"Oh, Jimmie, don't let me think of it! I could not bear it, and live."
"There are other, more immediate, things to be thought of. Our patient Donahue is thinking hard on some of them this minute. In the first place, he is wondering if he is expected to work nights."
Donahue, who was by now accustomed to the name which had been thrust upon him, stopped and looked around at Augusta.
"I'm sorry, Donahue," she apologized cheerfully. "I know you are hungry and so is Jimmie. And it's all my fault. But really we can't stop right here. This is just the middle of a field. We'll just go on up to the edge of that little woods. And there we'll stop all day tomorrow, if you like, and think about things."
Jimmie tightened up on the rein, and Donahue plodded on obediently.
The track which they followed came again to the edge of a brook which they had been crossing and re-crossing now for two days. And they knew from the limpid clearness of the water and the slight thread of its rapid flow that they must be near its headwaters. Across its little valley, straight in front of them, stood a thin wall of tall, handsome maple trees, which thickened and deepened into a heavy green bank of solid forest as either end of the line ran up to the enclosing heights above the valley.
The cool, sharp breath of a hidden mountain lake came down to them, and Donahue smartened up his gait.
As they came up to where they could see through the fringe of trees, Augusta looked one long moment and drew in a deep breath of delight and pure joy in beauty.
A quick grasp of her hand on Jimmie's arm made him stop the horse. But before he could say a word she was out over the wheel and running through the trees, crying:
"It's ours, Jimmie! All alone ours! Nobody told us about it! We found it all for ourselves. It is all our own!"