"Fetch him. I've something to tell you, for your own benefit. I'll teach
you how to grow mushrooms, down in that cellar you're digging.
Well-grown ones will bring you a dollar a pound. I know, I've raised
them. I'd made a fortune only I love daylight and hate darkness. If you
can stand the underground part just for fun, you'll make it pay."

"Huckleberries! I'll get him. I'll hurry back."

As if he expected the new enterprise to begin that very night the lad
started down the hill. Already there was a manlier bearing about his
ill-shaped body. The necessity for hiding which he had felt had been
removed, and he was a free lad again.

An hour later Frederic Kaye saw him reappear, riding the apparently
restored burro, and smiled grimly.

"Hmm. Well, I'm in for it. I'm to remain under the cloud for an
indefinite time. If it succeeds--I'll not regret. If it doesn't, maybe
the Lord will square it up to my account, against the thoughtless
neglect I showed Salome. Now, I'll go out and interview my old
acquaintance of the Sierras. I wonder is his voice as mellifluous as
erstwhile!"

"Br-a-a-ay! Ah-umph! A-h-h-u-m-p-h!!" responded Balaam, from afar.

CHAPTER XXVI.

A PICNIC IN THE GLEN.

It is amazing how fast time flies when one is busy. At "Charity House"
all were busy, and to all the winter passed with incredible swiftness.

To Amy each day seemed too short to accomplish half she desired, and
each one held some new, fascinating interest in that study of life which
so absorbed her.

"You're the funniest girl, Amy. Even the lengthening of the days,
getting a little lighter in the mornings, week by week, so we can see
the sun rise and such things, as we walk to work--I'd never think of it,
'cept for you."

"Now you do think of it, isn't it interesting?"

"Yes, I like it. Things seem to mean something, now I know you. Before,
well--'pears like I didn't think at all; I just slid along and took no
notice."

"But it's so wonderful. Everything is wonderful,--even the way the
months have gone. Here it is spring, the bloodroot lying in a white
drift along the brookside, and the yellow lilies opening their funny
tooth-shaped petals everywhere in the woods. Yet only a minute ago, as
it seems, the dead leaves were falling, and I was on my way for the
first time to work in the mill. I belong there now, a part of it. I have
almost forgotten how it used to be when I was so idle."

"Seems to me you could never have bee