The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Harvester, by Gene Stratton Porter

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Title: The Harvester

Author: Gene Stratton Porter

Posting Date: July 12, 2008 [EBook #349]
Release Date: October, 1995

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HARVESTER ***




Produced by Charles Keller





THE HARVESTER

By Gene Stratton-Porter


Author Of A Girl Of The Limberlost, Freckles, Etc.



                        THIS PORTION
               OF THE LIFE OF A MAN OF TO-DAY
          IS OFFERED IN THE HOPE THAT IN CLEANLINESS,
             POETIC TEMPERMENT, AND MENTAL FORCE,
                    A LIKENESS WILL BE SEEN
                            TO
                     HENRY DAVID THOREAU




CHAPTER

     I.     Belshazzar's Decision
     II.    The Effect of a Dream
     III.   Harvesting the Forest
     IV.    A Commission for the South Wind
     V.     When the Harvester Made Good
     VI.    To Labour and to Wait
     VII.   The Quest of the Dream Girl
     VIII.  Belshazzar's Record Point
     IX.    The Harvester Goes Courting
     X.     The Chime of the Blue Bells
     XI.    Demonstrated Courtship
     XII.   ''The Way of a Man with a Maid''
     XIII.  When the Dream Came True
     XIV.   Snowy Wings
     XV.    The Harvester Interprets Life
     XVI.   Granny Moreland's Visit
     XVII.  Love Invades Science
     XVIII. The Better Man
     XIX.   A Vertical Spine
     XX.    The Man in the Background
     XXI.   The Coming of the Bluebird


CHARACTERS

     DAVID LANGSTON, A Harvester of the Woods.
     RUTH JAMESON, A Girl of the City.
     GRANNY MORELAND, An Interested Neighbour.
     DR. CAREY, Chief Surgeon of the Onabasha Hospital.
     MRS. CAREY, Wife of the Doctor.
     DR. HARMON, Who Concludes to Leave the City.
     MOLLY BARNET, A Hospital Nurse with a Heart.
     HENRY JAMESON, A Trader Without a Heart.
     ALEXANDER HERRON, Who Made a Concession.
     MRS. HERRON, A Gentle Woman.
     THE KENNEDYS, Philadelphia Lawyers.




THE HARVESTER



CHAPTER I. BELSHAZZAR'S DECISION

"Bel, come here!" The Harvester sat in the hollow worn in the hewed log
stoop by the feet of his father and mother and his own sturdier tread,
and rested his head against the casing of the cabin door when he gave
the command. The tip of the dog's nose touched the gravel between his
paws as he crouched flat on earth, with beautiful eyes steadily watching
the master, but he did not move a muscle.

"Bel, come here!"

Twinkles flashed in the eyes of the man when he repeated the order,
while his voice grew more imperative as he stretched a lean, wiry
hand toward the dog. The animal's eyes gleamed and his sensitive nose
quivered, yet he lay quietly.

"Belshazzar, kommen Sie hier!"

The body of the dog arose on straightened legs and his muzzle dropped
in the outstretched palm. A wind slightly perfumed with the odour of
melting snow and unsheathing buds swept the lake beside them, and lifted
a waving tangle of light hair on the brow of the man, while a level ray
of the setting sun flashed across the water and illumined the graven,
sensitive face, now alive with keen interest in the game being played.

"Bel, dost remember the day?" inquired the Harvester.

The eager attitude and anxious eyes of the dog betrayed that he did not,
but was waiting with every sense alert for a familiar word that would
tell him what was expected.

"Surely you heard the killdeers crying in the night," prompted the man.
"I called your attention when the ecstasy of the first bluebird waked
the dawn. All day you have seen the gold-yellow and blood-red osiers,
the sap-wet maples and spring tracing announcements of her arrival on
the sunny side of the levee."

The dog found no clew, but he recognized tones he loved in the suave,
easy voice, and his tail beat his sides in vigorous approval. The man
nodded gravely.

"Ah, so! Then you realize this day to be the most important of all the
coming year to me; this hour a solemn one that influences my whole after
life. It is time for your annual decision on my fate for a twelve-month.
Are you sure you are fully alive to the gravity of the situation, Bel?"

The dog felt himself safe in answering a rising inflection ending in his
name uttered in that tone, and wagged eager assent.

"Well then," said the man, "which shall it be? Do I leave home for the
noise and grime of the city, open an office and enter the money-making
scramble?"

Every word was strange to the dog, almost breathlessly waiting for a
familiar syllable. The man gazed steadily into the animal's eyes. After
a long pause he continued:

"Or do I remain at home to harvest the golden seal, mullein, and
ginseng, not to mention an occasional hour with the black bass or tramps
for partridge and cotton-tails?"

The dog recognized each word of that. Before the voice ceased, his sleek
sides were quivering, his nostrils twitching, his tail lashing, and at
the pause he leaped up and thrust his nose against the face of the man.
The Harvester leaned back laughing in deep, full-chested tones; then he
patted the dog's head with one hand and renewed his grip with the other.

"Good old Bel!" he cried exultantly. "Six years you have decided for me,
and right----every time! We are of the woods, Bel, born and reared
here as our fathers before us. What would we of the camp fire, the long
trail, the earthy search, we harvesters of herbs the famous chemists
require, what would we do in a city? And when the sap is rising, the
bass splashing, and the wild geese honking in the night! We never could
endure it, Bel.

"When we delivered that hemlock at the hospital to-day, did you hear
that young doctor talking about his 'lid'? Well up there is ours, old
fellow! Just sky and clouds overhead for us, forest wind in our faces,
wild perfume in our nostrils, muck on our feet, that's the life for us.
Our blood was tainted to begin with, and we've lived here so long it
is now a passion in our hearts. If ever you sentence us to life in the
city, you'll finish both of us, that's what you'll do! But you won't,
will you? You realize what God made us for and what He made for us,
don't you, Bel?"

As he lovingly patted the dog's head the man talked and the animal
trembled with delight. Then the voice of the Harvester changed and
dropped to tones of gravest import.

"Now how about that other matter, Bel? You always decide that too. The
time has come again. Steady now! This is far more important than the
other. Just to be wiped out, Bel, pouf! That isn't anything and it
concerns no one save ourselves. But to bring misery into our lives
and live with it daily, that would be a condition to rend the soul. So
careful, Bel! Cautious now!"

The voice of the man dropped to a whisper as he asked the question.

"What about the girl business?"

Trembling with eagerness to do the thing that would bring more
caressing, bewildered by unfamiliar words and tones, the dog hesitated.

"Do I go on as I have ever since mother left me, rustling for grub,
living in untrammelled freedom? Do I go on as before, Bel?"

The Harvester paused and waited the answer, with anxiety in his eyes
as he searched the beast face. He had talked to that dog, as most
men commune with their souls, for so long and played the game in such
intense earnest that he felt the results final with him. The animal was
immovable now, lost again, his anxious eyes watching the face of the
master, his eager ears waiting for words he recognized. After a long
time the man continued slowly and hesitantly, as if fearing the outcome.
He did not realize that there was sufficient anxiety in his voice to
change its tones.

"Or do I go courting this year? Do I rig up in uncomfortable
store-clothes, and parade before the country and city girls and try to
persuade the one I can get, probably----not the one I would want----to
marry me, and come here and spoil all our good times? Do we want a
woman around scolding if we are away from home, whining because she is
lonesome, fretting for luxuries we cannot afford to give her? Are you
going to let us in for a scrape like that, Bel?"

The bewildered dog could bear the unusual scene no longer. Taking the
rising inflection, that sounded more familiar, for a cue, and his name
for a certainty, he sprang forward, his tail waving as his nose touched
the face of the Harvester. Then he shot across the driveway and lay in
the spice thicket, half the ribs of one side aching, as he howled from
the lowest depths of dog misery.

"You ungrateful cur!" cried the Harvester. "What has come over you? Six
years I have trusted you, and the answer has been right, every time!
Confound your picture! Sentence me to tackle the girl proposition! I
see myself! Do you know what it would mean? For the first thing you'd
be chained, while I pranced over the country like a half-broken colt,
trying to attract some girl. I'd have to waste time I need for my work
and spend money that draws good interest while we sleep, to tempt her
with presents. I'd have to rebuild the cabin and there's not a chance in
ten she would not fret the life out of me whining to go to the city to
live, arrange for her here the best I could. Of all the fool, unreliable
dogs that ever trod a man's tracks, you are the limit! And you never
before failed me! You blame, degenerate pup, you!"

The Harvester paused for breath and the dog subsided to a pitiful
whimper. He was eager to return to the man who had struck him the first
blow his pampered body ever had received; but he could not understand a
kick and harsh words for him, so he lay quivering with anxiety and fear.

"You howling, whimpering idiot!" exclaimed the Harvester. "Choose a
day like this to spoil! Air to intoxicate a mummy! Roots swelling! Buds
bursting! Harvest close and you'd call me off and put me at work like
that, would you? If I ever had supposed lost all your senses, I never
would have asked you. Six years you have decided my fate, when the first
bluebird came, and you've been true blue every time. If I ever trust you
again! But the mischief is done now.

"Have you forgotten that your name means 'to protect?' Don't you
remember it is because of that, it is your name? Protect! I'd have
trusted you with my life, Bell! You gave it to me the time you pointed
that rattler within six inches of my fingers in the blood-root bed.
You saw the falling limb in time to warn me. You always know where the
quicksands lie. But you are protecting me now, like sin, ain't you?
Bring a girl here to spoil both our lives! Not if I know myself!
Protect!"

The man arose and going inside the cabin closed the door. After that the
dog lay in abject misery so deep that two big tears squeezed from his
eyes and rolled down his face. To be shut out was worse than the blow.
He did not take the trouble to arise from the wet leaves covering the
cold earth, but closing his eyes went to sleep.

The man leaned against the door and ran his fingers through his hair as
he anathematized the dog. Slowly his eyes travelled around the room. He
saw his tumbled bed by the open window facing the lake, the small
table with his writing material, the crude rack on the wall loaded
with medical works, botanies, drug encyclopaedias, the books of the few
authors who interested him, and the bare, muck-tracked floor. He went
to the kitchen, where he built a fire in the cook stove, and to the
smoke-house, from which he returned with a slice of ham and some eggs.
He set some potatoes boiling and took bread, butter and milk from the
pantry. Then he laid a small note-book on the table before him and
studied the transactions of the day.

     10 lbs. wild cherry bark      6 cents       $.60
     5   "   wahoo root bark      25 "           1.25
     20  "   witch hazel bark      5 "           1.00
     5   "   blue flag root       12 "           .60
     10  "   snake root           18 "           1.80
     10  "   blood root           12 "           1.20
     15  "   hoarhound            10 "           1.50
                                                 -----
                                                $7.95


"Not so bad," he muttered, bending over the figures. "I wonder if any
of my neighbours who harvest the fields average as well at this season.
I'll wager they don't. That's pretty fair! Some days I don't make it,
and then when a consignment of seeds go or ginseng is wanted the cash
comes in right properly. I could waste half of it on a girl and yet save
money. But where is the woman who would be content with half? She'd want
all and fret because there wasn't more. Blame that dog!"

He put the book in his pocket, prepared and ate his supper, heaped a
plate generously, placed it on the floor beneath the table, and set away
the food that remained.

"Not that you deserve it," he said to space. "You get this in honour
of your distinguished name and the faithfulness with which you formerly
have lived up to its import. If you hadn't been a dog with more sense
than some men, I wouldn't take your going back on me now so hard. One
would think an animal of your intelligence might realize that you would
get as much of a dose as I. Would she permit you to eat from a plate on
the kitchen floor? Not on your life, Belshazzar! Frozen scraps around
the door for you! Would she allow you to sleep across the foot of the
bed? Ho, ho, ho! Would she have you tracking on her floor? It would be
the barn, and growling you didn't do at that. If I'd serve you right,
I'd give you a dose and allow you to see how you like it. But it's
cutting off my nose to spite my face, as the old adage goes, for
whatever she did to a dog, she'd probably do worse to a man. I think
not!"

He entered the front room and stood before a long shelf on which were
arranged an array of partially completed candlesticks carved from wood.
There were black and white walnut, red, white, and golden oak, cherry
and curly maple, all in original designs. Some of them were oddities,
others were failures, but most of them were unusually successful. He
selected one of black walnut, carved until the outline of his pattern
was barely distinguishable. He was imitating the trunk of a tree with
the bark on, the spreading, fern-covered roots widening for the base,
from which a vine sprang. Near the top was the crude outline of a big
night moth climbing toward the light. He stood turning this stick with
loving hands and holding it from him for inspection.

"I am going to master you!" he exulted. "Your lines are right. The
design balances and it's graceful. If I have any trouble it will be with
the moth, and I think I can manage. I've got to decide whether to use
cecropia or polyphemus before long. Really, on a walnut, and in
the woods, it should be a luna, according to the eternal fitness of
things----but I'm afraid of the trailers. They turn over and half curl
and I believe I had better not tackle them for a start. I'll use the
easiest to begin on, and if I succeed I'll duplicate the pattern and try
a luna then. The beauties!"

The Harvester selected a knife from the box and began carving the stick
slowly and carefully. His brain was busy, for presently he glanced at
the floor.

"She'd object to that!" he said emphatically. "A man could no more sit
and work where he pleased than he could fly. At least I know mother
never would have it, and she was no nagger, either. What a mother she
was! If one only could stop the lonely feeling that will creep in, and
the aching hunger born with the body, for a mate; if a fellow only
could stop it with a woman like mother! How she revelled in sunshine and
beauty! How she loved earth and air! How she went straight to the marrow
of the finest line in the best book I could bring from the library! How
clean and true she was and how unyielding! I can hear her now, holding
me with her last breath to my promise. If I could marry a girl like
mother----great Caesar! You'd see me buying an automobile to make the
run to the county clerk. Wouldn't that be great! Think of coming in from
a long, difficult day, to find a hot supper, and a girl such as she must
have been, waiting for me! Bel, if I thought there was a woman similar
to her in all the world, and I had even the ghost of a chance to win
her, I'd call you in and forgive you. But I know the girls of to-day. I
pass them on the roads, on the streets, see them in the cafe's, stores,
and at the library. Why even the nurses at the hospital, for all the
gravity of their positions, are a giggling, silly lot; and they never
know that the only time they look and act presentably to me is when they
stop their chatter, put on their uniforms, and go to work. Some of them
are pretty, then. There's a little blue-eyed one, but all she needs is
feathers to make her a 'ha! ha! bird.' Drat that dog!"

The Harvester took the candlestick and the box of knives, opened the
door, and returned to the stoop. Belshazzar arose, pleading in his eyes,
and cautiously advanced a few steps. The man bent over his work and paid
not the slightest heed, so the discouraged dog sank to earth and fixedly
watched the unresponsive master. The carving of the candlestick went
on steadily. Occasionally the Harvester lifted his head and repeatedly
sucked his lungs full of air. Sometimes for an instant he scanned the
surface of the lake for signs of breaking fish or splash of migrant
water bird. Again his gaze wandered up the steep hill, crowned with
giant trees, whose swelling buds he could see and smell. Straight before
him lay a low marsh, through which the little creek that gurgled and
tumbled down hill curved, crossed the drive some distance below, and
entered the lake of Lost Loons.

While the trees were bare, and when the air was clear as now, he could
see the spires of Onabasha, five miles away, intervening cultivated
fields, stretches of wood, the long black line of the railway, and
the swampy bottom lands gradually rising to the culmination of the
tree-crowned summit above him. His cocks were crowing warlike challenges
to rivals on neighbouring farms. His hens were carolling their spring
egg-song. In the barn yard ganders were screaming stridently. Over the
lake and the cabin, with clapping snowy wings, his white doves circled
in a last joy-flight before seeking their cotes in the stable loft. As
the light grew fainter, the Harvester worked slower. Often he leaned
against the casing, and closed his eyes to rest them. Sometimes he
whistled snatches of old songs to which his mother had cradled him, and
again bits of opera and popular music he had heard on the streets of
Onabasha. As he worked, the sun went down and a half moon appeared above
the wood across the lake. Once it seemed as if it were a silver bowl set
on the branch of a giant oak; higher, it rested a tilted crescent on the
rim of a cloud.

The dog waited until he could endure it no longer, and straightening
from his crouching position, he took a few velvet steps forward, making
faint, whining sounds in his throat. When the man neither turned his
head nor gave him a glance, Belshazzar sank to earth again, satisfied
for the moment with being a little closer. Across Loon Lake came the
wavering voice of a night love song. The Harvester remembered that as a
boy he had shrunk from those notes until his mother explained that they
were made by a little brown owl asking for a mate to come and live
in his hollow tree. Now he rather liked the sound. It was eloquent of
earnest pleading. With the lonely bird on one side, and the reproachful
dog eyes on the other, the man grinned rather foolishly.

Between two fires, he thought. If that dog ever catches my eye he will
come tearing as a cyclone, and I would not kick him again for a hundred
dollars. First time I ever struck him, and didn't intend to then. So
blame mad and disappointed my foot just shot out before I knew it. There
he lies half dead to make up, but I'm blest if I forgive him in a hurry.
And there is that insane little owl screeching for a mate. If I'd start
out making sounds like that, all the girls would line up and compete for
possession of my happy home.

The Harvester laughed and at the sound Belshazzar took courage and
advanced five steps before he sank belly to earth again. The owl
continued its song. The Harvester imitated the cry and at once it
responded. He called again and leaned back waiting. The notes came
closer. The Harvester cried once more and peered across the lake,
watching for the shadow of silent wings. The moon was high above the
trees now, the knife dropped in the box, the long fingers closed around
the stick, the head rested against the casing, and the man intoned
the cry with all his skill, and then watched and waited. He had been
straining his eyes over the carving until they were tired, and when
he watched for the bird the moonlight tried them; for it touched the
lightly rippling waves of the lake in a line of yellow light that
stretched straight across the water from the opposite bank, directly to
the gravel bed below, where lay the bathing pool. It made a path of gold
that wavered and shimmered as the water moved gently, but it appeared
sufficiently material to resemble a bridge spanning the lake.

"Seems as if I could walk it," muttered the Harvester.

The owl cried again and the man intently watched the opposite bank. He
could not see the bird, but in the deep wood where he thought it might
be he began to discern a misty, moving shimmer of white. Marvelling, he
watched closer. So slowly he could not detect motion it advanced, rising
in height and taking shape.

"Do I end this day by seeing a ghost?" he queried.

He gazed intently and saw that a white figure really moved in the woods
of the opposite bank.

"Must be some boys playing fool pranks!" exclaimed the Harvester.

He watched fixedly with interested face, and then amazement wiped
out all other expression and he sat motionless, breathless, looking,
intently looking. For the white object came straight toward the water
and at the very edge unhesitatingly stepped upon the bridge of gold and
lightly, easily advanced in his direction. The man waited. On came
the figure and as it drew closer he could see that it was a very tall,
extremely slender woman, wrapped in soft robes of white. She stepped
along the slender line of the gold bridge with grace unequalled.

From the water arose a shining mist, and behind the advancing figure
a wall of light outlined and rimmed her in a setting of gold. As she
neared the shore the Harvester's blood began to race in his veins and
his lips parted in wonder. First she was like a slender birch trunk,
then she resembled a wild lily, and soon she was close enough to prove
that she was young and very lovely. Heavy braids of dark hair rested
on her head as a coronet. Her forehead was low and white. Her eyes were
wide-open wells of darkness, her rounded cheeks faintly pink, and her
red lips smiling invitation. Her throat was long, very white, and the
hands that caught up the fleecy robe around her were rose-coloured and
slender. In a panic the Harvester saw that the trailing robe swept the
undulant gold water, but was not wet; the feet that alternately showed
as she advanced were not purple with cold, but warm with a pink glow.

She was coming straight toward him, wonderful, alluring, lovely beyond
any woman the Harvester ever had seen. Straightway the fountains of
twenty-six years' repression overflowed in the breast of the man and all
his being ran toward her in a wave of desire. On she came, and now her
tender feet were on the white gravel. When he could see clearly she was
even more beautiful than she had appeared at a distance. He opened his
lips, but no sound came. He struggled to rise, but his legs would not
bear his weight. Helpless, he sank against the casing. The girl walked
to his feet, bent, placed a hand on each of his shoulders, and smiled
into his eyes. He could scent the flower-like odour of her body and
wrapping, even her hair. He struggled frantically to speak to her as she
leaned closer, yet closer, and softly but firmly laid lips of pulsing
sweetness on his in a deliberate kiss.

The Harvester was on his feet now. Belshazzar shrank into the shadows.

"Come back!" cried the man. "Come back! For the love of mercy, where are
you?"

He ran stumblingly toward the lake. The bridge of gold was there, the
little owl cried lonesomely; and did he see or did he only dream he saw
a mist of white vanishing in the opposite wood?

His breath came between dry lips, and he circled the cabin searching
eagerly, but he could find nothing, hear nothing, save the dog at his
heels. He hurried to the stoop and stood gazing at the molten path of
moonlight. One minute he was half frozen, the next a rosy glow enfolded
him. Slowly he lifted a hand and touched his lips. Then he raised his
eyes from the water and swept the sky in a penetrant gaze.

"My gracious Heavenly Father," said the Harvester reverently. "Would it
be like that?"



