“Neither am I,” said Rupert. He drew nearer to Sheba. “It would be a strange thing to waken and find ourselves owners of a fortune,” he said. “We may waken to find it so—in a few days. But there is always a chance that things may fail one. I was thinking of what we should do if—we lose everything.”
Sheba put out her slim hand. She smiled with trembling lips.
“We have been across the mountain,” she said. “We came together—and we will go back together. Will you go back with us, Rupert?”
He took her in his strong young arms and kissed her, while Tom looked on.
“That is what I was thinking,” he cried; “that it does not matter whether we win the claim or lose it. The house is gone and the store is gone, but we can add a room to the cabin in Blair’s Hollow—we can do it ourselves—and I will learn to plough.”
He dropped on one knee like a young knight and kissed her little, warm, soft palm.
“If I can take care of you and Uncle Tom, Sheba,” he said, “will you marry me?”
“Yes, I will marry you,” she answered. “We three can be happy together—and there will always be the spring and the summer and the winter.”
“May she marry me, Uncle Tom,” Rupert asked, “even though we begin life like Adam and Eve?”
“She shall marry you the day we go back to the mountains,” said Tom. “I always thought Adam and Eve would have had a pretty fair show—if they had not left the Garden of Eden behind them when they began the world for themselves. You won’t have left it behind you. You’ll find it in the immediate vicinity of Talbot’s Cross-roads.”