d if we work hard enough for the help and the
healing of others, it may be that after a while we will be allowed to
find help and healing for ourselves."

And the young man looking sadly in the face of the old man promised that
he would try--that he would do his best.

XVI

LOVE'S TOUCHSTONE

Ruth, meantime, was still waiting and watching the forest path, and
wondering why he did not come back. He nearly always passed Cedar House
more than once during the day, but he did not return now, although she
waited and watched from early morning till the sun went down. She was
tired of hearing the old ladies wrangling over the hearth, and going
outside the door she had played with the swan, and had grown tired of
that. Looking listlessly about for something else to do, she caught
sight of David sitting alone under the willows on the river bank. He
thought himself safely hidden for the reading of his book, but the
foliage was thinner now on the slender golden wands; some of them were
quite bare, and hung like long silken fringes of shining yellow. The
first frost had touched them on the night before; the soft breeze was
freighted with drifting leaves, and there was a fresh sparkle in the
crystalline air.

She had put on a long coat of dove-colored cloth--one of the fine
garments that Philip Alston was always finding for her--on account of
the cool weather, and she was wearing her gypsy bonnet tied down with
its three-cornered handkerchief of white lace, so that she was all ready
for going further from the house. In another moment she was skimming
down the river bank toward the boy. He saw her coming; but she moved so
like a darting swallow that he barely had time to hide his book under
the mossy log on which he was sitting before she fluttered into a seat
beside him, nestling against his arm.

"There now!" she sighed, smoothing down her skirts. "Now we can have a
nice long talk about love."

The boy moved with the uneasiness that every boy feels at any abstract
approach to the great topic. The girl went straight on, with all the
serenity of the least experienced of her sex. Her big blue eyes were
gravely fixed on his reddened face. Her own was quite calm, and very
serious indeed. Her soft lips were set as firmly as one rose leaf may be
folded against another. The tips of her little fingers met in wisdom's
gesture.

"Listen, David, dear. Listen well, and think hard. I have been thinking
a great deal about love l