CHAPTER II. THE EFFECT OF A DREAM

Fully convinced at last that he had been dreaming, the Harvester picked
up his knives and candlestick and entered the cabin. He placed them on a
shelf and turned away, but after a second's hesitation he closed the
box and arranged the sticks neatly. Then he set the room in order and
carefully swept the floor. As he replaced the broom he thought for an
instant, then opened the door and whistled softly. Belshazzar came at a
rush. The Harvester pushed the plate of food toward the hungry dog and
he ate greedily. The man returned to the front room and closed the door.

He stood a long time before his shelf of books, at last selected a
volume of "Medicinal Plants" and settled to study. His supper finished,
Belshazzar came scratching and whining at the door. Several times the
man lifted his head and glanced in that direction, but he only returned
to his book and read again. Tired and sleepy, at last, he placed the
volume on the shelf, went to a closet for a pair of bath towels, and
hung them across a chair. Then he undressed, opened the door, and ran
for the lake. He plunged with a splash and swam vigorously for a few
minutes, his white body growing pink under the sting of the chilled
water. Over and over he scanned the golden bridge to the moon, and stood
an instant dripping on the gravel of the landing to make sure that no
dream woman was crossing the wavering floor! He rubbed to a glow and
turned back the covers of his bed. The door and window stood wide.
Before he lay down, the Harvester paused in arrested motion a second,
then stepped to the kitchen door and lifted the latch.

As the man drew the covers over him, the dog's nose began making
an opening, and a little later he quietly walked into the room. The
Harvester rested, facing the lake. The dog sniffed at his shoulder, but
the man was rigid. Then the click of nails could be heard on the floor
as Belshazzar went to the opposite side. At his accustomed place he
paused and set one foot on the bed. There was not a sound, so he lifted
the other. Then one at a time he drew up his hind feet and crouched
as he had on the gravel. The man lay watching the bright bridge. The
moonlight entered the window and flooded the room. The strong lines on
the weather-beaten face of the Harvester were mellowed in the light, and
he appeared young and good to see. His lithe figure stretched the length
of the bed, his hair appeared almost white, and his face, touched by the
glorifying light of the moon, was a study.

One instant his countenance was swept with ultimate scorn; then
gradually that would fade and the lines soften, until his lips curved in
child-like appeal and his eyes were filled with pleading. Several
times he lifted a hand and gently touched his lips, as if a kiss were a
material thing and would leave tangible evidence of having been given.
After a long time his eyes closed and he scarcely was unconscious before
Belshazzar's cold nose touched the outstretched hand and the Harvester
lifted and laid it on the dog's head.

"Forgive me, Bel," he muttered. "I never did that. I wouldn't have hurt
you for anything. It happened before I had time to think."

They both fell asleep. The clear-cut lines of manly strength on the face
of the Harvester were touched to tender beauty. He lay smiling softly.
Far in the night he realized the frost-chill and divided the coverlet
with the happy Belshazzar.

The golden dream never came again. There was no need. It had done its
perfect work. The Harvester awoke the next morning a different man. His
face was youthful and alive with alert anticipation. He began his work
with eager impetuosity, whistling and singing the while, and he found
time to play with and talk to Belshazzar, until that glad beast almost
wagged off his tail in delight. They breakfasted together and arranged
the rooms with unusual care.

"You see," explained the Harvester to the dog, "we must walk neatly
after this. Maybe there is such a thing as fate. Possibly your answer
was right. There might be a girl in the world for me. I don't expect it,
but there is a possibility that she may find us before we locate
her. Anyway, we should work and be ready. All the old stock in the
store-house goes out as soon as we can cart it. A new cabin shall rise
as fast as we can build it. There must be a basement and furnace, too.
Dream women don't have cold feet, but if there is a girl living like
that, and she is coming to us or waiting for us to come to her, we must
have a comfortable home to offer. There should be a bathroom, too. She
couldn't dip in the lake as we do. And until we build the new house we
must keep the old one clean, just on the chance of her happening on us.
She might be visiting some of the neighbours or come from town with some
one or I might see her on the street or at the library or hospital or in
some of the stores. For the love of mercy, help me watch for her, Bel!
The half of my kingdom if you will point her for me!"

The Harvester worked as he talked. He set the rooms in order, put away
the remains of breakfast, and started to the stable. He turned back and
stood for a long time, scanning the face in the kitchen mirror. Once he
went to the door, then he hesitated, and finally took out his shaving
set and used it carefully and washed vigorously. He pulled his shirt
together at the throat, and hunting among his clothing, found an old
red tie that he knotted around his neck. This so changed his every-day
appearance that he felt wonderfully dressed and whistled gaily on his
way to the barn. There he confided in the old gray mare as he curried
and harnessed her to the spring wagon.

"Hardly know me, do you, Betsy?" he inquired. "Well, I'll explain. Our
friend Bel, here, has doomed me to go courting this year. Wouldn't that
durnfound you? I was mad as hornets at first, but since I've slept on
the idea, I rather like it. Maybe we are too lonely and dull. Perhaps
the right woman would make life a very different matter. Last night
I saw her, Betsy, and between us, I can't tell even you. She was the
loveliest, sweetest girl on earth, and that is all I can say. We are
going to watch for her to-day, and every trip we make, until we find
her, if it requires a hundred years. Then some glad time we are going to
locate her, and when we do, well, you just keep your eye on us, Betsy,
and you'll see how courting straight from the heart is done, even if we
lack experience."

Intoxicated with new and delightful sensations his tongue worked faster
than his hands.

"I don't mind telling you, old faithful, that I am in love this
morning," he said. "In love heels over, Betsy, for the first time in all
my life. If any man ever was a bigger fool than I am to-day, it would
comfort me to know about it. I am acting like an idiot, Betsy. I know
that, but I wish you could understand how I feel. Power! I am the
head-waters of Niagara! I could pluck down the stars and set them in
different places! I could twist the tail from the comet! I could twirl
the globe on my palm and topple mountains and wipe lakes from the
surface! I am a live man, Betsy. Existence is over. So don't you go at
any tricks or I might pull off your head. Betsy, if you see the tallest
girl you ever saw, and she wears a dark diadem, and has big black eyes
and a face so lovely it blinds you, why you have seen Her, and you balk,
right on the spot, and stand like the rock of Gibraltar, until you
make me see her, too. As if I wouldn't know she was coming a mile away!
There's more I could tell you, but that is my secret, and it's too
precious to talk about, even to my best friends. Bel, bring Betsy to the
store-room."

The Harvester tossed the hitching strap to the dog and walked down the
driveway to a low structure built on the embankment beside the lake.
One end of it was a dry-house of his own construction. Here, by an
arrangement of hot water pipes, he evaporated many of the barks, roots,
seeds, and leaves he grew to supply large concerns engaged in the
manufacture of drugs. By his process crude stock was thoroughly cured,
yet did not lose in weight and colour as when dried in the sun or
outdoor shade.

So the Harvester was enabled to send his customers big packages of
brightly coloured raw material, and the few cents per pound he asked in
advance of the catalogued prices were paid eagerly. He lived alone,
and never talked of his work; so none of the harvesters of the fields
adjoining dreamed of the extent of his reaping. The idea had been his
own. He had been born in the cabin in which he now lived. His father and
grandfather were old-time hunters of skins and game. They had added to
their earnings by gathering in spring and fall the few medicinal seeds,
leaves, and barks they knew. His mother had been of different type. She
had loved and married the picturesque young hunter, and gone to live
with him on the section of land taken by his father. She found life,
real life, vastly different from her girlhood dreams, but she was one of
those changeless, unyielding women who suffer silently, but never rue a
bargain, no matter how badly they are cheated. Her only joy in life had
been her son. For him she had worked and saved unceasingly, and when he
was old enough she sent him to the city to school and kept pace with him
in the lessons he brought home at night.

Using what she knew of her husband's work as a guide, and profiting by
pamphlets published by the government, every hour of the time outside
school and in summer vacations she worked in the woods with the boy,
gathering herbs and roots to pay for his education and clothing. So
the son passed the full high-school course, and then, selecting such
branches as interested him, continued his studies alone.

From books and drug pamphlets he had learned every medicinal plant,
shrub, and tree of his vicinity, and for years roamed far afield and
through the woods collecting. After his father's death expenses grew
heavier and the boy saw that he must earn more money. His mother
frantically opposed his going to the city, so he thought out the plan
of transplanting the stuff he gathered, to the land they owned and
cultivating it there. This work was well developed when he was twenty,
but that year he lost his mother.

From that time he went on steadily enlarging his species, transplanting
trees, shrubs, vines, and medicinal herbs from such locations as he
found them to similar conditions on his land. Six years he had worked
cultivating these beds, and hunting through the woods on the river
banks, government land, the great Limberlost Swamp, and neglected
corners of earth for barks and roots. He occasionally made long trips
across the country for rapidly diminishing plants he found in the
woodland of men who did not care to bother with a few specimens,
and many big beds of profitable herbs, extinct for miles around, now
flourished on the banks of Loon Lake, in the marsh, and through the
forest rising above. To what extent and value his venture had grown, no
one save the Harvester knew. When his neighbours twitted him with
being too lazy to plow and sow, of "mooning" over books, and derisively
sneered when they spoke of him as the Harvester of the Woods or the
Medicine Man, David Langston smiled and went his way.

How lonely he had been since the death of his mother he never realized
until that morning when a new idea really had taken possession of him.
From the store-house he heaped packages of seeds, dried leaves, barks,
and roots into the wagon. But he kept a generous supply of each, for he
prided himself on being able to fill all orders that reached him. Yet
the load he took to the city was much larger than usual. As he drove
down the hill and passed the cabin he studied the location.

"The drainage is perfect," he said to Belshazzar beside him on the seat.
"So is the situation. We get the cool breezes from the lake in summer
and the hillside warmth in winter. View down the valley can't be
surpassed. We will grub out that thicket in front, move over the
driveway, and build a couple of two-story rooms, with basement for
cellar and furnace, and a bathroom in front of the cabin and use it with
some fixing over for a dining-room and kitchen. Then we will deepen and
widen Singing Water, stick a bushel of bulbs and roots and sow a peck of
flower seeds in the marsh, plant a hedge along the drive, and straighten
the lake shore a little. I can make a beautiful wild-flower garden and
arrange so that with one season's work this will appear very well. We
will express this stuff and then select and fell some trees to-night.
Soon as the frost is out of the ground we will dig our basement and lay
the foundations. The neighbours will help me raise the logs; after that
I can finish the inside work. I've got some dried maple, cherry,
and walnut logs that would work into beautiful furniture. I haven't
forgotten the prices McLean offered me. I can use it as well as he.
Plain way the best things are built now, I believe I could make tables
and couches myself. I can see plans in the magazines at the library.
I'll take a look when I get this off. I feel strong enough to do all of
it in a few days and I am crazy to commence. But I scarcely know where
to begin. There are about fifty things I'd like to do. But to fell and
dry the trees and get the walls up come first, I believe. What do you
think, old unreliable?"

Belshazzar thought the world was a place of beauty that morning. He
sniffed the icy, odorous air and with tilted head watched the birds.
A wearied band of ducks had settled on Loon Lake to feed and rest,
for there was nothing to disturb them. Signs were numerous everywhere
prohibiting hunters from firing over the Harvester's land. Beside
the lake, down the valley, crossing the railroad, and in the farther
lowlands, the dog was a nervous quiver, as he constantly scented game
or saw birds he wanted to point. But when they neared the city, he sat
silently watching everything with alert eyes. As they reached the outer
fringe of residences the Harvester spoke to him.

"Now remember, Bel," he said. "Point me the tallest girl you ever saw,
with a big braid of dark hair, shining black eyes, and red velvet lips,
sweeter than wild crab apple blossoms. Make a dead set! Don't allow her
to pass us. Heaven is going to begin in Medicine Woods when we find her
and prove to her that there lies her happy home.

"When we find her," repeated the Harvester softly and exultantly. "When
we find her!"

He said it again and again, pronouncing the words with tender
modulations. Because he was chanting it in his soul, in his heart,
in his brain, with his lips, he had a hasty glance for every woman
he passed. Light hair, blue eyes, and short figures got only casual
inspection: but any tall girl with dark hair and eyes endured rather
close scrutiny that morning. He drove to the express office and
delivered his packages and then to the hospital. In the hall the
blue-eyed nurse met him and cried gaily, "Good morning, Medicine Man!"

"Ugh! I scalp pale-faces!" threatened the Harvester, but the girl was
not afraid and stood before him laughing. She might have gone her way
quite as well. She could not have differed more from the girl of the
newly begun quest. The man merely touched his wide-brimmed hat as he
walked around her and entered the office of the chief surgeon.

A slender, gray-eyed man with white hair turned from his desk, smiled
warmly, pushed a chair, and reached a welcoming hand.

"Ah good-morning, David," he cried. "You bring the very breath of spring
with you. Are you at the maples yet?"

"Begin to-morrow," was the answer. "I want to get all my old stock off
hands. Sugar water comes next, and then the giddy sassafras and spring
roots rush me, and after that, harvest begins full force, and all
my land is teeming. This is going to be a big year. Everything is
sufficiently advanced to be worth while. I have decided to enlarge the
buildings."

"Store-room too small?"

"Everything!" said the Harvester comprehensively. "I am crowded
everywhere."

The keen gray eyes bent on him searchingly.

"Ho, ho!" laughed the doctor. "'Crowded everywhere.' I had not heard of
cramped living quarters before. When did you meet her?"

"Last night," replied the Harvester. "Her home is already in
construction. I chose seven trees as I drove here that are going to fall
before night."

So casual was the tone the doctor was disarmed.

"I am trying your nerve remedy," he said.

Instantly the Harvester tingled with interest.

"How does it work?" he inquired.

"Finely! Had a case that presented just the symptoms you mentioned.
High-school girl broken down from trying to lead her classes, lead her
fraternity, lead her parents, lead society----the Lord only knows what
else. Gone all to pieces! Pretty a case of nervous prostration as you
ever saw in a person of fifty. I began on fractional doses with it, and
at last got her where she can rest. It did precisely what you claimed it
would, David."

"Good!" cried the Harvester. "Good! I hoped it would be effective.
Thank you for the test. It will give me confidence when I go before the
chemists with it. I've got a couple more compounds I wish you would try
when you have safe cases where you can do no harm."

"You are cautious for a young man, son!"

"The woods do that. You not only discover miracles and marvels in them,
you not only trace evolution and the origin of species, but you get
the greatest lessons taught in all the world ground into you early and
alone----courage, caution, and patience."

"Those are the rocks on which men are stranded as a rule. You think you
can breast them, David?"

The Harvester laughed.

"Aside from breaking a certain promise mother rooted in the blood and
bones of me, if I am afraid of anything, I don't know it. You don't
often see me going head-long, do you? As to patience! Ten years ago I
began removing every tree, bush, vine, and plant of medicinal value from
the woods around to my land; I set and sowed acres in ginseng, knowing
I must nurse, tend, and cultivate seven years. If my neighbours had
understood what I was attempting, what do you think they would have
said? Cranky and lazy would have become adjectives too mild. Lunatic
would have expressed it better. That's close the general opinion,
anyway. Because I will not fell my trees, and the woods hide the work I
do, it is generally conceded that I spend my time in the sun reading
a book. I do, as often as I have an opportunity. But the point is that
this fall, when I harvest that ginseng bed, I will clear more money than
my stiffest detractor ever saw at one time. I'll wager my bank account
won't compare so unfavourably with the best of them now. I did well
this morning. Yes, I'll admit this much: I am reasonably cautious, I'm
a pattern for patience, and my courage never has failed me yet, anyway.
But I must rap on wood; for that boast is a sign that I probably will
meet my Jonah soon."

"David, you are a man after my own heart," said the doctor. "I love you
more than any other friend I have I wouldn't see a hair of your head
changed for the world. Now I've got to hurry to my operation. Remain as
long as you please if there is anything that interests you; but don't
let the giggling little nurse that always haunts the hall when you come
make any impression. She is not up to your standard."

"Don't!" said the Harvester. "I've learned one of the big lessons of
life since last I saw you, Doc. I have no standard. There is just one
woman in all the world for me, and when I find her I will know her, and
I will be happy for even a glance; as for that talk of standards, I will
be only too glad to take her as she is."

"David! I supposed what you said about enlarged buildings was nonsense
or applied to store-rooms."

"Go to your operation!"

"David, if you send me in suspense, I may operate on the wrong man. What
has happened?"

"Nothing!" said the Harvester. "Nothing!"

"David, it is not like you to evade. What happened?"

"Nothing! On my word! I merely saw a vision and dreamed a dream."

"You! A rank materialist! Saw a vision and dreamed a dream! And you
call it nothing. Worst thing that could happen! Whenever a man of
common-sense goes to seeing things that don't exist, and dreaming
dreams, why look out! What did you see? What did you dream?"

"You woman!" laughed the Harvester. "Talk about curiosity! I'd have to
be a poet to describe my vision, and the dream was strictly private.
I couldn't tell it, not for any price you could mention. Go to your
operation."

The doctor paused on the threshold.

"You can't fool me," he said. "I can diagnose you all right. You are
poet enough, but the vision was sacred; and when a man won't tell, it's
always and forever a woman. I know all now I ever will, because I know
you, David. A man with a loose mouth and a low mind drags the women of
his acquaintance through whatever mire he sinks in; but you couldn't
tell, David, not even about a dream woman. Come again soon! You are
my elixir of life, lad! I revel in the atmosphere you bring. Wish me
success now, I am going to a difficult, delicate operation."

"I do!" cried the Harvester heartily. "I do! But you can't fail. You
never have and that proves you cannot! Good-bye!"

Down the street went the Harvester, passing over city pave with his
free, swinging stride, his head high, his face flushed with vivid
outdoor tints, going somewhere to do something worth while, the
impression always left behind him. Men envied his robust appearance and
women looked twice, always twice, and sometimes oftener if there was any
opportunity; but twice at least was the rule. He left a little roll of
bills at the bank and started toward the library. When he entered the
reading room an attendant with an eager smile hastily came toward him.

"What will you have this morning, Mr. Langston?" she asked in the voice
of one who would render willing service.

"Not the big books to-day," laughed the Harvester. "I've only a short
time. I'll glance through the magazines."

He selected several from a table and going to a corner settled with them
and for two hours was deeply engrossed. He took an envelope from his
pocket, traced lines, and read intently. He studied the placing of
rooms, the construction of furniture, and all attractive ideas were
noted. When at last he arose the attendant went to replace the magazines
on the table. They had been opened widely, and as she turned the
leaves they naturally fell apart at the plans for houses or articles of
furniture.

The Harvester slowly went down the street. Before every furniture store
he paused and studied the designs displayed in the windows. Then he
untied Betsy and drove to a lumber mill on the outskirts of the city and
made arrangements to have some freshly felled logs of black walnut
and curly maple sawed into different sizes and put through a course in
drying.

He drove back to Medicine Woods whistling, singing, and talking to
Belshazzar beside him. He ate a hasty lunch and at three o'clock was in
the forest, blazing and felling slender, straight-trunked oak and ash of
the desired proportions.



CHAPTER III. HARVESTING THE FOREST


The forest is never so wonderful as when spring wrestles with winter for
supremacy. While the earth is yet ice bound, while snows occasionally
fly, spring breathes her warmer breath of approach, and all nature
responds. Sunny knolls, embankments, and cleared spaces become bare,
while shadow spots and sheltered nooks remain white. This perfumes the
icy air with a warmer breath of melting snow. The sap rises in the trees
and bushes, sets buds swelling, and they distil a faint, intangible
odour. Deep layers of dead leaves cover the frozen earth, and the sun
shining on them raises a steamy vapour unlike anything else in nature. A
different scent rises from earth where the sun strikes it. Lichen faces
take on the brightest colours they ever wear, and rough, coarse mosses
emerge in rank growth from their cover of snow and add another perfume
to mellowing air. This combination has breathed a strange intoxication
into the breast of mankind in all ages, and bird and animal life prove
by their actions that it makes the same appeal to them.

Crows caw supremacy from tall trees; flickers, drunk on the wine of
nature, flash their yellow-lined wings and red crowns among trees in a
search for suitable building places; nut-hatches run head foremost down
rough trunks, spying out larvae and early emerging insects; titmice
chatter; the bold, clear whistle of the cardinal sounds never so gaily;
and song sparrows pipe from every wayside shrub and fence post. Coons
and opossums stir in their dens, musk-rat and ground-hog inspect the
weather, while squirrels race along branches and bound from tree to tree
like winged folk.

All of them could have outlined the holdings of the Harvester almost
as well as any surveyor. They understood where the bang of guns and the
snap of traps menaced life. Best of all, they knew where cracked nuts,
handfuls of wheat, oats, and crumbs were scattered on the ground, and
where suet bones dangled from bushes. Here, too, the last sheaf from the
small wheat field at the foot of the hill was stoutly fixed on a high
pole, so that the grain was free to all feathered visitors.

When the Harvester hitched Betsy, loaded his spiles and sap buckets
into the wagon, and started to the woods to gather the offering the wet
maples were pouring down their swelling sides, almost his entire family
came to see him. They knew who fed and passed every day among them, and
so were unafraid.

