eemed to revel in telling her
everything. Folly's answers were few and far between.

Leighton would have given much to see one of Folly's letters. He
wondered if her maid wrote them for her. He used to watch Lewis reading
them. They were invariably short--mere notes. Lewis would read each one
several times to make it seem like a letter. He seemed to feel that his
father would like to see one of the letters, and one day, to keep
himself from calling himself coward, he impulsively handed one over.

Leighton read the scant three pages slowly. It was as though Folly had
reached across the sea to scratch him again, for the note was well
written in a bold, round hand. It was short because Folly combined the
wisdom of the serpent with the voice of a dove. She knew the limits of
her shibboleth of culture, and never passed them. She said only the
things she had learned to write correctly. They were few.

The few weeks at the homestead had changed Leighton. A single mood held
him--a mood that he never threw off with a toss of his head. He seemed
to have lost his philosophy of cheerfulness at the word of command.
Lewis was too absorbed in his long days with Natalie to notice it, but
Nelton took it upon himself to open his eyes.

"Larst month," he said, "you and the governor was brothers. Now persons
don't have to ask me is he your father. It's written in his fyce. It's
this country life as has done it. Noisy, I calls it. No rest."

Lewis felt penitent. He suggested to Leighton a day together, a tramp
and a picnic, but Leighton shook his head.

"I don't want to have to talk," he said bluntly.

"Dad," said Lewis, "let's go away."

Leighton started as though the words were something he had too long
waited for.

"Go away?" he repeated. How often had he said, "To go away is the
sovereign cure." "Yes," he went on, "I believe you are right. I think
it's high time--past time--for me to clear. Will you come or stay?"

"I'll come if it's London," said Lewis, smiling.

"London first, of course," said Leighton, gravely. "To-day is Tuesday.
Say we start on Thursday. That gives us a day to go over and say
good-by."

"One day isn't enough," said Lewis. "Make it two."

"All right," agreed Leighton.

For that afternoon Lewis and Natalie had planned a long tramp, but
before they had gone a mile from Aunt Jed's a purling brook in the
depths of a still wood raised before them an impassable barrier of
beauty. By a common, unspoken con