n't get asked around much and he's got to hang around with
the boys.

"So I took what money I had and started a pool-room. I thought maybe
I'd feel better seeing people around all day. Well--it wasn't so bad.
But one night a little woman with a baby in her arms came to the door
and begged me to send her husband home and not let him play in my place
any more. She said she had no milk for the baby and no fire, that he
was spending everything he earned in my poolroom.

"So help me, God, parson, that part of it had never struck me. I ain't
bright and never was. But I ain't no skunk. I give that woman some of
her own money back and that week I sold out at a loss and slunk around
some more. I couldn't go back to my own work. I had a grudge against
it, someway. By and by the money was all gone and an old pal of mine
offered to set me up in business out here, away from the city and old
memories. And here I am again--the same old fool and numbskull. I'll
sell out this week and git. What I'll do I don't know. I'm not a
smart man. It was always Annie that did the heavy thinking and the
advising and had the ideas for starting things."

The boy who was born in India, who had heard hundreds of gripping,
human tales in that land of story and proverb, listened as if this was
the first breath of grief his heart had ever experienced. Then he took
the dead Annie's place.

"Williams, sometime next spring, Billy Evans is going to add a garage
to his livery barn. He'll need a mechanic. That will be just the
place for you. In the meantime I'm buying a little car and am in need
of a driver. So until Billy is ready you'd better come and bach with
me. The farm is big and I'm nearly as lonely at times as you are."

And he told his poolroom friend a tale of India and of two plain white
stones that lay somewhere within the heart of it.

CHAPTER XIV

THE CHARM

It was a wonderful charm--that picture of a little boy and his pet hen.
Nanny carried it about during the day and felt almost safe and easier
of heart. She wondered what had become of all her old happiness, the
carefree joy that had been hers before she met the boy who came from
India and who did not understand women.

Ever since that day on the hill top Nanny's life had been troubled.
She was haunted with strange, vague fears. She woke up one morning
with the knowledge that she had dreamed the night long of the boy from
India. That afternoon she found