her Irish inheritance prompted her
to give: ungrudgingly, faithfully, without reward save the knowledge of
a duty performed towards the woman who, in taking her into her household
and maintaining her there, had placed her in a position to make
friends--such friends!

* * * * *

When the soil is turned over carefully, enriched and prepared perfectly
for the seed; when rain is abundant, sunshine plenteous and
mother-earth's spring quickening is instinctive, is it to be wondered at
that the rootlet delves, the plantlet lifts itself, the bud forms
quickly, and unexpectedly spreads its petal-star to the sunlight which
enhances its beauty and fructifies its work of reproduction? The natural
laws, in this case, work to their prescribed end along lines of
favoring circumstance--and Love is but the working out of the greatest
of all Nature's laws. When conditions are adverse, there is only too
often struggle, strife, wretchedness. The result is a dwarfing of the
product, a lowering of the vital power, a recession from the type. But,
on the contrary, when all conditions combine to further the working of
this law, we have the rapid and perfect flowering, followed by the
beneficent maturity of fruit and seed. Thus Life, the ever-new, becomes
immortal.

Small wonder that Aileen Armagh, trying to explain that queer feeling of
timidity, should suddenly press her hand hard over her heart! It was
throbbing almost to the point of suffocating her, so possessed was it by
the joy of a sudden and wonderful presence of love.

The knowledge brought with it a sense of bewildering unreality. She knew
now that her day dreams had a substantial basis. She knew now that she
had _not_ meant what she said.

For years, ever since the night of the serenade, her vivid imagination
had been dwelling on Champney Googe's home-coming; for years he was the
central figure in her day dreams, and every dream was made half a
reality to her by means of the praises in his behalf which she heard
sounded by each man, woman, and child in the ever-increasing circle of
her friends. It was always with old Joel Quimber: "When Champ gits back,
we'll hev what ye might call the head of a fam'ly agin." Octavius Buzzby
spent hours in telling her of the boy's comings and goings and doings at
Champ-au-Haut, and the love Louis Champney bore him. Romanzo Caukins set
him on the pedestal of his boyish enthusiasm. The Colonel himself was
not less