as they stayed, or went out from
them strong to labor, backed with a solid backing. The number of young
firms whom they had started and made, and whose profit also afterward
profited them, was more than had ever been counted. They were never
deceived, for they had an unerring faculty for knowing their own kind.
No firm was keener. Straight on the nail themselves, they exacted the
same quality in others. What they traded in needed no other guaranty
than the name of Rondell.

If Rondell Brothers took Justin's affairs in hand! Lois felt a hope that
sent life through her veins.

"Oh, let us hurry home!" she pleaded, and tried to quicken her pace,
though it was Girard who supported her, else she must have fallen, while
Dosia slipped a little behind, trying to keep her place by his side, so
that when he looked for her she would be there.

"You're so tired," he whispered, with a break in his voice, "and I can't
help you!" and she tried to beat back that dear pity and longing with
her comforting "No, no, no! I'm not really tired"; her voice thrilled
with life, though her feet stumbled.

In that walk beside him, toiling slowly on and on in the bright, far
solitude of those empty fields, where even their hands might not touch,
they two were so heart-close--so heavenly, so fulfillingly near!

Once he whispered in a yearning distress, "Why are you crying?" And she
answered through those welling tears:

"I'm only crying because I'm so glad you're here!"

After a while there was a sound of wheels--wheels! Only a sulky, it
proved to be--a mere half-wagon set low down in the springs, and a
trotting horse in front, driven by a round-faced boy in a derby hat, the
turnout casting long, thin shadows ahead before Girard stopped it.

"You'll have to take another passenger," he said, after explaining
matters to the half-unwilling boy, who crowded himself at last to the
farthest edge of the seat, so that Lois might take possession of the six
inches allotted to her.

She held out her arms hastily. "My boy!" she said, but it was a voice
that had hope in it once more.

"Oh, yes, I forgot; here's the baby," said Girard, looking curiously at
the bundle before handing it to her. "We'll meet you at the Haledon
station very soon now."

In another moment the little vehicle was out of sight, jogging around a
bend of the road.

So still was the night! Only that long, curving runnel of the brook
again accompanied the silence. Not a leaf mo