reason why I would give my life—why I do and must give my life to protecting them from the consequences of the disaster. No sacrifice is too great for me to make to save their home for them."

"Do you mind telling me how much the mortgage is for?" asked Everett, still in his cool, thoughtful voice.

"

For ten thousand dollars," answered Rose Mary. "The land is worth really less than fifteen. Nobody but such a—such a friend as Mr. Newsome would have loaned Uncle Tucker so much. He—he has been very kind to us. I—I am very grateful to him and I—" Rose Mary faltered and dropped her eyes. A tear trembled on the edge of her black lashes and then splashed on to the chubby cheek of Peter the reposer.

"I see," said Everett coolly, and a flint tone made his usually rich voice harsh and tight. For a few minutes he sat quietly looking Rose Mary over with an inscrutable look in his eyes that finally faded again into the utter world weariness. "I see—and so the bargain and sale goes on even on Providence Road under Old Harpeth. But the old people will never have to give up the Briars while you are here to pay the price of their protection, Rose Mary. Never!"

"I don't believe they will—my faith in Him makes me sure," answered Rose Mary with

lovely unconsciousness as she raised large, comforted eyes to Everett's. "I don't know how I'm going to manage, but somehow my cup of faith seems to get filled each day with the wine of courage and the result is mighty apt to be a—song." And Rose Mary's face blushed out again into a flowering of smiles.

"A sort of cup of heavenly nectar," answered Everett with an answering smile, but the keen look still in his eyes. "See here, I want you to promise me something—don't ever, under any circumstances, tell anybody that I know about this mortgage. Will you?"

"Of course, I won't if you tell me not to," answered Rose Mary immediately. "I don't like to think or talk about it. I only told you because you wanted to help us. Help offers are the silver linings to trouble clouds, and you brought this one down on yourself, didn't you? Of course, it's selfish and wrong to tell people about your anxieties, but there is just no other way to get so close to a friend. Don't

you think perhaps sometimes the Lord doesn't bother to 'temper the winds,' but just leads you up on the sheltered side of somebody who is stronger than you are and leaves you there until your storm is over?"

CHAPTER II

THE FOLKS-GARDEN

"Well," said Uncle Tucker meditatively, "I reckon a festibul on a birthday can be taken as a kind of compliment to the Lord and no special glorification to yourself. He instuted your first one Himself, and I see no harm in jest a-marking of the years He sends you. What are Sister Viney's special reasons against the junket?"

"Oh, I don't know what makes Aunt Viney feel this way!" exclaimed Rose Mary with distress in her blue eyes that she raised to Uncle Tucker's, that were bent benignly upon her as she stood in the barn door beside him. "She says that as the Lord has granted her her fourscore years by reason of great strength, she oughtn't to remind Him that He has for

gotten her by having an eighty-second birthday. Everybody in Sweetbriar has been looking forward to it for a week, and it was going to be such a lovely party. What shall we do? She says she just won't have it, and Aunt Amandy is crying when Aunt Viney don't see it. She's made up her mind, and I don't know what more to say to her."

"Rose Mary," said Uncle Tucker, with a quizzical smile quirking at the corners of his mouth, "mighty often the ingredient of permanency is left out in the making up of a woman's mind, one way or another. Can't you kinder pervail with your Aunt Viney some? I've got a real hanker after this little birthday to-do. Jest back her around to another view of the question with a slack plow-line. Looks like it's too bad to—"

"Rose Mary, oh, Rose Mary, where are ye, child?" came a call in a high, sweet old quaver of a voice from down the garden path, and Miss Amanda hove in sight, hurrying along on

eager but tottering little feet. Her short, skimpy, gray skirts fluttered in the spring breezes and her bright, old eyes peered out from the gray shawl she held over her head with tremulous excitement. She was both laughing and panting as Rose Mary threw her arm around her and drew her into the door of the barn. "Sister Viney has consented in her mind about the party, all along of a verse I was just now a-reading to her in our morning lesson. Saint Luke says: 'It is meet that we should make merry and be glad, for this thy brother was dead and is alive again,' and at the same minute the recollection of how sick Mr. Mark has been hit us both. 'There now,' she says, 'you folks can jest go on with that party to-day for the benefit of our young brother Everett's coming to so good after all his sufferings. This time I will consider it as instituted of the Lord, but don't nobody say birthday next April, if I'm here, on no account whatever.' I take it as a special leading to me

to have read that verse this morning to Sister Viney, and won't you please go over and tell Sally Rucker to go on with the cake, Rose Mary? Sister Viney called Jennie over by sun-up, when she took this notion, and told her to tell her mother not to make it, even if she had already broke all the sixteen eggs."

"Yes, Aunt Amandy, I'll run over and tell Mrs. Rucker, and then we will begin right away to get things ready. I am so glad Aunt Viney is—"

"Rose Mamie, Rose Mamie," came another loud hail from up the path toward the house and down came the General at top speed, with a plumy setter frisking in his wake. "Aunt Viney says for you to come there to her this minute. They is a-going to be the party and it's right by the Bible to have it, some for Mr. Mark, too. Tobe Poteet said 'shoo' when I told him he couldn't come, 'cause they wasn't a-going to be no party on account of worrying the Lord about forgetting Aunt Viney, and I

was jest a-going to knock him into stuffings, 'cause they can't nobody say 'shoo' at the Bible or Aunt Viney neither, to me, when there Aunt Viney called for us to go tell everybody that the party was a-going off and be sure and come. I believe God let her call me before I hit Tobe, 'cause I ain't never hit him yet, and maybe now I never will have to." The General paused, and an expression of devout thankfulness came into his small face at thus being saved the necessity of administering chastisement to his henchman, Tobe the adventurous.

"I believe he did, Stonie, and how thankful I am," exclaimed little Miss Amanda, with real relief at this deliverance of young Tobe, who was her especial, both self-elected and chosen, knight from the General's cohorts.

"Yes'm," answered Stonie. "Come on now, Rose Mamie! Put your hand on me, Aunt Amandy, and I'll go slow with you," and presenting his sturdy little shoulder to Miss

Amanda on one side and drawing Rose Mary along with him on the other, Stonewall Jackson hurried them both away to the house.

"Well," remarked Uncle Tucker to himself as he took up a measure of grain from a bin in the corner of the feed-room and scattered some in front of a row of half-barrel nests upon which brooded a dozen complacent setting hens, "well, if the Lord has to pester with the affairs of Sweetbriar to the extent Stonie and the sisters, Rose Mary, too, are a-giving Him the credit of doing looks like we might be a-getting more'n our share of His attentions. I reckon by the time He gets all the women and children doings settled up for the day He finds some of the men have slipped the bridle and gone. That would account for some of these here wild covortings around in the world we hear about by the newspapers. But He'll git 'em some day sure as—"

"Am I interrupting any