elds of
learning that filled him at first with alternate despair and
exultation. He confided his new opportunity to Cynthia Walden and to
his amazement that young woman greeted his success with anything but
joy.

"I thought you'd be right glad," said Sandy, somewhat dashed. "I
thought you wanted me to learn and get on."

"So I do," Cynthia admitted, "but I wanted to do it all for you, until
you went away."

"What's the difference?" argued poor Sandy.

It was middle August before Marcia Lowe took her courage in her hands
and went to see Miss Ann Walden. With city ways still asserting
themselves now and again in her thought, she had waited for Miss Walden
to call, but, apparently, no such intention was in the mind of the
mistress of Stoneledge.

"Perhaps after a bit she will write and invite me up there," Marcia
Lowe then pondered. But no invitation came, and finally the little
doctor's temper rose.

"Very well," she concluded, "I'll go to her and have it out. I'm not a
bit afraid, and, besides, Uncle Theodore's business is too important to
delay any longer. She doesn't know, but she _must_ know."

So upon a fine afternoon Marcia Lowe set forth. Grim determination
made her face stern, and she looked older than she really was. When
she passed the Morleys' cabin she smiled up at Mary, who was standing
near by, but the amiable mistress ran in and slammed the door upon the
passerby. A little farther on she came to Andrew Townley's home and
she paused there to speak to the old man sunning himself by the doorway.

"You certainly do favour your uncle, Miss Marching," Andrew mumbled; he
had heard the stranger's claim of relationship and trustingly accepted
it; but her name was too much for him.

"Since you come I git to thinking more and more of Parson Starr. He
was the pleasantest thing that ever happened to us-all."

"Oh! thank you, Mr. Townley!"

So lonely and homesick was the little doctor that any word of
friendliness and good-will drew the tears to her eyes. They talked a
little more of Theodore Starr and then the walk to Stoneledge was
continued.

Marcia Lowe had never seen any of the family except from a distance,
and she dreaded, more than she cared to own, the meeting now. Still
she had come to set right, as far as in her lay, a bitter wrong and
injustice, and she was not one to spare herself.

Her advance had been watched ever since she left Andrew Townley's
cabin, but in reply to her timi