When Tom Weaver's father was sent to prison for selling moonshine, Tom soon thereafter dropped out of Denton High School for two reasons. He realized he would have to get a full time job to help support his mother; also, he had found it intolerable to take the shunning he received from his peers at school after they heard what had happened to his father. Within a short time he got a job at his uncle's sawmill about a mile out of town where he spent long hours working so as to avoid meeting any of his former classmates.

While in school, Tom had become quite fond of Cara Fisher whose father was the president of the only bank in Denton, and he believed she had liked him, too. But now that things had changed, he never expected to talk with her again. So, it was a great surprise for him while he sat on his front porch after work one evening, to see Cara riding her pony up the lane to his house.

"I just had to come and tell you, Tom, how sorry I am for what happened," Cara said. "There's no reason for the kids at school to treat you the way they have."

"It's kind of you to say that, Cara," Tom said, "I hope your coming out here doesn't cost you any friends."

"If they're that kind of friends, I don't need them," she replied.

In the weeks that followed, Cara rode out to see Tom on several occasions; then, without any explanation, her visits stopped.

Several weeks later, he received a letter from her in which she told him she was attending high school at Davisville, some forty miles west of Denton. When she had defied her parents' request for her to stop seeing Tom, she wrote, they had sent her to live with her maternal aunt in Davisville.

When Cara did not receive a reply to the letter she had sent to Tom, she made no effort to contact him again, but buried herself in her schoolwork and tried to forget the pain she felt from being so alone away from friends and home. At long last, the day of her graduation came, but she found little comfort in it because she was so unsure of what her future would be.

Late in the day following her graduation, Cara was surprised to see Tom riding her pony up to her aunt's house.

"Your parents want you to come back home, now," Tom said in a low voice as he dismounted. "We can both ride back on your pony and they will come later for your clothes."

Then mounting the pony, Cara in the saddle and Tom sitting behind her, they rode away without letting Cara's aunt know she was leaving. She knew it was not the proper thing to do, but she did not want anything to interfere with this chance to go back home.

As they rode along on the winding country road, Cara removed a yellow ribbon from her hair, letting the long curls fall loosely about her neck and shoulders, then tied the ribbon to her pony's mane. Neither of them talked much as they rode through the darkness on the long way home. She found it difficult to believe what was happening to her because it all seemed more like a dream than reality.

When they arrived at her parents' home, Tom told Cara to go on in the house while he took care of the pony.

"Cara, how did you get here?" her mother cried when Cara entered the house.

"Tom brought me home on my pony," Cara explained. "He said you and Dad wanted me to come home."

"No, Cara, what you are saying about Tom can't be true," her mother said. "It's sad to say but he was killed in an accident at the sawmill last fall."

Cara refused to believe her mother. She asked her parents to go out with her to the pony barn where Tom had taken her pony. On their arrival at the stable, they could find neither of them. Then, in order to convince Cara that Tom was dead, they decided to take her to the cemetery and show her his grave. On their arrival at the cemetery, they were astounded to see Cara's pony grazing alongside Tom's grave. Still tied to its mane was the yellow ribbon Cara had put there.