Emorys'.

In his haste and the dusk of the dull October twilight, he supposed the figure he saw in the carriage to be the doctor, who had preceded him, and called to the man on the box to drive home.

As he settled himself, he said, reproachfully:

“I hope you hadn't anything to do with this?”

A slim, gloved hand was placed in his own, and a laughing voice said:

“How do you do, Mr. Oakley?”

He glanced up quickly, and found himself face to face with Constance Emory.

There was a moment's silence, and then Dan said, the courage that had brought him all the way to Antioch suddenly deserting him: “It's too bad, isn't it? I had hoped I could slip in and out of town without any one being the wiser.”

“But you can't,” with a little air of triumph. “Antioch is going to entertain you. It's been in a perfect furor of excitement ever since it knew you were coming back.”

“Well, I suppose there is no help for it,” resignedly.

“Where is my father, Mr. Oakley?”

“I guess we left him behind,” with sudden cheerfulness. He leaned forward so that he could look into her face.

“Constance, I have returned because I couldn't stay away any longer. I tried to forget, but it was no use.”

She had withdrawn her hand, but he had found it again, and now his fingers closed over it and held it fast He was feeling a sense of ownership.

“Did you come to meet me?” he asked.

“I came to meet papa.”

“But you knew I was coming, too?”

“Oh no.”

It was too dark for him to see the color that was slowly mounting to her face.

“Constance, I don't believe you,” he cried.

“I was not sure you were coming,” Constance said, weakly.

“You might have known that I'd come back—that I couldn't stay away.”

“Don't you think you have been a long time in making that discovery?”

“Well, yes, but when I saw your father—”

“What did papa say to you?” with keen suspicion in her tones.

“You mustn't blame him, Constance. It was not so much what he said as what he didn't say. I never knew any one to be quite so ostentatious about what was left unsaid.”

Constance freed her hand, and, shrinking into a corner, covered her face. She had a painful realization of the direction those confidences must have taken, between her father, who only desired her happiness, and the candid Oakley, who only desired her love.

“Was there any use in my coming? You must be fair with me now. It's too serious a matter for you not to be.”

“You think I was not fair once?”

“I didn't mean that, but you have changed.”

“For the better, Mr. Oakley?”

“Infinitely,” with blunt simplicity.

“You haven't changed a scrap. You are just as rude as you ever were.”

Dan cast a hurried glance from the window. “Constance, we won't have much more time to ourselves; we are almost home. Won't you tell me what I have come to hear—that you do care for me, and will be my wife? You know that I love you. But you mustn't send me from you a second time without hope.”

“I shouldn't think you would care about me now. I wouldn't care about you if you had been as unworthy as I have been,” her voice faltered. “I might have shown you that I, too, could be brave, but I let the opportunity pass, and now, when everyone is proud—”

“But I do care. I care a great deal, for I love you just as I have loved you from the very first.”

She put out both her hands.

“If you had only looked back when you left the house that day you told me you cared—”

“What, Constance?”

“I was at the window. I thought you'd surely look back, and then you would have known—”

“My darling!”

The carriage had drawn up to the Emorys' gate. Dan jumped out and gave Constance his hand. Off in the distance they heard the band. Constance paused and rested her hand gently on Oakley's arm.

“Hark! Do you hear?”

“I wish they'd stop their confounded nonsense,” said Dan.

“No, you can't stop them,” delightedly. “Antioch feels a sense of proprietorship. But do you hear the music, Dan?”

“Yes, dear. It's the band.”

“Of course it's the band. But do you know what it is playing?”

Oakley shook his head dubiously. She gave his arm a little pat and laughed softly.

“It might be difficult to recognize it, but it's the bridal-march from 'Lohengrin.'”

“If they stick to that, I don't care, Constance.”

And side by side they went slowly and silently up the path to the house.

THE END