ver the welcome fire.
The blues were gone instantly. There was such a glad light in her eyes as
she advanced to meet him that Jake Ransom wondered if he had been mistaken
in the quivering breath, and there was such genuine pleasure in her
surprised greeting that Silas Chamberlain was warmed and fed by it.

"Where's that baby?" he demanded. "You ain't gone an' tucked him into bed
this time o' night, have you? I come special t' see 'im."

For months Elizabeth had wanted to see Silas and the baby in a "free for
all tumble" and her eyes danced with delight at the idea. She had not had
such a thrill in many weeks; the young mother spoke in every line of her
young face. As if by magic her troubles fell away from her. Crooking her
finger beckoningly at the old man, she crept on tiptoe to the bedroom
door. She had left a lamp lighted in the room and it was possible to
observe the baby without him being aware of their presence. Silas had
crept behind her like an Indian stalking a deer, and she caught his
suppressed breath as she turned with her finger on her lips at the door.
The rest of the group trailed behind with anticipatory grins.

Master John Hunter lay on the bed, very wide awake, making sputtering
efforts to devour his thumb, while he kicked his little feet as vigorously
as the confines of the pinning-blanket would allow.

Silas chuckled. Hearing a noise at the door, the heir of the house rolled
his head on his pillow till his mother's face came within the range of his
vision. Her absence that day had made the child more than usually eager
for her presence. The little feet kicked more wildly than ever, and
forgetting the generous slice of thumb still to be devoured, he grinned
such a vast and expansive grin that the hand to which the thumb was
attached, being free, joined the other in waving salutations of such
joyful pantomime that the object of his industrious beckonings, completely
carried into the current, rushed at him and, sweeping him up in her arms,
tossed him on high as gleefully as if she had not been weighed down by
care but a moment before the old man's advent into the room.

"There, Mr. Chamberlain, was there ever another like him?" she cried.

Baby, who had come down from a point as high as his mother's arms could
reach, doubled his fat little body together with a smothered, squeezed off
little gurgle of delight. Silas was aquiver with sympathetic glee. Those
were not the days when babies were raised b