That Girl of Johnson's — page 211: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

200 THAT GIRL OF JOHNSON’S. of womanliness and tenderness. The love that had held place in his heart since he watched the suffering she so bravely endured had but grown deeper and stronger and truer as the years with their changes had passed, and still he was waiting for the answer he hoped for, the answer he had asked her one night under the starlight of her loved heavens ere she left the quiet life of the town for the new life beyond the mountains with her cousin and uncle. She gave him no answer then; the swift agony of the bowed head left him no hope for that then, but the flashing touch of tenderness in the lifted wistful eyes as she bade him farewell left a throb of hope for the answer that might come to him when again she should be with him, and so he had waited with a tender patience that few men would have given him credit for in the old days of his good com- radeship. She was dressed in a soft black gown now that she held mechanically up from the reaching bushes and grasping briers, and there was no color about her save the deep red of the proud sweet mouth and the creamy whiteness of the smooth cheeks. It was a strange freak of hers, no doubt, this wish to once again stand upon the brink of her father’s death, but how could he, loving her, dissuade her from a desire so in- tense as this was shown by the pleading of the dark eyes? And so they had come, and, standing in the very place where she stood years before, with the misty, mysterious gulf at her feet and the broken glimpses of blue heaven through the floating mist, a touch of grief and pleading and tenderness came over the pure, pale face that caused this man, loving her, to bow his head as one involuntarily bows the head before the chancel with the touch of an in- describable holiness brooding above. And he removed his hat, standing so, with his hand upon her round arm as she stood immovable searching the terrible death below her, as though for the solving of the bitterness of her life, as though for the solving of. her own harsh heartlessness in. Ecomicbooks.co