scattering
over the land. So the great life of the nation swept on. He kept noticing
here deserted farms, and one afternoon in the deepening dusk he rode by a
graveyard high up on a bare hillside. A horse and buggy were outside, and
within he spied a lean young woman neatly dressed in a plain dark suit.
With a lawn mower brought from home she was cutting the grass on her family
lot. And she seemed to fit into the landscape. New England had grown very
old.

* * * * *

Late one night toward the end of July, there came a loud honk from down the
hill, then another and another. And as George in his pajamas came rushing
from his bedroom shouting radiantly, "Gee! It's dad!"--they heard the car
thundering outside. Bruce had left New York at dawn and had made the run in
a single day, three hundred and eleven miles. He was gray with dust all
over and he was worn and hollow eyed, but his dark visage wore a look of
solid satisfaction.

"I needed the trip to shake me down," he pleaded, when Edith scolded him
well for this terrific manner of starting his vacation. "I had to have it
to cut me off from the job I left behind me. Now watch me settle down on
this farm."

But it appeared he could not settle down. For the first few days, in his
motor, he was busy exploring the mountains. "We'll make 'em look foolish.
Eh, son?" he said. And with George, who mutely adored him, he ran all about
them in a day. Genially he gave everyone rides. When he'd finished with the
family, he took Dave Royce the farmer and his wife and children, and even
both the hired men, for Bruce was an hospitable soul. But more than anyone
else he took George. They spent hours working on the car, and at times when
they came into the house begreased and blackened from their work, Edith
reproved them like bad boys--but Deborah smiled contentedly.

But at the end of another week Bruce grew plainly restless, and despite his
wife's remonstrances made ready to return to town. When she spoke of his
hay fever he bragged to her complacently of his newly discovered cure.

"Oh, bother your little blue bugs!" she cried.

"The bugs aren't blue," he explained to her, in a mild and patient voice
that drove Edith nearly wild. "They're so little they have no color at all.
Poor friendly little devils--"

"Bruce!" his wife exploded.

"They've been almighty good to me. You ought to have heard my friend the
Judge, the last night I was with him. He