he Refuge to think and look and listen?" Lynda asked.
For they all worried now when Betty betook herself to the little house.

"Not much!" And here Betty twinkled. "I go there to meet Betty Arnold
face to face, and ask her if she would rather trade back. And then I
come trotting home, almost out of breath, to precious old Brace; I'm so
afraid he won't know he's still the one big thing in the world for me."

This little child of Betty's and Brace's had made a deep impression upon
them all. It had lived only three days and while it stayed the black
shadow hanging over the mother had made the baby seem of less account;
but later, they all recalled the pretty, soft mite with the strange,
old look in its wide eyes. He had been beautiful as babies who are not
going to stay often are. There were to be no years for him to change and
grow and so loveliness came with him.

"I reckon the little chap thought we didn't want him," Brace choked as
he spoke over the small, cold body of his first-born, "so he turned back
home before he forgot the way."

"Don't, brother!" Lynda pleaded as she stood with Truedale beside him.
"You know the way home might have been longer and harder, by and by."

"I wish Betty and I might have helped to make it easier; for a time,
anyway." The eternal revolt against seemingly useless suffering rang in
the words.

And that night Truedale had kissed Lynda lingeringly.

"Such things," he said, referring to the day's sad duties, "such things
do drag people together."

After that something new throbbed in their lives--something that had not
held sway before. If Betty looked and listened for the little creature
who had gone on ahead, Lynda listened and looked into what had been a
void in her life before.

She had always loved children in a kindly, detached way, but she had
never appropriated them. But now she could not forget the feeling of
that small, downy head that for a day or so nestled on her breast while
the young mother's feet all but slipped over the brink. She remembered
the strange look in the child's deep eyes the night it died. The
lonely, aged look that, in passing, seemed trying to fix one familiar
object. And when the dim light went out in the little face and only a
dead baby lay in her arms, maternity had been called forth from its
slumber and in following Betty's child, became vitalized and definite.

"I--I think I shall adopt a child." So she had thought while the cold
little head ye