odge, just like all the others, if I could only make out to
throw straight enough. 'Way down deep inside of you, you don't believe
God worries Himself much about what happens to us little dry leaves in
His big woods."

"Oh, but I do!--that is, I believe He cares. The things you spoke of are
things I might easily be deprived of; and I choose to believe that He
gives and continues them."

He was quiet for a full minute, sitting with his knees drawn up to his
chin and his hands tightly clasped over them. When he looked up at her
his face was the face of one tormented.

"I wish you'd ask Him to let my mother live!" he said brokenly. "I've
tried and tried, and the words just die in my mouth."

There is a Mother of Sorrows in every womanly heart, to whom the appeal
of the stricken is never made in vain. Ardea saw only a boy-brother
crying out in his pain, and she dropped on her knees and put her arms
around his neck and wept over him in a pure transport of sisterly
sympathy.

"Indeed and indeed I will help, Tom! And you mustn't let it drive you
out into the dark. You poor boy! I know just how it hurts, and I'm so
sorry for you!"

He freed himself gently from the comforting arms, got up rather
unsteadily, and lifted her to her feet. Then the manly bigness of him
sent the hot blood to her cheeks and she was ashamed.

"O Tom!" she faltered; "what must you think of me!"

He turned to gather up the scattered holly.

"I think God made you--and that was one time when His hand didn't
tremble," he said gravely.

They had picked their way down the leaf-slippery mountain side and he
was giving her the bunch of holly at the Dabney orchard gate before he
spoke again. But at the moment of leave-taking he said:

"How did you know what I needed more than anything else in all the
world, Ardea?"

She blushed painfully and the blue eyes were downcast.

"You must never speak of that again. I didn't stop to think. It's a
Dabney failing, I'm afraid--to do things first and consider them
afterward. It was as if we were little again, and you had fallen down
and hurt yourself."

"I know," he acquiesced, with the same manly gentleness that had made
her ashamed. "I won't speak of it any more--and I'll never forget it the
longest day I live. Good-by."

And he went the back way to his own orchard gate, plunging through the
leaf beds with his head down and his hands in his pockets, struggling as
he could to stem the swift current which