id when he had recovered from his surprise
over this unusual demonstration of affection. "We're going to lift
Elizabeth out into a chair for the first time to-day. She'll be glad
you've come too."

"How is she? You didn't say much about her in your last letter."

"Wasn't much to say," John replied. "She's better--that's the main thing.
Come on into the sitting-room till I can get her ready and get a quilt in
the rocking chair."

"Got a girl, I see!" Hugh remarked in a whisper as they closed the door
behind them.

"Yes, and a good one fortunately. Too much milk and butter. I found that
out when I got at it. No more buttermaking in mine. I had the whole thing
on my hands for over a week. I turned half those cows out to grass," John
said, bringing forward the chair for the invalid.

"I was afraid the morning I left that she had too much to do with all
those shellers on such short notice."

Hugh stooped to pick up the baby.

"How are you, partner?" he cried, swinging the delighted child up to the
ceiling. Jack was wild with joy. Hugh stood with legs wide apart and
cuddled the baby to him for a squeeze. This was part of the homecoming
too. He was still hugging Jack tenderly when John beckoned from the
bedroom door.

Hugh drew the rocking chair into the bedroom and then stopped to stare at
the wasted figure wrapped in a quilt who had to be supported while he
adjusted it.

"John! You didn't tell me she was like this!"

He took the thin hands in his, both of them, just as he had done John's a
moment before, and was moved almost to tears by the pallid face.
Elizabeth's brown eyes had fallen back into her bony, sharp-lined head,
and her nose was thin and drawn.

"Words fail me, Mrs. Hunter," he said feelingly.

But though words failed to express Hugh Noland's sympathy his eyes did
not, and the girl, who had not had an hour's sympathetic companionship
since he had been gone, caught the fact and was cheered by it.

Hugh Noland was vital and invigorating. Elizabeth listened to his account
of the adventures in Mitchell County. He was a good story-teller and his
incidents were well selected. She was too weak to sit up a whole hour and
was carried tenderly back to her bed, where the family life centred now
that she was becoming able to stand the noise and confusion of it.

During the days which followed, Hugh, at John's suggestion, brought his
books and read aloud to them in that little bedroom in the warm spring
even