with Spain, you know. But I'm doing
something with these little daubs of mine. I have sold a few pieces. The
price wasn't large, but it was something to put against a hungry interest
account. Some day I want to paint--"she hesitated.

"What?" Thaine asked.

Leigh was bending over her brushes and paints, and did not look up as she
said with an effort at indifference:

"Oh, the Purple Notches. It is so beautiful over there."

Thaine bit his lips to hold back the words, and Leigh went on:

"Dr. Carey says Uncle Jim couldn't have held out long at general farming.
But the Coburn book was right. The alfalfa is the silent subsoiler, and
when the whole quarter is seeded we'll pull that mortgage up by the roots,
all right."

She looked up with shining eyes, and Thaine took both of her hands in his,
saying:

"I must tell you good-by now. Mother will know I am here and will be
dragging the lake for me. This isn't like other good-bys. Of course, I may
come back a Brigadier General and make you very proud of me, or I might
not come at all, but I won't say that. Oh, Leigh, Leigh, may I tell you
once more how dear you are to me? Will you promise again to send me the
same message you sent to Prince Quippi when you want me to come back?"

"I will," Leigh replied in a low voice, and for that moment the grove
became for them a holy sanctuary, wherein their words were sacred vows.

When Thaine reached home again, Dr. Carey was just leaving, and the way
was prepared for the purpose of his own coming, as he had hoped it would
be.

"I've a call to make across the river. I'll be back in time to take you up
to catch the train. There's a feast of a breakfast waiting in there for
you. I know, for I had my share of it. Good-by for an hour or two."

The doctor waved his hand to Thaine and drove away.

"So the wanderlust and spirit of adventure in the Aydelot blood got you
after all," Asher Aydelot said as he looked across the breakfast table at
his son. "It seems such a little while ago that I was a boy in Ohio, a
foolish fifteen-year-old, crazy to see and be into what I've wished so
often since that I could forget."

"But you don't object, Father?" Thaine asked eagerly.

Asher did not reply at once. A rush of boyhood memories flooded his mind,
and as he looked at Virginia he recalled how his mother had looked at him
on the day he left home to join the Third Ohio regiment nearly forty
years ago. And then he remembered the moonlit ni