tried to find you to tell you so. But youhad gone. So I got my father to drive me to your place. We'd havestarted sooner, but Cavalier got away. And we waited to look forhim--to bring him along."
"Bring him along?" mutteringly echoed the blankbrained Link. "What fer?"
"Why," laughed the girl, "because your house is where he belongs andwhere he is going to live. Just as he has been living all summer."
Ferris caught his breath in a choked wheeze of unbelieving ecstasy.
"Gawd!" he breathed. "GAWD!"
Then, he stammered brokenly
"They--they don't seem no right words to--to thank you in, Ma'am. Butmaybe you und'stand what I'd want to say if I could?"
"Yes," she said gently. "I think I understand. I understood from theminute I saw you and the dog together. That's why I decided I didn'twant him. That's why I--"
"An' you'll get that thousand dollars!" cried Link, his fingers buriedrapturously in Chum's fur. "Ev'ry cent of it. I--"
"I think," interrupted the girl, winking very fast. "I think I've gotwhat I wanted, already. My father doesn't want the money either. Doyou, Dad?"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, stop rubbing it in!" fumed Gault. "Come onhome! It's getting cold. I ought to thank the Lord for not having youanywhere near me in Wall Street, girl! You'd send me under the hammerin a week."
He kicked the accelerator, and the little car whizzed off in thetwilight.
"Chum," observed Ferris, gaping after it. "Chum, I guess the good Lordbuilt that gal the same day He built YOU. If He did--well, He sure doneone grand day's work!"
CHAPTER IV.
The Choice
Luck had come at last to the Ferris farm. Link's cash went intoimprovements on the place, instead of going into the deteriorating ofhis inner man. And he worked the better. A sulky man is ever prone tobe an inefficient man. And Link no longer sulked.
All this-combined with a wholesale boom in local agriculture, andespecially in truck gardening--had wrought wonders in Link's farm andin Link's bank account. Within three years of Ferris's meeting withChum the place's last mortgage was wiped out and a score of neededrepairs and improvements were installed. Also the man had a small butsteadily growing sum to his credit in a Paterson savings bank.
Life on the farm was mighty pleasant, nowadays. Work was hard, ofcourse, but it was bringing results that made it more than worth while.Ferris and his dog were living on the fat of the land. And they werehappy.
Then came the interruption that had been inevitable from the very first.
A taciturn and eternally dead-broke man, in a rural region, need notfear intrusion on his privacy. Convivial folk make detours round him,as if he were a mud puddle. Thriftier and more respectable neighborseye him askance or eye him not at all.
But when a meed of permanent success comes to such a man he need nolonger be lonely unless he so wills. Which is not cynicism, but commonsense. The convivial element will still fight shy of him. But he iswelcomed into the circle of the respectable.
So it was with Link Ferris. Of old he had been known as a shiftless andharddrinking mountaineer with a sour farm that was plastered withmortgages. Now, he had cleared off his mortgages and had cleaned up hisfarm; and he and his home exuded an increasing prosperity.
People, meeting him in the nearby village of Hampton or at church,began to treat him with a consideration that the long-aloof farmerfound bewildering.
Yet he liked it rather than not; being at heart a gregarious soul. Andwith gruff friendliness he met the advances of well-to-do neighbors whoin old days had scarce favored him with a nod.
The gradual change from the isolated life of former years did not makeany sort of a hit with Chum. The collie had been well content to wanderthrough the day's work at his master's heels; to bring in the sheep andthe cattle from pasture; to guard the farm from intruders--human orotherwise.
In the evenings it had been sweet to lounge at Link's feet, on thelittle white porch, in the summer dusk; or to lie in drowsy content infront of the glowing kitchen stove on icy nights when the galescreeched through the naked boughs of the dooryard trees and the snowscratched hungrily at the window panes.
Now, the dog's sensitive brain was aware of a subtle alteration. He didnot object very much to the occasional visits at the house of otherfarmers and townsfolk during the erstwhile quiet evenings, although hehad been happier in the years of peaceful seclusion.
