d in talking about the hay crop with
Oliver Sloane--who, by the way, is more Oliver Sloaneish than ever."

"If you feel as you said you did the other night, why didn't you go and
speak to him?" Louisa wanted to know.

"But I don't feel that way now. That was just a mood. You don't know
anything about moods, dearie. You don't know what it is to yearn
desperately one hour for something you wouldn't take if it were offered
you the next."

"But that is foolishness," protested Louisa.

"To be sure it is--rank foolishness. But oh, it is so delightful to
be foolish after being compelled to be unbrokenly sensible for twenty
years. Well, I'm going picking strawberries this afternoon, Lou. Don't
wait tea for me. I probably won't be back till dark. I've only four more
days to stay and I want to make the most of them."

Nancy wandered far and wide in her rambles that afternoon. When she had
filled her jug she still roamed about with delicious aimlessness. Once
she found herself in a wood lane skirting a field wherein a man was
mowing hay. The man was Peter Wright. Nancy walked faster when she
discovered this, with never a roving glance, and presently the green,
ferny depths of the maple woods swallowed her up.

From old recollections, she knew that she was on Peter Morrison's land,
and calculated that if she kept straight on she would come out where the
old Morrison house used to be. Her calculations proved correct, with a
trifling variation. She came out fifty yards south of the old deserted
Morrison house, and found herself in the yard of the Wright farm!

Passing the house--the house where she had once dreamed of reigning as
mistress--Nancy's curiosity overcame her. The place was not in view of
any other near house. She deliberately went up to it intending--low be
it spoken--to peep in at the kitchen window. But, seeing the door wide
open, she went to it instead and halted on the step, looking about her
keenly.

The kitchen was certainly pitiful in its disorder. The floor had
apparently not been swept for a fortnight. On the bare deal table were
the remnants of Peter's dinner, a meal that could not have been very
tempting at its best.

"What a miserable place for a human being to live in!" groaned Nancy.
"Look at the ashes on that stove! And that table! Is it any wonder that
Peter has got gray? He'll work hard haymaking all the afternoon--and
then come home to THIS!"

An idea suddenly darted into Nancy's brain. At fi