dden bed, blood-root, hepatica, wind-flowers, violets
in a purple glory; finding in the summer wild roses, dewberries,
blackberries, bees and butterflies, the cool shade of the little
groves, the shine and shimmer of the streams; finding in the fall a
golden stillness and the redness of Virginia Creeper. They had ridden
on horseback over the clay roads, they had roamed the stubble with a
pack of wiry hounds at their heels, they had gathered Christmas greens,
they had sung carols, they had watched the Old Year out and the New
Year in, and their souls had been knit in a comradeship which had been
a very fine thing indeed for a boy like Randy and a girl like Becky.

There had been, too, about their friendship a rather engaging
seriousness. They had talked a great deal of futures. They had
dreamed together very great dreams. Their dreams had, of course,
changed from time to time. There had been that dream of Becky's when
she first went to the convent, that she wanted some day to be a nun
like Sister Loretto. The fact that it would involve a change of faith
was thrashed over flamingly by Randy. "It is all very well for an old
woman, Becky. But you'd hate it."

Becky had been sure that she would not hate it. "You don't know how
lovely she looks in the chapel."

"Well, there are other ways to look lovely."

"But it would be nice to be--good."

"You are good enough."

"I am not really, Randy. Sister Loretto says her prayers all day----"

"How often do you say yours?"

"Oh, at night. And in the mornings--sometimes----"

"That's enough for anybody. If you say them hard enough once, what
more can the Lord ask?"

He had been a rather fierce figure as he had flung his questions, but
he had not swerved her in the least from her thought of herself as a
novice in a white veil, and later as a full-fledged sister, with beads
and a black head-dress.

This dream had, in time, been supplanted by one imposed upon her by the
ambitions of a much-admired classmate.

"Maude and I are going to be doctors," Becky had announced as she and
Randy had walked over the fields with the hounds at their heels. "It's
a great opportunity for women, Randy, and we shall study in
Philadelphia."

"Shall you like cutting people up?" he had demanded brutally.

She had shuddered. "I shan't have to cut them up very much, shall I?"

"You'll have to cut them up a lot. All doctors do, and sometimes they
are dead."

She had argued a b