"Agnes, oh, Agnes, I begged you not to. I almost beseeched you, because—oh, don't you understand what is in me, that I am as all men, weak? To have seen you that night—the night I can never forget, the night when you stood over me and I came back to life and saw you. You didn't know then and understand that I had dreamed of you these two years since I had come here: that out of my vision I had seen you, had talked with you, oh, Agnes!" She straightened perceptibly; she looked up at him with that peculiarity in her eyes that even she had never come to understand. They became oblivious to all that was about them, and had unconsciously drawn closer together now and regarded each other as if in some enchanted garden. She sang to him then the music that was in her, and the words were:

"Jean, oh, Jean Baptiste, you have spoken and now at last I understand. And do you know that before I left back there from where I came, I saw you: I dreamed of you and that I would know you, and then I came and so strangely met and have known you now for the man you are, oh, Jean!"

Gradually as the composure that had been theirs passed momentarily into oblivion, and the harvest birds twittered gayly about them, his man's arm went out, and into the embrace her slender body found its way. His lips found hers, and all else was forgotten.

EPOCH THE SECOND

EPOCH THE SECOND

CHAPTER I

Table of Contents

REGARDING THE INTERMARRIAGE OF RACES

IT WAS winter, and the white snow lay everywhere; icicles hung from the eaves. All work on the farms was completed. People were journeying to a town half way between Bonesteel and Gregory to take the train for their former homes; others to spend it with their relatives, and Jean Baptiste was taking it for Chicago and New York where he went as a rule at the end of each year.

He was going with an air of satisfaction apparently; for, in truth, he had everything to make him feel so—that is, almost everything. He had succeeded in the West. The country had experienced a most profitable season, and the crop he reaped and sold had made him in round numbers the sum of seven thousand five hundred dollars. He had paid for the two hundred acres of land he had bargained for; he had seeded more land in the autumn just passed to winter wheat which had gone into the winter in the best of shape; his health was the best. For what more could he have wished?

And yet no man was more worried than he when he stepped from the stage onto the platform of the station where he was to entrain for the East.... It is barely possible that any man could have been more sad.... To explain this we are compelled to go back a few months; back to the harvest time; to his homestead and where he sat with some one near, very near, and what followed.