e such fun. But if Jan-an can come here
to stay, then what?" the voice faltered.

"Why, Light-of-my-Heart, I will return strong and hungry, and Jan-an
and my Princess and I will sit by the fire to-night and roast
chestnuts and apples and there will be such a story as never was
before."

"Both ways are beautiful ways, Motherly. I don't know which is
bestest."

It was always so with Mary-Clare and Noreen, all ways were alluring;
but the child had deep intuitions, and so she set her face at once
away from the little yellow house and the mother in the doorway, and
started on her quest of Jan-an.

When the child had passed from sight Mary-Clare packed a bit of
luncheon in a basket and ran lightly across the road. She looked back,
making sure that no one was watching her movements, then she plunged
into the woods, her head lowered, and her heart throbbing high.

The trail was not an easy one--Mary-Clare had seen to that!--and as no
one but Noreen and herself ever trod it, it was hardly discernible to
the uninitiated. Up and up the path led until it ended at a rough,
crude cabin almost hidden by a tangle of vines.

Looking back over the years of her married life, Mary-Clare often
wondered how she could have endured them but for the vision and
strength she received in her "Place," as she whimsically called
it--getting her idea from a Bible verse.

Among the many things that old Doctor Rivers had given Mary-Clare was
a knowledge and love of the Bible. He had offered the book to her as
literature and early in life she had responded to the appeal. The
verse that had inspired her to restore a deserted cabin to a thing of
beauty and eventually a kind of sanctuary, was this:

And the woman fled into the wilderness where she hath a place
prepared of God that they should feed her there.

The words, roughly carved, were traced on the east wall of the cabin
and under a picture of Father Damien.

The furniture of the shack was made by Mary-Clare's own hands. A long
table, some uneven shelves for books she most loved, a chair or two
and a low couch over which was thrown a gay-patched quilt. Once the
work of love was completed, Nature reached forth with offerings of
lovely vines and mountain laurel and screened the place from any
chance passer-by.

A hundred feet below the cabin was a little stream. That marked the
limit of even Noreen's territory unless, after due ceremony, she was
permitted to advance as far as the cabi