s and spruces
behind it--the only trees that could resist the full sweep of the winds
that blew bitterly up from the sea at times. Fruit trees would never
grow near it, and this had been a great grief to Sara.

"Oh, daddy, if we could just have an orchard!" she had been wont to say
wistfully, when other farmhouses in White Sands were smothered whitely
in apple bloom. And when she had gone away, and her father had nothing
to look forward to save her return, he was determined she should find an
orchard when she came back.

Over the southward hill, warmly sheltered by spruce woods and sloping
to the sunshine, was a little field, so fertile that all the slack
management of a life-time had not availed to exhaust it. Here Old Man
Shaw set out his orchard and saw it flourish, watching and tending it
until he came to know each tree as a child and loved it. His neighbours
laughed at him, and said that the fruit of an orchard so far away from
the house would all be stolen. But as yet there was no fruit, and when
the time came for bearing there would be enough and to spare.

"Blossom and me'll get all we want, and the boys can have the rest, if
they want 'em worse'n they want a good conscience," said that unworldly,
unbusinesslike Old Man Shaw.

On his way back home from his darling orchard he found a rare fern in
the woods and dug it up for Sara--she had loved ferns. He planted it
at the shady, sheltered side of the house and then sat down on the old
bench by the garden gate to read her last letter--the letter that was
only a note, because she was coming home soon. He knew every word of
it by heart, but that did not spoil the pleasure of re-reading it every
half-hour.

Old Man Shaw had not married until late in life, and had, so White
Sands people said, selected a wife with his usual judgment--which, being
interpreted, meant no judgment at all; otherwise, he would never have
married Sara Glover, a mere slip of a girl, with big brown eyes like a
frightened wood creature's, and the delicate, fleeting bloom of a spring
Mayflower.

"The last woman in the world for a farmer's wife--no strength or get-up
about her."

Neither could White Sands folk understand what on earth Sara Glover had
married him for.

"Well, the fool crop was the only one that never failed."

Old Man Shaw--he was Old Man Shaw even then, although he was only
forty--and his girl bride had troubled themselves not at all about White
Sands opinions. They had