There had been something between Ethelyn and Frank Van Buren more than a cousinly liking, and Richard's heart throbbed powerfully as he sat by the tossing, restless Ethelyn, moaning on about the huckleberry hills, and the ledge of rocks where the wild laurels grew.

This pain he did not try to analyze; he only said to himself that he felt no bitterness toward Ethelyn.

She was too near to death's dark tide for that.

She was Ethie--his darling--the mother of the child that had been buried from sight before he came.
Perhaps she did not love him, and never would; but he had loved her, oh! so much, and if he lost her he would be wretched indeed.

And so, forgiving all the past of which he knew, and trying to forgive all he did not know, he sat by her till the sun went down, and his mother came for the twentieth time, urging him to eat.