d size alone--that the man, recoiling a little, dragged one
hand across his forehead as though he doubted his own eyes. But when
he looked again it was still there, sitting chin in palm, small head
under a rather weather-beaten felt hat thrust slightly forward, gazing
fixedly toward the stucco house beyond the shrubbery. And before Caleb
could move, before he was more than half aware of the painful pulse in
his throat, it all happened again, just as it had happened years and
years before.

Caleb heard voices in the adjoining grounds, and as he half turned in
that direction Allison's bulky form, vivid in a far more vivid plaid,
appeared in the hedge gap. While Caleb stared another figure flashed
through ahead of him, laughter upon her lips, and paused a-tip-toe, to
wave a hand in greeting. And instantly, as they had a dozen years
before, Barbara Allison's eyes swung in instant scrutiny of the one who
was seated at Caleb's feet. She hesitated, and recovered herself. But
when, with quite dignified deliberation, she finally came forward to
pass that motionless figure upon the steps, every pulse in her body was
beating consciousness of his nearness. And yet, at that, when she
paused at Caleb's side and bobbed her head with a characteristic
impetuosity which she had never lost she seemed completely oblivious to
the presence of anyone save Caleb and herself.

"Good morning, Uncle Cal," she murmured, very demurely.

Then the man upon the steps moved; he rose and turned and swept his
rather weather-beaten hat from his head. His hair was still wavy,
still chestnut in the shadows. And Caleb, though he could not force a
word from his tightened throat, marveled how tall the boy had
grown--how paradoxically broad of shoulder and slender of body he
seemed to be.

It was a man's face which was lifted to his, tanned and wrinkled a
little at the corners of the eyes by much exposure to sun and wind.
But the eyes themselves hadn't changed a bit. They were still the same
steady and unwavering gray. A smile crept into them, a smile crept
across the even lips, and for all the change there was in that slow
mirth it might have been the little figure of other days--the boy in
the white drill trousers and uncouth boots--who was smiling up at Caleb.

Standing there in his blue flannel shirt and corduroy trousers, clasped
tight to knee by high brown boots below them, Stephen O'Mara held out a
sinewy brown hand. His voice was a litt