I were twenty, you and I could play together in
the Garden; if I were ninety I could tuck you safely away in my nest and
feed you on dainties, and no one could say a word. As it is--well, we'll
do the best we can, and, after you are in your training, you'll be glad
enough to have my nest to fly to for a change of air and an opportunity
to chat with me. The Property Man will come in handy. Hark! the wind is
rising. How it blows!"

The ashes were flying about on the hearth and the trees outside beat
their branches against the windows.

"It never roars like that in the In-Place," whispered Priscilla, awed by
the sound and fury that were rapidly gaining power.

"The In-Place?" Boswell sighed. "What a blessed name! To think of any one
fluttering about in the dangerous Garden when he or she might remain in
the In-Place!"

There was a tap on the door, and in reply to Boswell's "Come!" Goodale
entered.

"Shall I serve supper now, sir?"

"Yes."

"In here?"

"No; in the dining-room." Then, "How far is it to the railway station?"

"Twenty-six miles, sir."

"It seemed like a hundred. Can the team make it to-morrow if the storm
ceases?"

"They look capable, sir."

"Then we will start to-morrow for the States."

CHAPTER XIV

Priscilla Glenn always looked back on the next four weeks of her life as
a transition stage between one incarnation and another. Kenmore, and that
which had gone to the making of her life previous to her meeting with
John Boswell, seemed to have accomplished their purpose and left her
detached and finished, up to a certain point, for the next period of her
existence. In the severing of all the ties of the past, even affection,
gratitude, and memory, for the time being, were held in abeyance. This
was a merciful state, for, had ordinary emotions and sentiments held her,
she would have been unfitted for the difficult task of readjustment which
she gradually achieved, simply because of her dulled mental and spiritual
sensations.

The noise and flash of the big city bewildered and dazzled the girl from
the In-Place and encrusted her with an unreality that spared her many a
pang of loss, and also fear for the future. Boswell's apartment, high
above the street and overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades, became a
veritable sanctuary from which she dreaded to emerge and to which she
clung in a passion of self-preservation. The gray wall of stone across
the sparkling stream grew to be, in