le from Vancouver came home,
bringing all the Robertsons presents, Jessie's being an autograph
album. She brought it to school and each of her friends proudly
inscribed their names therein, attached to verses sentimental or
otherwise.

Within a week every girl in the Fourth Book had an autograph album,
even if it were only one made of foolscap and trimmed with tissue-paper
such as Rosie made for Elizabeth. It proved far more interesting and
twice as tractable as a beau. A new era dawned in Forest Glen, an age
of learning, when one racked one's brains to compose a poem for a
friend's book, and the age of chivalry was forgotten.

CHAPTER VIII

A BUDDING ACTRESS

During those golden autumn months, the spirit of chivalry had been
manifesting itself in other parts of Forest Glen beside the schoolroom.
That in which the grown-up part of the community shared centered round
Sandy McLachlan's little clearing.

The lawyers had made a bad mess of poor Sandy's affairs, the country
declared. He had virtually lost his farm, as far as the law went, and
all because of some technicality regarding the lack of a fence on all
sides, one which the rural mind considered highly absurd. And not only
that, but the place had been sold to Jake Martin, who had given Sandy
notice to leave early in October.

But the old man was hard to move. Sure of his rights, and convinced of
the injustice of all legal proceedings, he clung tenaciously to his
little property. It was not a place anyone need grieve over losing, an
observer might say--a few acres of stumpy, cleared land, an indefinite
piece of forest, and an old log cabin. But it was Sandy's home--the
only one he had known since he left his father's fisher-hut on the
wind-swept shore of Islay. And every stone and tree on the rough
little place, and the very birds that sang in the evening from the dark
circle of forest were very dear to the old man's heart. From the
doorway he could see down the leafy lane to the church and beyond it
into the grassy graveyard with its leaning headstones. There was one
there, an old moss-grown, wooden slab, once painted white. It marked
two graves, those of Sandy's wife and his daughter, their only child,
who had been Eppie's mother.

Yes, it was hard to think of leaving it all, and he was fiercely
determined to stay.

His friends did their best to help him. Mr. Coulson took the liberty
of writing to Mrs. Jarvis, the owner of the property,