mpfire, singing songs
and telling stories under the great harvest moon, all comrades of the
road, must turn their thoughts to soberer things than roasting apples
and school day reminiscences. The grown people, too, stretched out in
their steamer chairs, have been idling away the hours. Vaguely, as in a
mist, a great surgeon recalls that there is a hospital somewhere he has
been neglecting for weeks. An engineer is thinking of his tunnel only
just started through the heart of a mountain. A little old spinster,
fair and fresh as a rose, recalls with a start that for many weeks she
has been sleeping under the stars and eating strange food on a bare deal
table; and down in the valley her beautiful old home, filled with
memories of her girlhood, is waiting to shelter her.

Near the spinster sits a tall man with a delicate, nervous face. He sits
with folded arms, his eyes fixed on the back wall of mountains across
the valley. He is thinking not of the future of the little home in
Surrey that awaits him, but of the twenty black years behind him, as
blank and empty as the years of a prisoner spent in solitary
confinement. Sometimes, with a curious, startled gaze, he turns his eyes
toward his daughter, seated in the circle with the young people.

While we have been taking this leisurely view of our friends, Alberdina
has approached, smiling broadly over a great tray of cakes and ginger
ale. Mrs. Lupo is hovering in the background.

"It was that skirt of the young lady's that brought me really back to my
senses," Mrs. Lupo had confessed to Miss Campbell. "I thought the young
lady had sunk in the mire. The misery that come to me then made me see
things different; that and the prayer you taught me. Lupo, he's workin'
now in the valley and when the camp is broke up, I guess we'll forgive
and forgit."

Miss Campbell, glancing at Mrs. Lupo now in the background, wondered if
that awful memory of the carving knife was not a dream.

"Papa," Billie called from her place near the campfire, "you mustn't
forget to send pounds and pounds of really good coffee to old Granny,
the herb gatherer, enough to last her all winter."

"I'll make a note of it, daughter. Are there any other old parties you
wish to pension off with coffee or tea this winter?"

"No, papa. But I'd like to keep old Granny in coffee for the rest of her
life because she loves it so."

"Ladies and gentlemen," called Percy, rising and flourishing an apple on
the end of