After the familiarity of a long, cold winter, when it had been easier
to pick up scattered food than to search for it, they became so friendly
with the man, the dog, and the gray horse that they hastily snatched
the food offered at the barn and then followed through the woods. The
Harvester always was particular to wear large pockets, for it was good
company to have living creatures flocking after him, trusting to his
bounty. Ajax, a shimmering wonder of gorgeous feathers, sunned on the
ridge pole of the old log stable, preened, spread his train, and uttered
the peacock cry of defiance, to exercise his voice or to express his
emotions at all times. But at feeding hour he descended to the park and
snatched bites from the biggest turkey cocks and ganders and reigned in
power absolute over ducks, guineas, and chickens. Then he followed to
the barn and tried to frighten crows and jays, and the gentle white
doves under the eaves.

The Harvester walked through deep leaves and snow covering the road that
only a forester could have distinguished. Over his shoulder he carried
a mattock, and in the wagon were his clippers and an ax. Behind him came
Betsy drawing the sap buckets and big evaporating kettles. Through the
wood ranged Belshazzar, the craziest dog in all creation. He always went
wild at sap time. Here was none of the monotony of trapping for skins
around the lake. This marked the first full day in the woods for
the season. He ranged as he pleased and came for a pat or a look of
confidence when he grew lonely, while the Harvester worked.

At camp the man unhitched Betsy and tied her to the wagon and for
several hours distributed buckets. Then he hung the kettles and gathered
wood for the fire. At noon he returned to the cabin for lunch and
brought back a load of empty syrup cans, and barrels in which to collect
the sap. While the buckets filled at the dripping trees, he dug roots in
the sassafras thicket to fill orders and supply the demand of Onabasha
for tea. Several times he stopped to cut an especially fine tree.

"You know I hate to kill you," he apologized to the first one he felled.
"But it certainly must be legitimate for a man to take enough of his
trees to build a home. And no other house is possible for a creature of
the woods but a cabin, is there? The birds use of the material they find
here; surely I have the right to do the same. Seems as if nothing else
would serve, at least for me. I was born and reared here, I've always
loved you; of course, I can't use anything else for my home."

He swung the ax and the chips flew as he worked on a straight half-grown
oak. After a time he paused an instant and rested, and as he did so he
looked speculatively at his work.

"I wonder where she is to-day," he said. "I wonder what she is going to
think of a log cabin in the woods. Maybe she has been reared in the
city and is afraid of a forest. She may not like houses made of logs.
Possibly she won't want to marry a Medicine Man. She may dislike the
man, not to mention his occupation. She may think it coarse and common
to work out of doors with your hands, although I'd have to argue there
is a little brain in the combination. I must figure out all these
things. But there is one on the lady: She should have settled these
points before she became quite so familiar. I have that for a foundation
anyway, so I'll go on cutting wood, and the remainder will be up to her
when I find her. When I find her," repeated the Harvester slowly. "But I
am not going to locate her very soon monkeying around in these woods. I
should be out where people are, looking for her right now."

He chopped steadily until the tree crashed over, and then, noticing a
rapidly filling bucket, he struck the ax in the wood and began gathering
sap. When he had made the round, he drove to the camp, filled the
kettles, and lighted the fire. While it started he cut and scraped
sassafras roots, and made clippings of tag alder, spice brush and white
willow into big bundles that were ready to have the bark removed during
the night watch, and then cured in the dry-house.

He went home at evening to feed the poultry and replenish the
ever-burning fire of the engine and to keep the cabin warm enough that
food would not freeze. With an oilcloth and blankets he returned to camp
and throughout the night tended the buckets and boiling sap, and worked
or dozed by the fire between times. Toward the end of boiling, when the
sap was becoming thick, it had to be watched with especial care so it
would not scorch. But when the kettles were freshly filled the Harvester
sat beside them and carefully split tender twigs of willow and slipped
off the bark ready to be spread on the trays.

"You are a good tonic," he mused as he worked, "and you go into some of
the medicine for rheumatism. If she ever has it we will give her some
of you, and then she will be all right again. Strange that I should be
preparing medicinal bark by the sugar camp fire, but I have to make this
hay, not while the sun shines, but when the bark is loose, while the sap
is rising. Wonder who will use this. Depends largely on where I sell it.
Anyway, I hope it will take the pain out of some poor body. Prices so
low now, not worth gathering unless I can kill time on it while waiting
for something else. Never got over seven cents a pound for the best I
ever sold, and it takes a heap of these little quills to make a pound
when they are dry. That's all of you----about twenty-five cents' worth.
But even that is better than doing nothing while I wait, and some one
has to keep the doctors supplied with salicin and tannin, so, if I do,
other folks needn't bother."

He arose and poured more sap into the kettles as it boiled away and
replenished the fire. He nibbled a twig when he began on the spice
brush. As he sat on the piled wood, and bent over his work he was
an attractive figure. His face shone with health and was bright with
anticipation. While he split the tender bark and slipped out the wood he
spoke his thoughts slowly:

"The five cents a pound I'll get for you is even less, but I love the
fragrance and taste. You don't peel so easy as the willow, but I like
to prepare you better, because you will make some miserable little sick
child well or you may cool some one's fevered blood. If ever she has a
fever, I hope she will take medicine made from my bark, because it will
be strong and pure. I've half a notion to set some one else gathering
the stuff and tending the plants and spend my time in the little
laboratory compounding different combinations. I don't see what bigger
thing a man can do than to combine pure, clean, unadulterated roots and
barks into medicines that will cool fevers, stop chills, and purify bad
blood. The doctors may be all right, but what are they going to do if we
men behind the prescription cases don't supply them with unadulterated
drugs. Answer me that, Mr. Sapsucker. Doc says I've done mighty well so
far as I have gone. I can't think of a thing on earth I'd rather do, and
there's money no end in it. I could get too rich for comfort in short
order. I wouldn't be too wealthy to live just the way I do for any
consideration. I don't know about her, though. She is lovely, and
handsome women usually want beautiful clothing, and a quantity of things
that cost no end of money. I may need all I can get, for her. One never
can tell."

He arose to stir the sap and pour more from the barrels to the kettles
before he began on the tag alder he had gathered.

"If it is all the same to you, I'll just keep on chewing spice brush
while I work," he muttered. "You are entirely too much of an astringent
to suit my taste and you bring a cent less a pound. But you are thicker
and dry heavier, and you grow in any quantity around the lake and on the
marshy places, so I'll make the size of the bundle atone for the price.
If I peel you while I wait on the sap I'm that much ahead. I can spread
you on drying trays in a few seconds and there you are. Howl your head
off, Bel, I don't care what you have found. I wouldn't shoot anything
to-day, unless the cupboard was bare and I was starvation hungry. In
that case I think a man comes first, and I'd kill a squirrel or quail
in season, but blest if I'd butcher a lot or do it often. Vegetables
and bread are better anyway. You peel easier even than the willow. What
jolly whistles father used to make!

"There was about twenty cents' worth of spice, and I'll easy raise it to
a dollar on this. I'll get a hundred gallons of syrup in the coming two
weeks and it will bring one fifty if I boil and strain it carefully and
can guarantee it contains no hickory bark and brown sugar. And it won't!
Straight for me or not at all. Pure is the word at Medicine Woods; syrup
or drugs it's the same thing. Between times I can fell every tree I'll
need for the new cabin, and average a dollar a day besides on spice,
alder, and willow, and twice that for sassafras for the Onabasha
markets; not to mention the quantities I can dry this year. Aside from
spring tea, they seem to use it for everything. I never yet have had
enough. It goes into half the tonics, anodyne, and stimulants; also soap
and candy. I see where I grow rich in spite of myself, and also where my
harvest is going to spoil before I can garner it, if I don't step
lively and double even more than I am now. Where the cabin is to come
in----well it must come if everything else goes.

"The roots can wait and I'll dig them next year and get more and larger
pieces. I won't really lose anything, and if she should come before I
am ready to start to find her, why then I'll have her home prepared.
How long before you begin your house, old fire-fly?" he inquired of a
flaming cardinal tilting on a twig.

He arose to make the round of the sap buckets again, then resumed his
work peeling bark, and so the time passed. In the following ten days he
collected and boiled enough sap to make more syrup than he had expected.
His earliest spring store of medicinal twigs, that were peeled to dry in
quills, were all collected and on the trays; he had digged several wagon
loads of sassafras and felled all the logs of stout, slender oak he
would require for his walls. Choice timber he had been curing for
candlestick material he hauled to the saw-mills to have cut properly,
for the thought of trying his hand at tables and chairs had taken
possession of him. He was sure he could make furniture that would appear
quite as well as the mission pieces he admired on display in the store
windows of the city. To him, chairs and tables made from trees that grew
on land that had belonged for three generations to his ancestors, trees
among which he had grown, played, and worked, trees that were so much
his friends that he carefully explained the situation to them before
using an ax or saw, trees that he had cut, cured, and fashioned into
designs of his own, would make vastly more valuable furnishings in his
home than anything that could be purchased in the city.

As he drove back and forth he watched constantly for her. He was working
so desperately, planning far ahead, doubling and trebling tasks, trying
to do everything his profession demanded in season, and to prepare
timber and make plans for the new cabin, as well as to start a pair
of candlesticks of marvellous design for her, that night was one
long, unbroken sleep of the thoroughly tired man, but day had become a
delightful dream.

He fed the chickens to produce eggs for her. He gathered barks and
sluiced roots on the raft in the lake, for her. He grubbed the spice
thicket before the door and moved it into the woods to make space for a
lawn, for her. His eyes were wide open for every woven case and dangling
cocoon of the big night moths that propagated around him, for her. Every
night when he left the woods from one to a dozen cocoons, that he had
detected with remarkable ease while the trees were bare, were stuck
in his hat band. As he arranged them in a cool, dry place he talked to
them.

"Of course I know you are valuable and there are collectors who would
pay well for you, but I think not. You are the prettiest thing God made
that I ever saw, and those of you that home with me have no price on
your wings. You are much safer here than among the crows and jays of the
woods. I am gathering you to protect you, and to show to her. If I don't
find her by June, you may go scot free. All I want is the best pattern
I can get from some of you for candlestick designs. Of everything in the
whole world a candlestick should be made of wood. It should be carved
by hand, and of all ornamentations on earth the moth that flies to the
night light is the most appropriate. Owls are not so bad. They are of
the night, and they fly to light, too, but they are so old. Nobody I
ever have known used a moth. They missed the best when they neglected
them. I'll make her sticks over an original pattern; I'll twine
nightshade vines, with flowers and berries around them, and put a
trailed luna on one, and what is the next prettiest for the other? I'll
think well before if decide. Maybe she'll come by the time I get to
carving and tell me what she likes. That would beat my taste or guessing
a mile."

He carefully arranged the twigs bearing cocoons in a big, wire-covered
box to protect them from the depredations of nibbling mice and the
bolder attacks of the saucy ground squirrels that stored nuts in his
loft and took possession of the attic until their scampering sometimes
awoke him in the night.

Every trip he made to the city he stopped at the library to examine
plans of buildings and furniture and to make notes. The oak he had
hauled was being hewed into shape by a neighbour who knew how, and every
wagon that carried a log to the city to be dressed at the mill brought
back timber for side walls, joists, and rafters. Night after night he
sat late poring over his plans for the new rooms, above all for her
chamber. With poised pencil he wavered over where to put the closet and
entrance to her bath. He figured on how wide to make her bed and where
it should stand. He remembered her dressing table in placing windows
and a space for a chest of drawers. In fact there was nothing the active
mind of the Harvester did not busy itself with in those days that might
make a woman a comfortable home. Every thought emanated from impulses
evolved in his life in the woods, and each was executed with mighty
tenderness.

A killdeer sweeping the lake close two o'clock one morning awakened him.
He had planned to close the sugar camp for the season that day, but when
he heard the notes of the loved bird he wondered if that would not be a
good time to stake out the foundations and begin digging. There was yet
ice in the ground, but the hillside was rapidly thawing, and although
the work would be easier later, so eager was the Harvester to have walls
up and a roof over that he decided to commence.

But when morning came and he and Belshazzar breakfasted and fed Betsy
and the stock, he concluded to return to his first plan and close the
camp. All the sap collected that day went into the vinegar barrel. He
loaded the kettles, buckets, and spiles and stopped at the spice thicket
to cut a bale of twigs as he passed. He carried one load to the wagon
and returned for another. Down wind on swift wing came a bird and
entered the bushes. Motionless the Harvester peered at it. A mourning
dove had returned to him through snow, skifting over cold earth. It
settled on a limb and began dressing its plumage. At that instant a
wavering, "Coo coo a'gh coo," broke in sobbing notes from the deep wood.
Without paying the slightest heed, the dove finished a wing, ruffled
and settled her feathers, and opened her bill in a human-like yawn. The
Harvester smiled. The notes swelled closer in renewed pleading. The cry
was beyond doubt a courting male and this an indifferent female.
Her beady eyes snapped, her head turned coquettishly, a picture of
self-possession, she hid among the dense twigs of the spice thicket.
Around the outside circled the pleading male.

With shining eyes the Harvester watched. These were of the things
that made life in the woods most worth while. More insistent grew the
wavering notes of the lover. More indifferent became the beloved. She
was superb in her poise as she amused herself in hiding. A perfect burst
of confused, sobbing notes broke on the air. Then away in the deep wood
a softly-wavering, half-questioning "Coo-ah!" answered them. Amazement
flashed into the eyes of the Harvester, but his face was not nearly so
expressive as that of the bird. She lifted a bewildered head and grew
rigid in an attitude of tense listening. There was a pause. In quicker
measure and crowding notes the male called again. Instantly the soft
"Coo!" wavered in answer. The surprised little hen bird of the thicket
hopped straight up and settled on her perch again, her dark eyes
indignant as she uttered a short "Coo!" The muscles of the Harvester's
chest were beginning to twitch and quiver. More intense grew the notes
of the pleading male. Softly seductive came the reply. The clapping
of his wings could be heard as he flew in search of the charmer. "A'gh
coo!" cried the deserted female as she tilted off the branch and tore
through the thicket in pursuit, with wings hastened by fright at the
ringing laugh of the Harvester.

"Not so indifferent after all, Bel," he said to the dog standing in
stiff point beside him. "That was all 'pretend!' But she waited just a
trifle too long. Now she will have to fight it out with a rival. Good
thing if some of the flirtatious women could have seen that. Help them
to learn their own minds sooner."

He laughed as he heaped the twigs on top of the wagon and started down
the hill chuckling. Belshazzar followed, leading Betsy straight in the
middle of the road by the hitching strap. A few yards ahead the man
stopped suddenly with lifted hand. The dog and horse stood motionless.
A dove flashed across the road and settled in sight on a limb. Almost
simultaneously another perched beside it, and they locked bills in a
long caress, utterly heedless of a plaintive "Coo" in the deep wood.

"Settled!" said the Harvester. "Jupiter! I wish my troubles were that
nearly finished! Wish I knew where she is and how to find my way to her
lips! Wonder if she will come when I call her. What if I should
find her, and she would have everything on earth, other lovers, and
indifference worse than Madam Dove's for me. Talk about bitterness! Well
I'd have the dream left anyway. And there are always two sides. There is
just a possibility that she may be poor and overworked, sick and tired,
and wondering why I don't come. Possibly she had a dream, too, and she
wishes I would hurry. Dear Lord!"

The Harvester began to perspire as he strode down the hill. He scarcely
waited to hang the harness properly. He did not stop to unload the wagon
until night, but went after an ax and a board that he split into pegs.
Then he took a ball of twine, a measuring line, and began laying out his
foundation, when the hard earth would scarcely hold the stakes he drove
into it. When he found he only would waste time in digging he put away
the neatly washed kettles, peeled the spice brush, spread it to dry, and
prepared his dinner. After that he began hauling stone and cement for
his basement floor and foundation walls. Occasionally he helped at
hewing logs when the old man paused to rest. That afternoon the first
robin of the season hailed him in passing.

"Hello!" cried the Harvester. "You don't mean to tell me that you have
beaten the larks! You really have! Well since I see it, I must believe,
but you are early. Come around to the back door if crumbs or wheat will
do or if you can make out on suet and meat bones! We are good and ready
for you. Where is your mate? For any sake, don't tell me you don't know.
One case of that kind at Medicine Woods is enough. Say you came ahead
to see if it is too cold or to select a home and get ready for her. Say
anything on earth except that you love her, and want her until your body
is one quivering ache, and you don't know where she is."



CHAPTER IV. A COMMISSION FOR THE SOUTH WIND

The next morning the larks trailed ecstasy all over the valley, the
following day cuckoos were calling in the thickets, a warm wind swept
from the south and set swollen buds bursting, while the sun shone,
causing the Harvester to rejoice. Betsy's white coat was splashed with
the mud of the valley road; the feet of Belshazzar left tracks over
lumber piles; and the Harvester removed his muck-covered shoes at the
door and wore slippers inside. The skunk cabbage appeared around the
edge of the forest, rank mullein and thistles lay over the fields in
big circles of green, and even plants of delicate growth were thrusting
their heads through mellowing earth and dead leaves, to reach light and
air.

Then the Harvester took his mattock and began to dig. His level best
fell so far short of what he felt capable of doing and desired to
accomplish that the following day he put two more men on the job. Then
the earth did fly, and so soon as the required space was excavated the
walls were lined with stone and a smooth basement floor was made of
cement. The night the new home stood, a skeleton of joists and rafters,
gleaming whitely on the banks of Loon Lake, the Harvester went to the
bridge crossing Singing Water and slowly came up the driveway to see how
the work appeared. He caught his breath as he advanced. He had intended
to stake out generous rooms, but this, compared with the cabin, seemed
like a big hotel.

"I hope I haven't made it so large it will be a burden," he
soliloquized. "It's huge! But while I am at it I want to build big
enough, and I think I have."

He stood on the driveway, his arms folded, and looked at the structure
as he occasionally voiced his thoughts.

"The next thing is to lay up the side walls and get the roof over. Got
to have plenty of help, for those logs are hewed to fourteen inches
square and some of them are forty feet long. That's timber! Grew with
me, too. Personally acquainted with almost every tree of it. We will bed
them in cement, use care with the roof, and if that doesn't make a cool
house in the summer, and a warm one in winter, I'll be disappointed.
It sets among the trees, and on the hillside just right. We must have a
wide porch, plenty of flowers, vines, ferns, and mosses, and when I get
everything finished and she sees it----perhaps it will please her."

A great horned owl swept down the hill, crossed the lake, and hooted
from the forest of the opposite bank. The Harvester thought of his dream
and turned.

"Any women walking the water to-night? Come if you like," he bantered,
"I don't mind in the least. In fact, I'd rather enjoy it. I'd be so
happy if you would come now and tell me how this appears to you,
for it's all yours. I'd have enlarged the store-room, dry-houses and
laboratory for myself, but this cabin, never! The old one suited me as
it was; but for you----I should have a better home."

The Harvester glanced from the shining skeleton to the bridge of gold
and back again.

"Where are you to-night?" he questioned. "What are you doing? Can't you
give me a hint of where to search for you when this is ready? I don't
know but I am beginning wrong. My little brothers of the wood do
differently. They announce their intentions the first thing, flaunt
their attractions, and display their strength. They say aloud, for all
the listening world to hear, what is in their hearts. They chip, chirp,
and sing, warble, whistle, thrill, scream, and hoot it. They are strong
on self-expression, and appreciative of their appearance. They meet,
court, mate, and THEN build their home together after a mutual plan.
It's a good way, too! Lots surer of getting things satisfactory."

The Harvester sat on a lumber pile and gazed questioningly at the
framework.

"I wish I knew if I am going at things right," he said. "There are two
sides to consider. If she is in a good home, and lovingly cared for, it
would be proper to court her and get her promise, if I could----no I'm
blest if I'll be so modest----get her promise, as I said, and let her
wait while I build the cabin. But if she should be poor, tired, and
neglected, then I ought to have this ready when I find her, so I could
pick her up and bring her to it, with no more ceremony than the birds."

The Harvester's clear skin flushed crimson.

"Of course, I don't mean no wedding ceremony," he amended. "I was
thinking of a long time wasted in preliminaries when in my soul I know I
am going to marry my Dream Girl before I ever have seen her in reality.
What would be the use in spending much time in courting? She is my wife
now, by every law of God. Let me get a glimpse of her, and I'll prove
it. But I've got to make tracks, for if she were here, where would I put
her? I must hurry!"

He went to the work room and began polishing a table top. He had bought
a chest of tools and was spending every spare minute on tables,
chair seats, and legs. He had decided to make these first and carve
candlesticks later when he had more time. Two hours he worked at the
furniture, and then went to bed. The following morning he put eggs under
several hens that wanted to set, trimmed his grape-vines, examined the
precious ginseng beds, attended his stock, got breakfast for Belshazzar
and himself, and was ready for work when the first carpenter arrived.
Laying hewed logs went speedily, and before the Harvester believed it
possible the big shingles he had ordered were being nailed on the roof.
Then came the plumber and arranged for the bathroom, and the furnace
man placed the heating pipes. The Harvester had intended the cabin to
be mostly the work of his own hands, but when he saw how rapidly
skilled carpenters worked, he changed his mind and had them finish the
living-room, his room, and the upstairs, and make over the dining-room
and kitchen.

Her room he worked on alone, with a little help if he did not know how
to join the different parts. Every thing was plain and simple, after
plans of his own, but the Harvester laid floors and made window casings,
seats, and doors of wood that the big factories of Grand Rapids used in
veneering their finest furniture. When one of his carpenters pointed
out this to him, and suggested that he sell his lumber to McLean and use
pine flooring from the mills the Harvester laughed at him.

