had brought the milk-pail. With a knowledge acquired of experience she learned that the calf had fed itself; that meant that it was all right. Glowing like prospectors who have found a yellow vein and marked the place, they made their way out of the wood.

Down in the hollow a light twinkled in the kitchen window; it was nearly midnight and Billy found himself stumbling over the rough pasture field half asleep and decidedly out of temper.

“My, but I hate this place,” he stormed bitterly. “Soon’s I’m big enough to get away it won’t see much more of me, I can tell you.”

His mother was silent. She never used the evasive “You must not say such things.” Perhaps

the most eloquent part of her life was its quietness. Just now Billy felt his conscience twinge under it. Her patience was teaching him early to overcome the selfishness of youth. He knew that always hers was the greater suffering, but she never complained; so a bit sheepishly he added: “And I suppose that’s just when I might be able to save you and Jean some. But I could make lots of money then; we’d be independent; we could all go together.”

“Oh, no, sonny, we couldn’t do that. Things will be different. There’ll be a way for you and Jean. We’ll find one somehow. Maybe your father’ll see things differently after a while. I think that’ll be a fine calf of Dolly’s; likely almost a cream coat with black points and big soft, black eyes, like a young deer’s.”

“I think she was a fool to trail it away in there as if she thought we’d kill it. I’d have been gooder’n gold to it at home. It was just a chance that we found her at all, and I’m sure no one wants to go prowlin’ around the swamp at this time of the night.”

Then she told him what she knew of nature’s primitive laws handed down from Dolly’s wild ancestors—how the wild birds protect their young from preying enemies and why the old turkey hen, tame for generations, always tried to hide her nest. She also told him of whatever beautiful things she knew to look and listen for

in the woods at night, simple, wonderful lore that her father had given her on their walks through the woods to salt the cattle on Sundays. Before Billy had finished his bread and milk and crawled into bed he had resolved to explore that wood again. He wasn’t afraid of it now; it was a real outdoor theatre.

But long after he was asleep his mother lay awake on the lounge downstairs, listening to the heavy breathing in the next room and thinking. It had troubled her a good deal lately, this night thinking, always looking back and wondering just how present situations had come about. Life had sprung up around her so happily in her beautiful old home. Only to live and laugh and be happy—that was all that was expected of her, and if it didn’t seem enough, if she had visions, mysterious inward stirrings of something creative crying for expression, she generally kept them to herself. At last she suggested it timidly—she wanted to go to school, she wanted to do something. She didn’t know just what. How could she when she had never had a chance to see what there was to be done? But her father had laughed and petted her and said he guessed he could keep his only little girl. It was a pretty hard lookout if a man couldn’t protect his one pet lamb from being buffetted about in the world, fighting for a living with men, and losing their respect and her own womanliness by working at

a man’s job. And he added with unconcealed disappointment that it wasn’t like her to want such a thing when she could have the protection of her father’s home.

She didn’t realize then, of course, how miserably inadequate such a protection might be, but the argument silenced her. She felt keenly ashamed of herself—sort of in a class with the long-spurred hen cropping up every year, a menace to the social life and economic purpose of the flock. They seemed to think she wanted to “go into the world” for the mere joy of adventure or the hope of notoriety, either of which would almost have frightened her to death. But the uncontrollable little voice inside wouldn’t be quiet. It still cried out to create something, to be a part of the scheme that makes the world go round.

Then Dan came, Dan with his handsome face and buoyant, indomitable swing, a fine animal—and the time-old instinct leapt into a flame. There had never been anyone else, because there hadn’t been anyone else in the neighborhood, and she had never been out of it, and this seemed just what she had been waiting for. She wasn’t introspective, and she didn’t stop to analyze this feeling, of course. Apart from the tumultuous sway of it there were secret visions which she would not for worlds have revealed to anyone, but which brought her the only reassurance, “This is real”—a train of little white figures to

hold close for a while, then to send out into the world to do the things she had wanted to do. They would be just like Dan, of course, but they would be guided by the spark she had kept smouldering in her dreams for them.

Now that the dream had failed it never occurred to her that she had made a mistake. Dan was still her man; she couldn’t have imagined things otherwise, only she wondered what she could do, working single-handed and against odds, to give the children a chance. What if, in the fight ahead of her, she should go out as she had seen several of her neighbors go, coming up to the battle spent and tired out, trying desperately to hang on, then suddenly letting go because the overstrained vitality just snapped? Staring into the darkness she whispered over and over, “Oh, God, I can’t—not yet.”

CHAPTER III.

“I want to tell you how much I love you. I also want not to tell you at all, but to do something for you with my hands and feet, to make your bed, to pick lavender pine cones for you, to do something you would never know that I had done. For of the many ways of love, one of the dearest is to serve in silence, to celebrate and not be found out. Mothering is a great business on these lines.”—Dr. Richard Cabot in “What Men Live By.”

Summer had passed with the anxiety and toil of harvest, and the cheering presence of numberless bird colonies, living out the romances and cares of their family history in the meadow of the Swamp Farm. The sumachs in the fence corners were turning crimson before a plan that had long been evolving in Mary’s mind took definite direction. Dan had gone on a two days’ trip for one of his agencies. It might be the only opportunity she would have for secrecy. Nothing had ever before driven her to such drastic measures, but never before had she had so much at stake. She felt distinctly guilty as she evaded Billy’s few searching questions and looked away from the troubled appeal in Jean’s brimming eyes. For the first time in their lives she was leaving them; no wonder they had misgivings. She was almost frightened herself, at this new thing that could drive her to practise such deception.

Still she set out on her six mile walk to town with grim determination, walking fast to reach the railroad track before she should meet any one she knew on the travelled highway. By the time she came to the narrow board walk at the edge of the town she was hot and tired and white with excitement. Everyone seemed to be looking at her. She supposed they all knew Dan, but then there was no reason why they should associate her with Dan. It was a long time since they had been in town together, strangely enough, on a similar errand.

That was before Jean was born, and Dan had brought her in to the lawyer’s office. He had sold a town lot that her father had given her, and superficial as it might seem, it had been necessary for her to come to the lawyer’s office to put her name to the deed, and sign another paper applying the proceeds against the mortgage on the Swamp Farm.