to hold them a little longer before they should grow too dim and
far away.

A hand scratched at the flap of her tent and Janet Payne's voice
broke into her reverie: "Can't we see you, please, for just a moment?
We'll solemnly promise not to stay long."

Patsy hooked back the flap and forced the semblance of a welcome into
her greeting.

"It was simply ripping!" chorused the Dempsy Carters, each gripping a
hand.

Janet Payne looked down upon her with adoring eyes. "It was the best,
the very best I've ever seen you or any one else play it. For the
first time Rosalind seemed a real girl."

But it was the voice of Gregory Jessup that carried above the others:
"Have you heard, Miss O'Connell? Burgeman died last night, and Billy
was with him. He's come home."

"Faith! then there's some virtue in signs, after all."

A hush fell on the group. Patsy suddenly put out her hand. "I'm glad
for you--I'm glad for him; and I hope it ended right. Did you see
him?"

"For a few minutes. There wasn't time to say much; but he looked like
a man who had won out. He said he and the old man had had a good
talk together for the first time in their lives--said it had given
him a father whose memory could never shame him or make him bitter. I
wanted to tell you, so you wouldn't have him on your mind any
longer."

She smiled retrospectively. "Thank you; but I heaved him off nearly
twenty-four hours ago."

Left to herself again, she finished her packing; then tying under her
chin a silly little poke-bonnet of white chiffon and corn-flowers,
still somewhat crushed from its long imprisonment in a trunk, she
went back for a last glimpse of the Forest and her Greenwood tree.

The place was deserted except for the teamsters who had come for the
tents and the property trunks. A flash of white against the green of
the tree caught her eye; for an instant she thought it one of
Orlando's poetic effusions, overlooked in the play and since
forgotten. Idly curious, she pulled it down and read it--once, twice,
three times:

Where twin oaks rustle in the wind,
There waits a lad for Rosalind.
If still she be so wond'rous kind,
Perchance she'll ease the fretted mind
That naught can cure--but Rosalind.

With a glad little cry she crumpled the paper in her hand and fled,
straight as a throstle to its mate, to the giant twin oaks which
were landmarks in the forest. Her eyes were a-search for a vagabond
figure in rags; it w