"Oh, my dear!" she said. "Here, where you gave me the talisman, I return it. I have kept it for you all the years. It brought me whatever the world had to give—friends, fortune, health. You did not claim it, dear; but it is yours, and in return, oh, my fairy prince—my true knight—I claim the world's best treasure—a brave man's faithful love!"
EPILOGUE
It is a lonely thoroughfare, that North Elba road. Not many teams pass to and fro, and the clattering stage was still a mile away. The eternal peaks alone looked down upon these two, for it is not likely that even the leveled glass of any hermit of the mountain-tops saw what passed between them.
Only, from Algonquin and Tahawus there came a gay little wind—the first brisk puff of autumn—and frolicking through a yellow tree in the forsaken door-yard it sent fluttering about them a shower of drifting gold.