"I don't say that I could afford to buy burl maple, walnut, and cherry
for wood-work," said the Harvester. "I could not, but since I have it,
you can stake your life I won't sell it and build my home of cheap,
rapidly decaying wood. The best I have goes into this cabin and what
remains will do to sell. I have an idea that when this is done it is
going to appear first rate. Anyway, it will be solid enough to last
a thousand years, and with every day of use natural wood grows more
beautiful. When we get some tables, couches, and chairs made from the
same timber as the casings and the floors, I think it will be fine.
I want money, but I don't want it bad enough to part with the BEST of
anything I have for it. Go carefully and neatly there; it will have to
be changed if you don't."

So the work progressed rapidly. When the carpenters had finished the
last stroke on the big veranda they remained a day more and made flower
boxes, and a swinging couch, and then the greedy Harvester kept the best
man with him a week longer to help on the furniture.

"Ain't you going to say a word about her, Langston?" asked this man as
they put a mirror-like surface on a curly maple dressing table top.

"Her!" ejaculated the Harvester. "What do you mean?"

"I haven't seen you bathe anywhere except in the lake since I have been
here," said the carpenter. "Do you want me to think that a porcelain
tub, this big closet, and chest of drawers are for you?"

A wave of crimson swept over the Harvester.

"No, they are not for me," he said simply. "I don't want to be any more
different from other men than I can help, although I know that life in
the woods, the rigid training of my mother, and the reading of only the
books that would aid in my work have made me individual in many of my
thoughts and ways. I suppose most men, just now, would tell you anything
you want to know. There is only one thing I can say: The best of my soul
and brain, the best of my woods and store-house, the best I can buy with
money is not good enough for her. That's all. For myself, I am getting
ready to marry, of course. I think all normal men do and that it is a
matter of plain common-sense that they should. Life with the right woman
must be infinitely broader and better than alone. Are you married?"

"Yes. Got a wife and four children."

"Are you sorry?"

"Sorry!" the carpenter shrilled the word. "Sorry! Well that's the best
I ever heard! Am I sorry I married Nell and got the kids? Do I look
sorry?"

"I am not expecting to be, either," said the Harvester calmly. "I think
I have done fairly well to stick to my work and live alone until I am
twenty-six. I have thought the thing all over and made up my mind. As
soon as I get this house far enough along that I feel I can proceed
alone I am going to rush the marrying business just as fast as I can,
and let her finish the remainder to her liking."

"Well this ought to please her."

"That's because you find your own work good," laughed the Harvester.

"Not altogether!" The carpenter polished the board and stood it on end
to examine the surface as he talked. "Not altogether! Nothing but good
work would suit you. I was thinking of the little creek splashing down
the hill to the lake; and that old log hewer said that in a few more
days things here would be a blaze of colour until fall."

"Almost all the drug plants and bushes leaf beautifully and flower
brilliantly," explained the Harvester. "I studied the location suitable
to each variety before I set the beds and planned how to grow plants
for continuity of bloom, and as much harmony of colour as possible.
Of course a landscape gardener would tear up some of it, but seen as a
whole it isn't so bad. Did you ever notice that in the open, with God's
blue overhead and His green for a background, He can place purple and
yellow, pink, magenta, red, and blue in masses or any combination you
can mention and the brighter the colour the more you like it? You
don't seem to see or feel that any grouping clashes; you revel in each
wonderful growth, and luxuriate in the brilliancy of the whole. Anyway,
this suits me."

"I guess it will please her, too," said the carpenter. "After all the
pains you've taken, she is a good one if it doesn't."

"I'll always have the consolation of having done my best," replied
the Harvester. "One can't do more! Whether she likes it or not depends
greatly on the way she has been reared."

"You talk as if you didn't know," commented the carpenter.

"You go on with this now," said the Harvester hastily. "I've got to
uncover some beds and dig my year's supply of skunk cabbage, else folk
with asthma and dropsy who depend on me will be short on relief. I ought
to take my sweet flag, too, but I'm so hurried now I think I'll leave it
until fall; I do when I can, because the bloom is so pretty around the
lake and the bees simply go wild over the pollen. Sometimes I almost
think I can detect it in their honey. Do you know I've wondered often
if the honey my bees make has medicinal properties and should be kept
separate in different seasons. In early spring when the plants and
bushes that furnish the roots and barks of most of the tonics are in
bloom, and the bees gather the pollen, that honey should partake in a
degree of the same properties and be good medicine. In the summer
it should aid digestion, and in the fall cure rheumatism and blood
disorders."

"Say you try it!" urged the carpenter. "I want a lot of the fall kind.
I'm always full of rheumatism by October. Exposure, no doubt."

"Over eating of too much rich food, you mean," laughed the Harvester.
"I'd like to see any man expose his body to more differing extremes of
weather than I do, and I'm never sick. It's because I am my own cook
and so I live mostly on fruits, vegetables, bread, milk, and eggs, a few
fish from the lake, a little game once in a great while or a chicken,
and no hot drinks; plenty of fresh water, air, and continuous work out
of doors. That's the prescription! I'd be ashamed to have rheumatism at
your age. There's food in the cupboard if you grow hungry. I am going
past one of the neighbours on my way to see about some work I want her
to do."

The Harvester stopped for lunch, carried food to Belshazzar, and started
straight across country, his mattock, with a bag rolled around the
handle, on his shoulder. His feet sank in the damp earth at the foot of
the hill, and he laughed as he leaped across Singing Water.

"You noisy chatterbox!" cried the man. "The impetus of coming down the
curves of the hill keeps you talking all the way across this muck bed to
the lake. With small work I can make you a thing of beauty. A few bushes
grubbed, a little deepening where you spread too much, and some more
mallows along the banks will do the trick. I must attend to you soon."

"Now what does the boy want?" laughed a white-haired old woman, as the
Harvester entered the door. "Mebby you think I don't know what you're
up to! I even can hear the hammering and the voices of the men when the
wind is in the south. I've been wondering how soon you'd need me. Out
with it!"

"I want you to get a woman and come over and spend a day with me.
I'll come after you and bring you back. I want you to go over mother's
bedding and have what needs it washed. All I want you to do is to
superintend, and tell me now what I will want from town for your work."

"I put away all your mother's bedding that you were not using, clean as
a ribbon."

"But it has been packed in moth preventives ever since and out only four
times a year to air, as you told me. It must smell musty and be yellow.
I want it fresh and clean."

"So what I been hearing is true, David?"

"Quite true!" said the Harvester.

"Whose girl is she, and when are you going to jine hands?"

The Harvester lifted his clear eyes and hesitated.

"Doc Carey laid you in my arms when you was born, David. I tended you
'fore ever your ma did. All your life you've been my boy, and I love you
same as my own blood; it won't go no farther if you say so. I'll never
tell a living soul. But I'm old and 'til better weather comes, house
bound; and I get mighty lonely. I'd like to think about you and her, and
plan for you, and love her as I always did you folks. Who is she, David?
Do I know the family?"

"No. She is a stranger to these parts," said the unhappy Harvester.

"David, is she a nice girl 'at your ma would have liked?"

"She's the only girl in the world that I'd marry," said the Harvester
promptly, glad of a question he could answer heartily. "Yes. She is
gentle, very tender and----and affectionate," he went on so rapidly that
Granny Moreland could not say a word, "and as soon as I bring her home
you shall come to spend a day and get acquainted. I know you will love
her! I'll come in the morning, then. I must hurry now. I am working
double this spring and I'm off for the skunk cabbage bed to-day."

"You are working fit to kill, the neighbours say. Slavin' like a horse
all day, and half the night I see your lights burning."

"Do I appear killed?" laughingly inquired the Harvester.

"You look peart as a struttin' turkey gobbler," said the old woman. "Go
on with your work! Work don't hurt a-body. Eat a-plenty, sleep all you
ort, and you CAN'T work enough to hurt you."

"So the neighbours say I'm working now? New story, isn't it? Usually I'm
too lazy to make a living, if I remember."

"Only to those who don't sense your purceedings, David. I always knowed
how you grubbed and slaved an' set over them fearful books o' yours."

"More interesting than the wildest fiction," said the man. "I'm making
some medicine for your rheumatism, Granny. It is not fully tested yet,
but you get ready for it by cutting out all the salt you can. I haven't
time to explain this morning, but you remember what I say, leave out the
salt, and when Doc thinks it's safe I'll bring you something that will
make a new woman of you."

He went swinging down the road, and Granny Moreland looked after him.

"While he was talkin'," she muttered, "I felt full of information as a
flock o' almanacs, but now since he's gone, 'pears to me I don't know a
thing more 'an I did to start on."

"Close call," the Harvester was thinking. "Why the nation did I admit
anything to her? People may talk as they please, so long as I don't
sanction it, but I have two or three times. That's a fool trick. Suppose
I can't find her? Maybe she won't look at me if I can. Then I'd have
started something I couldn't finish. And if anybody thinks I'll end
this by taking any girl I can get, if I can't find Her, why they think
wrongly. Just the girl of my golden dream or no woman at all for me.
I've lived alone long enough to know how to do it in comfort. If I can't
find and win her I have no intention of starting a boarding house."

The Harvester began to laugh. "'I'd rather keep bachelor's hall in Hell
than go to board in Heaven!'" he quoted gaily. "That's my sentiment too.
If you can't have what you want, don't have anything. But there is no
use to become discouraged before I start. I haven't begun to hunt her
yet. Until I do, I might as well believe that she will walk across the
bridge and take possession just as soon as I get the last chair leg
polished. She might! She came in the dream, and to come actually
couldn't be any more real. I'll make a stiff hunt of it before I give
up, if I ever do. I never yet have made a complete failure of anything.
But just now I am hunting skunk cabbage. It's precisely the time to take
it."

Across the lake, in the swampy woods, close where the screech owl sang
and the girl of the golden dream walked in the moonlight the Harvester
began operations. He unrolled the sack, went to one end of the bed and
systematically started a swath across it, lifting every other plant
by the roots. Flowering time was almost past, but the bees knew where
pollen ripened, and hummed incessantly over and inside the queer
cone-shaped growths with their hooked beaks. It almost appeared as if
the sound made inside might be to give outsiders warning not to poach
on occupied territory, for the Harvester noticed that no bee entered a
pre-empted plant.

With skilful hand each stroke brought up a root and he tossed it to one
side. The plants were vastly peculiar things. First they seemed to be a
curled leaf with no flower. In colour they shaded from yellow to almost
black mahogany, and appeared as if they were a flower with no leaf.
Closer examination proved there was a stout leaf with a heavy outside
mid-rib, the tip of which curled over in a beak effect, that wrapped
around a peculiar flower of very disagreeable odour. The handling of
these plants by the hundred so intensified this smell the Harvester
shook his head.

"I presume you are mostly mine," he said to the busy little workers
around him. "If there is anything in my theory of honey having varying
medicinal properties at different seasons, right now mine should be
good for Granny's rheumatism and for nervous and dropsical people. I
shouldn't think honey flavoured with skunk cabbage would be fit to eat.
But, of course, it isn't all this. There is catkin pollen on the wind,
hazel and sassafras are both in bloom now, and so are several of the
earliest little flowers of the woods. You can gather enough of them
combined to temper the disagreeable odour into a racy sweetness, and all
the shrub blooms are good tonics, too, and some of the earthy ones. I'm
going to try giving some of you empty cases next spring and analyzing
the honey to learn if it isn't good medicine."

The Harvester straightened and leaned on the mattock to fill his lungs
with fresh air and as he delightedly sniffed it he commented, "Nothing
else has much of a chance since I've stirred up the cabbage bed. I can
scent the catkins plainly, being so close, and as I came here I could
detect the hazel and sassafras all right."

Above him a peculiar, raucous chattering for an instant hushed other
wood voices. The Harvester looked up, laughing gaily.

"So you've decided to announce it to your tribe at last, have you?"
he inquired. "You are waking the sleepers in their dens to-day? Well,
there's nothing like waiting until you have a sure thing. The bluebirds
broke the trail for the feathered folk the twenty-fourth of February.
The sap oozed from the maples about the same time for the trees. The
very first skunk cabbage was up quite a month ago to signal other plants
to come on, and now you are rousing the furred folk. I'll write this
down in my records----'When the earliest bluebird sings, when the sap
wets the maples, when the skunk cabbage flowers, and the first striped
squirrel barks, why then, it is spring!'"

He bent to his task and as he worked closer the water he noticed
sweet-flag leaves waving two inches tall beneath the surface.

"Great day!" he cried. "There you are making signs, too! And right! Of
course! Nature is always right. Just two inches high and it's harvest
for you. I can use a rake, and dried in the evaporator you bring me
ten cents a pound; to the folks needing a tonic you are worth a small
fortune. No doubt you cost that by the time you reach them; but I fear
I can't gather you just now. My head is a little preoccupied these days.
What with the cabbage, and now you, and many of the bushes and trees
making signs, with a new cabin to build and furnish, with a girl to find
and win, I'm what you might call busy. I've covered my book shelf.
I positively don't dare look Emerson or Maeterlinck in the face. One
consolation! I've got the best of Thoreau in my head, and if I read
Stickeen a few times more I'll be able to recite that. There's a man for
you, not to mention the dog! Bel, where are you? Would you stick to me
like that? I think you would. But you are a big, strong fellow. Stickeen
was only such a mite of a dog. But what a man he followed! I feel as
if I should put on high-heeled slippers and carry a fan and a lace
handkerchief when I think of him. And yet, most men wouldn't consider my
job so easy!"

The Harvester rapidly pitched the evil-smelling plants into big heaps
and as he worked he imitated the sounds around him as closely as he
could. The song sparrow laughed at him and flew away in disgust when he
tried its notes. The jay took time to consider, but was not fooled. The
nut-hatch ran head first down trees, larvae hunting, and was never a
mite deceived. But the killdeer on invisible legs, circling the lake
shore, replied instantly; so did the lark soaring above, and the dove of
the elm thicket close beside. The glittering black birds flashing over
every tree top answered the "T'check, t'chee!" of the Harvester quite as
readily as their mates.

The last time he paused to rest he had studied scents. When he
straightened again he was occupied with every voice of earth and air
around and above him, and the notes of singing hens, exultant cocks, the
scream of geese, the quack of ducks, the rasping crescendo of guineas
running wild in the woods, the imperial note of Ajax sunning on the
ridge pole and echoes from all of them on adjoining and distant farms.

"'Now I see the full meaning and beauty of that word sound!'" quoted
the Harvester. "'I thank God for sound. It always mounts and makes me
mount!'"

He breathed deeply and stood listening, a superb figure of a man, his
lean face glowing with emotion.

"If she could see and hear this, she would come," he said softly. "She
would come and she would love it as I do. Any one who understands,
and knows how to translate, cares for this above all else earth has to
offer. They who do not, fail to read as they run!"

He shifted feet mired in swamp muck, and stood as if loath to bend again
to his task. He lifted a weighted mattock and scraped the earth from
it, sniffing it delightedly the while. A soft south wind freighted with
aromatic odours swept his warm face. The Harvester removed his hat and
shook his head that the breeze might thread his thick hair.

"I've a commission for you, South Wind," he said whimsically. "Go find
my Dream Girl. Go carry her this message from me. Freight your breath
with spicy pollen, sun warmth, and flower nectar. Fill all her senses
with delight, and then, close to her ear, whisper it softly, 'Your lover
is coming!' Tell her that, O South Wind! Carry Araby to her nostrils,
Heaven to her ears, and then whisper and whisper it over and over until
you arouse the passion of earth in her blood. Tell her what is rioting
in my heart, and brain, and soul this morning. Repeat it until she must
awake to its meaning, 'Your lover is coming.'"



CHAPTER V. WHEN THE HARVESTER MADE GOOD

The sassafras and skunk cabbage were harvested. The last workman was
gone. There was not a sound at Medicine Woods save the babel of bird and
animal notes and the never-ending accompaniment of Singing Water. The
geese had gone over, some flocks pausing to rest and feed on Loon Lake,
and ducks that homed there were busy among the reeds and rushes. In
the deep woods the struggle to maintain and reproduce life was at its
height, and the courting songs of gaily coloured birds were drowned by
hawk screams and crow calls of defiance.

Every night before he plunged into the lake and went to sleep the
Harvester made out a list of the most pressing work that he would
undertake on the coming day. By systematizing and planning ahead he was
able to accomplish an unbelievable amount. The earliest rush of spring
drug gathering was over. He could be more deliberate in collecting the
barks he wanted. Flowers that were to be gathered at bloom time and
leaves were not yet ready. The heavy leaf coverings he had helped
the winds to heap on his beds of lily of the valley, bloodroot, and
sarsaparilla were removed carefully.

Inside the cabin the Harvester cleaned the glass, swept the floors with
a soft cloth pinned over the broom, and hung pale yellow blinds at the
windows. Every spare minute he worked on making furniture, and with each
piece he grew in experience and ventured on more difficult undertakings.
He had progressed so far that he now allowed himself an hour each day on
the candlesticks for her. Every evening he opened her door and with soft
cloths polished the furniture he had made. When her room was completed
and the dining-room partially finished, the Harvester took time to stain
the cabin and porch roofs the shade of the willow leaves, and on the
logs and pillars he used oil that served to intensify the light yellow
of the natural wood. With that much accomplished he felt better. If she
came now, in a few hours he would be able to offer a comfortable room,
enough conveniences to live until more could be provided, and of food
there was always plenty.

His daily programme was to feed and water his animals and poultry,
prepare breakfast for himself and Belshazzar, and go to the woods,
dry-house or store-room to do the work most needful in his harvesting.
In the afternoon he laboured over furniture and put finishing touches on
the new cabin, and after supper he carved and found time to read again,
as before his dream.

He was so happy he whistled and sang at his work much of the time at
first, but later there came days when doubts crept in and all his will
power was required to proceed steadily. As the cabin grew in better
shape for occupancy each day, more pressing became the thought of how he
was going to find and meet the girl of his dream. Sometimes it seemed to
him that the proper way was to remain at home and go on with his work,
trusting her to come to him. At such times he was happy and gaily
whistled and sang:

     "Stay in your chimney corner,
          Don't roam the world about,
       Stay in your chimney corner,
          And your own true love will find you out."


But there were other days while grubbing in the forest, battling with
roots in the muck and mire of the lake bank, staggering under a load
for two men, scarcely taking time to eat and sleep enough to keep his
condition perfect, when that plan seemed too hopeless and senseless to
contemplate. Then he would think of locking the cabin, leaving the drugs
to grow undisturbed by collecting, hiring a neighbour to care for his
living creatures, and starting a search over the world to find her.
There came times when the impulse to go was so strong that only the
desire to take a day more to decide where, kept him. Every time his mind
was made up to start the following day came the counter thought, what
if I should go and she should come in my absence? In the dream she came.
That alone held him, even in the face of the fact that if he left home
some one might know of and rifle the precious ginseng bed, carefully
tended these seven years for the culmination the coming fall would
bring. That ginseng was worth many thousands and he had laboured over
it, fighting worms and parasites, covering and uncovering it with the
changing seasons, a siege of loving labour.

Sometimes a few hours of misgiving tortured him, but as a rule he was
cheerful and happy in his preparations. Without intending to do it
he was gradually furnishing the cabin. Every few days saw a new piece
finished in the workshop. Each trip to Onabasha ended in the purchase of
some article he could see would harmonize with his colour plans for
one of the rooms. He had filled the flower boxes for the veranda with
delicate plants that were growing luxuriantly.

Then he designed and began setting a wild-flower garden outside her door
and started climbing vines over the logs and porches, but whatever he
planted he found in the woods or took from beds he cultivated. Many of
the medicinal vines had leaves, flowers, twining tendrils, and berries
or fruits of wonderful beauty. Every trip to the forest he brought back
a half dozen vines, plants, or bushes to set for her. All of them either
bore lovely flowers, berries, quaint seed pods, or nuts, and beside the
drive and before the cabin he used especial care to plant a hedge of
bittersweet vines, burning bush, and trees of mountain ash, so that
the glory of their colour would enliven the winter when days might be
gloomy.

He planted wild yam under her windows that its queer rattles might amuse
her, and hop trees where their castanets would play gay music with every
passing wind of fall. He started a thicket along the opposite bank of
Singing Water where it bubbled past her window, and in it he placed in
graduated rows every shrub and small tree bearing bright flower, berry,
or fruit. Those remaining he used as a border for the driveway from the
lake, so that from earliest spring her eyes would fall on a procession
of colour beginning with catkins and papaw lilies, and running through
alders, haws, wild crabs, dogwood, plums, and cherry intermingled with
forest saplings and vines bearing scarlet berries in fall and winter. In
the damp soil of the same character from which they were removed, in
the shade and under the skilful hand of the Harvester, few of these
knew they had been transplanted, and when May brought the catbirds and
orioles much of this growth was flowering quite as luxuriantly as the
same species in the woods.

The Harvester was in the store-house packing boxes for shipment. His
room was so small and orders so numerous that he could not keep large
quantities on hand. All crude stuff that he sent straight from the
drying-house was fresh and brightly coloured. His stock always was
marked prime A-No. 1. There was a step behind him and the Harvester
turned. A boy held out a telegram. The man opened it to find an order
for some stuff to be shipped that day to a large laboratory in Toledo.

