"YOU'VE GOT THE WINNING CARDS, MY GIRL ... IT'S ALL IN THE PLAYING NOW"

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

TO
EVELINA HEMINWAY SMITH
"Sister—Friend"

Contents

"Love is the golden bead in the bottom of the crucible." And the crucible was St. Angé.

Fifty years before this story began, St. Angé was a lumber camp; the first gash in that part of the great Solitude to the north, which lay across Beacon Hill, three miles from Hillcrest.

When the splendid lumber had been felled within a prescribed limit, Industry took another leap, left St. Angé scarred and blighted, with a fringe of forest north and south, and struck camps farther back and nearer Canada.

Then Nature began to heal the stricken heart of the Solitude. A second growth of lovely tree and bush sprang to the call, and the only reminders of the camp were the absences of the men during the logging season, and the roaring and rushing of the river through Long Meadow every spring, with its burden of logs from the distant camps.

In the beginning St. Angé had had her aspirations. A futile highway had been constructed, for no other purpose apparently, than to connect the north and south forests. A little church had been built—there had never been any regular service held in it—and a small school-house which promptly degenerated into the Black Cat Tavern, General Store, and Post Office. A few modest houses met