d under his arm.

"My matins," the priest answered, smiling down into the curiously eager
face that with the fresh unlined beauty of young manhood was upturned to
his. "Good morning." He lifted his hat and walked rapidly away without
waiting for any further word from Champney.

"Sure-footed as a mountain goat!" Champney said to himself as he watched
him cross the rough hilltop. "I'd like to know where he gets it all!"

He stretched out under the pines, his hands clasped under his head, and
fell to thinking of his own affairs, into the as yet undecided course of
which the memory of the priest's words, "The question of value is not,
happily, a question of environment" fell with the force of gravity.

"I might as well go it blind," he spoke aloud to himself: "it's all a
matter of luck into which ring you shy your hat; I suppose it's the
'value', after all, that does it in the end. Besides--"

He did not finish that thought aloud; but he suddenly sat bolt upright,
a fist pressed hard on each knee. His face hardened into determination.
"By George, what an ass I've been! If I can't do it in one way I can in
another.--Hoop! Hooray!"

He turned a somersault then and there; came right side up; cuffed the
dazed puppy goodnaturedly and bade him "Come on", which behest the
little fellow obeyed to the best of his ability among the rough ways of
the sheep walks.

He did not stop at the house, but walked straight down to Flamsted, Rag
lagging at his heels. He sent a telegram to New York. Then he went
homewards in the broiling sun, carrying the exhausted puppy under his
arm. His mother met him on the porch.

"I've just telegraphed Mr. Van Ostend, mother, that I'll be in New York
Friday, ready to sail on Saturday."

"My dear boy!" That was all she said then; but she laid her hand on his
shoulder when they went in to dinner, and Champney knew she was
satisfied.

Two days later, Champney Googe, having bade good-bye to his neighbors,
the Caukinses large and small, to Octavius, Ann and Hannah,--Aileen was
gone on an errand when he called last at Champ-au-Haut but he left his
remembrance to her with the latter--to his aunt, to Joel Quimber and
Augustus, to Father Honore and a host of village well-wishers who, in
their joyful anticipation of his future and his fortunes, laid aside all
factional differences, said, at last, farewell to Flamsted, to The
Corners, The Bow, and his home among the future quarries in The Gore.

PAR