tore near by was deserted, Cynthia
ran from the church, across The Way, and escaped, unseen, to the trail
leading up to Stoneledge. Her gay spirits returned and she sang
snatches of song as she once used to sing. There was no sequence, no
meaning of words, but the short sharp turns and trills were as wild and
sweet as the bird notes. She tried Sandy's call--but her memory failed
her there!

"Oh! the old tree," Cynthia ran to it. For months and months she had
forgotten it, and the secret it held in its dead heart. Yes, the box
was there! The box in which lay the outbursts of a girl's fancy and
imaginings. With a mischievous laugh Cynthia removed the old letters
and put them in the bag that hung from a girdle at her waist. Then she
walked on to the old Walden Place. There a shock awaited her. What
had happened? The crumbling walls had fallen in many places; but there
were props and scaffoldings, too! Sandy had begun his work of
redemption on the Great House. It was to be the home of the Markhams,
but the surprised onlooker could not know that the property, taken by
the county for unpaid taxes, had been bought in by Levi Markham in
Sandy's name.

"Dear old Stoneledge!" And then Cynthia sat down upon a fallen log and
knew the heavy heartedness of one who arrives too late to receive the
welcome that was hushed forever. But suddenly her face brightened. In
the general demoralization a portion of the house still stood--it was
the wing, the library!

The roof had caved in, but the Significant Room stood open and stark to
the glittering winter sunlight! Reverent hands had removed the
furniture, books, and pictures; the stark and staring walls, with their
stained and torn paper, were bared to the gaze of every chance
passerby. Suddenly, to the yearning heart of the onlooker, a miracle
appeared. The scene of devastation disappeared; there was a fragrance
of honeysuckle and yellow roses in the sharp air and, in a dim, sweet,
old, sheltered room stood a little girl with patched gingham gown and
long smooth-hanging braids of hair, gazing up at a portrait that no
eyes but hers had ever seen. It was little Madam Bubble and she was
lovingly, proudly, exultingly, looking at "The Biggest of Them All!"

Unheeded, the tears rained down the cheeks of the woman standing by the
ruins of her old home; she stretched her arms out tremblingly as if to
hold the vision to the exclusion of all the rest of life.

"Oh! my Sand