your father's said, Lew," she added. "He's
given you the key to the heart of 'Come again!'"

"As if Lew would ever need that!" cried Natalie.

Soon after leaving the house, Leighton struck off to the right and up.
His step was not springy. His head hung low on his breast, and his
fingers gripped nervously at the light stick he carried. He did not
speak, and Lewis knew enough not to break that silence. They crossed a
field, Leighton walking slightly ahead. He did not have to look up to
lead the way.

Presently they came into a lane. It dipped off to the left, into the
valley. It was bordered by low, gray stone walls. On its right hung a
thick wood of second-growth trees--a New England wood, various beyond
the variety of any other forest on earth. It breathed a mingled essence
of faint odors. The fronds of the trees reached over and embowered the
lane.

On the left the view was open to the valley by reason of a pasture. The
low stone wall was topped by a snaky fence of split rails. They were so
old, so gray, that they, too, seemed of stone. Beyond them sloped the
meager pasture-land; brown, almost barren even in the youth of the year.
It was strewn with flat, outcropping rocks. Here and there rose a mighty
oak. A splotch of green marked a spring. Below the spring one saw the
pale blush of laurel in early June.

Leighton stopped and prodded the road with his stick. Lewis looked down.
He saw that his father's hand was trembling. His eyes wandered to a big
stone that peeped from the loam in the very track of any passing wheel.
The stone was covered with moss--old moss. It was a long time since
wheels had passed that way.

Leighton walked on a few steps, and then paused again, his eyes fixed on
a spot at the right of the lane where the old wall had tumbled and
brought with it a tangled mass of fox-grape vine. He left the roadway
and sat on the lower wall, his back against a rail. He motioned to Lewis
to sit down too.

"I have brought you here," said Leighton and stopped. His voice had been
so low that Lewis had understood not a word. "I have brought you here,"
said Leighton again, and this time clearly, "to tell you about your
mother."

Lewis restrained himself from looking at his father's face.

"Your mother's name," went on Leighton, "was Jeanette O'Reilly. She was
a milk-maid. That is, she didn't have to milk the cows, but she took
charge of the milk when it came into the creamery and did to and with it
all th