age was legal, of course, the certificate is here,
and the marriage was registered by the missionary, who has come back
now and lives in the city. But I dare not tell who I am--Jim does not
know who his grandfather is."

"He surely couldn't take your boy," cried Pearl. "There is no justice
in that."

"Only the unmarried mother has the absolute right to her child," said
Annie Gray, as one who quotes from a legal document. "I talked to a
lawyer whom Mr. Bowen sent for. He showed it to me in the law."

"Peter Neelands was right," said Pearl after a while, "it is exactly
the sort of a law he said the other one was."

The two women sat by the fire, which by this time was reduced to one
tiny red coal. There was not a sound in the house except the regular
breathing of little Jim from the adjoining room. A night wind stirred
the big tree in front of the house, and its branches touched the
shingles softly, like a kind hand.

"I'll tell you the rest of it, Pearl, and why I am so frightened.
Perhaps I grow fearful, living here alone, and my mind conjures up
dreadful things. Jim's grandfather has moved to this Province from the
East. I read about him in the papers. He is a powerful man--who
gets his own way. He might be able to get doctors to pronounce me
insane--we read such things. He has such influence."

"Who is he?" asked Pearl wonderingly.

"He is the Premier of this Province," said Annie Gray. "Now do you
wonder at my fear?"

Pearl sat a long time silent. "A way will be found," she said.

CHAPTER XXI

THE OPENING OF THE WAY

"I wonder where they are," Pearl said to herself, as she looked
anxiously out of the window of the school on Monday morning. The roads
leading from the Purple Springs school lay like twisted brown ribbons
on the tender green fields, but not a child, not a straw hat, red
sweater, sun-bonnet; not a glint of a dinner-pail broke the monotony
of the bright spring morning.

The farm-houses seemed to be enjoying their usual activity. The
spielers among the hens were announcing that the day's business was
off to a good start, with prospects never brighter, dogs barked,
calves bawled, cow-bells jangled--there was even a murmur of talking.

"They are not dead," said Pearl, as she listened, bareheaded, at the
gate, "not dead, except to me--but they are not going to let the
children come!

"They have turned me down!"

At nine o'clock, a flash of hope lighted up the gloom that had settled