g the heathen of the Orient and come and
live in peace and plenty in a little Yankee town where there was a drug
store and a post office and a mossy gray old stone church with a mellow
bell in its steeple.

The wonderful and big son-in-law always listened respectfully to his
big Yankee father-in-law. Then he would smile and point to the little
brown babies lying sick in their mothers' arms.

"Somebody," he would say gently, "must help and heal and neighbor with
these people."

As there was no answer that could be made to this the Yankee
father-in-law said nothing. But the very last time he was in India he
looked sharply at his daughter and then said wearily and bitterly:

"Sinner and saint--we men are all alike. We each in our own way kill
the women we love. Cynthia is dying for a sight of Green Valley and
Green Valley folks."

At that Cynthia's husband cried out. But Joshua Churchill did not stay
to argue. He went away and never came back. He wanted of course to go
back to Green Valley. But he could not bear to live alone in the big
house where he had once been so happy. So he went instead into exile.
And now he was dying in California.

As for Cynthia's husband, he discovered when it was too late to do any
good that while he had been saving the souls and the children of alien
women and men he had let the woman who was dearer to him than life die
slowly and unnoticed. Saints have always done that and they always
will.

Joshua Churchill meant to stay alive long enough to explain the
shortcomings of both saints and sinners to the boy who was the last of
the Churchills. He had half a mind to exact a promise from the boy.
He meant too to tell him a long and a rather strange story and implore
him to beware of a number of things.

But when Cynthia's son,--tall, bronzed and serene, smiled down on the
old man who even in death had the look of a master, the warnings, the
bitterness melted away and Joshua Churchill smiled back and sighed
gratefully.

"Well, son,--I don't know as that saint father of yours and your
sinning granddad made such a mess of things after all. It's something
to give the world a man. Go back home to Green Valley and marry a
Green Valley girl."

And without bothering to say another word Joshua Churchill died.

Nanny came back to her valley town when the budded lilacs dripped with
rain and the wooded hillsides were blurred with spring mists.

But Green Valley rain never bothered