ers.

Sam worked early and late, and got tanned to the most awful deep
mahogany. All of him held out pretty well but his heels, which he came
in three times to have me fix for him; and once mother and I had to
dress a blister on his back that he got from wearing a torn shirt in the
potato-field.

I was wild with anxiety about Peter and the play and the poor little
heroine; I didn't know whether she was being murdered or separated for
life from the hero. Still, it was good to have Sam to myself for long,
quiet, hot evenings out on the front porch under the brooding doves in
the eaves above us. Sam never talks much but he listens to me, and
sometimes he tells me things from way down inside himself. And little by
little I began to understand all about the things he had been too busy
doing to tell me about.

"You see, it is this way, Bettykin," he said, one evening when the young
moon was attempting to silver the dark all around us as we sat on the
front steps, with mother away rounding off the second pair of socks for
Peter. "There wasn't one cent of money for me to take Byrd and Mammy and
make a start in New York. Even with the best sort of a backing, it is
always a ten-year pull for a youngster before he counts in the world. I
could have sold The Briers, but I couldn't make up my mind to do it, and
then while I hesitated I--I"--he paused a minute and steadied his voice,
while I took his hand and held on to it tight--"I got a call--a land
call that I had to answer. God just picked me up and planted me here on
my bit of land, and I've got to root and grow or--or dishonor Him."

"Oh, Sam, you have, you have honored Him," I said as I crept closer to
his arm.

"I've been all uprooted and pruned, Betty, and I've lost--lost--you
know! But for Him I must go on just the same and bear fruit." At the
pain in Sam's low voice something in me throbbed.

"Lost? Oh, Sam, what?" I exclaimed, as I hugged his arm against my
breast. "What's happened to you, Sam? Tell--"

But just here we were interrupted by a clatter and a clash of hoofs, a
wild shout in Peter's voice, and a cheer in the fledgling's high treble.
The biggest mule lurched up to the gate, and two figures took a flying
leap from his back to the pavement. With a rush they swept up the path
and brought up panting at the bottom of our steps.

"Peter!" I gasped, descending to be sure that neither of them was bodily
broken or demented.

"It's across! it's across!" shouted