lly
inquired.

"All, all," she replied proudly. "And half the furniture. That cedar
desk there, the table--with his own hands."

"They are such gentle hands," Saxon was moved to say.

Mrs. Hale looked at her quickly, her vivid face alive with a grateful
light.

"They are gentle, the gentlest hands I have ever known," she said
softly. "And you are a dear to have noticed it, for you only saw them
yesterday in passing."

"I couldn't help it," Saxon said simply.

Her gaze slipped past Mrs. Hale, attracted by the wall beyond, which
was done in a bewitching honeycomb pattern dotted with golden bees. The
walls were hung with a few, a very few, framed pictures.

"They are all of people," Saxon said, remembering the beautiful
paintings in Mark Hall's bungalow.

"My windows frame my landscape paintings," Mrs. Hale answered, pointing
out of doors. "Inside I want only the faces of my dear ones whom I
cannot have with me always. Some of them are dreadful rovers."

"Oh!" Saxon was on her feet and looking at a photograph. "You know Clara
Hastings!"

"I ought to. I did everything but nurse her at my breast. She came to
me when she was a little baby. Her mother was my sister. Do you know
how greatly you resemble her? I remarked it to Edmund yesterday. He had
already seen it. It wasn't a bit strange that his heart leaped out to
you two as you came drilling down behind those beautiful horses."

So Mrs. Hale was Clara's aunt--old stock that had crossed the Plains.
Saxon knew now why she had reminded her so strongly of her own mother.

The talk whipped quite away from Billy, who could only admire the
detailed work of the cedar desk while he listened. Saxon told of meeting
Clara and Jack Hastings on their yacht and on their driving trip in
Oregon. They were off again, Mrs. Hale said, having shipped their horses
home from Vancouver and taken the Canadian Pacific on their way to
England. Mrs. Hale knew Saxon's mother or, rather, her poems; and
produced, not only "The Story of the Files," but a ponderous scrapbook
which contained many of her mother's poems which Saxon had never seen.
A sweet singer, Mrs. Hale said; but so many had sung in the days of gold
and been forgotten. There had been no army of magazines then, and the
poems had perished in local newspapers.

Jack Hastings had fallen in love with Clara, the talk ran on; then,
visiting at Trillium Covert, he had fallen in love with Sonoma Valley
and bought a magnificent hom