ad
enough, anyway. Sometimes on clear, soft nights, when the moon came out
all splendid and the "peepers" sang so plaintively in the Hollow, the
boy's heart would fill and grow enormous in his chest with the
intolerable sadness he felt.

Then Maw's mood lifted--pierced by a ray of heavenly sunlight--for Nat
came home!

Luke saw him first--heard him, rather; for Nat came up the lane--oh,
miraculous!--driving a motor car. It was not a car like Uncle
Clem's--not even a stepbrother to it. It was low and almost noiseless,
and shaped like one of those queer torpedoes they were fighting with
across the water. It was colored a soft dust-gray and trimmed with
nickel; and, huge and powerful though it was, it swung to a mere touch
of Nat's hand.

Nat stood before them, clad in black leather Norfolk and visored cap and
leggings.

"Look like a fancy brand of chauffeur, don't I?" he laughed, with the
easy resumption of a long-broken relation that was so characteristically
Nat.

But Nat was not a chauffeur. Something much bigger and grander. The news
he brought them on top of it all took their breaths away. Nat was a
special demonstrator, out on a brand-new high-class job for a house
handling a special line of high-priced goods. And he was to go to Europe
in another week--did they get it straight? Europe! Jiminy! He and
another fellow were taking cars over to France and England.

No; they didn't quite get it. They could not grasp its significance, but
clung humbly, instead, to the mere glorious fact of his presence.

He stayed two days and a night; and summer was never lovelier. Maw was
like a girl, and there was such a killing of pullets and extravagance
with new-laid eggs as they had never known before. At the last he gave
them all presents.

"Tell the truth," he laughed, "I'm stony broke. 'Tisn't mine, all this
stuff you see. I got some kale in advance--not much, but enough to swing
me; but of course, the outfit's the company's. But I'll tell you one
thing: I'm going to bring some long green home with me, you can bet! And
when I do"--Nat had given Maw a prodigious nudge in the ribs--"when I
do--I ain't goin' to stay an old bachelor forever! Do you get that?"

Maw's smile had faded for a moment. But the presents were fine--a new
knife for Tom, a book for Luke, and twenty whole round dollars for Maw,
enough to pay that old grocery bill down at Beckonridge's and Paw's new
invoice of patent medicine.

They all stood on th