Chapter Twenty-Six

Spring was blossoming into summer. It was evening and a cooling breeze was laving Sunrise in its magic setting of green. Red and golden banners of glory streamed in the western sky. Dan Farlin, straight, handsome, and elegant, stood on the little front porch of his cabin, looking down at the figures of a tall youth and a girl strolling on the grassy trail leading to town—the new town of Sunrise. Dan was up for over Sunday from the bank at Rocky Point.

“Yes, I’ve got a place,” Jim Bond was telling Gladys Farlin. “Only four miles west of town. A hundred and sixty acres of homestead and I’m buying a piece of grazing land that adjoins it on time. We can have a little home of our own, Gladys. Tell me, don’t you think it’s time you answered my question?”

“Don’t you think there’s something you should tell me before . . . I answer, Jim?” she said in a low voice.

“I know.” He nodded, taking her hands as they paused in the trail. “I was Bovert, sweetheart, but now I’m what I was in the first place. Just Jim Bond. And I owe it to you. Now you can answer, girlie, if you still trust me.”

The girl looked up at him out of shining eyes. “I still trust you, Jim,” she said softly. “I have to trust you because . . . because I love you.” Jim Bond barely heard the last words before he took her in his arms.

“Then that’s your answer,” he said in a thrilling voice.

“Yes,” she whispered as their lips met.

“And that’s that,” said Dan Farlin to himself as he turned back into the cabin. “I might have known it. Well, I guess I’ll have to be satisfied.”

“Was you speaking to me, Mister Dan?” asked the housekeeper as he entered the living room.

Dan Farlin roused himself at the unexpected voice. “Yes”—he smiled—“if you were quick enough to catch it.”

He lit a cigarette and sat down on the divan to await the two young people who were strolling hand in hand up the path. He had an idea that they had something to tell him.

And he was right.

THE END