be glad when her time comes, and she doesn't want to live any
longer in this vale of tears. But when she takes a sick spell, lord,
what a fuss she makes, master! Doctors from town and a trained nurse
and enough medicine to kill a dog! Life may be a vale of tears, all
right, master, but there are some folks who enjoy weeping, I reckon."

Summer passed through the garden with her procession of roses and
lilies and hollyhocks and golden glow. The golden glow was
particularly fine that year. There was a great bank of it at the lower
end of the garden, like a huge billow of sunshine. Tamzine revelled in
it, but Abel liked more subtly-tinted flowers. There was a certain
dark wine-hued hollyhock which was a favourite with him. He would sit
for hours looking steadfastly into one of its shallow satin cups. I
found him so one afternoon in the hop-vine arbour.

"This colour always has a soothing effect on me," he explained.
"Yellow excites me too much--makes me restless--makes me want to sail
'beyond the bourne of sunset'. I looked at that surge of golden glow
down there today till I got all worked up and thought my life had been
an awful failure. I found a dead butterfly and had a little
funeral--buried it in the fern corner. And I thought I hadn't been
any more use in the world than that poor little butterfly. Oh, I was
woeful, master. Then I got me this hollyhock and sat down here to look
at it alone. When a man's alone, master, he's most with God--or with
the devil. The devil rampaged around me all the time I was looking at
that golden glow; but God spoke to me through the hollyhock. And it
seemed to me that a man who's as happy as I am and has got such a
garden has made a real success of living."

"I hope I'll be able to make as much of a success," I said sincerely.

"I want you to make a different kind of success, though, master," said
Abel, shaking his head. "I want you to _do_ things--the things I'd
have tried to do if I'd had the chance. It's in you to do them--if you
set your teeth and go ahead."

"I believe I _can_ set my teeth and go ahead now, thanks to you, Mr.
Armstrong," I said. "I was heading straight for failure when I came
here last spring; but you've changed my course."

"Given you a sort of compass to steer by, haven't I?" queried Abel
with a smile. "I ain't too modest to take some credit for it. I saw I
could do _you_ some good. But my garden has done more than I did, if
you'll believe it. It's wonderf