ything in
nature talks to us, if we will but listen. You have taught me to listen,
too. Back a piece in the woods are a strong young hemlock and a little
white birch. For years I have watched and tended them. When I was a small
girl I likened the hemlock to you, sir, and there was I, leaning and
huddling close to you, like the ghostly stripling of the woods. Well, I
noticed to-day, Mr. Farwell, the birch stands quite securely; it doesn't
bend for support on the hemlock, but it is standing friendly all the
same. I think"--and here Priscilla clasped her hands close and
outstretched them--"I think I am soon going away!"

Her eyes were tear-dimmed, her face very earnest.

"I wish--you would give up the childish folly, Priscilla." A fear rose
in Farwell's eyes. "What could you, such an one as you have become, do
out--in the States? It is madness--sheer, brutal madness."

Priscilla shook her head.

"You think it childish folly? Why, I have never lost sight of it for a
day. You have not understood me if you have imagined that. I have always
known I must go. Lately I have felt the nearness of the going, and it is
the _how_ to break away and begin that puzzle me. I am ready."

"Priscilla, you are a wild child still, playing with dangerous tools.
You cannot comprehend the trouble into which you are willing, in your
blindness, to plunge. Why, you are a--a woman; a beautiful one! Do you
know what the world does with such, unless they are guarded and
protected?"

"What does it do?" The true eyes held Farwell commandingly, and with a
sense of dismay he looked back at the only world he really knew: the
world of his own ungoverned passions and selfishness. A kind of shame
came over him, and he felt he was no safe guide. There were worlds and
worlds! He had sold his birthright; this woman, bent upon finding hers,
might inherit a fairer kingdom.

"What does it do, Master Farwell?"

"I do not know. It depends upon--you. It is like a great quarry--I have
read somewhere something like this--we must all mould and chisel our
characters; some of us crush them and chip them. It isn't always the
world's fault. God help us!"

Priscilla looked at him with large, shining eyes and the maternal in her
rose to the call of his sad recognition of failure where she was to go
with such brave courage.

"Do not fear for me," she said gently; "'twould be a poor return if I
failed, after all you have done for me."

"I--what have I done?"

"Eve