ide
Old William, and the horses plodded along slowly, tamed by the slack
reins lying neglected on their backs. Old William was not driving. His
hands, loosely holding the lines, lay on his knees. Down his pink cheeks
and into his white beard crawled tears from his wide blue eyes.

"Glen dead! Little Glen Leighton dead!" he said aloud from time to time,
and Lewis knew himself forgotten. He forgave the old man for the sake of
the picture he conjured--a picture of that other boyhood when "little
Glen Leighton" and the wood-cutter had hunted and fished and roamed
these crowding hills together.

The next day was one of pouring showers. Twice Lewis left the house,
only to be turned back by the rain. He was not afraid of getting wet,
but he was afraid of having to talk to Natalie indoors. He could not
remember ever having talked to her hemmed in by four walls.

But on the morrow he awoke to clean-washed skies and a fuzzy pale-green
carpet that spread across the fields and rose in bumps and mounds over
trees and budding shrubs. He left the homestead early, and struck out
for Aunt Jed's. As he approached the house, a strange diffidence fell
upon him. He was afraid to go in. For an hour he sat on the top rail of
a fence and watched.

At last Natalie came out. She started to walk toward him, but presently
turned to the right. Lewis followed her. At first she walked fast, but
soon she began to pause beside some burst of green or tempting downy
mass of pussy-willow, as though she were in two minds whether to fill
her arms and rush back, carrying spring into the house or to go on. She
went on slowly until she reached the barrier of rails that closed the
entrance to Leighton's land of dreams. Here Lewis came up with her.

"Nat," he said, "shall I help you over?"

Natalie whirled round at the sound of his voice. Just for a second there
was fright in her eyes; then color mounted swiftly into her pale cheeks,
and her lips opened to speak, but she said nothing. There was something
in Lewis's face that stopped her--a look of age and of hunger. She
wanted to ask him why he had come back, but her heart was beating so
fast that she dared not trust her voice.

Lewis was frightened, too. He was frightened lest he should find the
strange woman when he needed just the oldest pal he had in the world.

"Nat," he blurted out, "dad is dead."

When a man thinks he is being clumsy and tactless with a woman, he is
generally making a master str