The Mountain Girl by Emma Payne Erskine Chapter 32 Page 14

her, or the long year of patient waiting and trusting; or had she passed through depths of which he as yet knew nothing, to cause this evanescent breath of pathos? He felt and knew it was all of these. What must she have endured as she wrote that letter!

David fell easily and happily into his life on the mountain again — not the English lord, but the vital, human being, the man in splendid possession of himself and his impulses, holding sacred his rights as a man, not to be coerced by custom or bound by any chains save those he himself had forged to bind his heart before God.

For a time he would not allow himself to think of the future, preferring to live thus with the world completely shut away. Buoyantly, jubilantly, he tramped the hills and visited the homes where he had been