His hands deftly tied packages and he hastily packed bottles and nailed
boxes. Then he ran to harness Betsy and load. As he drove down the hill
to the bridge he looked at his watch and shook his head.

"What are you good for at a pinch, Betsy?" he asked as he flecked the
surprised mare's flank with a switch. Belshazzar cocked his ears and
gazed at the Harvester in astonishment.

"That wasn't enough to hurt her," explained the man. "She must speed up.
This is important business. The amount involved is not so much, but I do
love to make good. It's a part of my religion, Bel. And my religion has
so precious few parts that if I fail in the observance of any of them
it makes a big hole in my performances. Now we don't want to end a life
full of holes, so we must get there with this stuff, not because it's
worth the exertion in dollars and cents, but because these men patronize
us steadily and expect us to fill orders, even by telegraph. Hustle,
Betsy!"

The whip fell again and Belshazzar entered indignant protest.

"It isn't going to hurt her," said the Harvester impatiently. "She may
walk all the way back. She can rest while I get these boxes billed and
loaded if she can be persuaded to get them to the express office on
time. The trouble with Betsy is that she wants to meander along the road
with a loaded wagon as her mother and grandmother before her wandered
through the woods wearing a bell to attract the deer. Father used to say
that her mother was the smartest bell mare that ever entered the forest.
She'd not only find the deer, but she'd make friends with them and lead
them straight as a bee-line to where he was hiding. Betsy, you must
travel!"

The Harvester drew the lines taut, and the whip fell smartly. The
astonished Betsy snorted and pranced down the valley as fast as she
could, but every step indicated that she felt outraged and abused. This
was the loveliest day of the season. The sun was shining, the air was
heavy with the perfume of flowering shrubs and trees, the orchards of
the valley were white with bloom. Farmers were hurrying back and forth
across fields, leaving up turned lines of black, swampy mould behind
them, and one progressive individual rode a wheeled plow, drove three
horses and enjoyed the shelter of a canopy.

"Saints preserve us, Belshazzar!" cried the Harvester. "Do you see that?
He is one of the men who makes a business of calling me shiftless. Now
he thinks he is working. Working! For a full-grown man, did you ever see
the equal? If I were going that far I'd wear a tucked shirt, panama hat,
have a pianola attachment, and an automatic fan."

The Harvester laughed as he again touched Betsy and hurried to Onabasha.
He scarcely saw the delights offered on either hand, and where his
eyes customarily took in every sight, and his ears were tuned for
the faintest note of earth or tree top, to day he saw only Betsy and
listened for a whistle he dreaded to hear at the water tank. He climbed
the embankment of the railway at a slower pace, but made up time going
down hill to the city.

"I am not getting a blame thing out of this," he complained to
Belshazzar. "There are riches to stagger any scientist wasting to-day,
and all I've got to show is one oriole. I did hear his first note and
see his flash, and so unless we can take time to make up for this on the
home road we will have to christen it oriole day. It's a perfumed golden
day, too; I can get that in passing, but how I loathe hurrying. I don't
mind planning things and working steadily, but it's not consistent with
the dignity of a sane man to go rushing across country with as much
appreciation of the delights offered right now as a chicken with its
head off would have. We will loaf going back to pay for this! And won't
we invite our souls? We will stop and gather a big bouquet of crab
apple blossoms to fill the green pitcher for her. Maybe some of their
wonderful perfume will linger in her room. When the petals fall we will
scatter them in the drawers of her dresser, and they may distil a faint
flower odour there. We could do that to all her furniture, but perhaps
she doesn't like perfume. She'll be compelled to after she reaches
Medicine Woods. Betsy, you must travel faster!"

The whip fell again and the Harvester stopped at the depot with a few
minutes to spare. He threw the hitching strap to Belshazzar, and ran
into the express office with an arm load of boxes.

"Bill them!" he cried. "It's a rush order. I want it to go on the
next express. Almost due I think. I'll help you and we can book them
afterward."

The expressman ran for a truck and they hastily weighed and piled on
boxes. When the last one was loaded from the wagon, a heap more lying in
the office were added, pitched on indiscriminately as the train pulled
under the sheds of the Union Station.

"I'll push," cried the Harvester, "and help you get them on."

Hurrying as fast as he could the expressman drew the heavy truck through
the iron gates and started toward the train slowing to a stop, and the
Harvester pushed. As they came down the platform they passed the dining
and sleeping cars of the long train and were several times delayed
by descending passengers. Just opposite the day coach the expressman
narrowly missed running into several women leading small children and
stopped abruptly. A toppling box threatened the head of the Harvester.
He peered around the truck and saw they must wait a few seconds. He put
in the time watching the people. A gray-haired old man, travelling in a
silk hat, wavered on the top step and went his way. A fat woman loaded
with bundles puffed as she clung trembling a second in fear she would
miss the step she could not see. A tall, slender girl with a face coldly
white came next, and from the broken shoe she advanced, the bewildered
fright of big, dark eyes glancing helplessly, the Harvester saw that she
was poor, alone, ill, and in trouble. Pityingly he turned to watch her,
and as he gauged her height, saw her figure, and a dark coronet of hair
came into view, a ghastly pallor swept his face.

"Merciful God!" he breathed, "that's my Dream Girl!"

The truck started with a jerk. The toppling box fell, struck a passing
boy, and knocked him down. The mother screamed and the Harvester sprang
to pick up the child and see that he was not dangerously hurt. Then he
ran after the truck, pitched on the box, and whirling, sped beside the
train toward the gates of exit. There was the usual crush, but he could
see the tall figure passing up the steps to the depot. He tried to
force his way and was called a brute by a crowded woman. He ran down the
platform to the gates he had entered with the truck. They were automatic
and had locked. Then he became a primal creature being cheated of a
lawful mate and climbed the high iron fence and ran for the waiting
room.

He swept it at a glance, not forgetting the women's apartment and the
side entrance. Then he hurried to the front exit. Up the street leading
from the city there were few people and he could see no sign of the
slight, white-faced girl. He crossed the sidewalk and ran down the
gutter for a block and breathlessly waited the passing crowd on the
corner. She was not among it. He tried one more square. Still he could
not see her. Then he ran back to the depot. He thought surely he must
have missed her. He again searched the woman's and general waiting room
and then he thought of the conductor. From him it could be learned where
she entered the car. He ran for the station, bolted the gate while the
official called to him, and reached the track in time to see the train
pull out within a few yards of him.

"You blooming idiot!" cried the angry expressman as the Harvester ran
against him, "where did you go? Why didn't you help me? You are white as
a sheet! Have you lost your senses?"

"Worse!" groaned the Harvester. "Worse! I've lost what I prize most on
earth. How could I reach the conductor of that train?"

"Telegraph him at the next station. You can have an answer in a half
hour."

The Harvester ran to the office, and with shaking hand wrote this
message:

"Where did a tall girl with big black eyes and wearing a gray dress take
your train? Important."

Then he went out and minutely searched the depot and streets. He hired
an automobile to drive him over the business part of Onabasha for three
quarters of an hour. Up one street and down another he went slowly where
there were crowds, faster as he could, but never a sight of her. Then he
returned to the depot and found his message. It read, "Transferred to me
at Fort Wayne from Chicago."

"Chicago baggage!" he cried, and hurried to the check room. He had lost
almost an hour. When he reached the room he found the officials busy and
unwilling to be interrupted. Finally he learned there had been a half
dozen trunks from Chicago. All were taken save two, and one glance at
them told the Harvester that they did not belong to the girl in gray.
The others had been claimed by men having checks for them. If she had
been there, the officials had not noticed a tall girl having a white
face and dark eyes. When he could think of no further effort to make he
drove to the hospital.

Doctor Carey was not in his office, and the Harvester sat in the
revolving chair before the desk and gripped his head between his hands
as he tried to think. He could not remember anything more he could
have done, but since what he had done only ended in failure, he was
reproaching himself wildly that he had taken his eyes from the Girl an
instant after recognizing her. Yet it was in his blood to be decent and
he could not have run away and left a frightened woman and a hurt child.
Trusting to his fleet feet and strength he had taken time to replace the
box also, and then had met the crowd and delay. Just for the instant it
appeared to him as if he had done all a man could, and he had not found
her. If he allowed her to return to Chicago, probably he never would. He
leaned his head on his hands and groaned in discouragement.

Doctor Carey whirled the chair so that it faced him before the Harvester
realized that he was not alone.

"What's the trouble, David?" he asked tersely.

The Harvester lifted a strained face.

"I came for help," he said.

"Well you will get it! All you have to do is to state what you want."

That seemed simplicity itself to the doctor. But when it came to putting
his case into words, it was not easy for the Harvester.

"Go on!" said the doctor.

"You'll think me a fool."

The doctor laughed heartily.

"No doubt!" he said soothingly. "No doubt, David! Probably you are; so
why shouldn't I think so. But remember this, when we make the biggest
fools of ourselves that is precisely the time when we need friends, and
when they stick to us the tightest, if they are worth while. I've been
waiting since latter February for you to tell me. We can fix it, of
course; there's always a way. Go on!"

"Well I wasn't fooling about the dream and the vision I told you of
then, Doc. I did have a dream--and it was a dream of love. I did see a
vision--and it was a beautiful woman."

"I hope you are not nursing that experience as something exclusive and
peculiar to you," said the doctor. "There is not a normal, sane man
living who has not dreamed of love and the most exquisite woman who came
from the clouds or anywhere and was gracious to him. That's a part of a
man's experience in this world, and it happens to most of us, not once,
but repeatedly. It's a case where the wish fathers the dream."

"Well it hasn't happened to me 'on repeated occasions,' but it did one
night, and by dawn I was converted. How CAN a dream be so real, Doc?
How could I see as clearly as I ever saw in the daytime in my most alert
moment, hear every step and garment rustle, scent the perfume of hair,
and feel warm breath strike my face? I don't understand it!"

"Neither does any one else! All you need say is that your dream was real
as life. Go on!"

"I built a new cabin and pretty well overturned the place and I've been
making furniture I thought a woman would like, and carrying things from
town ever since."

"Gee! It was reality to you, lad!"

"Nothing ever more so," said the Harvester.

"And of course, you have been looking for her?"

"And this morning I saw her!"

"David!"

"Not the ghost of a chance for a mistake. Her height, her eyes, her
hair, her walk, her face; only something terrible has happened since she
came to me. It was the same girl, but she is ill and in trouble now."

"Where is she?"

"Do you suppose I'd be here if I knew?"

"David, are you dreaming in daytime?"

"She got off the Chicago train this morning while I was helping Daniels
load a big truck of express matter. Some of it was mine, and it was
important. Just at the wrong instant a box fell and knocked down a child
and I got in a jam----"

"And as it was you, of course you stopped to pick up the child and do
everything decent for other folks, before you thought of yourself, and
so you lost her. You needn't tell me anything more. David, if I find
her, and prove to you that she has been married ten years and has an
interesting family, will you thank me?"

"Can't be done!" said the Harvester calmly. "She has been married only
since she gave herself to me in February, and she is not a mother. You
needn't bank on that."

"You are mighty sure!"

"Why not? I told you the dream was real, and now that I have seen her,
and she is in this very town, why shouldn't I be sure?"

"What have you done?"

The Harvester told him.

"What are you going to do next?"

"Talk it over with you and decide."

The doctor laughed.

"Well here are a few things that occur to me without time for thought.
Talk to the ticket agents, and leave her description with them. Make it
worth their while to be on the lookout, and if she goes anywhere to find
out all they can. They could make an excuse of putting her address on
her ticket envelope, and get it that way. See the baggagemen. Post the
day police on Main Street. There is no chance for her to escape you. A
full-grown woman doesn't vanish. How did she act when she got off the
car? Did she appear familiar?"

"No. She was a stranger. For an instant she looked around as if she
expected some one, then she followed the crowd. There must have been an
automobile waiting or she took a street car. Something whirled her out
of sight in a few seconds."

"Well we will get her in range again. Now for the most minute
description you can give."

The Harvester hesitated. He did not care to describe the Dream Girl to
any one, much less the living, suffering face and poorly clad form of
the reality.

"Cut out your scruples," laughed the doctor. "You have asked me to help
you; how can I if I don't know what kind of a woman to look for?"

"Very tall and slender," said the Harvester. "Almost as tall as I am."

"Unusually tall you think?"

"I know!"

"That's a good point for identification. How about her complexion, hair,
and eyes?"

"Very large, dark eyes, and a great mass of black hair."

The doctor roared.

"The eyes may help," he said. "All women have masses of hair these days.
I hope----"

"Her hair is fast to her head," said the Harvester indignantly. "I saw
it at close range, and I know. It went around like a crown."

The doctor choked down a laugh. He wanted to say that every woman's hair
was like a crown at present, but there were things no man ventured with
David Langston; those who knew him best, least of any. So he suggested,
"And her colouring?"

"She was white and rosy, a lovely thing in the dream," said the
Harvester, "but something dreadful has happened. That's all wiped out
now. She was very pale when she left the car."

"Car sick, maybe."

"Soul sick!" was the grim reply.

Then Doctor Carey appeared so disturbed the Harvester noticed it.

"You needn't think I'd be here prating about her if I wasn't FORCED.
If she had been rosy and well as she was in the dream, I'd have made
my hunt alone and found her, too. But when I saw she was sick and in
trouble, it took all the courage out of me, and I broke for help. She
must be found at once, and when she is you are probably the first man
I'll want. I am going to put up a pretty stiff search myself, and if I
find her I'll send or get her to you if I can. Put her in the best ward
you have and anything money will do----"

The face of the doctor was growing troubled.

"Day coach or Pullman?" he asked.

"Day."

"How was she dressed?"

"Small black hat, very plain. Gray jacket and skirt, neat as a flower."

"What you'd call expensively dressed?"

The Harvester hesitated.

"What I'd call carefully dressed, but----but poverty poor, if you will
have it, Doc."

Doctor Carey's lips closed and then opened in sudden resolution.

"David, I don't like it," he said tersely.

The Harvester met his eye and purposely misunderstood him.

"Neither do I!" he exclaimed. "I hate it! There is something wrong with
the whole world when a woman having a face full of purity, intellect,
and refinement of extreme type glances around her like a hunted thing;
when her appearance seems to indicate that she has starved her body to
clothe it. I know what is in your mind, Doc, but if I were you I
wouldn't put it into words, and I wouldn't even THINK it. Has it been
your experience in this world that women not fit to know skimp their
bodies to cover them? Does a girl of light character and little brain
have the hardihood to advance a foot covered with a broken shoe? If I
could tell you that she rode in a Pullman, and wore exquisite clothing,
you would be doing something. The other side of the picture shuts you up
like a clam, and makes you appear shocked. Let me tell you this: No
other woman I ever saw anywhere on God's footstool had a face of more
delicate refinement, eyes of purer intelligence. I am of the woods, and
while they don't teach me how to shine in society, they do instil always
and forever the fineness of nature and her ways. I have her lessons so
well learned they help me more than anything else to discern the
qualities of human nature. If you are my friend, and have any faith at
all in my common sense, get up and do something!"

The doctor arose promptly.

"David, I'm an ass," he said. "Unusually lop-eared, and blind in the
bargain. But before I ask you to forgive me, I want you to remember two
things: First, she did not visit me in my dreams; and, second, I did not
see her in reality. I had nothing to judge from except what you
said: you seemed reluctant to tell me, and what you did say
was----was----disturbing to a friend of yours. I have not the slightest
doubt if I had seen her I would agree with you. We seldom disagree,
David. Now, will you forgive me?"

The Harvester suddenly faced a window. When at last he turned, "The
offence lies with me," he said, "I was hasty. Are you going to help me?"

"With all my heart! Go home and work until your head clears, then come
back in the morning. She did not come from Chicago for a day. You've
done all I know to do at present."

"Thank you," said the Harvester.

He went to Betsy and Belshazzar, and slowly drove up and down the
streets until Betsy protested and calmly turned homeward. The Harvester
smiled ruefully as he allowed her to proceed.

"Go slow and take it easy," he said as they reached the country. "I want
to think."

Betsy stopped at the barn, the white doves took wing, and Ajax screamed
shrilly before the Harvester aroused in the slightest to anything around
him. Then he looked at Belshazzar and said emphatically: "Now, partner,
don't ever again interfere when I am complying with the observances of
my religion. Just look what I'd have missed if I hadn't made good with
that order!"



CHAPTER VI. TO LABOUR AND TO WAIT

"We have reached the 'beginning of the end,' Ajax!" said the Harvester,
as the peacock ceased screaming and came to seek food from his hand.
"We have seen the Girl. Now we must locate her and convince her that
Medicine Woods is her happy home. I feel quite equal to the latter
proposition, Ajax, but how the nation to find her sticks me. I can't
make a search so open that she will know and resent it. She must have
all the consideration ever paid the most refined woman, but she also
has got to be found, and that speedily. When I remember that look on her
face, as if horrors were snatching at her skirts, it takes all the grit
out of me. I feel weak as a sapling. And she needs all my strength. I've
simply got to brace up. I'll work a while and then perhaps I can think."

So the Harvester began the evening routine. He thought he did not want
anything to eat, but when he opened the cupboard and smelled the food he
learned that he was a hungry man and he cooked and ate a good supper. He
put away everything carefully, for even the kitchen was dainty and fresh
and he wanted to keep it so for her. When he finished he went into the
living-room, stood before the fireplace, and studied the collection of
half-finished candlesticks grouped upon it. He picked up several and
examined them closely, but realized that he could not bind himself to
the exactions of carving that evening. He took a key from his pocket and
unlocked her door. Every day he had been going there to improve upon his
work for her, and he loved the room, the outlook from its windows; he
was very proud of the furniture he had made. There was no paper-thin
covering on her chairs, bed, and dressing table. The tops, seats, and
posts were solid wood, worth hundreds of dollars for veneer.

To-night he folded his arms and stood on the sill hesitating. While
she was a dream, he had loved to linger in her room. Now that she was
reality, he paused. In one golden May day the place had become sacred.
Since he had seen the Girl that room was so hers that he was hesitating
about entering because of this fact. It was as if the tall, slender form
stood before the chest of drawers or sat at the dressing table and he
did not dare enter unless he were welcome. Softly he closed the door and
went away. He wandered to the dry-house and turned the bark and roots on
the trays, but the air stifled him and he hurried out. He tried to work
in the packing room, but walls smothered him and again he sought the
open.

He espied a bundle of osier-bound, moss-covered ferns that he had found
in the woods, and brought the shovel to transplant them; but the
work worried him, and he hurried through with it. Then he looked for
something else to do and saw an ax. He caught it up and with lusty
strokes began swinging it. When he had chopped wood until he was very
tired he went to bed. Sleep came to the strong, young frame and he awoke
in the morning refreshed and hopeful.

He wondered why he had bothered Doctor Carey. The Harvester felt able
that morning to find his Dream Girl without assistance before the day
was over. It was merely a matter of going to the city and locating a
woman. Yesterday, it had been a question of whether she really existed.
To-day, he knew. Yesterday, it had meant a search possibly as wide
as earth to find her. To-day, it was narrowed to only one location so
small, compared with Chicago, that the Harvester felt he could sift
its population with his fingers, and pick her from others at his first
attempt. If she were visiting there probably she would rest during the
night, and be on the streets to-day.

When he remembered her face he doubted it. He decided to spend part
of the time on the business streets and the remainder in the residence
portions of the city. Because it was uncertain when he would return,
everything was fed a double portion, and Betsy was left at a livery
stable with instructions to care for her until he came. He did not know
where the search would lead him. For several hours he slowly walked the
business district and then ranged farther, but not a sight of her. He
never had known that Onabasha was so large. On its crowded streets he
did not feel that he could sift the population through his fingers, nor
could he open doors and search houses without an excuse.

Some small boys passed him eating bananas, and the Harvester looked at
his watch and was amazed to find that the day had advanced until two
o'clock in the afternoon. He was tired and hungry. He went into a
restaurant and ordered lunch; as he waited a girl serving tables smiled
at him. Any other time the Harvester would have returned at least a
pleasant look, and gone his way. To-day he scowled at her, and ate in
hurried discomfort. On the streets again, he had no idea where to go and
so he went to the hospital.

"I expected you early this morning," was the greeting of Doctor Carey.
"Where have you been and what have you done?"

"Nothing," said the Harvester. "I was so sure she would be on the
streets I just watched, but I didn't see her."

"We will go to the depot," said the doctor. "The first thing is to keep
her from leaving town."

They arranged with the ticket agents, expressmen, telegraphers, and, as
they left, the Harvester stopped and tipped the train caller, offering
further reward worth while if he would find the Girl.

"Now we will go to the police station," said the doctor.

"I'll see the chief and have him issue a general order to his men to
watch for her, but if I were you I'd select a half dozen in the down
town district, and give them a little tip with a big promise!"

"Good Lord! How I hate this," groaned the Harvester.

"Want to find her by yourself?" questioned his friend.

"Yes," said the Harvester, "I do! And I would, if it hadn't been for
her ghastly face. That drives me to resort to any measures. The
probabilities are that she is lying sick somewhere, and if her comfort
depends on the purse that dressed her, she will suffer. Doc, do you know
how awful this is?"

"I know that you've got a great imagination. If the woods make all men
as sensitive as you are, those who have business to transact should stay
out of them. Take a common-sense view. Look at this as I do. If she was
strong enough to travel in a day coach from Chicago; she can't be so
very ill to-day. Leaving life by the inch isn't that easy. She will be
alive this time next year, whether you find her or not. The chances are
that her stress was mental anyway, and trouble almost never overcomes
any one."

