She was laughing in the moonlight. "Oh Man, I can't ever, ever tell
you!"

"Don't try," said the Harvester. "Call it settled. I will start early
in the morning. I know that little cemetery. The man whose land it is
on can point me the spot. She is probably the last one laid there. Come
now, Ruth. Go to the room I made for you, and sleep deeply and in peace.
Will you try to rest?"

"Oh David!" she exulted. "Only think! Here where it's clean and cool;
beside the lake, where leaves fall gently and I can come and sit close
to her and bring flowers; and she never will be alone, for your dear
mother is here. Oh David!"

"It is better. I can't thank you enough for thinking of it. Come now,
let me help you."

He half carried her down the hill. Then he made the cabin a glamour of
light by putting candles in the sticks he had carved and placing them
everywhere.

"There is a lighting plant in the basement," he said, "but I had not
expected to use it until winter, and I have no acetylene. Candles were
our grandmothers' lights and they are the best anyway. Go bathe your
face, Ruth, and wash away all trace of tears. Put on the pink powder,
and in a few weeks you will have colour to outdo the wildest rose. You
must be as gay as you can the remainder of this night."

"I will!" cried the Girl. "I will! Oh I didn't know a thing on earth
could make me happy! I didn't know I really could be glad. Oh if the ice
in my heart would melt, and the wall break down, and the girlhood I've
never known would come yet! Oh David, if it would!"

"Before the Lord it shall!" vowed the Harvester. "It shall come with the
fulness of joy right here in Medicine Woods. Think it! Believe it! Keep
it before you! Work for it! Happiness is worth while! All of us have a
right to it! It shall be yours and soon."

"I will try! I will!" promised the Girl. "I'll go right now and I'll put
on the blessed pink powder so thickly you'll never know what is under
it, and soon it won't be needed at all."

She was laughing as she left the room. The Harvester restlessly walked
the floor a few minutes and then sat with a notebook and began entering
stems.

When the Girl returned, he brought the pillow from her bed, folded the
coverlet, and she lay on them in the big swing. He covered her with the
white shawl, and while Singing Water sang its loudest, katydids exulted
over the delightful act of their ancestor, and a million gauze-winged
creatures of night hummed agai