u will, I am sure. Let us go to the mills."

John hesitated before he asked, "Could not I have, sir, a few days with
Aunt Ann at the Cape?"

"No, I shall want you here."

John was silent and disappointed. The Squire saw it. "It can't be
helped--I do not feel able to be alone. Leila will be away a year more
and you will be gone for several years. For your sake and mine I want you
this summer. Take care! You lost a stirrup when Dixy shied. Oh! here are
the mills. Good morning, McGregor. All well?"

"Yes, sir. Tom has gone to the city. He is to be in the office of a
friend of mine this summer. I shall be alone."

"John goes to West Point this September, Doctor."

"Indeed! You too will be alone. Next it will be Leila. How the young
birds are leaving the nests! Even that slow lad of Grace's is going. He
is to learn farming with old Roberts. He has a broad back and the
advantage of not being a thinking-machine."

"He may have made the best choice, McGregor."

"No, sir," said the Doctor, "my son has the best of it."

John laughed. "I don't think I should like either farm or medicine."

"No," returned the Doctor, with his queer way of stating things, "there
must be some one to feed the people; Tom is to be trained to cure, and
you to kill."

"I don't want to kill anybody," said John, laughing.

"But that is the business you are going to learn, young man." John was
silent. The idea of killing anybody!

"Heard from Mrs. Penhallow lately?" asked the doctor.

"No, but from Leila to-day; and, you will be surprised, from Josiah too."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. Give him the two letters, John. Let me have them to-morrow, Doctor.
Good-bye," and they rode on to the mills.

"It is a pity, John, Josiah gave no address," said Penhallow,--"a
childlike man, intelligent, and with some underlying temper of the old
African barbarian." The summer days ran on with plenty of work for John
and without incidents of moment, until the rector went away as was his
habit the first of August, more moody than usual. If the rectory were
finished, he would go there in September, and Mrs. Ann had written to him
about the needed furniture.

On August 20th that lady wrote from Cape May that she must go home, and
Leila that her aunt was well but homesick. The Squire, who missed her
greatly, unreluctantly yielded, and on August 25th she was met at the
station by Penhallow and John. To the surprise of both, she had brought
Leila, as her school was