the too curious gaze of travelers on the road below. Indeed, so
altogether taking and fascinating a bit of property did it become after
its transformation that it was said that two of Green Valley's real
estate men never went down that road without doing sums in their heads
and calling themselves names for overlooking such a bargain. It takes
constructive imagination to be successful in real estate.

And now around this cozy home spot Billy wandered deliriously,
aimlessly. It was the tolling of the church bell and the smell of the
lilacs that recalled to him the significance of the day.

"Why, he was born on Lilac Sunday and he's red-headed just like Her.
Gosh--I must a bin born lucky!"

Billy looked once more all about his story-book home and then his eyes
strayed away to Petersen's Woods, fairy green and already full of deep
shadowed aisles, full of fretted beauty and solemnity. Beyond them lay
the creek, a pool of silver draped in misty morning veils.

"Gosh--I wish to God I was religious!" suddenly, contritely murmured
Billy Evans. In high heaven the angels, and in Billy's kitchen Grandma
Wentworth, overheard and smiled.

When Hank Lolly came up from the livery barn for a late breakfast, his
face drawn and eyes full of fear for the man and woman who had been
family and home to him, Billy went down the footpath to meet him.

"It's all right, Hank! He's here, red hair and all," Billy informed
him in the merest breath of a whisper. Hank wiped his face in limp
relief and sat down quite suddenly on the grass beside the path.
Instinctively Billy sat down with him.

They said nothing for a time, just looked and looked at the wide blue
sky, the green sweet world, tried for perhaps the millionth time to
sense Eternity and the what-and-why-and-how of it all and then gave it
up and like children accepted the day, the little new life, the whole
wonder of it as happy children accept it all, on faith and with
untainted joy. It was just good to be there and there was no doubting
the perfect May day. So they sat reverently until Billy, looking again
at that mass of shimmering greens and into those church-like aisles,
said:

"Hank, some one of us had ought to go to church to-day. I wish to God
I had kep' up going to Sunday school. Mother got me started but she
died before she could get me started in on church. So I never went.
It's a terrible thing for a man not to learn religion along with his
reading and wri