bright
picture of a young girl with golden-red hair digging energetically at
the roots of a rose-bush. It was pleasant to think that, like him, she
had loved the taste of the earth and the fragrance of growing things.
His ambition was to down all the scoffers along the river and in the
city who thought his ambition a passing amusement, and predicted
abandonment and a season of gaiety during the coming winter.

Of the other members of the two households there were, at the great
house, Miss Patty, as every one called her, John Merryvale's sister who
came to him after his wife's death; and at the cabin in the pines, Tom,
the son of the household, a serious, reliable boy, deliberate to
slowness.

And lastly, there was Hertha. Ellen had insisted when they moved to
Merryvale that Hertha remain a second year at her college, and the girl
stayed away for that time; but the next season, the year Lee Merryvale
went North, she made her entrance, a girl of nineteen, into Merryvale
life. It was a modest entrance and she played her part shyly in the
background. Hertha bore no resemblance to her sister and brother. Among
the cabins in the pines you noticed her tightly curling hair and deep
brown eyes, but as she moved about the great house you saw her graceful
figure, her slender feet and hands, her small head on its long neck, her
delicate nose and mouth, her white skin. She was a good needlewoman, and
Miss Patty quickly seized upon her as her maid, and, for a pittance,
Hertha worked for her by day, while at night and on Sundays she joined
mother and brother and sister in the cabin. "You's a contented chile,"
her mother used to say, "an' 'member, dat's a gift." She had not been so
contented in the city where she spent her childhood, but this new world
by the river touched her spirit. She loved the quiet days, sewing and
waiting on Miss Patty whose indolence and advancing years made her
increasingly dependent. She loved on Sundays to take walks with Tom
through the woods to where the creek set in, black, mysterious, a long
line of cypresses guarding the stream. She was contented with her home,
and her mind sometimes wandered when Ellen talked in the evening of
plans for the future. Ellen was full of plans, she lived not for to-day
but for to-morrow, but Hertha lived in to-day. Life was not always
pleasant, the autumn tempests that lashed the great oaks and uprooted
the pines were terrifying, but there were more days of sunshine than o