itects' plans, listening
to professional golfers' ideas concerning the best way of laying out
golf links, and hearing protests from certain in the parish concerning
her wild, utopian, and unpractical scheme. Difficulties, however, did
not turn her aside from her purpose, and in her arduous labours she was
led to brood less over the tragic cloud which had fallen upon her life.

A year later a great change came over Vale Linden. The little wayside
station some three miles away, which had been seldom used, became quite
busy. The hills and vales, which had been well-nigh forsaken, echoed to
the laughter of many voices. Tired, over-worked men and women found
health and recreation amongst the wild moors, and roaming amidst wooded
dells, while many who, amidst the crowded thoroughfares of London, found
little to rejoice in, felt that their youth was renewed as they filled
their lungs with the balmy air of Devon.

The great house at Vale Linden, which during the late ownership never
received a guest, save those of a select class, was now often filled
with people they would have called plebeian; nevertheless, it had never
since its erection been such a centre of hospitality and gladness as
now.

The new homestead was filled almost as soon as it was opened, while in
the new church, which John Castlemaine had built, people who had
listened to no preacher but the prosy vicar, rejoiced in the thoughts of
men who had a real message to deliver, while those who had lived their
lives amidst turmoil and strife felt that their spiritual and
intellectual needs were met, in this quaint Devonshire village, "far
from the madding crowd."

And Olive Castlemaine was the presiding genius everywhere. It was she
who arranged for competitions on the golf links, and matches in the
tennis courts. No concert or lecture at the village hall seemed to be
complete without her. The ministers who came to the little church
declared that but for the organ which she played, and the choir she
trained, they would find it far more difficult to preach, while the
vicar of the parish sorrowed with a great sorrow that such a beautiful
and accomplished girl should be a dissenter.

Nevertheless, he could not deny that a new life was lived by the people.
Books which the villagers had never heard of before were now read
eagerly, while drunkenness was becoming more and more a thing of the
past.

Thus Olive Castlemaine entered upon a new phase of her life. In the
mi