that she had given the elder man. Cheerful fires
burned in old-fashioned, open-hearthed Franklin stoves, in both rooms,
and the atmosphere was fragrant with the mingled breath of crackling
apple-wood, and lavender from the fine old linen with which both beds
had been freshly made.

"Sleep well, my dear friends," said Aunt Ruth, in her quaintly friendly
way, as she bade her guests good-night and shook hands with them,
receiving warm responses.

"One must find sweet repose under your roof," said Matthew Kendrick, and
Richard, attending his hostess to the door, murmured, "You look as if
you'd put two small boys to bed and tucked them in!" at which Aunt Ruth
laughed with pleasure, nodding at him over her shoulder as she went
away.

Presently, as Matthew Kendrick lay down in the soft bed, his face toward
the glow of his fire that he might watch it, Richard knocked and came in
from his own room and, crossing to the bed, stood leaning on the
foot-board.

"Too sleepy to talk, grandfather?" he asked.

"Not at all, my boy," responded the old man, his heart stirring in his
breast at this unwonted approach at an hour when the two were usually
far apart. Never that he could remember had Richard come into his room
after he had retired.

"I wanted to tell you," said the young man, speaking very gently, "that
you've been awfully kind, and have done us all a lot of good to-day. And
you've done me most of all."

"Why, that's pleasant news, Dick," answered old Matthew Kendrick, his
eyes fixed on the shadowy outlines of the face at the foot of the bed.
"Sit down and tell me about it."

So Richard sat down, and the two had such a talk as they had had never
before in their lives--a long, intimate talk, with the barriers
down--the barriers which both felt now never should have existed. Lying
there in the soft bed of Aunt Ruth's best feathers, with the odour of
her lavender in his nostrils, and the sound of the voice he loved in his
ears, the old man drank in the delight of his grandson's confidence, and
the wonder of something new--the consciousness of Richard's real
affection, and his heart beat with slow, heavy throbs of joy, such as he
had never expected to feel again in this world.

"Altogether," said Richard, rising reluctantly at last, as the tall old
clock on the landing near-by slowly boomed out the hour of midnight,
"it's been a great day for me. I'd been looking forward with quite a bit
of dread to bringing you up, I kn