ter, for she had a
certain erect bearing and strong resemblance of feature. All single women
were called old maids at twenty-five in those days. Else this fair-faced
woman, with clear gray eyes and pink cheeks, and scarce a hint of white in
her abundant brown hair, would not have been considered in the then
ridiculed class. There was a mixture of resoluteness and of timidity in
the expression of her face betokening a character at once determined of
will but shrinking in action. And withal, she was daintily neat and well
kept, like her neat and well-kept farm and home.

As Dr. Carey passed up the flower-bordered walk, she arose to greet him.
If there was a look of glad expectancy in her eyes, the doctor did not
notice it, for the whole setting of the scene was peacefully lovely, and
the fresh-cheeked, white-handed woman was a joy to see. Some quick
remembrance of the brown-handed claimholders' wives crossed his mind at
that instant, and like a cruel stab to his memory came unbidden the
picture of Virginia Thaine in her dainty girlishness in the old mansion
house of the years now dead. Was he to blame that the contrast between
Asher Aydelot's wife, now of Kansas, and Jane Aydelot of Ohio should throw
the favor toward the latter, that he should forget for the moment what
the women of the frontier must sacrifice in the winning of the
wilderness?

"I am glad to see you again, Doctor," Jane Aydelot said in cordial
greeting.

"This is a very great pleasure to me, I assure you, Miss Aydelot," Horace
Carey replied, grasping her hand.

Inside the house everything was as well appointed as the outside
suggested. As the doctor was making himself more presentable after his
long journey, he realized that the pretty, old-fashioned bedroom had
evidently been a boy's room once, Asher Aydelot's room. And with a woman's
loving sentiment, neither Asher's mother nor the present owner had changed
it at all. The petals of a pink rose of the wallpaper by the old-styled
dresser were written over in a boyish hand and the doctor read the names
of "Jim and Alice," and "Asher and Nell."

"Old sweethearts of 'the Kerry Dancing' days," he thought to himself.

From the open window he looked out upon the magnificence of the autumn
forests and saw the white pike road leading down to Clover Creek and the
church spires and courthouse tower above the trees.

"The heir to all this comfort and beauty gave it up because he didn't want
to be a tavern-ke