“It is beautiful,” said Christine. “Are you going to wear it?”
A soft color swept over Alison’s face. “No, not yet,” she said. And, passing her sister, she went into the house. Christine looked after her and sighed gently.
The next morning Neal took his departure, his last smile and hand clasp for Alison. “I’ll come back as soon as I can,” he said.
“And you will write?” she asked.
“If I can. If I have anything to tell.” And he rode away.
“My knight goes forth,” whispered Alison to herself. She watched him between the waving sweep of prairie till he was lost to view. Then she turned to her sister and said wistfully, “Oh, Christine, I shall miss him so, I shall miss him so.”
“Why, my dear, my dear,” Christine looked with tender concern at the eyes full of tears, “does it matter so much to you?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” replied Alison rushing up to her room.
All day long she thought of him who had ridden towards the west. In the evening she got out her copy of the “Faerie Queen” and pored over it till her mind was full of the terrors of the forest, of hidden foes, of wounded knights, of desperate combats, and she dreamed of them and, waking in the middle of the night, started up imagining she saw Neal in the hands of fierce Indians. “The Apaches! The Apaches!” she cried out, and sank down on her pillow sobbing convulsively.
Her cry awoke her sister who turned to soothe her, patting her as she would a child. “Why, Alison, dear child, you must have had a horrid dream,” she said. “Go to sleep. There are no Indians.”