keep faith with me, or we
shall both be sorry."

"Why, of course!" Rose said it gently, as if she wondered at him. "Of
course I shall keep faith with you."

She heard him rising from his place.

"Now," he said, "you must go home."

"Why must I? The little side door is never locked."

"No, but you have been through a good deal. We must take care of you."

"I feel as if I had all the strength in the world. I could waste it and
waste it, and then have enough to waste again."

"It isn't altogether strength. It's fire--the fire of youth. Bank it up
and let it smoulder, or it will burn you up."

"How are you so wise, playmate? You are as wise as dear grannie."

He stretched up his hands in the darkness. The face he lifted to the
shrouded heavens only the unseen citizens of the night could see, the
beneficent powers that nurse and foster.

"It has been my study," he said, in a tone of awe, as if he had not
before thought how strange it is never to squander. "All these years I
have done nothing but think of my body, how to build up here, how to
husband there. So much exercise, so much sleep, so much turning away
from what burns up and tears. Well, I have done it. I have made myself
into something as solid as the ground, as enduring as the rocks."

"Has it been--easy?" she ventured. "Have you liked to do it?"

"No, I have not liked to do it." Afterwards, in her own room, she
thought of that question and understood the answer better. "I have never
lavished anything," he said. "As soon as I saw what grannie was about,
trying to give me a body to live in, I began to help her. We have done
it. Sometimes I think she did it sitting there in her chair and praying
to her God. I haven't done any spending. It has been all saving. But
when the time comes, I shall spend it all at once."

She felt very far away from him.

"How, playmate?" she asked timidly.

He roused himself. "Never mind," he said. "That's not for us to think
about to-night. Now run home, child, and go to bed."

"But we haven't decided about me. What must I do?"

He was silent for a moment and then he said,--

"A long time ago, grannie told me what to do. She said, 'Do the thing
you think God wishes you to do.'"

"But I don't know anything about God."

"Nor I, playmate. But I think very often about what grannie said."

"Have you tried to do it?"

"I have kept it in my mind."

It was her turn to brood in silence. Then she said to him,--

"It do