It was the memory of those words that hovered about her like some bright defending angel when Allan's father came six years later to ask her to marry him, and taught her that fine scorn of him. It was what had kept her in her place waiting all the years,' and what had drawn her to the younger brother, who was like and yet so unlike Allan.
When Miranda realized where she was standing, and that she must finish her work and get back to her room before she was discovered, she raised both hands to her face and laid them gently on her lips, one over the other, crossed, as if she would touch and hold the sacred kiss that had lain there but the moment before. Then she lifted her face slightly and with her eyes open looking up at the dark rafters, and her fingers still laid lightly on her lips, she murmured solemnly:
"Thanks be!" Gravely she came forth to the business of the night. She reached and fastened the padlock, her warm fingers melting the snow that already again lay thick upon it, and made sure the key was safe about her neck and dropped inside her dress against her warm, palpitating breast to keep it from getting wet and telling tales. She struggled back the beam into place, forcing it into its fastening with all her fierce young might until it rested evenly against the door as before. With her hands and feet she smoothed and kicked the snow into levelness in front of the door. She mounted the fence rail for just an instant and glanced off toward the sugar maples, but there was no sign of a dark figure creeping in the blanketed air of the storm, no sound but the steady falling, falling, of the snow, grain by grain, the little, mighty snow In a few minutes all possible marks of the escape would be utterly obliterated. With a sigh of relief Miranda stole quickly back to the cherry tree. She had intended to smooth her tracks in retreat one at a time so that the snow would have less to do, but it was not necessary except just about the door of the smoke-house. The snow was doing it all and well. Ten minutes would cover everything; half an hour would make it one white level plain.
The climbing of the cherry tree was a difficult task with chilled body and numb hands, but she accomplished it swiftly, and crept back over the roof and into her own window. Fortunately the snow was dry and brushed off easily. Her dress was not wet so there was no need to invent an excuse for that. With deep thanksgiving she dropped on her knees beside her bed and sobbed her weary heart out into her pillow. Miranda was not one who often cried. In a crisis she was all there and ready for action. She could bear hardships with a jolly twinkle and meet snubbing with a merry grimace, but that kiss had broken her down and she cried as she had never cried before in her life; and prayed her queer heart-felt prayers:
"Oh God, I didn't never expect no such thing as his bein' good to me. It was turrible good of you to let him. An' I'm so glad he's safe. So glad! You won't let him get caught will you? He didn't do it you know—say, did you know that I wonder?—'thout his tellin' you? I 'spose you did but I like to think you would a' let me save him anyway, even ef he had. But he didn't do it. He said he didn't, and you know he never told what wasn't so—he never minded even when it made out against him. But who did do it? God—are you going to let Enoch Taylor die? Allan can't never come back ef you do—and he said mebbe—but then I don't suppose there could ever be anythin' like that fer me. But please, I thank you fer makin' him so kind. I can't never remember anybody to huv kissed me before. Of course it was dark an' he couldn't see my red hair,—but then he knowed it was there—he couldn't forget a thing like that—an' it was most as if I was real folks like any other girl. An' please, you'll take good care of him, won't you? Not let him get lost er froze, er hungry, an' find him a nice place with a warm bed an' work to do so's he can earn money, 'cause it ain't in conscience people'll find out how folks felt about him here. He ain't bad, you know, and anyhow you made him, and you must 'uv had some intrust in him. I guess you like him pretty well, don't you, or you wouldn't uv let me get him away 'thout bein' found out. So please, I thank you, and ef you've got anythin' comin’ to me any time that's real good, jest give it to him instead. Amen."
The prayer ended, she crept into her bed, her heart warm and happy, but though the hour was well on to morning she could not sleep, for continually she was going over the wonderful experience in the smoke-house. Allan's tired, regular breathing, the soft feel of his hair when she touched it, and his cheek against hers; his lips when they kissed her, and his whispered words. What it had meant to her to have him take her in his arms and thank her that way and be so kind and glad for what she had done, nobody but a lonely, loveless girl like herself could understand. Over and over her heart thrilled at the wonder of it all—that she had been permitted to save him. She felt as she thought it over that she would have been willing to lay down her life to save him.
That was twelve long years ago and not a word had been heard from Allan since, yet still Miranda on starlit nights looked out, remembered, and waited. Long ago she had given up all hope of his return. He was dead or he was married, or he had forgotten, she told herself in her practical daytime thoughts; yet when night came and the stars looked down upon her she thought of him, that perhaps he was somewhere looking at those same stars, and she prayed he might not be in want or trouble—so she waited. Somehow she found it hard to believe that Allan could easily die, he was so young and strong and vivid—so adequate to all situations. It was easy to find excuse for his not coming back. The world was large and far apart in those days of few railroads, expensive travel, and no telegraph. Even letters were expensive, and not unduly indulged in. There would still be danger for him in return, for old Enoch Taylor's sudden and tragic death, shot in the back near the edge of the town just at the time of early candlelight, was still remembered; and the shadow of young Allan's supposed crime and mysterious disappearance had fallen over his younger brother's reputation and made it what it was. Even his father spoke of him only to warn his younger sons now and then that they follow not in his footsteps. Only in Miranda's heart he really lived, and that was why his younger brother, slender and dark and in many ways much like him, had found a warm place in her heart and love, for he seemed somehow like Allan come back to her again.
Love wasn't in just getting it back again to yourself. It was great just to love; just to know that a beloved one existed.
Not that Miranda ever reasoned things out in so many words. She was keen and practical in daily life, but in her dreams strange fancies floated half formed amid her practicalities, and great truths loomed large upon her otherwise limited horizon. It was so she often caught the meaning of life where wiser souls have failed.
The world is not so large and disconnected after all. One evening just after Miranda had gone next door to live with David and Marcia she heard David reading the New York Tribune aloud to his wife while she sewed; little scraps of news and items of interest; what the politicians were doing, and how work was progressing on the canal locks.
"Listen to this," he said half amusedly: "A boy has travelled through England, Ireland and Wales with only fifty-five dollars in his pocket when he started, and has returned safely. He says he is only five dollars in debt, and gives as his reason for going that he wished to see the country!"
Miranda did not understand at all the sympathetic glance of amusement that passed between husband and wife. Her attention had been caught by the facts. A boy! Travelled through all those countries! How very like Allan to do that, and to go on just a little money! It was like him, too, to want to go to see things. It was one of the things in him that had always made good practical people misunderstand him —that wanting to do things just because it was pleasant to do them, and not for any gain or necessity. Miranda smiled to herself as she set the heel of the stocking she was knitting; but she never saw how strange it was that she, the most practical of human beings, should heartily understand and sympathize with the boy who was an idealist. Perhaps she had the same thing in her own nature only she never knew it.
Nevertheless, it became a pleasant pastime for Miranda to look up at the stars at night and share with them her belief that it was Allan who had journeyed all that way, and her pleasure in feeling that he was back in his own land again, nearer to her. All these years she had dreamed out things he might have done, until as the years passed and he did not come, her dreaming became a thing almost without a foundation, a foolish amusement of which she was