“I guess I’m getting Mr. Hacket’s gift o’ gab,” I said to myself.

Again I heard the sound of galloping hoofs and as I looked back I saw Sally rounding the turn by the river and coming toward me at full speed, the mane of her pony flying back to her face.  She pulled up beside me just as I had imagined she would do.

“Bart, I hate somebody terribly,” said she.

“Whom?”

“A man who is coming to our house on the stage to-day.  Granny Barnes is trying to get up a match between us.  Father says he is rich and hopes he will want to marry me.  I got mad about it.  He is four years older than I am.  Isn’t that awful?  I am going to be just as mean and hateful to him as I can.”

“I guess they’re only fooling you,” I said.

“No, they mean it.  I have heard them talking it over.”

“He can not marry you.”

“Why?”

It seemed to me that the time had come for me to speak out, and with burning cheeks I said: 

“Because I think that God has married you to me already.  Do you remember when we kissed each other by the wheat-field one day last summer?”

“Yes.”  She was looking down at the mane of her pony and her cheeks were red and her voice reminded me of the echoes that fill the cavern of a violin when a string is touched.

“Seems to me we were married that day.  Seems so, every time I think of it, God asked me all the questions an’ I answered yes to ’em.  Do ye remember after we had kissed each other how that little bird sang?”

“Yes.”

We had faced about and were walking back toward Canton, I close by the pony’s side.

“May I kiss you again?”

She stopped the pony and leaned toward me and our lips met in a kiss the thought of which makes me lay down my pen and bow my head a moment while I think with reverence of that pure, sweet spring of memory in whose waters I love to wash my spirit.

We walked on and a song sparrow followed us perching on the fence-rails and blessing us with his song.

“I guess God has married us again,” I declared.

“I knew that you were walking on this road and I had to see you,” said she.  “People have been saying such terrible things.”

“What?”

“They say your uncle found the pocketbook that was lost and kept the money.  They say he was the first man that went up the road after it was lost.”

Now The Thing stood uncovered before me in all its ugliness—­The Thing born not of hate but of the mere love of excitement in people wearied by the dull routine and the reliable, plodding respectability of that countryside.  The crime of Amos had been a great help in its way but as a topic it was worn out and would remain so until court convened.

“It’s a lie—­my uncle never saw the pocketbook.  Some money was left to him by a relative in Vermont.  That’s how it happened that he bought a farm instead of going to the poorhouse when Grimshaw put the screws on him.”