"Oh, she's going with him—there are no frills to the affection of Caroline Darrah! She'll be bending over his camp-fire yanking out his hot tamales in less than a month—glad to do it. Won't you, beautiful?" answered David gleefully to Caroline's beautiful confusion.
"David Kildare," observed the major with the utmost solemnity, "when a man and woman embark with love at the rudder it is well the Almighty controls the wind and the tides."
"I know, Major, I know and I'm scared some, only I'm counting on Phoebe's chart and the stars. I'm just the jolly paddler," answered David with a laugh across at Phoebe.
"Well," remarked the major judicially, "I think she will be able to accomplish the course if undisturbed. It will behoove you, however, to remember that husband love is a steady combustion, not a conflagration."
"What do you call a love that has burned constantly for between ten and fifteen years, Major?" asked David as he smiled into the keen old eyes that held his.
"That," answered the major, "is a fire fit to light an altar, sir."
"And in my heart, ah, Major, can you trust me—to keep—it burning?" said Phoebe, thus making her avowal before them all with gallant voice and eyes of the dawn.
Moments later after Phoebe and Mrs. Buchanan had retired down the hall, and up the stairway, Caroline Darrah still knelt by the major's chair. They were both silent and the major held her hand in his. They neither of them heard the latch key and in a moment Andrew Sevier stood across the firelight from them.
"I wanted to hear it, Major," he entreated as he laid his hand on Caroline's shoulder when she came to his side and held out his other to the major. "Say it, if you will, sir!"
"The Almighty bless you, boy, and make His sun to shine upon you. He is doing it in giving you Caroline to wife. Some women He holds as hostages until the greater men in us can rise to claim them and to-night His eyes have seen your fulfilment." The major looked straight into the pain-ravaged but radiant face before him and his keen old eyes glowed through the mist that spread across them.