woman who spent her time behind closed blinds?
Presently she left the dust behind and drove along under the maple
trees that lined the village street, over cool roads that were kept
well sprinkled.

The Craigmiles lived on the main street of the town in the most
dignified of the well-built homes of cream-colored brick, with a wide
front stoop and white columns at the entrance. Mary was shown into the
parlor by a neat serving maid, who stepped softly as if she were
afraid of waking some one. The room was dark and cool, but the air
seemed heavy with a lingering musky odor. The dark furniture was set
stiffly back against the walls, the floor was covered with a velvet
carpet of rich, dark colors, and oil portraits were hung about in
heavy gold frames.

Mary looked up at two of these portraits with pride, and rebelled that
the light was so shut out that they must always be seen in the
obscurity, for Bertrand had painted them, and she considered them her
husband's best work. In the painting of them and the long sittings
required the intimacy between the two families had begun. Really it
had begun before that, for there were other paintings in that
home--portraits, old and fine, which Elder Craigmile's father had
brought over from Scotland when he came to the new world to establish
a new home. These paintings were the pride of Elder Craigmile's heart,
and the delight of Bertrand Ballard's artist soul.

To Bertrand they were a discovery--an oasis in a desert. One day the
banker had called him in to look at a canvas that was falling to
pieces with age, in the hope that the artist might have the skill to
restore it. From that day the intimacy began, and a warm friendship
sprang up between the two families, founded on Bertrand's love for the
old works of art, wherein the ancestors of Peter Craigmile, Senior,
looked out from their frames with a dignity and warmth and grace
rarely to be met with in this new western land.

Bertrand's heart leaped with joy as he gazed on one of them, the one
he had been called on to save if possible. "This must be a genuine
Reynolds. Ah! They could paint, those old fellows!" he cried.

"Genuine Reynolds? Why, man, it is! it is! You are a true artist. You
knew it in a moment." Peter Senior's heart was immediately filled with
admiration for the younger man. "Yes, they were a good family--the
Craigmiles of Aberdeen. My father brought all the old portraits coming
to him to this country to keep the f