"You, a doctor and say that!"

"Oh, I mean instantaneously----in a day! Of course if it grinds away
for years! But youth doesn't allow it to do that. It throws it off, and
grows hopeful and happy again. She won't die; put that out of your
mind. If I were you I would go home now and go straight on with my work,
trusting to the machinery you have set in motion. I know most of the
men with whom we have talked. They will locate her in a week or less.
It's their business. It isn't yours. It's your job to be ready for her,
and have enough ahead to support her when they find her. Try to realize
that there are now a dozen men on hunt for her, and trust them. Go back
to your work, and I will come full speed in the motor when the first man
sights her. That ought to satisfy you. I've told all of them to call me
at the hospital, and I will tell my assistant what to do in case a call
comes while I am away. Straighten your face! Go back to Medicine Woods
and harvest your crops, and before you know it she will be located. Then
you can put on your Sunday clothes and show yourself, and see if you can
make her take notice."

"Idiot!" exclaimed the Harvester, but he started home. When he arrived
he attended to his work and then sat down to think.

"Doc is right," was his ultimate conclusion. "She can't leave the city,
she can't move around in it, she can't go anywhere, without being seen.
There's one more point: I must tell Carey to post all the doctors to
report if they have such a call. That's all I can think of. I'll
go to-night, and then I'll look over the ginseng for parasites, and
to-morrow I'll dive into the late spring growth and work until I haven't
time to think. I've let cranesbill get a week past me now, and it can't
be dispensed with."

So the following morning, when the Harvester had completed his work at
the cabin and barn and breakfasted, he took a mattock and a big hempen
bag, and followed the path to the top of the hill. As it ran along the
lake bank he descended on the other side to several acres of cleared
land, where he raised corn for his stock, potatoes, and coarser garden
truck, for which there was not space in the smaller enclosure close the
cabin. Around the edges of these fields, and where one of them sloped
toward the lake, he began grubbing a variety of grass having tall stems
already over a foot in height at half growth. From each stem waved four
or five leaves of six or eight inches length and the top showed forming
clusters of tiny spikelets.

"I am none too early for you," he muttered to himself as he ran the
mattock through the rich earth, lifting the long, tough, jointed root
stalks of pale yellow, from every section of which broke sprays of fine
rootlets. "None too early for you, and as you are worth only seven cents
a pound, you couldn't be considered a 'get-rich-quick' expedient, so
I'll only stop long enough with you to gather what I think my customers
will order, and amass a fortune a little later picking mullein flowers
at seventy-five cents a pound. What a crop I've got coming!"

The Harvester glanced ahead, where in the cleared soil of the bank grew
large plants with leaves like yellow-green felt and tall bloom stems
rising. Close them flourished other species requiring dry sandy soil,
that gradually changed as it approached the water until it became
covered with rank abundance of short, wiry grass, half the blades of
which appeared red. Numerous everywhere he could see the grayish-white
leaves of Parnassus grass. As the season advanced it would lift
heart-shaped velvet higher, and before fall the stretch of emerald would
be starred with white-faced, green-striped flowers.

"Not a prettier sight on earth," commented the Harvester, "than just
swale wire grass in September making a fine, thick background to set off
those delicate starry flowers on their slender stems. I must remember to
bring her to see that."

His eyes followed the growth to the water. As the grass drew closer
moisture it changed to the rank, sweet, swamp variety, then came
bulrushes, cat-tails, water smartweed, docks, and in the water blue flag
lifted folded buds; at its feet arose yellow lily leaves and farther out
spread the white. As the light struck the surface the Harvester imagined
he could see the little green buds several inches below. Above all arose
wild rice he had planted for the birds. The red wings swayed on the
willows and tilted on every stem that would bear their weight, singing
their melodious half-chanted notes, "O-ka-lee!"

Beneath them the ducks gobbled, splashed, and chattered; grebe and coot
voices could be distinguished; king rails at times flashed into sight
and out again; marsh wrens scolded and chattered; occasionally a
kingfisher darted around the lake shore, rolling his rattling cry and
flashing his azure coat and gleaming white collar. On a hollow tree
in the woods a yellow hammer proved why he was named, because he
carpentered industriously to enlarge the entrance to the home he was
excavating in a dead tree; and sailing over the lake and above the woods
in grace scarcely surpassed by any, a lonesome turkey buzzard awaited
his mate's decision as to which hollow log was most suitable for their
home.

The Harvester stuffed the grass roots in the bag until it would hold no
more and stood erect to wipe his face, for the sun was growing warm. As
he drew his handkerchief across his brow, the south wind struck him with
enough intensity to attract attention. Instantly the Harvester removed
his hat, rolled it up, and put it into his pocket. He stood an instant
delighting in the wind and then spoke.

"Allow me to express my most fervent thanks for your kindness," he said.
"I thought probably you would take that message, since it couldn't mean
much to you, and it meant all the world to me. I thought you would carry
it, but, I confess, I scarcely expected the answer so soon. The only
thing that could make me more grateful to you would be to know exactly
where she is: but you must understand that it's like a peep into Heaven
to have her existence narrowed to one place. I'm bound to be able to
say inside a few days, she lives at number----I don't know yet, on
street----I'll find out soon, in the closest city, Onabasha. And I know
why you brought her, South Wind. If ever a girl's cheeks need fanning
with your breezes, and painting with sun kisses, I wouldn't mind, since
this is strictly private, adding a few of mine; if ever any one needed
flowers, birds, fresh air, water, and rest! Good Lord, South Wind, did
you ever reach her before you carried that message? I think not! But
Onabasha isn't so large. You and the sun should get your innings there.
I do hope she is not trying to work! I can attend to that; and so there
will be more time when she is found, I'd better hustle now."

He picked up the bag and returned to the dry-house, where he carefully
washed the roots and spread them on the trays. Then he took the same
bag and mattock and going through the woods in the opposite direction
he came to a heavy growth in a cleared space of high ground. The bloom
heads were forming and the plant was half matured. The Harvester dug a
cylindrical, tapering root, wrinkling lengthwise, wiped it clean, broke
and tasted it. He made a wry face. He stood examining the white wood
with its brown-red bark and, deciding that it was in prime condition, he
began digging the plants. It was common wayside "Bouncing Bet," but the
Harvester called it "soapwort." He took every other plant in his way
across the bed, and when he digged a heavy load he carried it home,
stripped the leaves, and spread them on trays, while the roots he
topped, washed, and put to dry also. Then he whistled for Belshazzar and
went to lunch.

As he passed down the road to the cabin his face was a study of
conflicting emotions, and his eyes had a far away appearance of deep
thought. Every tree of his stretch of forest was rustling fresh leaves
to shelter him; dogwood, wild crab, and hawthorn offered their flowers;
earth held up her tribute in painted trillium faces, spring beauties,
and violets, blue, white, and yellow. Mosses, ferns, and lichen
decorated the path; all the birds greeted him in friendship, and
sang their purest melodies. The sky was blue, the sun bright, the air
perfumed for him; Belshazzar, always true to his name, protected every
footstep; Ajax, the shimmering green and gold wonder, came up the hill
to meet him; the white doves circled above his head. Stumbling half
blindly, the Harvester passed unheeding among them, and went into the
cabin. When he came out he stood a long time in deep study, but at last
he returned to the woods.

"Perhaps they will have found her before night," he said. "I'll harvest
the cranesbill yet, because it's growing late for it, and then I'll see
how they are coming on. Maybe they'd know her if they met her, and maybe
they wouldn't. She may wear different clothing, and freshen up after her
trip. She might have been car sick, as Doc suggested, and appear very
different when she feels better."

He skirted the woods around the northeast end and stopped at a big bed
of exquisite growth. Tall, wiry stems sprang upward almost two feet in
height; leaves six inches across were cut in ragged lobes almost to the
base, and here and there, enough to colour the entire bed a delicate
rose or sometimes a violet purple, the first flowers were unfolding. The
Harvester lifted a root and tasted it.

"No doubt about you being astringent," he muttered. "You have enough
tannin in you to pucker a mushroom. By the way, those big, corn-cobby
fellows should spring up with the next warm rain, and the hotels and
restaurants always pay high prices. I must gather a few bushels."

He looked over the bed of beautiful wild alum and hesitated.

"I vow I hate to touch you," he said. "You are a picture right now, and
in a week you will be a miracle. It seems a shame to tear up a plant for
its roots, just at flowering time, and I can't avoid breaking down half
I don't take, getting the ones I do. I wish you were not so pretty! You
are one of the colours I love most. You remind me of red-bud, blazing
star, and all those exquisite magenta shades that poets, painters, and
the Almighty who made them love so much they hesitate about using them
lavishly. You are so delicate and graceful and so modest. I wish she
could see you! I got to stop this or I won't be able to lift a root. I
never would if the ten cents a pound I'll get out of it were the only
consideration."

The Harvester gripped the mattock and advanced to the bed. "What I must
be thinking is that you are indispensable to the sick folks. The steady
demand for you proves your value, and of course, humanity comes first,
after all. If I remain in the woods alone much longer I'll get to the
place where I'm not so sure that it does. Seems as if animals, birds,
flowers, trees, and insects as well, have their right to life also. But
it's for me to remember the sick folks! If I thought the Girl would get
some of it now, I could overturn the bed with a stout heart. If any one
ever needed a tonic, I think she does. Maybe some of this will reach
her. If it does, I hope it will make her cheeks just the lovely pink of
the bloom. Oh Lord! If only she hadn't appeared so sick and frightened!
What is there in all this world of sunshine to make a girl glance around
her like that? I wish I knew! Maybe they will have found her by night."

The Harvester began work on the bed, but he knelt and among the damp
leaves from the spongy black earth he lifted the roots with his fingers
and carefully straightened and pressed down the plants he did not take.
This required more time than usual, but his heart was so sore he could
not be rough with anything, most of all a flower. So he harvested the
wild alum by hand, and heaped large stacks of roots around the edges of
the bed. Often he paused as he worked and on his knees stared through
the forest as if he hoped perhaps she would realize his longing for her,
and come to him in the wood as she had across the water. Over and
over he repeated, "Perhaps they will find her by night!" and that so
intensified the meaning that once he said it aloud. His face clouded and
grew dark.

"Dealish nice business!" he said. "I am here in the woods digging flower
roots, and a gang of men in the city are searching for the girl I love.
If ever a job seemed peculiarly a man's own, it appears this would be.
What business has any other man spying after my woman? Why am I not down
there doing my own work, as I always have done it? Who's more likely to
find her than I am? It seems as if there would be an instinct that
would lead me straight to her, if I'd go. And you can wager I'll go fast
enough."

The Harvester appeared as if he would start that instant, but with lips
closely shut he finally forced himself to go on with his work. When he
had rifled the bed, and uprooted all he cared to take during one season,
he carried the roots to the lake shore below the curing house, and
spread them on a platform he had built. He stepped into his boat and
began dashing pails of water over them and using a brush. As he worked
he washed away the woody scars of last year's growth, and the tiny buds
appearing for the coming season.

Belshazzar sat on the opposite bank and watched the operation; and Ajax
came down and, flying to a dead stump, erected and slowly waved his
train to attract the sober-faced man who paid no heed. He left the roots
to drain while he prepared supper, then placed them on the trays, now
filled to overflowing, and was glad he had finished. He could not cure
anything else at present if he wanted to. He was as far advanced as he
had been at the same time the previous year. Then he dressed neatly and
locking the Girl's room, and leaving Belshazzar to protect it, he went
to Onabasha.

"Bravo!" cried Doctor Carey as the Harvester entered his office. "You
are heroic to wait all day for news. How much stuff have you gathered?"

"Three crops. How many missing women have you located?"

The doctor laughed. There was no sign of a smile on the face of the
Harvester.

"You didn't really expect her to come to light the first day? That would
be too easy! We can't find her in a minute."

"It will be no surprise to me if you can't find her at all. I am not
expecting another man to do what I don't myself."

"You are not hunting her. You are harvesting the woods. The men you
employ are to find her."

"Maybe I am, and maybe I am not," said the Harvester slowly. "To me
it appears to be a poor stick of a man who coolly proceeds with money
making, and trusts to men who haven't even seen her to search for the
girl he loves. I think a few hours of this is about all my patience will
endure."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know," said the Harvester. "But you can bank on one thing
sure----I'm going to do something! I've had my fill of this. Thank you
for all you've done, and all you are going to do. My head is not clear
enough yet to decide anything with any sense, but maybe I'll hit on
something soon. I'm for the streets for a while."

"Better go home and go to bed. You seem very tired."

"I am," said the Harvester. "The only way to endure this is to work
myself down. I'm all right, and I'll be careful, but I rather think I'll
find her myself."

"Better go on with your work as we planned."

"I'll think about it," said the Harvester as he went out.

Until he was too tired to walk farther he slowly paced the streets of
the city, and then followed the home road through the valley and up the
hill to Medicine Woods. When he came to Singing Water, Belshazzar heard
his steps on the bridge, and came bounding to meet him. The Harvester
stretched himself on a seat and turned his face to the sky. It was a
deep, dark-blue bowl, closely set with stars, and a bright moon shed a
soft May radiance on the young earth. The lake was flooded with light,
and the big trees of the forest crowning the hill were silver coroneted.
The unfolding leaves had hidden the new cabin from the bridge, but the
driveway shone white, and already the upspringing bushes hedged it in.
Insects were humming lazily in the perfumed night air, and across the
lake a courting whip-poor-will was explaining to his sweetheart just
how much and why he loved her. A few bats were wavering in air hunting
insects, and occasionally an owl or a nighthawk crossed the lake.
Killdeer were glorying in the moonlight and night flight, and cried in
pure, clear notes as they sailed over the water. The Harvester was tired
and filled with unrest as he stretched on the bridge, but the longer
he lay the more the enfolding voices comforted him. All of them were
waiting and working out their lives to the legitimate end; there was
nothing else for him to do. He need not follow instinct or profit by
chance. He was a man; he could plan and reason.

The air grew balmy and some big, soft clouds swept across the moon. The
Harvester felt the dampness of rising dew, and went to the cabin. He
looked at it long in the moonlight and told himself that he could see
how much the plants, vines, and ferns had grown since the previous
night. Without making a light, he threw himself on the bed in the
outdoor room, and lay looking through the screening at the lake and sky.
He was working his brain to think of some manner in which to start a
search for the Dream Girl that would have some probability of success to
recommend it, but he could settle on no feasible plan. At last he fell
asleep, and in the night soft rain wet his face. He pulled an oilcloth
sheet over the bed, and lay breathing deeply of the damp, perfumed air
as he again slept. In the morning brilliant sunshine awoke him and he
arose to find the earth steaming.

"If ever there was a perfect mushroom day!" he said to Belshazzar. "We
must hurry and feed the stock and ourselves and gather some. They mean
real money."



CHAPTER VII. THE QUEST OF THE DREAM GIRL

The Harvester breakfasted, fed the stock, hitched Betsy to the spring
wagon, and went into the dripping, steamy woods. If anyone had asked him
that morning concerning his idea of Heaven, he never would have dreamed
of describing a place of gold-paved streets, crystal pillars, jewelled
gates, and thrones of ivory. These things were beyond the man's
comprehension and he would not have admired or felt at home in such
magnificence if it had been materialized for him. He would have told
you that a floor of last year's brown leaves, studded with myriad flower
faces, big, bark-encased pillars of a thousand years, jewels on every
bush, shrub, and tree, and tilting thrones on which gaudy birds almost
burst themselves to voice the joy of life, while their bright-eyed
little mates peered questioningly at him over nest rims----he would have
told you that Medicine Woods on a damp, sunny May morning was Heaven.
And he would have added that only one angel, tall and slender, with the
pink of health on her cheeks and the dew of happiness in her dark eyes,
was necessary to enter and establish glory. Everything spoke to him that
morning, but the Harvester was silent. It had been his habit to talk
constantly to Belshazzar, Ajax, his work, even the winds and perfumes;
it had been his method of dissipating solitude, but to-day he had no
words, even for these dear friends. He only opened his soul to beauty,
and steadily climbed the hill to the crest, and then down the other side
to the rich, half-shaded, half-open spaces, where big, rough mushrooms
sprang in a night similar to the one just passed.

He could see them awaiting him from afar. He began work with rapid
fingers, being careful to break off the heads, but not to pull up the
roots. When four heaping baskets were filled he cut heavily leaved
branches to spread over them, and started to Onabasha. As usual,
Belshazzar rode beside him and questioned the Harvester when he politely
suggested to Betsy that she make a little haste.

"Have you forgotten that mushrooms are perishable?" he asked. "If we
don't get these to the city all woodsy and fresh we can't sell them.
Wonder where we can do the best? The hotels pay well. Really, the
biggest prices could be had by----"

Then the Harvester threw back his head and began to laugh, and
he laughed, and he laughed. A crow on the fence Joined him, and a
kingfisher, heading for Loon Lake, and then Belshazzar caught the
infection.

"Begorry! The very idea!" cried the Harvester. "'Heaven helps them
that help themselves.' Now you just watch us manoeuvre for assistance,
Belshazzar, old boy! Here we go!"

Then the laugh began again. It continued all the way to Onabasha and
even into the city. The Harvester drove through the most prosperous
street until he reached the residence district. At the first home
he stopped, gave the lines to Belshazzar, and, taking a basket of
mushrooms, went up the walk and rang the bell.

"All groceries should be delivered at the back door," snapped a pert
maid, before he had time to say a word.

The Harvester lifted his hat.

"Will you kindly tell the lady of the house that I wish to speak with
her?"

"What name, please?"

"I want to show her some fine mushrooms, freshly gathered," he answered.

How she did it the Harvester never knew. The first thing he realized was
that the door had closed before his face, and the basket had been picked
deftly from his fingers and was on the other side. After a short time
the maid returned.

"What do you want for them, please?"

The last thing on earth the Harvester wanted to do was to part with
those mushrooms, so he took one long, speculative look down the hall and
named a price he thought would be prohibitive.

"One dollar a dozen."

"How many are there?"

"I count them as I sell them. I do not know."

The door closed again. Presently it opened and the maid knelt on the
floor before him and counted the mushrooms one by one into a dish pan
and in a few minutes brought back seven dollars and fifty cents. The
chagrined Harvester, feeling like a thief, put the money in his pocket,
and turned away.

"I was to tell you," said she, "that you are to bring all you have to
sell here, and the next time please go to the kitchen door."

"Must be fond of mushrooms," said the disgruntled Harvester.

"They are a great delicacy, and there are visitors." The Harvester ached
to set the girl to one side and walk through the house, but he did not
dare; so he returned to the street, whistled to Betsy to come, and went
to the next gate. Here he hesitated. Should he risk further snubbing at
the front door or go back at once. If he did, he only would see a maid.
As he stood an instant debating, the door of the house he just had
left opened and the girl ran after him. "If you have more, we will take
them," she called.

The Harvester gasped for breath.

"They have to be used at once," he suggested.

"She knows that. She wants to treat her friends."

"Well she has got enough for a banquet," he said. "I--I don't usually
sell more than a dozen or two in one place."

"I don't see why you can't let her have them if you have more."

"Perhaps I have orders to fill for regular customers," suggested the
Harvester.

"And perhaps you haven't," said the maid. "You ought to be ashamed not
to let people who are willing to pay your outrageous prices have them.
It's regular highway robbery."

"Possibly that's the reason I decline to hold up one party twice," said
the Harvester as he entered the gate and went up the walk to the front
door.

"You should be taught your place," called the maid after him.

The Harvester again rang the bell. Another maid opened the door, and
once more he asked to speak with the lady of the house. As the girl
turned, a handsome old woman in cap and morning gown came down the
stairs.

"What have you there?" she asked.

The Harvester lifted the leaves and exposed the musky, crimpled, big
mushrooms.

"Oh!" she cried in delight. "Indeed, yes! We are very fond of them. I
will take the basket, and divide with my sons. You are sure you have no
poisonous ones among them?"

"Quite sure," said the Harvester faintly.

"How much do you want for the basket?"

"They are a dollar a dozen; I haven't counted them."

"Dear me! Isn't that rather expensive?"

"It is. Very!" said the Harvester. "So expensive that most people don't
think of taking over a dozen. They are large and very rich, so they go a
long way."

"I suppose you have to spend a great deal of time hunting them? It does
seem expensive, but they are fresh, and the boys are so fond of them.
I'm not often extravagant, I'll just take the lot. Sarah, bring a pan."

Again the Harvester stood and watched an entire basket counted over and
carried away, and he felt the robber he had been called as he took the
money.

At the next house he had learned a lesson. He carpeted a basket with
leaves and counted out a dozen and a half into it, leaving the remainder
in the wagon. Three blocks on one side of the street exhausted his
store and he was showered with orders. He had not seen any one that even
resembled a dark-eyed girl. As he came from the last house a big, red
motor shot past and then suddenly slowed and backed beside his wagon.

"What in the name of sense are you doing?" demanded Doctor Carey.

"Invading the residence district of Onabasha," said the Harvester.
"Madam, would you like some nice, fresh, country mushrooms? I guarantee
that there are no poisonous ones among them, and they were gathered this
morning. Considering their rarity and the difficult work of collecting,
they are exceedingly low at my price. I am offering these for five
dollars a dozen, madam, and for mercy sake don't take them or I'll have
no excuse to go to the next house."

