s horse and take the buggy," said
Ellen. "It is very kind of you. While you are harnessing, aunt and I
will pack the basket."

Stephen, harnessing the gray horse, had a sense of shock; whether
pleasant or otherwise, he could not determine. He had never seen a girl
in the least like Ellen. Girls had never impressed him. She did.

When he drove around to the kitchen door she and Myrtle were both there,
and he drank a cup of coffee before starting, and Myrtle introduced him.
"Only think, Mr. Wheaton," said she, "Ellen says she knows a great deal
about farming, and we are going to hire Jim Mason and go right ahead."
Myrtle looked adoringly at Ellen.

Stephen spoke eagerly. "Don't hire anybody," he said. "I used to work on
a farm to pay my way through college. I need the exercise. Let me help."

"You may do that," said Ellen, "on shares. Neither aunt nor I can think
of letting you work without any recompense."

"Well, we will settle that," Stephen replied. When he drove away, his
usually calm mind was in a tumult.

"Your niece has come," he told Christopher, when the two men were
breakfasting together on Silver Mountain.

"I am glad of that," said Christopher. "All that troubled me about being
here was that Myrtle might wake up in the night and hear noises."

Christopher had grown even more radiant. He was effulgent with pure
happiness.

"You aren't going to tap your sugar-maples?" said Stephen, looking up
at the great symmetrical efflorescence of rose and green which towered
about them.

Christopher laughed. "No, bless 'em," said he, "the trees shall keep
their sugar this season. This week is the first time I've had a chance
to get acquainted with them and sort of enter into their feelings. Good
Lord! I've seen how I can love those trees, Mr. Wheaton! See the pink on
their young leaves! They know more than you and I. They know how to grow
young every spring."

Stephen did not tell Christopher how Ellen and Myrtle were to work the
farm with his aid. The two women had bade him not. Christopher seemed to
have no care whatever about it. He was simply happy. When Stephen left,
he looked at him and said, with the smile of a child, "Do you think I am
crazy?"

"Crazy? No," replied Stephen.

"Well, I ain't. I'm just getting fed. I was starving to death. Glad
you don't think I'm crazy, because I couldn't help matters by saying I
wasn't. Myrtle don't think I am, I know. As for Ellen, I haven't seen
her since she was a