he trail the Bird Woman wheeled to McLean with a dumbfounded look.

"God!" muttered he.

At last the Bird Woman spoke.

"Do you think the Angel knew she did that?" she asked softly.

"No," said McLean; "I do not. But the poor boy knew it. Heaven help
him!"

The Bird Woman stared across the gently waving swale. "I don't see how I
am going to blame her," she said at last. "It's so exactly what I would
have done myself."

"Say the remainder," demanded McLean hoarsely. "Do him justice."

"He was born a gentleman," conceded the Bird Woman. "He took no
advantage. He never even offered to touch her. Whatever that kiss meant
to him, he recognized that it was the loving impulse of a child under
stress of strong emotion. He was fine and manly as any man ever could
have been."

McLean lifted his hat. "Thank you," he said simply, and parted the
bushes for her to enter Freckles' room.

It was her first visit. Before she left she sent for her cameras and
made studies of each side of it and of the cathedral. She was entranced
with the delicate beauty of the place, while her eyes kept following
Freckles as if she could not believe that it could be his conception and
work.

That was a happy day. The Bird Woman had brought a lunch, and they
spread it, with Freckles' dinner, on the study floor and sat, resting
and enjoying themselves. But the Angel put her banjo into its case,
silently gathered her music, and no one mentioned the concert.

The Bird Woman left McLean and the Angel to clear away the lunch, and
with Freckles examined the walls of his room and told him all she knew
about his shrubs and flowers. She analyzed a cardinal-flower and
showed him what he had wanted to know all summer--why the bees
buzzed ineffectually around it while the humming-birds found in it
an ever-ready feast. Some of his specimens were so rare that she was
unfamiliar with them, and with the flower book between them they
knelt, studying the different varieties. She wandered the length of the
cathedral aisle with him, and it was at her suggestion that he lighted
his altar with a row of flaming foxfire.

As Freckles came to the cabin from his long day at the swamp he saw
Mrs. Chicken sweeping to the south and wondered where she was going. He
stepped into the bright, cosy little kitchen, and as he reached down the
wash-basin he asked Mrs. Duncan a question.

"Mother Duncan, do kisses wash off?"

So warm a wave swept her heart that a half-flush