g at a little table deep in some books and papers before
him, heard no word of his friend's teasing speech. It was Doss Provine,
at the big fireplace heating a poker to burn a hole through his
pulley-wheel, who turned toward his mother-in-law and grinned foolishly.

"I reckon I know the answer to that," he observed. "The boys is all a
warnin' me that a widower is mo' run after than a young feller. They tell
me I'll have to watch out."

"I say watch out--_you_!" cried Nancy, wheeling upon him with a comically
disproportionate fury. "Jest you let me ketch you settin' up to any of
the gals--you, a father with two he'pless chaps to look after, and nobody
but an old woman like me, with one foot in the grave, to depend on!"

There was one girl however who, instead of multiplying her visits to the
Card cabin with Creed's advent, abruptly ceased them. Judith Barrier was
an uncertain quantity to her masculine household; unreasonably elated or
depressed, she led them the round of her moods, and they paid for the
fact that Creed Bonbright did not come across the mountain top visiting,
without being at all aware of where their guilt lay. After that interview
at the milking lot one thought, one emotion was with her always. Always
she was waiting for the next meeting with Creed. Through the day she
heard his voice or his footstep in all the little sounds of the woods,
the humble noises of the farm life; and at night there was the cedar
tree.

Now the cedar tree had affairs of its own. When, with the egotism of her
keen, passionate, desirous youth, the girl in the little chamber under
the eves listened to its voice in April, it was talking in the soft air
of the vernal night about the sap which rose in its veins, spicy,
resinous, odoured with spring, carrying its wine of life into the
farthest green tips, till all the little twigs were intoxicated with it,
and beat and flung themselves in joy. And the tree's deep note was a song
of abiding trust. There was a nest building within its heart--so well
hidden in that dense thicket that it was safe from the eye of any
prowler. Hope and faith and a great devotion went to the building. And
the tree, rich and happy in its own life, cherished generously that other
life within its protecting arms. Its song was of the mating birds, the
building birds, the mother joy and father joy that made the nest ready
for the speckled eggs and the birdlings that should follow.

But to the listening girl t