But he grieved at his master's increasingly frequent absences fromhome. Nowadays, once or twice a week, Link was wont to dress himself inhis best as soon as the day's work was done, and fare forth to Hamptonfor the evening.
Sometimes he let Chum go with him in these outings. Oftener of late hehad said, as he started out:
"Not to-night, Chummie. Stay here."
Obediently the big dog would lay himself down with a sigh on the porchedge; his head between his white little forepaws; his sorrowful browneyes following the progress of his master down the lane to the highroad.
But he grieved, as only a sensitive highbred dog can grieve--a dog whoasks nothing better of life than permission to live and to die at theside of the man he has chosen as his god; to follow that god out intorain or chill; to starve with him, if need be; to suffer at hishands--in short, to do or to be anything except to be separated fromhim.
Link Ferris had gotten into the habit of leaving Chum alone at home,oftener and oftener of late, as his own evening absences from the farmgrew more and more frequent.
He left Chum at home because She did not like dogs.
"She" was Dorcas Chatham, the daughter of Hampton's postmaster andgeneral storekeeper.
Old Man Chatham in former days would have welcomed Cal Whitson, theofficial village souse, to his home as readily as he would haveadmitted the ne'er-do-well Link Ferris to that sanctuary. But of latehe had noted the growing improvement in Link's fortunes, as evidencedby his larger store trade, his invariable cash payments and thefrequent money orders which went in his name to the Paterson savingsbank.
Wherefore, when Dorcas met Link at a church sociable and again on astraw ride and asked him to come and see her some time, her sire madeno objection. Indeed he welcomed the bashful caller with something likean approach to cordiality.
Dorcas was a calm-eyed, efficient damsel, more than a little pretty,and with much repose of manner. Link Ferris, from the first, eyed herwith a certain awe. When a mystic growing attraction was added to thisand when it in turn merged into love, the sense of awe was not lost.Rather it was strengthened.
In all his thirty-one lean and lonely years Link had never beforefallen in love. At the age when most youths are sighing over somewonder girl, he had been too busy fighting off bankruptcy andstarvation to have time or thought for such things.
Wherefore, when love at last smote him it smote him hard. And it foundhim woefully unprepared for the battle.
He knew nothing of women. He did not know, for example, what theaverage youth finds out in his teens--that grave eyes and silentaloofness and lofty self-will and icy pietism in a maiden do not alwayssignify that she is a saint and that she must be worshiped as such.Ferris had no one to tell him that far oftener these signs point merelyto stupid narrowness and to lack of ideas.
Dorcas was clever at housework. She was quietly self-assured. She wasgood to look upon. She was not like any of the few girls Link had met.Wherefore he built for her a sacred shrine in his innermost heart; andhe knelt before her image there.
If Ferris found her different from the other Hampton girls, Dorcasfound him equally different from the local swains she knew. Sherecognized his hidden strength. The maternal element in her naturesympathized with his loneliness and with the marks it had left upon hissoul.
For the rest--he was neither a village cut-up like Con Skerly, nor asolemn mass of conceit like Royal Crews; nor patronizing like youngLawyer Wetherell; nor vaguely repulsive like old Cap'n Baldy Todd, whocame furtively a-courting her. Link was different. And she liked him.She liked him more and more.
Once her parents took Dorcas and her five-year-old sister, Olive, on aSunday afternoon ramble, which led eventually to the Ferris farm. Linkwelcomed the chance callers gladly, and showed them over the place.Dorcas's housewifely eye rejoiced in the well-kept house, even whileshe frowned inwardly at its thousand signs of bachelor inefficiency.The stock and the crops, too, spoke of solid industry.
But she shrank back in sudden revolt as a huge tawny collie camebounding toward her from the fold where he had just marshaled the sheepfor the night. The dog was beautiful. And he meant her no harm. He eventried shyly to make friends with the tall and grave-eyed guest. Dorcassaw all that. Yet she shrank from him with instinctive fear--in spiteof it.
As a child she had been bitten--and bitten badly--by a nondescriptmongrel that had been chased into the
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