icture stood ever upon the easel, the same beautiful
unfinished picture! Upon one visit the girl had taken a rare pimpernel
blossom she had found in a lonely hollow and laid it on the empty stool
before the canvas. It was still there when she went again! Faded and
neglected it lay before the shrine, and the message never came that was
to call her to the Hills.

The people of the village, too, were different. They were busy and took
small notice of the girl. Business, Janet thought, was the only reason.
Mrs. Jo G. in particular was changed, but it had been a hard summer for
Mrs. Jo G., and when, after many attempts to secure Janet as waitress,
she had failed, she turned upon the girl sharply.

"You might be doin' worse things!" she snapped, "you're growin' more an'
more like yer ma, an' it ain't t' yer credit!" That was the first inroad
the oncoming wave of sentiment had made in the bulkhead of local
reticence.

Janet started. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"What I say. An' what's more, Janet, if you can't turn in an' be useful
t' them as was good enough fur you before, you can stop away from us
altogether. I don't want Maud Grace t' get any fool notions in her
head."

Once Janet would have turned upon such an attack, but somehow the spring
of resistance was checked. After all what did it matter? But she took
her mother's picture from the carpet-bag that night and hid it in her
blouse with the long-silent whistle! More and more she remained at the
lighthouse. Seldom, even, did she sail over to the dunes and never
unless she felt strong enough to leave a pleasant impression upon Billy.
Over all this, Mark Tapkins watched and brooded, and he slouched more
dejectedly between the Light and his father's little home.

"I tell you!" he often confided to his inner self, "city life is
blightin'! When I was there, it took the breath out o' me, an' now it's
come t' Quinton, it's knocked a good many different from what they once
was!" With this oft-repeated sentiment Mark reached his father's door
one day and through it caught the smell of frying crullers. Old Pa
Tapkins was realizing his harvest from the boarders by acting upon
Janet's suggestion to Mark. From early sunrise until the going down of
the sun, Pa, when not necessarily preparing food for three regular
meals, was mixing, shaping, frying, and selling his now famous cakes.
People, in passing, inhaled the fragrance of Pa's cooking and stopped to
regale themselves an