"Don't worry! This can't last much longer. She's of and in the city or
she wouldn't have picked up the flowers. Doc, are you sure they were
mine?"

"Yes. Half the girls have been tricked out in yours the past two weeks.
I can spot them as far as I can see."

"Dear Lord, that's getting close!" said the Harvester intensely. "Seems
as if the violets would tell her."

"Now cut out flowers talking and the South Wind!" ordered the doctor.
"This is business. The violets prove something all right, though. If she
was in the country, she could gather plenty herself. She is working at
sewing in some room in town, either over a store or in a house. If she
hadn't been starved for flowers she never would have stopped for them on
the street. I could see just a flash of hesitation, but she wanted them
too much. David, one bouquet will go in water and be cared for a week.
Man, it's getting close! This does seem like a link."

"Since you say it, possibly I dare agree with you," said the Harvester.

"How near are you through with that canvass of yours?"

"About three fourths."

"Well I'd go on with it. After all we have got to find her ourselves.
Those senile policemen!"

"I am going on with it; you needn't worry about that. But I've got to
change to other flowers. I've stripped the violet beds. There's quite
a crop of berries coming, but they are not ripe yet, and a tragedy to
pick. The pond lilies are just beginning to open by the thousand. The
lake border is blue with sweet-flag that is lovely and the marsh pale
gold with cowslips. The ferns are prime and the woods solid sheets of
every colour of bloom. I believe I'll go ahead with the wild flowers."

"I would too! David, you do feel better, don't you?"

"I certainly do, Doctor. Surely it won't be long now!"

The Harvester was so hopeful that he whistled and sang on the return to
Medicine Woods, and that night for the first time in many days he sat
long over a candlestick, and took a farewell peep into her room before
he went to bed.

The next day he worked with all his might harvesting the last remnants
of early spring herbs, in the dry-room and store-house, and on furniture
and candlesticks.

Then he went back to flower gathering and every day offered bunches of
exquisite wood and field flowers and white and gold water lilies from
door to door.

Three weeks later the Harvester, perceptibly thin, pale, and worried
entered the office. He sank into a chair and groaned