perience the dreariness of
housework where all individuality is denied the worker. Hepsie came and
went as the exigencies of the work permitted, and there was always a horse
provided for her journeys away from the place; in fact, Hepsie was much
more free than her mistress had been in her first three years in the same
house. Elizabeth demanded good service, but she gave good service also,
and from being a good joke to work for the grass widow, it came to be
recognized that the Hunter farm was a good place to live, and when the
spring came around the men who had worked there the season before always
presented themselves for fresh hiring.

Two years more passed, and Master Jack Hunter was seven years old. On his
seventh birthday his mother dressed him and herself carefully and rode
over to the lonely graveyard. She did not go flower-laden. Rather, she
went as was her custom, to spend an hour with the quiet dead in silent
thought. Hugh Noland's sacrifice had not been in vain. The life he had
laid down had, whatever its mistakes and weaknesses, been a happy one to
himself, and had carried a ray of cheer to all with whom it had come in
contact, while his death had pointed toward an ideal of purity, in spite
of failures. That brief period during which Elizabeth had been compelled
to live a double life for his sake had held many lessons, and had forever
weaned her from duplicity of any sort. Those special hours--the hours
spent beside Hugh Noland's grave--were spent in searching self-inquiry, in
casting up accounts, in measuring herself against the principles with
which she struggled. People had gone out of her wrestlings; principles
remained. Here Elizabeth meditated upon the fact that because the
neighbourhood sentiment and discussion centred around their home, she and
John Hunter had missed a golden opportunity in not having become a force
for good during those first years of their marriage.

The hour spent beside Hugh's grave was her sacrament. There she went to
renew her faith in her own powers, which Hugh's interest and estimates had
first taught her to recognize; there she went to renew her vows of higher
living, and there to contemplate the freedom which Hugh Noland had given
her. But for the land and stock which gave her an independent income she
would have been as tearful, worn, and despondent as many of the women
about her. Her heart was very tender toward Hugh as she sat beside his
grave to-day. She held his letter