The doctor stared, then understood, and began to laugh. When at last he
could speak he said, "David, I'll bet you started with three bushels and
began at the head of this street, and they are all gone."

"Put up a good one!" said the Harvester. "You win. The first house I
tried they ordered me to the back door, took a market basket full away
from me by force, tried to buy the load, and I didn't see any one save a
maid."

The doctor lay on the steering gear and faintly groaned.

The Harvester regarded him sympathetically. "Isn't it a crime?" he
questioned. "Mushrooms are no go. I can see that!----or rather they are
entirely too much of a go. I never saw anything in such demand. I must
seek a less popular article for my purpose. To-morrow look out for me.
I shall begin where I left off to-day, but I will have changed my
product."

"David, for pity sake," peeped the doctor.

"What do I care how I do it, so I locate her?" superbly inquired the
Harvester.

"But you won't find her!" gasped the doctor.

"I've come as close it as you so far, anyway," said the Harvester. "Your
mushrooms are on the desk in your office."

He drove slowly up and down the streets until Betsy wabbled on her legs.
Then he left her to rest and walked until he wabbled; and by that time
it was dark, so he went home.

At the first hint of dawn he was at work the following morning. With
loaded baskets closely covered, he started to Onabasha, and began where
he had quit the day before. This time he carried a small, crudely
fashioned bark basket, leaf-covered, and he rang at the front door with
confidence.

Every one seemed to have a maid in that part of the city, for a freshly
capped and aproned girl opened the door.

"Are there any young women living here?" blandly inquired the Harvester.

"What's that of your business?" demanded the maid.

The Harvester flushed, but continued, "I am offering something
especially intended for young women. If there are none, I will not
trouble you."

"There are several."

"Will you please ask them if they would care for bouquets of violets,
fresh from the woods?"

"How much are they, and how large are the bunches?"

"Prices differ, and they are the right size to appear well. They had
better see for themselves."

The maid reached for the basket, but the Harvester drew back.

"I keep them in my possession," he said. "You may take a sample."

He lifted the leaves and drew forth a medium-sized bunch of long-stemmed
blue violets with their leaves. The flowers were fresh, crisp, and
strong odours of the woods arose from them.

"Oh!" cried the maid. "Oh, how lovely!"

She hurried away with them and returned carrying a purse.

"I want two more bunches," she said. "How much are they?"

"Are the girls who want them dark or fair?"

"What difference does that make?"

"I have blue violets for blondes, yellow for brunettes, and white for
the others."

"Well I never! One is fair, and two have brown hair and blue eyes."

"One blue and two whites," said the Harvester calmly, as if matching
women's hair and eyes with flowers were an inherited vocation. "They are
twenty cents a bunch."

"Aha!" he chortled to himself as he whistled to Betsy. "At last we have
it. There are no dark-eyed girls here. Now we are making headway."

Down the street he went, with varying fortune, but with patience and
persistence at every house he at last managed to learn whether there was
a dark-eyed girl. There did not seem to be many. Long before his store
of yellow violets was gone the last blue and white had disappeared. But
he calmly went on asking for dark-eyed girls, and explaining that all
the blue and white were taken, because fair women were most numerous.

At one house the owner, who reminded the Harvester of his mother,
came to the door. He uncovered and in his suavest tones inquired if
a brunette young woman lived there and if she would like a nosegay of
yellow violets.

"Well bless my soul!" cried she. "What is this world coming to? Do
you mean to tell me that there are now able-bodied men offering at our
doors, flowers to match our girls' complexions?"

"Yes madam?" said the Harvester gravely, "and also selling them as fast
as he can show them, at prices that make a profit very well worth while.
I had an equal number of blue and white, but I see the dark girls are
very much in the minority. The others were gone long ago, and I now have
flowers to offer brunettes only."

"Well forever more! And you don't call that fiddlin' business for a big,
healthy, young man?"

The Harvester's gay laugh was infectious.

"I do not," he said. "I have to start as soon as I can see, tramp long
distances in wet woods and gather the violets on my knees, make them
into bunches, and bring them here in water to keep them fresh. I have
another occupation. I only kill time on these, but I would be ashamed to
tell you what I have gotten for them this morning."

"Humph! I'm glad to hear it!" said the woman. "Shame in some form is a
sign of grace. I have no use for a human being without a generous supply
of it. There is a very beautiful dark-eyed girl in the house, and I will
take two bunches for her. How much are they?"

"I have only three remaining," said the Harvester. "Would you like to
allow her to make her own selection?"

"When I'm giving things I usually take my choice. I want that, and that
one."

"As my stock is so nearly out, I'll make the two for twenty," said the
Harvester. "Won't you accept the last one from me, because you remind me
just a little of my mother?"

"I will indeed," said she. "Thank you very much! I shall love to have
them as dearly as any of the girls. I used to gather them when I was a
child, but I almost never see the blue ones any more, and I don't know
as I ever expected to see a yellow violet again as long as I live. Where
did you get them?"

"In my woods," said the Harvester. "You see I grow several members of
the viola pedata family, bird's foot, snake, and wood violet, and three
of the odorata, English, marsh, and sweet, for our big drug houses. They
use the flowers in making delicate tests for acids and alkalies.
The entire plant, flower, seed, leaf, and root, goes into different
remedies. The beds seed themselves and spread, so I have more than
I need for the chemists, and I sell a few. I don't use the white and
yellow in my business; I just grow them for their beauty. I also sell my
surplus lilies of the valley. Would you like to order some of them for
your house or more violets for to-morrow?"

"Well bless my soul! Do you mean to tell me that lilies of the valley
are medicine?"

The Harvester laughed.

"I grow immense beds of them in the woods on the banks of Loon Lake,"
he said. "They are the convallaris majallis of the drug houses and I
scarcely know what the weak-hearted people would do without them. I use
large quantities in trade, and this season I am selling a few because
people so love them."

"Lilies in medicine; well dear me! Are roses good for our innards too?"

Then the Harvester did laugh.

"I imagine the roses you know go into perfumes mostly," he answered.
"They do make medicine of Canadian rock rose and rose bay, laurel, and
willow. I grow the bushes, but they are not what you would consider
roses."

"I wonder now," said the woman studying the Harvester closely, "if you
are not that queer genius I've heard of, who spends his time hunting and
growing stuff in the woods and people call him the Medicine Man."

"I strongly suspect madam, I am that man," said the Harvester.

"Well bless me!" cried she. "I've always wanted to see you and here when
I do, you look just like anybody else. I thought you'd have long hair,
and be wild-eyed and ferocious. And your talk sounds like out of a book.
Well that beats me!"

"Me too!" said the Harvester, lifting his hat. "You don't want any
lilies to-morrow, then?"

"Yes I do. Medicine or no medicine, I've always liked 'em, and I'm going
to keep on liking them. If you can bring me a good-sized bunch after the
weak-kneed----"

"Weak-hearted," corrected the Harvester.

"Well 'weak-hearted,' then; it's all the same thing. If you've got any
left, as I was saying, you can fetch them to me for the smell."

The Harvester laughed all the way down town. There he went to Doctor
Carey's office, examined a directory, and got the names of all the
numbers where he had sold yellow violets. A few questions when the
doctor came in settled all of them, but the flower scheme was better.
Because the yellow were not so plentiful as the white and blue, next day
he added buttercups and cowslips to his store for the dark girls. When
he had rifled his beds for the last time, after three weeks of almost
daily trips to town, and had paid high prices to small boys he set
searching the adjoining woods until no more flowers could be found, he
drove from the outskirts of the city one day toward the hospital, and as
he stopped, down the street came Doctor Carey frantically waving to him.
As the big car slackened, "Come on David, quick! I've seen her!" cried
the doctor.

The Harvester jumped from the wagon, threw the lines to Belshazzar, and
landed in the panting car.

"For Heaven's sake where? Are you sure?"

The car went speeding down the street. A policeman beckoned and cried
after it.

"It won't do any good to get arrested, Doc," cautioned the Harvester.

"Now right along here," panted Doctor Carey. "Watch both sides sharply.
If I stop you jump out, and tell the blame policemen to get at their
job. The party they are hired to find is right under their noses."

The Harvester began to perspire. "Doc, don't you think you should tell
me? Maybe she is in some store. Maybe I could do better on foot."

"Shut up!" growled the doctor. "I am doing the best I know."

He hurried up the street for blocks and back again, and at last stopped
before a large store and went in. When he returned he drove to the
hospital and together they entered the office. There he turned to the
Harvester.

"It isn't so hard to understand you now, my boy," he said. "Shades of
Diana, but she'll be a beauty when she gets a little more flesh and
colour. She came out of Whitlaw's and walked right to the crossing. I
almost could have touched her, but I didn't notice. Two girls passed
before me, and in hurrying, a tall, dark one knocked off one of your
bunches of yellow violets. She glanced at it and laughed, but let
it lay. Then your girl hesitated stooped and picked it up. The crazy
policeman yelled at me to clear the crossing and it didn't hit me for a
half block how tall and white she was and how dark her eyes were. I was
just thinking about her picking up the flowers, and that it was queer
for her to do it, when like a brick it hit me, THAT'S DAVID'S GIRL! I
tried to turn around, but you know what Main Street is in the middle
of the day. And those idiots of policemen! They ordered me on, and I
couldn't turn for a street car coming, so I called to one of them that
the girl we wanted was down the street, and he looked at me like an
addle-pate and said, 'What girl? Move on or you'll get in a jam here.'
You can use me for a football if I don't go back and smash him. Paid him
five dollars myself less than two weeks ago to keep his eyes open. 'TO
KEEP HIS EYES OPEN!'" panted the doctor, shaking his fist at David. "Yes
sir! 'To keep his eyes open!' And he motioned for things to come along,
and so I lost her too."

"I think we had better go back to the street," said the Harvester.

"Oh, I'd been back and forth along that street for nearly an hour before
I gave up and came here to see if I could find you, and we've hunted it
an hour more! What's the use? She's gone for this time, but by gum, I
saw her! And she was worth seeing!"

"Did she appear ill to you?"

The doctor dropped on a chair and threw out his hands hopelessly.

"This was awful sudden, David," he said. "I was going along as I told
you, and I noticed her stop and thought she had a good head to wait a
second instead of running in before me, and there came those two girls
right under the car from the other side. I only had a glimpse of her as
she stooped for the flowers. I saw a big braid of hair, but I was half a
block away before I got it all connected, and then came the crush in the
street, and I was blocked."

The doctor broke down and wiped his face and expressed his feelings
unrestrainedly.

"Don't!" said the Harvester patiently. "It's no use to feel so badly,
Doc. I know what you would give to have found her for me. I know you did
all you could. I let her escape me. We will find her yet. It's glorious
news that she's in the city. It gives me heart to hear that. Can't you
just remember if she seemed ill?"

The doctor meditated.

"She wasn't the tallest girl I ever saw," he said slowly, "but she was
the tallest girl to be pretty. She had on a white waist and a gray skirt
and black hat. Her eyes and hair were like you said, and she was plain,
white faced, with a hue that might possibly be natural, and it might be
confinement in bad light and air and poor food. She didn't seem sick,
but she isn't well. There is something the matter with her, but it's not
immediate or dangerous. She appeared like a flower that had got a little
moisture and sprouted in a cellar."

"You saw her all right!" said the Harvester, "and I think your diagnosis
is correct too. That's the way she seemed to me. I've thought she needed
sun and air. I told the South Wind so the other day."

"Why you blame fool!" cried the doctor. "Is this thing going to your
head? Say, I forgot! There is something else. I traced her in the store.
She was at the embroidery counter and she bought some silk. If she ever
comes again the clerk is going to hold her and telephone me or get her
address if she has to steal it. Oh, we are getting there! We will have
her pretty soon now. You ought to feel better just to know that she is
in town and that I've seen her."

"I do!" said the Harvester. "Indeed I do!"

"It can't be much longer," said the doctor. "She's got to be located
soon. But those policemen! I wouldn't give a nickel for the lot! I'll
bet she's walked over them for two weeks. If I were you I'd discharge
the bunch. They'd be peacefully asleep if she passed them. If they'd let
me alone, I'd have had her. I could have turned around easily. I've been
in dozens of closer places."

"Don't worry! This can't last much longer. She's of and in the city or
she wouldn't have picked up the flowers. Doc, are you sure they were
mine?"

"Yes. Half the girls have been tricked out in yours the past two weeks.
I can spot them as far as I can see."

"Dear Lord, that's getting close!" said the Harvester intensely. "Seems
as if the violets would tell her."

"Now cut out flowers talking and the South Wind!" ordered the doctor.
"This is business. The violets prove something all right, though. If she
was in the country, she could gather plenty herself. She is working at
sewing in some room in town, either over a store or in a house. If she
hadn't been starved for flowers she never would have stopped for them on
the street. I could see just a flash of hesitation, but she wanted them
too much. David, one bouquet will go in water and be cared for a week.
Man, it's getting close! This does seem like a link."

"Since you say it, possibly I dare agree with you," said the Harvester.

"How near are you through with that canvass of yours?"

"About three fourths."

"Well I'd go on with it. After all we have got to find her ourselves.
Those senile policemen!"

"I am going on with it; you needn't worry about that. But I've got to
change to other flowers. I've stripped the violet beds. There's quite
a crop of berries coming, but they are not ripe yet, and a tragedy to
pick. The pond lilies are just beginning to open by the thousand. The
lake border is blue with sweet-flag that is lovely and the marsh pale
gold with cowslips. The ferns are prime and the woods solid sheets of
every colour of bloom. I believe I'll go ahead with the wild flowers."

"I would too! David, you do feel better, don't you?"

"I certainly do, Doctor. Surely it won't be long now!"

The Harvester was so hopeful that he whistled and sang on the return to
Medicine Woods, and that night for the first time in many days he sat
long over a candlestick, and took a farewell peep into her room before
he went to bed.

The next day he worked with all his might harvesting the last remnants
of early spring herbs, in the dry-room and store-house, and on furniture
and candlesticks.

Then he went back to flower gathering and every day offered bunches of
exquisite wood and field flowers and white and gold water lilies from
door to door.

Three weeks later the Harvester, perceptibly thin, pale, and worried
entered the office. He sank into a chair and groaned wearily.

"Isn't this the bitterest luck!" he cried. "I've finished the town. I've
almost walked off my legs. I've sold flowers by the million, but I've
not had a sight of her."

"It's been almost a tragedy with me," said the doctor gloomily. "I've
killed two dogs and grazed a baby, because I was watching the sidewalks
instead of the street. What are you going to do now?"

"I am going home and bring up the work to the July mark. I am going to
take it easy and rest a few days so I can think more clearly. I don't
know what I'll try next. I've punched up the depot and the policemen
again. When I get something new thought out I'll let you know."

Then he began emptying his pockets of money and heaping it on the table,
small coins, bills, big and little.

"What on earth is that?"

"That," said the Harvester, giving the heap a shove of contempt, "that
is the price of my pride and humiliation. That is what it cost people
who allowed me to cheek my way into their homes and rob them, as one
maid said, for my own purposes. Doc, where on earth does all the money
come from? In almost every house I entered, women had it to waste, in
many cases to throw away. I never saw so much paid for nothing in all my
life. That whole heap is from mushrooms and flowers."

"What are you piling it there for?"

"For your free ward. I don't want a penny of it. I wouldn't keep it, not
if I was starving."

"Why David! You couldn't compel any one to buy. You offered something
they wanted, and they paid you what you asked."

"Yes, and to keep them from buying, and to make the stuff go farther, I
named prices to shame a shark. When I think of that mushroom deal I can
feel my face burn. I've made the search I wanted to, and I am satisfied
that I can't find her that way. I have kept up my work at home between
times. I am not out anything but my time, and it isn't fair to plunder
the city to pay that. Take that cussed money and put it where I'll never
see or hear of it. Do anything you please, except to ask me ever to
profit by a cent. When I wash my hands after touching it for the last
time maybe I'll feel better."

"You are a fanatic!"

"If getting rid of that is being a fanatic, I am proud of the title. You
can't imagine what I've been through!"

"Can't I though?" laughed the doctor. "In work of that kind you get into
every variety of place; and some of it is new to you. Never mind! No one
can contaminate you. It is the law that only a man can degrade himself.
Knowing things will not harm you. Doing them is a different matter. What
you know will be a protection. What you do ruins----if it is wrong. You
are not harmed, you are only disgusted. Think it over, and in a few days
come back and get your money. It is strictly honest. You earned every
cent of it."

"If you ever speak of it again or force it on me I'll take it home and
throw it into the lake."

He went after Betsy and slowly drove to Medicine Woods. Belshazzar,
on the seat beside him, recognized a silent, disappointed master
and whimpered as he rubbed the Harvester's shoulder to attract his
attention.

"This is tough luck, old boy," said the Harvester. "I had such hopes and
I worked so hard. I suffered in the flesh for every hour of it, and I
failed. Oh but I hate the word! If I knew where she is right now, Bel,
I'd give anything I've got. But there's no use to wail and get sorry
for myself. That's against the law of common decency. I'll take a swim,
sleep it off, straighten up the herbs a little, and go at it again, old
fellow; that's a man's way. She's somewhere, and she's got to be found,
no matter what it costs."



CHAPTER VIII. BELSHAZZAR'S RECORD POINT

The Harvester set the neglected cabin in order; then he carefully and
deftly packed all his dried herbs, barks, and roots. Next came carrying
the couch grass, wild alum, and soapwort into the store-room. Then
followed July herbs. He first went to his beds of foxglove, because
the tender leaves of the second year should be stripped from them at
flowering time, and that usually began two weeks earlier; but his bed
lay in a shaded, damp location and the tall bloom stalks were only in
half flower, their pale lavender making an exquisite picture. It paid
to collect those leaves, so the Harvester hastily stripped the amount he
wanted.

Yarrow was beginning to bloom and he gathered as much as he required,
taking the whole plant. That only brought a few cents a pound, but it
was used entire, so the weight made it worth while.

Catnip tops and leaves were also ready. As it grew in the open in dry
soil and the beds had been weeded that spring, he could gather great
arm loads of it with a sickle, but he had to watch the swarming bees. He
left the male fern and mullein until the last for different reasons.

On the damp, cool, rocky hillside, beneath deep shade of big forest
trees, grew the ferns, their long, graceful fronds waving softly. Tree
toads sang on the cool rocks beneath them, chewinks nested under gnarled
roots among them, rose-breasted grosbeaks sang in grape-vines clambering
over the thickets, and Singing Water ran close beside. So the Harvester
left digging these roots until nearly the last, because he so disliked
to disturb the bed. He could not have done it if he had not been forced.
All of the demand for his fern never could be supplied. Of his products
none was more important to the Harvester because this formed the basis
of one of the oldest and most reliable remedies for little children. The
fern had to be gathered with especial care, deteriorated quickly, and no
staple was more subject to adulteration.

So he kept his bed intact, lifted the roots at the proper time,
carefully cleaned without washing, rapidly dried in currents of hot
air, and shipped them in bottles to the trade. He charged and received
fifteen cents a pound, where careless and indifferent workers got ten.

On the banks of Singing Water, at the head of the fern bed, the
Harvester stood under a gray beech tree and looked down the swaying
length of delicate green. He was lean and rapidly bronzing, for he
seldom remembered a head covering because he loved the sweep of the wind
in his hair.

"I hate to touch you," he said. "How I wish she could see you before I
begin. If she did, probably she would say it was a sin, and then I never
could muster courage to do it at all. I'd give a small farm to know
if those violets revived for her. I was crazy to ask Doc if they were
wilted, but I hated to. If they were from the ones I gathered that
morning they should have been all right."

A tree toad dared him to come on; a chipmunk grew saucy as the Harvester
bent to an unloved task. If he stripped the bed as closely as he dared
and not injure it, he could not fill half his orders; so, deftly and
with swift, skilful fingers and an earnest face, he worked. Belshazzar
came down the hill on a rush, nose to earth and began hunting among the
plants. He never could understand why his loved master was so careless
as to go to work before he had pronounced it safe. When the fern bed was
finished, the Harvester took time to make a trip to town, but there
was no word waiting him; so he went to the mullein. It lay on a sunny
hillside beyond the couch grass and joined a few small fields, the only
cleared land of the six hundred acres of Medicine Woods. Over rocks and
little hills and hollows spread the pale, grayish-yellow of the green
leaves, and from five to seven feet arose the flower stems, while
the entire earth between was covered with rosettes of young plants.
Belshazzar went before to give warning if any big rattlers curled in the
sun on the hillside, and after him followed the Harvester cutting leaves
in heaps. That was warm work and he covered his head with a floppy old
straw hat, with wet grass in the crown, and stopped occasionally to
rest.

He loved that yellow-faced hillside. Because so much of his reaping lay
in the shade and commonly his feet sank in dead leaves and damp earth,
the change was a rest. He cheerfully stubbed his toes on rocks, and
endured the heat without complaint. It appeared to him as if a member of
every species of butterfly he knew wavered down the hillside. There were
golden-brown danais, with their black-striped wings, jetty troilus with
an attempt at trailers, big asterias, velvety black with longer trails
and wide bands of yellow dots. Coenia were most numerous of all and to
the Harvester wonderfully attractive in rich, subdued colours with a
wealth of markings and eye spots. Many small moths, with transparent
wings and noses red as blood, flashed past him hunting pollen.
Goldfinches, intent on thistle bloom, wavered through the air trailing
mellow, happy notes behind them, and often a humming-bird visited the
mullein. On the lake wild life splashed and chattered incessantly, and
sometimes the Harvester paused and stood with arms heaped with leaves,
to interpret some unusually appealing note of pain or anger or some very
attractive melody. The red-wings were swarming, the killdeers busy, and
he thought of the Dream Girl and smiled.

