cabin where
Father Le Claire swam his horse in the May flood six years before. He
gave no reason for the act that brought me over a road, every foot
sacred to the happiest moments of my life. Past the big cottonwood, down
into the West Draw where the pink blossoms called in sweet insistent
tones to me to remember a day when I had crowned a little girl with
blooms like these, a day when my life was in its Maytime joy. On across
the prairie we swung to the very borders of Springvale, which was
nestling by the river and stretching up the hillslope toward where the
bluff breaks abruptly. I could see "Rockport" gray and sun-flecked
beyond its sheltering line of green bushes.

Just as we turned toward Cliff Street Dever said carelessly,

"Lots of changes some ways sence I took you out of here last August.
Judson, he's married two months ago."

The warm sunny glorious world turned drab and cold to me with the words.

"What's the matter, Baronet?--you're whiter'n a dead man!"

"Just a little faint. Got that way in the army," I answered, which was a
lie.

"Better now? As I was sayin', Judson and Lettie has been married two
months now. Kinder surprised folks by jinin' up sudden; but--oh, well,
it's a lot better quick than not at all sometimes."

I caught my breath. My "spell" contracted in the army was passing. And
here were Cliff Street and the round turret-like corners of Judge
Baronet's stone-built domicile. It was high noon, and my father had just
gone into the house. I gave Dever his fare and made the hall door at a
leap. My father turned at the sound and--I was in his arms. Then came
Aunt Candace, older by more than ten months. Oh, the women are the ones
who suffer most. I had not thought until that moment what all this
winter of absence meant to Candace Baronet. I held her in my strong arms
and looked down into her love-hungry eyes. Men are such stupid unfeeling
brutes. I am, at least; for I had never read in this dear woman's face
until that instant what must have been written there all these
years,--the love that might have been given to a husband and children of
her own, this lonely, childless woman had given to me.

"Aunty, I'll never leave you again," I declared, as she clung to me, and
patted my cheeks and stroked my rough curly hair.

We sat down together to the midday meal, and my father's blessing was
like the benediction of Heaven to my ears.

Springvale also had its measure of good breeding. My coming