sat with the letter in her hand and the
paper on her lap. She was meditating deeply, but what was in her mind
Anson never knew. She had grown more and more reticent of late. She
sighed, rose, and resumed her evening tasks.

CHAPTER XV.

BERT COMES BACK.

One raw March evening, when the wind was roaring among the gray
branches of the maples like a lion in wrath, some one knocked on the
door.

"Come in!" shouted Anson, who was giving baby her regular ride on his
boots.

"Come in!" added Flaxen.

Gearheart walked in slowly, closed the door behind his back, and stood
devouring the cheerful scene. He was poorly dressed and wore a wide,
limp hat; they did not know him till he bared his head.

"Bert!" yelled Anson, tossing the baby to his shoulder and leaping
toward his chum, tramping and shaking and clapping like a madman,
scaring the child.

"My gosh-all-hemlock! I'm glad to see ye! Gimme that paw again. Come to
the fire. This is Flaxie" (as though he had not had his eyes on her
face all the time). "Be'n sick?"

Bert's hollow cough prompted this question.

"Yes. Had some kind of a fever down in Arizony. Oh, I'm all right now,"
he added in reply to an anxious look from Flaxen.

"An' this is----"

"Baby--Elsie," she replied, putting a finishing touch to the little
one's dress, mother-like.

"Where's he?" he asked a little later.

Anson replied with a little gesture, which silenced Bert at the same
time that it explained. And when Flaxen was busy a few moments later,
Anson said:

"Gone up the spout."

At the table they grew quite gay, talking over old times, and Bert's
pale face grew rosier, catching a reflection of the happy faces
opposite.

"Say, Bert, do you remember the time you threw that pan o' biscuits I
made out into the grass an' killed every dog in the township?" Then
they roared.

"I remember your flapjacks that always split open in the middle, an' no
amount o' heat could cook 'em inside," Bert replied.

Then they grew sober again when Bert said with a pensive cadence:
"Well, I tell you, those were days of hard work; but many's the time
I've looked back at 'em these last three years, wishin' they'd never
ended an' that we'd never got scattered."

"We won't be again, will we, pap?"

"Not if I can help it," Anson replied.

"But how are you, Bert? Rich?"

Bert put his hand into his pocket and laid a handful of small coins on
the table.

"That's the size o' my pile--four dollar