of gingerly treads, was the big hired man, bearing a
huge striped watermelon. He nodded in passing, and grinned with a
meaning hospitality on the visitor.

At one corner of the garden an oblong mound of earth, bordered with
bright stones and river-clam shells, marked the "posy" bed. Within
its boundaries a collection of overgrown house plants, belated pinks,
and seeding sweet-peas, fought for life with the early fall frosts.
Landers looked steadily down at the sorry little garden. Like
everything else he had seen that night, it told its pathetic tale of
things that had been but would be no more.

As he looked, a multitude of homely blossoms that he had plucked in
the past flowered anew in his memory. The mild faces of violets and
pansies, the gaudy blotches of phlox, stood out like nature. He could
almost smell the heavy odor of mignonette. A mist gathered over his
eyes, and again, as at the good-bye of a moment ago, the lump rose
chokingly in his throat.

He turned away from the tiny, damaged bed to send a searching look
around the garden.

"Faith!" he called gently.

"Faith!"--louder.

A soft little sound caught his ear from the grass-plot at the border.
He started swiftly toward it, but stopped half-way, for the sound was
repeated, and this time came distinctly--a bitter, half-choked sob.
With a motion of weariness and of pain the man passed his hand over
his eyes, then walked on firmly, his footsteps muffled in the short
grass.

A dainty little figure in the plainest of calico, lay curled up on the
sod beneath the big maple. Her face was buried in both arms; her whole
body trembled, as she struggled hard against the great sobs.

"Faith--" interrupted the man softly, "Faith--"

The sobs became more violent.

"Go away, Guy," pleaded a tearful, muffled voice between the breaks.
"Please go away, please--"

The man knelt swiftly down on the grass; irresistibly his arm spread
over the dainty, trembling, little woman. Then as suddenly he drew
back with a face white as moonlight, and a sound in his throat that
was almost a groan.

He knelt a moment so, then touched her shoulder gently--as he would
have touched earth's most sacred thing.

"Faith--" he repeated uncertainly.

The girl buried her head more deeply.

"I won't, I tell you," she cried chokingly, "I won't--" she could say
no more. There were no words in her meagre vocabulary to voice her
bitterness of heart.

The man got to his feet almost ro