the singer
could not elude him.

The view from the summit was glorious. From there could be seen the
whole of long Lake Loeven, the green vales encircling the lake and
all the blue hills that shelter the valley. When folks from the
shut-in Ashdales climbed to the towering peak they must have
thought of the mountain whither the Tempter had once taken Our
Lord, that he might show Him all the kingdoms of the world, and
their glories.

When Jan had at last left the dense woods behind him and had come
to a cleared place, he saw the singer. At the top of the highest
peak was a cairn, and on the topmost stone of this cairn
silhouetted against the pale evening sky stood Glory Goldie
Sunnycastle, in her scarlet dress.

If the folk in the dales and woodlands below had turned their eyes
toward the peak just then, they would have seen her standing there
in her shining raiment.

Glorv Goldie looked out over miles and miles of country. She saw
steep hills crowned with white churches on the shores of the lake,
manors and founderies surrounded by parks and gardens, rows of
farmhouses along the skirt of the woods, stretches of field and
meadow land, winding roads and endless tracts of forest.

At first she sang. But presently she hushed her singing and thought
only of gazing out over the wide, open world before her. Suddenly
she flung out her arms as if wanting to take it all into her
embrace--all this wealth and power and bigness from which she had
been shut out until that day.

Jan did not return until far into the night, and when he reached
home he could give no coherent account of his movements. He
declared he had seen and talked with the senator, but what the
senator had advised him to do he could not remember.

"It's no good trying to do anything," he said again and again.
That was all the satisfaction Katrina got.

Jan walked all bent over, and looked ill. Earth and moss clung to
his coat, and Katrina asked him if he had fallen and hurt himself.

"No," he told her, but he may have lain on the ground a while.

Then he must be ill, thought Katrina.

It was not that either. It was just that something had stopped the
instant it dawned on him that his little girl had offered to save
the home for her parents not out of love for them, but because she
longed to get away and go out in tine world. But this he would not
speak of.

THE EVE OF DEPARTURE

The evening before Glory Goldie of Ruffluck left for Stockholm Jan