he sumptuous wealth of their luscious fruit. For it
was apple time in the land! The evanescent harvest apples were long
since gone, the snows were past their best, the pippins were mellowing
under the sharp persuasion of the nippy, frosty nights and the brave
gallantry of the sunny days. In this ancient warfare between the frosty
nights and the gallant sunny days the apples ripened rapidly; and well
that they should, for the warfare could not be for long. Already in the
early morning hours the vanguard of winter's fierce hosts was to be seen
flaunting its hoary banners even in the very face of the gallant sun
so bravely making stand against it. But it was the time of the year in
which men felt it good to be alive, for there was in the air that
tang that gives speed to the blood, spring to the muscle, edge to the
appetite, courage to the soul, and zest to life--the apple time of the
year.

It was in apple time that Cameron came back to the farm. Under
compulsion of Mandy, Haley had found it necessary to drive into the
city for some things for the "women folk" and, being in the city, he had
called for Cameron and had brought him out. Under compulsion, not at all
because Haley was indifferent to the prospect of a visit from his former
hired man, not alone because the fall plowing was pressing and the
threshing gang was in the neighbourhood, but chiefly because, through
the channel of Dr. Martin, the little nurse, and Mandy, it had come to
be known in the Haley household and in the country side that the
hired man was a "great swell in the old country," and Haley's sturdy
independence shrank from anything that savoured of "suckin' round a
swell," as he graphically put it. But Mandy scouted this idea and waited
for the coming of the expected guest with no embarrassment from the
knowledge that he had been in the old country "a great swell."

Hence when, through a crack beside the window blind, she saw him, a
poor, pale shadow, descending wearily and painfully from the buggy,
the great mother heart in the girl welled with pity. She could hardly
forbear rushing out to carry him bodily in her strong arms to the spare
room and lay him where she had once helped to lay him the night of the
tragedy some eight weeks before. But in this matter she had learned her
lesson. She remembered the little nurse and her indignant scorn of the
lack of self-control she had shown on the occasion of her last visit to
the hospital. So, instead of ru