hile God lets ye live. Notice their color
against the ice and snow, and the pretty skippin' ways of them! And
spunky! Weel, I'm heat fair!"

Freckles emptied his cap, turned his pockets and scattered his last
grain. Then he waved his watching friends good-bye and started down the
timber-line.

A week later, Duncan and Freckles arose from breakfast to face the
bitterest morning of the winter. When Freckles, warmly capped and
gloved, stepped to the corner of the kitchen for his scrap-pail, he
found a big pan of steaming boiled wheat on the top of it. He wheeled to
Mrs. Duncan with a shining face.

"Were you fixing this warm food for me chickens or yours?" he asked.

"It's for yours, Freckles," she said. "I was afeared this cold weather
they wadna lay good without a warm bite now and then."

Duncan laughed as he stepped to the other room for his pipe; but
Freckles faced Mrs. Duncan with a trace of every pang of starved
mother-hunger he ever had suffered written large on his homely,
splotched, narrow features.

"Oh, how I wish you were my mother!" he cried.

Mrs. Duncan attempted an echo of her husband's laugh.

"Lord love the lad!" she exclaimed. "Why, Freckles, are ye no bright
enough to learn without being taught by a woman that I am your mither?
If a great man like yoursel' dinna ken that, learn it now and ne'er
forget it. Ance a woman is the wife of any man, she becomes wife to all
men for having had the wifely experience she kens! Ance a man-child has
beaten his way to life under the heart of a woman, she is mither to
all men, for the hearts of mithers are everywhere the same. Bless ye,
laddie, I am your mither!"

She tucked the coarse scarf she had knit for him closer over his chest
and pulled his cap lower over his ears, but Freckles, whipping it
off and holding it under his arm, caught her rough, reddened hand and
pressed it to his lips in a long kiss. Then he hurried away to hide the
happy, embarrassing tears that were coming straight from his swelling
heart.

Mrs. Duncan, sobbing unrestrainedly, swept into the adjoining room and
threw herself into Duncan's arms.

"Oh, the puir lad!" she wailed. "Oh, the puir mither-hungry lad! He
breaks my heart!"

Duncan's arms closed convulsively around his wife. With a big, brown
hand he lovingly stroked her rough, sorrel hair.

"Sarah, you're a guid woman!" he said. "You're a michty guid woman! Ye
hae a way o' speakin' out at times that's like the inspired pr