ng in
plant, in animal, in humanity; in the deep hard arteries of the ancient
hills themselves? Winter there is grim and bleak beyond the telling.
In far separated cabins, held in the quarantine of mired roads, men and
women have lived, from hand to mouth, sinking into a dour and
melancholy apathy.

But when Spring comes, the gray and chocolate humps of raggedness are
softly veiled again with tender verdure and a song runs with the caress
of the breeze. It is a song relayed on the throats of birds. The
color of new flower and leaf and of skies washed clean of brooding
finds an echo in man and womankind. When the dogwood blossom,
everywhere, breaks into white foam upon the soft billows of woodland
green, and the sap stirs--then the old and crabbed bitterness of life
stands aside for the coming of Love.

If one be young and free, one feels, admittedly or subconsciously, the
deep tides that sing to sentiment and the undertows that pull to
passion.

About the lonely house of Alexander McGivins the woods were burgeoning
and tuneful. Stark contours of landscape had become lovely and
Alexander, preparing for the activities of "drappin' and kiverin'" in
the steep corn-fields, felt the surge of vague influences in her bosom.

Joe McGivins had carried a stricken face since Old Aaron's death. He
looked to his sister, as he had looked to his father, for direction and
guidance and though he worked it was as a hired man might have worked,
patiently rather than keenly and without initiative.

But keeping busy failed to comfort the empty ache in Alexander's heart
because in the grave over yonder lay all that had filled her world, and
though she would have fought the man who suggested it, there were times
when her lovely lips fell into lines of irony, and when she
half-consciously felt that her playing at being a man had been a bitter
and empty jest. She had only forfeited her woman's rights in life, and
had failed to gain the compensation of man's.

Once or twice when on the high road, she passed youthful couples,
love-engrossed, she went on with a wistfulness in her eyes. For such
as these, life held something, but for her, she was sure in her
obduracy of inexperience, there was no objective.

If the truth be told, the "spring-tide" was welling in the channels of
her being, as well as in the rivulets of the hills, and the changes
that had come to her were near to bearing fruit.

That space of little more than a week,