for him helped to calm her own
agitation.

"You must be all wore out, doctor," she said sympathetically. "You've
had such an awful winter's work."

Dr. Allen looked embarrassed. It was not the hard toil of the past
winter that had so often made him feel weary. "Oh, I'm all right," he
said evasively. "And you--the winter seems to have benefited you, Miss
Winters," he continued, looking kindly at her shining eyes and flushed
face. "It's a pleasure to see you looking so well, when I remember how
ill you were last fall."

The little woman blushed guiltily. "It's--it's the spring, I guess,"
she stammered; and she was right, for Miss Arabella's long winter was
over, and for her the birds had already begun to sing.

The young man smiled as he helped her out at the Camerons' gate. He
could not help seeing that she was concealing something beneath her
shawl, and was as frightened as though it had been a dynamite bomb. He
was amused, and wondered, as he always did when he met Miss Arabella,
what the queer little body was thinking about. He never dreamed that
his conduct could have had the smallest effect upon her odd behavior,
so blind was he to the far-reaching influence of all human action, good
or evil.

Her heart once more in her mouth, Miss Arabella sped up the Camerons'
lane to the back door. Old lady Cameron was seated by the sitting-room
window, knitting. She wore her best black dress and her lace collar
with the big cairngorm brooch; for the minister and his wife were
expected to tea. She tapped upon the window-pane with her
knitting-needle, and smilingly beckoned Miss Arabella to come in by the
front way. But she shook her head and sped on. She darted up the
steps and into the kitchen, without knocking. Elsie, in a trim cotton
gown and a spotless white apron, was setting the tea-table; and in a
warm corner behind the stove Uncle Hughie, crippled with a bad attack
of rheumatism, was rocking in his old arm-chair, and singing the "March
o' the Cameron Men."

"Hoots! toots! Come away, Arabella! Come away!" he cried. "Eh, hech!
And would you be coming over in all the rain? Well! well! well! and
that would be kind, whatefer."

Elsie put down the pitcher of milk she was bringing from the pantry and
came forward to remove the visitor's dripping shawl.

"Don't, Elsie, don't!" whispered Miss Arabella, clutching it tighter.
"Come on upstairs. I want to tell you something--something awful."

Elsie's