ou might say. Mary-Clare was born in that snowdrift, and
the mother died there! Ole Doc took 'em both home later."

"Good God!" ejaculated Northrup. "That's the grimmest tale I ever
listened to. What came next?"

"The funeral--a double one, for they brought Hamlin's body back. Then
the saving of Mary-Clare. Polly and I wanted her--but ole Doc said
he'd have to keep an eye on her for a while--she seemed sorter
petering out for some time, and then when she took a turn and caught
on, you couldn't pry her away from ole Doc. He gave her his name and
everything else. His wife was dead; his boy away to school, his
housekeeper was a master hand with babies, and somehow ole Doc got to
figuring out that Mary-Clare was a recompense for what he'd lost in
women folks, and so he raised her and taught her. Good Lord, the
education he pumped into that girl! He wouldn't let her go to school,
but whenever he happened to think of anything he taught it to her, and
he was powerful educated. Said he wanted to see what he could do by
answering her questions and letting her think things out for herself.
Remember, Polly, how Mary-Clare used to ride behind ole Doc with a
book braced up against his back?"

Aunt Polly lifted the sock she was knitting and wiped her eyes.

"Mary-Clare just naturally makes you laugh and cry at once," the old
voice replied, "remembering her is real diverting. She came from
plain, decent stock, but something was grafted onto her while she was
young and it made a new kind of girl of Mary-Clare. So loving and
loyal." Again Aunt Polly wiped her eyes.

"And brave and grateful," Heathcote took up his story, "and terrible
far-seeing. I don't hold with Polly that Mary-Clare became something
new by grafting. Seems more like she was two girls, both keeping pace
and watching out and one standing guard if the other took a time off.
I never did feel sure ole Doc was quite fair with Mary-Clare. Without
meaning to, he got a stranglehold on that girl. She'd have trotted off
to hell for him, or with him. She'd have held her head high and
laughed it off, too. I don't suppose any one on God's earth actually
knows what the real Mary-Clare thinks about things on her own hook,
but you bet she has ideas!"

Northrup was more interested than he had been in many a day. The story
thrilled him. The girl of the yellow house loomed large upon his
vision and he began to understand. He was not one to scoff at things
beyond the pale of exact s