if she were doing it just for herself. It makes it
more worth while."

It was the first time that York had caught the note of anything outside
of self in Jerry's views of life.

He involuntarily pressed his hand against the specially delivered letter
he himself had received that afternoon, and his lips were set grimly.
The plea of the old woman, and the soul of the young woman, which called
loudest now?

"Will this young Ekblad go up to his sweetheart's grave every Sunday,
like Mr. Ponk comes here?" Jerry asked, after a pause.

"No, he will probably never go near it," York replied.

"Why not? I thought that was the customary way of doing here," Jerry
declared.

"Because it isn't his grave. It belongs to Bill Belkap, who doesn't care
for it. Paul Ekblad will find his solace in caring for Nell Poser's
child and in knowing it was her wish that he is fulfilling. That is the
real solace for the loss of loved ones."

Jerry remembered Uncle Cornie and his withered yellow hand under her
plump white one as he told her of Jim Swaim's wish for his child.

"If I carry out that wish I will be true to my father--and--he will be
happier," she thought, and a great load seemed lifting itself from her
soul.

"Oh, father, father! You are not in the 'Eden' burial-plot. You are here
with me. I shall never lose you." The girl's face was tenderly sweet
with silent emotion as she turned to the man beside her.

"I'm glad you told me that story. May I come down to your office in the
morning for a little conference? I can come at ten."

"Certainly. Come any time," York assured her, wishing the while that the
plea of Jerusha Darby's that lay in his pocket was in the bottom of
Fishing Teddy's deep hole down the Sage Brush.

The next morning Jerry Swaim came into the office of the Macpherson
Mortgage Company promptly at the stroke of ten by the town clock.

"If I were only a younger man," York Macpherson thought, feeling how the
presence of this girl transformed the room she entered--"if I were only
younger I would fall at her shrine, without a question. Now I keep
asking myself how a woman can be so charming, on the one hand, and so
characterless maybe, shallow anyhow, on the other. But the test is on
for sure now."

No hint of this thought, however, was in his face as he laid aside his
pen and asked, in his kindly, stereotyped way:

"What can I do for you?"

"You can be my father-confessor for a minute or two, and then make ou