````When twilight’s sable curtain falls,
`````Then stars stand thick at even ````To act as outside sentinels `````Around the gates of heaven.
````That night along the shimmering slant,
`````(I tell you true, my brother)
````The password was “Almira Grant”
`````They whispered to each other.=
I knew mighty well what was their password that March night when I walked away from Celene.
I was not fit for any tavern society just then. Impulse seized upon me and I went down into the orchard. True love does not forget his trails and his caches! I found the tree with the hollow trunk and slipped my hand into the hole; I pulled forth the little packet of three rings. I reckoned that when I got my courage and my voice I would have a story to tell her—some evidence of love longstanding to offer—and that I’d find those rings pretty valuable as exhibits A, B, and C.
There were quite a number of gossiping loafers in the tavern foreroom when I marched in at last and took my room key from its hook.
If there had been any doubt among them as to my importance in the world, that doubt must have vanished when they looked on me that night; for if I did not feel at that moment that the world was mine, nobody ever did!