The eye was a piece of
shining black flint and told him that his mine in Lonesome Cove
was but a pocket of cannel coal and worth no more than the
smouldering lumps in his grate. Then he lifted the piece of white
paper--it was his license to marry June.
XXIV
Very slowly June walked up the little creek to the old log where
she had lain so many happy hours. There was no change in leaf,
shrub or tree, and not a stone in the brook had been disturbed.
The sun dropped the same arrows down through the leaves--blunting
their shining points into tremulous circles on the ground, the
water sang the same happy tune under her dangling feet and a wood-
thrush piped the old lay overhead.
Wood-thrush! June smiled as she suddenly rechristened the bird for
herself now. That bird henceforth would be the Magic Flute to
musical June--and she leaned back with ears, eyes and soul awake
and her brain busy.
All the way over the mountain, on that second home-going, she had
thought of the first, and even memories of the memories aroused by
that first home-going came back to her--the place where Hale had
put his horse into a dead run and had given her that never-to-be-
forgotten thrill, and where she had slid from behind to the ground
and stormed with tears.
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