."

Breasting the biting gale, the two men swung out through the snowy lane
to the roadway.

Carl watched his companion in silence. It was a test--this wind--to
see how much of a man had been made from the flabby, drunken wreck he
had dragged to the Glade Farm weeks ago with a masterful command. It
had been a bitter fight, with days of heavy sullenness on Wherry's part
and swift apology when the mood was gone, days of hard riding and
walking, of icy plunges after a racking grind of exercise for which
Carl himself with his splendid strength inexorably set the pace, days
of fierce rebellion when he had calmly thrashed his suffering young
guest into submission and locked him in his room, days of horrible
choking remorse and pleading when Carl had grimly turned away from the
pitiful wreck Starrett had made of his clever young secretary.

Once Starrett had motored up officiously to bully Wherry into coming
back to him. Carl smiled. Starrett had stumbled back to his waiting
motor with a broken rib and a bruised and swollen face. Starrett was a
coward--he would not come again.

Carl glanced again at Wherry. It was a man who walked beside him
to-night. The battle was over. Chin up, shoulders squared against the
bitter wind, he walked with the free, full stride of health and new
endurance, tossing the snow from his dark, heavy hair with a laugh.
There was clear red in his face and his eyes were shining.

Five miles in the teeth of a sleety blizzard and every muscle ached
with the fight.

"Dick," said Carl suddenly, "I'm proud of you."

Wherry swung sturdily on his heel.

"But you won for me, Carl," he said quietly. "I'll not forget that."

In silence they tramped back through the heavy drifts to the farmhouse
and left their snowy coats in the great warm kitchen where the
Carmodys--old Allan and young Allan, young, shy, pretty Mary and old
Mary, the sole winter servants of the Glade--were mulling cider over a
red-hot stove.

By the fire in the sitting room Dick faced his host with hot color in
his face.

"Carl," he said with an effort, "my letter to-night--it's from a girl
up home in Vermont. I--I've never spoken of her before--I wasn't fit--"

"Yes?" said Carl.

"She's a little bit of a girl with wonderful eyes," said Wherry, his
eyes gentle. "We used to play a lot by the brook, Carl, until I went
away to college and forgot. I--I wrote her the whole wretched mess,"
he choked. "She says come back."