the
woods?"

She looked up suddenly from the flowers and caught him unawares. "What
is wrong?" she asked with real concern. "Did you and Phoebe fall out?"

"No," he shook his head. He knew that attempts at subterfuge and evasion
would be vain. "No, mommie, no use trying to deceive you any longer--I
fell out with myself--I wish I could keep it from you," he added slowly;
"I know it's going to hurt you."

"You tell me, Davie. I've lived sixty years and never yet met a trouble
I couldn't live through. Tell me about it."

She placed the box of arbutus in the garden path and laid her hand on
his arm.

"Oh, mommie," he blurted out, almost sobbing, "I'm ashamed of myself!
You'll be ashamed of your boy."

"It's no girl----" the mother hesitated.

He answered with a vehement, "No!"

"Then tell me," she said softly. "I can look in your eyes and hear you
tell me most anything so long as you need not tell me that you have
broken the heart or spoiled the soul of a girl."

She spoke gently, but the man cried out, "Thank God, I have nothing like
that to confess! You know there is only one girl for me. I could never
look into her eyes if I had betrayed the trust of any girl. I have
dreamed of growing into a man she could love and marry, but I failed. I
wanted to offer her more than slavery on a farm, I wanted to have
something more than the few hundreds I scraped together. I took the five
hundred dollars we skimped for and bought stock of Caleb Warner--you
heard that he died?"

"Phares told me."

"I guess the five hundred dollars is gone with him! I heard of other
men getting rich by buying gold and oil stock so I took a chance and
staked all the spare money I had."

"It was your money, Davie."

"You called it mine, but you helped to earn and save it. Caleb promised
me he would sell half of the stock for me at a great profit in a week or
two, and I could keep the other half for the big dividends it would pay
me soon--now he's dead, and the stock is probably worthless."

He looked miserably at her troubled face. She flung her arm about him
and led him to a seat under the budded cherry tree. "We must sit down
and talk it over," she said. "Perhaps it isn't so bad as you think. Are
you sure the stock is worth nothing? Perhaps you can get something out
of it."

"Perhaps I can." He brightened at the suggestion.

"Well," she went on, "I can't say that I think you did right to buy the
stock and try to get rich quick. You