and blood. I know her best, of course," Mrs. Darby
went on. "The only way to meet her is to let her meet you. But we will
drop that now. After breakfast I want you to look up the men. I have
told them to report to you on the crop values, and harvest plans, and
fall seeding later. Look over the place well, won't you? Then meet me in
the rose-arbor at ten o'clock for a cup of tea and we will counsel
together."

Mrs. Darby would have told the late Cornelius to "come in for
instructions later." But Eugene Wellington wasn't a sure result. He was
only in the process of solution. And Eugene, being very human, was
unconsciously flattered by this deference to a penniless young man. It
made him pleased with himself and gave him a vague sense of
proprietorship which Cornelius Darby, the real-in-law owner of this fine
country estate, never dreamed of enjoying.

"I wonder what Jerry is doing this morning," he thought as he rode
Cornelius Darby's high-school-gaited horse to the far side of the place.

"The more I see of this farm the finer it looks to me. Not a foot of
waste ground, not a nesting-place for weeds, not a broken fence; grove
and stream, and tilled fields, and gardens, and lawns, and well-kept
buildings. Not an unpainted board nor broken hinge--everything in
perfect repair except that splintered framework at the rose-arbor." He
paused on a little ridge above the Winnowoc from which the whole farm
lay in full view. His artistic eye noted the peaceful beauty of the
scene, the growing crops, the yellowing wheat, the black-green corn, the
fertile meadows swathed in June sunshine, the graceful shrubbery and big
forest trees through which the red-tiled roofs of the buildings glowed,
the pigeons circling about the cupolas of the barn. And not the least
attractive feature of the picture, although he was unconscious of it,
was the young artist himself, astride a graceful black horse, in relief
against a background of wooded border of the bluff above the clear
gurgling Winnowoc. Eugene looked well on horseback, although he was no
lover of horses, and preferred the steady, sure mounts to the spirited
ones.

"I wonder if Jerry's big estate can be as well appointed as this. I wish
she were here with me now." The rider fell to dreaming of Jerry, trying
to put her in a picture of this "Eden" six times enlarged.

<tb>

At this same hour Jerry Swaim was sitting in Junius Brutus Ponk's gray
runabout under the shade of the low oak-