n of eagerness.

So Kenneth Thornton was speedily accepted into full brotherhood and
became a favourite. The cheery peal of his laugh and his even cordiality
opened an easy road to popularity and confidence.

Thornton had been schooled in England until the war clouds lowered, and
as he talked of his boyish days there, and of the sights and festivities
of London town, he found in Caleb Parish and his daughter receptive
listeners, but in young Doane a stiff-necked monument of wordless
resentment.

One summer night when the skies had spilt day-long torrents of rain and
the sun had set red with the woods still sobbing and chill, a great fire
roared on Caleb Parish's hearth. Before it sat the householder with his
daughter and Kenneth Thornton; as usual, too, silent and morose yet
stubbornly present, was Peter Doane.

Oddly enough they were talking of the minuet, and Kenneth rose to
illustrate a step and bow that he had seen used in England.

Suddenly the girl came to her feet and faced him with a curtsey.

Kenneth Thornton bent low from the waist, and, with a stately gesture,
carried her fingers to his lips.

"Now, my lord," she commanded, "show the newest steps that they dance at
court."

"Your humble servant, Mistress Dorothy," he replied, gravely.

Then they both laughed, and Caleb Parish was divided between smile and
tears--but Peter Doane glowered and sat rigid, thinking of freshly
reared barriers that democracy should have levelled.

CHAPTER IV

A week later Dorothy led Kenneth Thornton and Peter Doane to a place
where beside a huge boulder a "spring-branch" gushed into a natural
basin of stone. The ferns grew thick there, and the moss lay deep and
green, but over the spot, with branches spreading nobly and its head
high-reared, stood an ancient walnut and in the narrow circle of open
ground at its base grew a young tree perhaps three feet tall.

"I want to move that baby tree," said Dorothy, and now her voice became
vibrant, "to a place where, when it has grown tall, it can stand as a
monument over my mother's grave."

She paused, and the two young men offered no comment. Each was watching
the glow in her eyes and feeling that, to her, this ceremony meant
something more than the mere setting out of a random seedling.

"It will stand guard over our home," she went on, and her eyes took on
an almost dreamy far-awayness. "It will be shade in summer and a
reminder of coming spring in winter. It wi