ing him, enjoying him, would not have exchanged comradeship with
the boy's simple, high-tuned relish of life for comradeship with kings.

"Miss Madeira is going to Europe, I hear, Piney," adventured Steering.

"Yass." Piney said nothing more for some time. He looked very
thoughtful. "Y'see," he went on after a bit, "I'm a-thinkin' abaout
ridin' off--some'ere--over the Ridge,--bein' gone fer a long time."

"Oh, Lord!" groaned Steering. He very well knew what was taking Piney
away. It was hard on him that the boy's plan for absence should pile up
on Sally Madeira's plan, but he could understand that it would be harder
on the boy to stay in the Tigmores with the inspiration of the Tigmores
hushed and gone.

"Not thinking of going to Italy yet, Piney?" It had come to be an
accepted joke with them, that penchant of Piney's for Italy. The boy was
willing to laugh about it, but his eyes always sobered dreamily in the
end, and invariably he wound up with, "but I'm a-goin', all righty, an'
don't you fergit it." He did now. "But y'see, whilst I'm a-waitin' I git
kinda tired the hills, Mist' Steerin'," he complained, trying to explain
how it was with him without telling anything. "Lots er times I go off
an' don't come back fer a long time." Not till Miss Madeira comes home,
Bruce added out of his own intuition. "Git sorta tired the hills,"
repeated Piney stubbornly.

"Do they stop talking to you, the hills and the woods and the quiet?"

"Yass, they do, sometimes, when I'm pestered--not as I pester much," he
laughed and broke off suddenly in his laughter, with a little sobbing
shake in his breath, and passed on ahead of Steering, who looked away
from him up the bridle road that cut into the Canaan Tigmores.

"There comes Uncle Bernique!" cried Steering then, glad of a chance to
divert Piney. Gazing toward Bernique welcomingly, he was diverted
himself. The old man made no answer to the shouts that Piney and
Steering sent out to him. He peered straight toward them, through them,
his eyes dry and brilliant. He seemed hardly able to sit on his horse,
because of a sort of enervating restlessness; he paid no attention
whatever to his bridle; both of his hands were in the pockets of the
tattered old coat that covered his body.

"Hi there, Pard!" hallooed Piney, with a boy's rich assurance that
recognises neither class nor age.

"Found!" the old man tried to speak, but made a dry, clicking sound
instead. He took his hands from his