hind him.

The girl grew taller, but the cool whiteness of her face was untinged by
any flush of young maidenhood. At seventeen she was a slender sprite of a
girl, to reach whose unearthly aloofness the warm human hands of her
companions strained unavailing. Each winter she descended to the valley
and to school and church, a silent, remote child, moving like one in a
dream. And every spring she came back to the hill, to Timothy and his
pipes, to the pines and the uplands, to the Round Stone and the white road
in front of it. Ralph Wilcox, hearty, kindly son of his hearty, kindly
parents, tried to speak to her long enough to make her seem real, but she
was rarely in the house except during the day and a half of each week when
her father was there; and on their casual encounters out of doors she
melted from before his eyes like a pixie, knowing the hiding places and
turns of his own land better than he. Sometimes he caught a glimpse of her
afterward, regarding him steadily and curiously from a nook in a hillside,
and once as she darted away she had dropped a handkerchief and turned her
head in time to see him pick it up; but she did not slacken her pace, or
speak to him then or at all.

She rarely spoke, even to Timothy, but this was no barrier between them.
All the winter Timothy lived on the thoughts of the spring, and when the
arbutus and Moira came back he poured out to her the strange treasures he
had found in his heart. Scarcely to her, for she only gazed silent at the
stars as he talked. Rather she seemed to unlock in him the rich stores of
his own understanding and emotion. He marveled that he could ever have
found the valley empty. He felt within him a swelling flood, ever renewed,
of significance to fill all his world with a sweet and comforting meaning.

And so his red hair grew threaded with white, and his foolish, idle heart
happier and happier as the years went on. Then, one midwinter day, Father
Delancey climbed the hill to say that Timothy's sister's husband was dead,
and that Timothy was sent for to take his place, hold the Nebraska claim,
work the land, and be a father to his sister's children. Timothy was
stunned with horror, but the unbending will of the never-contradicted
parish priest bore him along without question.

"Sure, Tim, go! I tell you to! 'Tis the only thing _to_ do! And 'twill be
a man's work and earn ye many hours out of purgatory. An' 'twill be grand
for ye, ye that never would have a