and neighbourly
kindness, and there were some there who remembered that old promise
about the other One who will come wherever "two or three are gathered
together," and thought they felt the Unseen Presence.

A few hours later Bud was sitting in the cushioned rocking-chair of
the tent before a cheerful fire that blazed in the Klondike heater.
On the lounge sat his father, mother and Mrs. Cavers.

Libby Anne, in a pale blue kimono, and wrapped in a warm shawl, was
on Bud's knee, holding in her hands a gold locket and a chain, and
saying over and over to herself in an ecstasy: "Bud did come back and
I'm Bud's girl."

Mr. Perkins was in radiant good-humour. "By George, it's great to
have Buddie home!" he said, "and our kid here gettin' better. Let me
tell you, Buddie, we've had a pretty dull, damp time around here;
things have been pretty blue, and with no one to help me with the
stock since Ted left. I was tellin' ye about Ted, wasn't I? Well,
sir, we've been up against it all right, but now I'm feelin' so good
I could whoop and yell, and still, I kinda feel I shouldn't. I'm a
good deal like old Bill Mills, down at the Portage, the time the boys
'shivaried' him. You see, just the day after the first woman was
buried old Bill started in to paint up his buckboard, and as soon as
the paint was dry he was off huntin' up another woman; and he got
her, too, a strappin' fine big Crofter girl--by George! you should
see her milkin' a cow--I passed there one day when she was milkin',
and I can tell you she had a big black-and-white Holstein cow shakin'
to the horns! Well, anyway, when Bill and the girl got married, the
boys came to 'shivaree' them. The old woman was just dead two months,
and when the noise started Bill came out, mad as hops, and told them
they should be ashamed of themselves making such a racket at a house
where there had so lately been a funeral! That's how it is with us,
eh, what? By George, it's great altogether to have Buddie home."

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE CONTRITE HEART

Who knows whither the clouds have fled?
In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake.
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,
And the heart forgets its sorrow and ache.

_----James Russell Lowell._

DURING Libby Anne's illness Mrs. Cavers had been so anxious about her
that she had hardly given a thought to anything else; but when the
little girl's perfect recovery seemed assured, she was confronted
again by