sheer exuberance of youthful joy. "Did he name
anything about a weddin' in church?"

"Elder Drane is a mighty fine man," asserted Judith, suddenly sober. "Any
gal might be glad to git him. But its my belief and opinion that his
heart is buried with his first--or his second," and she laughed out
suddenly at the unintentional humorous conclusion she had made.

"See here, Jude," the boy put it boldly as the four young people strolled
toward the house, "you're too pretty and sweet to be anybody's thirdly.
Next time old man Drane comes pesterin' round you, you tell him that
you're promised to me--hear?"

Again Judith laughed. It is impossible to talk seriously to a boy with
whom one has played hat-ball and prisoner's base, whose hair one has
pulled, and who has, in retort courteous, rolled one in the dust.

"I'm in earnest if I ever was in my life," asserted Lacey, taking it
quite as a matter of course that Cliantha and Pendrilla should be made
party to his courting.

And the two little old maids of seventeen looked with wondering
admiration at Judith's management of all this masculine attention--her
careless, discounting smile for their swaggering young cousin, her calm
acceptance of imposing Elder Drane's humble and persistent wooing.

Chapter IV

Building

Judith awakened that morning with the song of the first thrush sounding
in her ears. Day was not yet come, but she knew instantly it was near
dawn, so soon as she heard the keen, cool, unmatched thrush voice. Not
elaborate the song like the bobolink, nor passionate like the
nightingale, nor with the bravura of the oriole; but low or loud, its
pure tones are always penetrating, piercing the heart of their hearer
with exquisite sweetness.

The girl lay long in the dark listening, and it seemed to her half
awakened consciousness that this voice in the April dawn was like Creed
Bonbright. These notes, lucid, passionless, that yet always stirred her
heart strangely, and the selfless personality, the high-purposed soul
that spoke in him, they were akin. The crystal tones flowed on; Judith
harkened, the ear of her spirit alert for a message. Yes, Creed was like
that. And her feeling for him too, it partook of the same quality, a
thing to climb toward rather than concede.

And then after all her tremulous hopes, her plannings, the dozen times
she had taken a certain frock from its peg minutely inspecting and
repairing it, that it might be ready for wear on t