"I wonder if she would like this," he mused.

When the mullein leaves were deep on the trays of the dry-house he began
on the bloom and that was a task he loved. Just to lay off the beds in
swaths and follow them, deftly picking the stamens and yellow petals
from the blooms. These he would dry speedily in hot air, bottle, and
send at once to big laboratories. The listed price was seventy-five
cents a pound, but the beautiful golden bottles of the Harvester always
brought more. The work was worth while, and he liked the location and
gathering of this particular crop: for these reasons he always left
it until the last, and then revelled in the gold of sunshine, bird,
butterfly, and flower. Several days were required to harvest the mullein
and during the time the man worked with nimble fingers, while his brain
was intensely occupied with the question of what to do next in his
search for the Girl.

When the work was finished, he went to the deep wood to take a peep at
acres of thrifty ginseng, and he was satisfied as he surveyed the big
bed. Long years he had laboured diligently; soon came the reward. He had
not realized it before, but as he studied the situation he saw that
he either must begin this harvest at once or employ help. If he waited
until September he could not gather one third of the crop alone.

"But the roots will weigh less if I take them now," he argued, "and I
can work at nothing in comfort until I have located her. I will go on
with my search and allow the ginseng to grow that much heavier. What a
picture! It is folly to disturb this now, for I will lose the seed of
every plant I dig, and that is worth almost as much as the root. It is
a question whether I want to furnish the market with seed, and so raise
competition for my bed. I think, be jabbers, that I'll wait for this
harvest until the seed is ripe, and then bury part of a head where I dig
a root, as the Indians did. That's the idea! The more I grow, the more
money; and I may need considerable for her. One thing I'd like to know:
Are these plants cultivated? All the books quote the wild at highest
rates and all I've ever sold was wild. The start grew here naturally.
What I added from the surrounding country was wild, but through and
among it I've sown seed I bought, and I've tended it with every care.
But this is deep wood and wild conditions. I think I have a perfect
right to so label it. I'll ask Doc. And another thing I'll go through
the woods west of Onabasha where I used to find ginseng, and see if I
can get a little and then take the same amount of plants grown here,
and make a test. That way I can discover any difference before I go to
market. This is my gold mine, and that point is mighty important to me,
so I'll go this very day. I used to find it in the woods northeast of
town and on the land Jameson bought, west. Wonder if he lives there yet.
He should have died of pure meanness long ago. I'll drive to the river
and hunt along the bank."

Early the following morning the Harvester went to Onabasha and stopped
at the hospital for news. Finding none, he went through town and several
miles into the country on the other side, to a piece of lowland lying
along the river bank, where he once had found and carried home to reset
a big bed of ginseng. If he could get only a half pound of roots
from there now, they would serve his purpose. He went down the bank,
Belshazzar at his heels, and at last found the place. Many trees had
been cut, but there remained enough for shade; the fields bore the
ragged, unattractive appearance of old. The Harvester smiled grimly
as he remembered that the man who lived there once had charged him for
damage he might do to trees in driving across his woods, and boasted to
his neighbours that a young fool was paying for the privilege of doing
his grubbing. If Jameson had known what the roots he was so anxious to
dispose of brought a pound on the market at that time, he would have
been insane with anger. So the Harvester's eyes were dancing with fun
and a wry grin twisted his lips as he clambered over the banks of
the recently dredged river, and looked at its pitiful condition and
straight, muddy flow.

"Appears to match the remainder of the Jameson property," he said. "I
don't know who he is or where he came from, but he's no farmer. Perhaps
he uses this land to corral the stock he buys until he can sell it
again."

He went down the embankment and began to search for the location where
he formerly had found the ginseng. When he came to the place he stood
amazed, for from seed, roots, and plants he had missed, the growth had
sprung up and spread, so that at a rapid estimate the Harvester thought
it contained at least five pounds, allowing for what it would shrink on
account of being gathered early. He hesitated an instant, and thought
of coming later; but the drive was long and the loss would not amount
to enough to pay for a second trip. About taking it, he never thought
at all. He once had permission from the owner to dig all the shrubs,
bushes, and weeds he desired from that stretch of woods, and had paid
for possible damages that might occur. As he bent to the task there did
come a fleeting thought that the patch was weedless and in unusual shape
for wild stuff. Then, with swift strokes of his light mattock, he lifted
the roots, crammed them into his sack, whistled to Belshazzar, and going
back to the wagon, drove away. Reaching home he washed the ginseng,
and spread it on a tray to dry. The first time he wanted the mattock
he realized that he had left it lying where he had worked. It was an
implement that he had directed a blacksmith to fashion to meet his
requirements. No store contained anything half so useful to him. He had
worked with it for years and it just suited him, so there was nothing to
do but go back. Betsy was too tired to return that day, so he planned
to dig his ginseng with something else, finish his work the following
morning, and get the mattock in the afternoon.

"It's like a knife you've carried for years, or a gun," muttered the
Harvester. "I actually don't know how to get along without it. What made
me so careless I can't imagine. I never before in my life did a trick
like that. I wonder if I hurried a little. I certainly was free to
take it. He always wanted the stuff dug up. Of all the stupid tricks,
Belshazzar, that was the worst. Now Betsy and a half day of wasted time
must pay for my carelessness. Since I have to go, I'll look a little
farther. Maybe there is more. Those woods used to be full of it."

According to this programme, the next afternoon the Harvester again
walked down the embankment of the mourning river and through the ragged
woods to the place where the ginseng had been. He went forward, stepping
lightly, as men of his race had walked the forest for ages, swerving to
avoid boughs, and looking straight ahead. Contrary to his usual custom
of coming to heel in a strange wood, Belshazzar suddenly darted around
the man and took the path they had followed the previous day. The animal
was performing his office in life; he had heard or scented something
unusual. The Harvester knew what that meant. He looked inquiringly at
the dog, glanced around, and then at the earth. Belshazzar proceeded
noiselessly at a rapid pace over the leaves: Suddenly the master saw the
dog stop in a stiff point. Lifting his feet lightly and straining his
eyes before him, the Harvester passed a spice thicket and came in line.

For one second he stood as rigid as Belshazzar. The next his right arm
shot upward full length, and began describing circles, his open
palm heavenward, and into his face leapt a glorified expression of
exultation. Face down in the rifled ginseng bed lay a sobbing girl. Her
frame was long and slender, a thick coil of dark hair; bound her head. A
second more and the Harvester bent and softly patted Belshazzar's head.
The beast broke point and looked up. The man caught the dog's chin in a
caressing grip, again touched his head, moved soundless lips, and waved
toward the prostrate figure. The dog hesitated. The Harvester made the
same motions. Belshazzar softly stepped over the leaves, passed around
the feet of the girl, and paused beside her, nose to earth, softly
sniffing.

In one moment she came swiftly to a sitting posture.

"Oh!" she cried in a spasm of fright.

Belshazzar reached an investigating nose and wagged an eager tail.

"Why you are a nice friendly dog!" said the trembling voice.

He immediately verified the assertion by offering his nose for a kiss.
The girl timidly laid a hand on his head.

"Heaven knows I'm lonely enough to kiss a dog," she said, "but suppose
you belong to the man who stole my ginseng, and then ran away so fast he
forgot his----his piece he digged with."

Belshazzar pressed closer.

"I am just killed, and I don't care whose dog you are," sobbed the girl.

She threw her arms around Belshazzar's neck and laid her white face
against his satiny shoulder. The Harvester could endure no more. He took
a step forward, his face convulsed with pain.

"Please don't!" he begged. "I took your ginseng. I'll bring it back
to-morrow. There wasn't more than twenty-five or thirty dollars' worth.
It doesn't amount to one tear."

The girl arose so quickly, the Harvester could not see how she did it.
With a startled fright on her face, and the dark eyes swimming, she
turned to him in one long look. Words rolled from the lips of the man in
a jumble. Behind the tears there was a dull, expressionless blue in the
girl's eyes and her face was so white that it appeared blank. He began
talking before she could speak, in an effort to secure forgiveness
without condemnation.

"You see, I grow it for a living on land I own, and I've always gathered
all there was in the country and no one cared. There never was enough in
one place to pay, and no other man wanted to spend the time, and so
I've always felt free to take it. Every one knew I did, and no one ever
objected before. Once I paid Henry Jameson for the privilege of cleaning
it from these woods. That was six or seven years ago, and it didn't
occur to me that I wasn't at liberty to dig what has grown since. I'll
bring it back at once, and pay you for the shrinkage from gathering it
too early. There won't be much over six pounds when it's dry. Please,
please don't feel badly. Won't you trust me to return it, and make good
the damage I've done?"

The face of the Harvester was eager and his tones appealing, as he
leaned forward trying to make her understand.

"Certainly!" said the Girl as she bent to pat the dog, while she
dried her eyes under cover of the movement. "Certainly! It can make no
difference!"

But as the Harvester drew a deep breath of relief, she suddenly
straightened to full height and looked straight at him.

"Oh what is the use to tell a pitiful lie!" she cried. "It does make a
difference! It makes all the difference in the world! I need that money!
I need it unspeakably. I owe a debt I must pay. What----what did I
understand you to say ginseng is worth?"

"If you will take a few steps," said the Harvester, "and make yourself
comfortable on this log in the shade, I will tell you all I know about
it."

The girl walked swiftly to the log indicated, seated herself, and
waited. The Harvester followed to a respectful distance.

"I can't tell to an ounce what wet roots would weigh," he said as easily
as he could command his voice to speak with the heart in him beating
wildly, "and of course they lose greatly in drying; but I've handled
enough that I know the weight I carried home will come to six pounds at
the very least. Then you must figure on some loss, because I dug
this before it really was ready. It does not reach full growth until
September, and if it is taken too soon there is a decrease in weight. I
will make that up to you when I return it."

The troubled eyes were gazing on his face intently, and the Harvester
studied them as he talked.

"You would think, then, there would be all of six pounds?

"Yes," said the Harvester, "closer eight. When I replace the shrinkage
there is bound to be over seven."

"And how much did I understand you to say it brought a pound?"

"That all depends," answered he. "If you cure it yourself, and dry it
too much, you lose in weight. If you carry it in a small lot to the
druggists of Onabasha, probably you will not get over five dollars for
it."

"Five?"

It was a startled cry.

"How much did you expect?" asked the Harvester gently.

"Uncle Henry said he thought he could get fifty cents a pound for all I
could find."

"If your Uncle Henry has learned at last that ginseng is a salable
article he should know something about the price also. Will you tell
me what he said, and how you came to think of gathering roots for the
market?"

"There were men talking beneath the trees one Sunday afternoon about old
times and hunting deer, and they spoke of people who made money long ago
gathering roots and barks, and they mentioned one man who lived by it
yet."

"Was his name Langston?"

"Yes, I remember because I liked the name. I was so eager to earn
something, and I can't leave here just now because Aunt Molly is very
ill, so the thought came that possibly I could gather stuff worth money,
after my work was finished. I went out and asked questions. They said
nothing brought enough to make it pay any one, except this ginseng
plant, and the Langston man almost had stripped the country. Then uncle
said he used to get stuff here, and he might have got some of that. I
asked what it was like, so they told me and I hunted until I found that,
and it seemed a quantity to me. Of course I didn't know it had to be
dried. Uncle took a root I dug to a store, and they told him that it
wasn't much used any more, but they would give him fifty cents a pound
for it. What MAKES you think you can get five dollars?"

"With your permission," said the Harvester.

He seated himself on the log, drew from his pocket an old pamphlet,
and spreading it before her, ran a pencil along the line of a list of
schedule prices for common drug roots and herbs. Because he understood,
his eyes were very bright, and his voice a trifle crisp. A latent anger
springing in his breast was a good curb for his emotions. He was closely
acquainted with all of the druggists of Onabasha, and he knew that not
one of them had offered less than standard prices for ginseng.

"The reason I think so," he said gently, "is because growing it is the
largest part of my occupation, and it was a staple with my father before
me. I am David Langston, of whom you heard those men speak. Since I was
a very small boy I have lived by collecting herbs and roots, and I get
more for ginseng than anything else. Very early I tired of hunting other
people's woods for herbs, so I began transplanting them to my own. I
moved that bed out there seven years ago. What you found has grown since
from roots I overlooked and seeds that fell at that time. Now do you
think I am enough of an authority to trust my word on the subject?"

There was not a change of expression on her white face.

"You surely should know," she said wearily, "and you could have no
possible object in deceiving me. Please go on."

"Any country boy or girl can find ginseng, gather, wash, and dry it, and
get five dollars a pound. I can return yours to-morrow and you can cure
and take it to a druggist I will name you, and sell for that. But if you
will allow me to make a suggestion, you can get more. Your roots are now
on the trays of an evaporating house. They will dry to the proper degree
desired by the trade, so that they will not lose an extra ounce in
weight, and if I send them with my stuff to big wholesale houses I deal
with, they will be graded with the finest wild ginseng. It is worth more
than the cultivated and you will get closer eight dollars a pound for it
than five. There is some speculation in it, and the market fluctuates:
but, as a rule, I sell for the highest price the drug brings, and, at
times when the season is very dry, I set my own prices. Shall I return
yours or may I cure and sell it, and bring you the money?"

"How much trouble would that make you?"

"None. The work of digging and washing is already finished. All that
remains is to weigh it and make a memorandum of the amount when I sell.
I should very much like to do it. It would be a comfort to see the money
go into your hands. If you are afraid to trust me, I will give you the
names of several people you can ask concerning me the next time you go
to the city."

She looked at him steadily.

"Never mind that," she said. "But why do you offer to do it for a
stranger? It must be some trouble, no matter how small you represent it
to be."

"Perhaps I am going to pay you eight and sell for ten."

"I don't think you can. Five sounds fabulous to me. I can't believe
that. If you wanted to make money you needn't have told me you took it.
I never would have known. That isn't your reason!"

"Possibly I would like to atone for those tears I caused," said the
Harvester.

"Don't think of that! They are of no consequence to any one. You needn't
do anything for me on that account."

"Don't search for a reason," said the Harvester, in his gentlest tones.
"Forget that feature of the case. Say I'm peculiar, and allow me to do
it because it would be a pleasure. In close two weeks I will bring you
the money. Is it a bargain?"

"Yes, if you care to make it."

"I care very much. We will call that settled."

"I wish I could tell you what it will mean to me," said the Girl.

"If you only would," plead the Harvester.

"I must not burden a stranger with my troubles."

"But if it would make the stranger so happy!"

"That isn't possible. I must face life and bear what it brings me
alone."

"Not unless you choose," said the Harvester. "That is, if you will
pardon me, a narrow view of life. It cuts other people out of the joy of
service. If you can't tell me, would you trust a very lovely and gentle
woman I could bring to you?"

"No more than you. It is my affair; I must work it out myself."

"I am mighty sorry," said the Harvester. "I believe you err in that
decision. Think it over a day or so, and see if two heads are not better
than one. You will realize when this ginseng matter is settled that you
profited by trusting me. The same will hold good along other lines, if
you only can bring yourself to think so. At any rate, try. Telling a
trouble makes it lighter. Sympathy should help, if nothing can be done.
And as for money, I can show you how to earn sums at least worth your
time, if you have nothing else you want to do."

The Girl bent toward him.

"Oh please do tell me!" she cried eagerly. "I've tried and tried to find
some way ever since I have been here, but every one else I have met says
I can't, and nothing seems to be worth anything. If you only would tell
me something I could do!"

"If you will excuse my saying so," said the Harvester, "it appeals to
me that ease, not work, is the thing you require. You appear extremely
worn. Won't you let me help you find a way to a long rest first?"

"Impossible!" cried the Girl. "I know I am white and appear ill, but
truly I never have been sick in all my life. I have been having trouble
and working too much, but I'll be better soon. Believe me, there is no
rest for me now. I must earn the money I owe first."

"There is a way, if you care to take it," said the Harvester. "In my
work I have become very well acquainted with the chief surgeon of the
city hospital. Through him I happen to know that he has a free bed in
a beautiful room, where you could rest until you are perfectly strong
again, and that room is empty just now. When you are well, I will tell
you about the work."

As she arose the Harvester stood, and tall and straight she faced him.

"Impossible!" she said. "It would be brutal to leave my aunt. I cannot
pay to rest in a hospital ward, and I will not accept charity. If you
can put me in the way of earning, even a few cents a day, at anything
I could do outside the work necessary to earn my board here, it would
bring me closer to happiness than anything else on earth."

"What I suggest is not impossible," said the Harvester softly. "If you
will go, inside an hour a sweet and gentle lady will come for you and
take you to ease and perfect rest until you are strong again. I will see
that your aunt is cared for scrupulously. I can't help urging you. It is
a crime to talk of work to a woman so manifestly worn as you are."

"Then we will not speak of it," said the Girl wearily. "It is time for
me to go, anyway. I see you mean to be very kind, and while I don't in
the least understand it, I do hope you feel I am grateful. If half
you say about the ginseng comes true, I can make a payment worth while
before I had hoped to. I have no words to tell you what that will mean
to me."

"If this debt you speak of were paid, could you rest then?"

"I could lie down and give up in peace, and I think I would."

"I think you wouldn't," said the Harvester, "because you wouldn't be
allowed. There are people in these days who make a business of securing
rest for the tired and over weary, and they would come and prevent that
if you tried it. Please let me make another suggestion. If you owe money
to some one you feel needs it and the debt is preying on you, let's pay
it."

He drew a small check-book from his pocket and slipped a pen from a
band.

"If you will name the amount and give me the address, you shall be free
to go to the rest I ask for you inside an hour."

Then slowly from head to foot she looked at him.

"Why?"

"Because your face and attitude clearly indicate that you are over
tired. Believe me, you do yourself wrong if you refuse."

"In what way would changing creditors rest me?"

"I thought perhaps you were owing some one who needed the money. I am
not a rich man, but I have no one save myself to provide for and I have
funds lying idle that I would be glad to use for you. If you make a
point of it, when you are rested, you can repay me."

"My creditor needs the money, but I should prefer owing him rather than
a perfect stranger. What you suggest would help me not at all. I must go
now."

"Very well," said the Harvester. "If you will tell me whom to ask for
and where you live, I will come to see you to-morrow and bring you
some pamphlets. With these and with a little help you soon can earn
any amount a girl is likely to owe. It will require but a little while.
Where can I find you?"

The Girl hesitated and for the first time a hint of colour flushed her
cheek. But courage appeared to be her strong point.

"Do you live in this part of the country?" she asked.

"I live ten miles from here, east of Onabasha," he answered.

"Do you know Henry Jameson?"

"By sight and by reputation."

"Did you ever know anything kind or humane of him?"

"I never did."

"My name is Ruth Jameson. At present I am indebted to him for the only
shelter I have. His wife is ill through overwork and worry, and I am
paying for my bed and what I don't eat, principally, by attempting her
work. It scarcely would be fair to Uncle Henry to say that I do it. I
stagger around as long as I can stand, then I sit through his abuse. He
is a pleasant man. Please don't think I am telling you this to harrow
your sympathy further. The reason I explain is because I am driven. If I
do not, you will misjudge me when I say that I only can see you here.
I understood what you meant when you said Uncle Henry should have known
the price of ginseng if he knew it was for sale. He did. He knew what
he could get for it, and what he meant to pay me. That is one of his
original methods with a woman. If he thought I could earn anything worth
while, he would allow me, if I killed myself doing it; and then he would
take the money by force if necessary. So I can meet you here only. I can
earn just what I may in secret. He buys cattle and horses and is away
from home much of the day, and when Aunt Molly is comfortable I can have
a few hours."

"I understand," said the Harvester. "But this is an added hardship.
Why do you remain? Why subject yourself to force and work too heavy for
you?"

"Because his is the only roof on earth where I feel I can pay for all I
get. I don't care to discuss it, I only want you to say you understand,
if I ask you to bring the pamphlets here and tell me how I can earn
money."

"I do," said the Harvester earnestly, although his heart was hot in
protest. "You may be very sure that I will not misjudge you. Shall I
come at two o'clock to-morrow, Miss Jameson?"

"If you will be so kind."

The Harvester stepped aside and she passed him and crossing the rifled
ginseng patch went toward a low brown farmhouse lying in an unkept
garden, beside a ragged highway. The man sat on the log she had vacated,
held his head between his hands and tried to think, but he could not for
big waves of joy that swept over him when he realized that at last he
had found her, had spoken with her, and had arranged a meeting for the
morrow.

"Belshazzar," he said softly, "I wish I could leave you to protect
her. Every day you prove to me that I need you, but Heaven knows her
necessity is greater. Bel, she makes my heart ache until it feels like
jelly. There seems to be just one thing to do. Get that fool debt paid
like lightning, and lift her out of here quicker than that. Now, we will
go and see Doc, and call off the watch-dogs of the law. Ahead of them,
aren't we, Belshazzar? There is a better day coming; we feel it in our
bones, don't we, old partner?"

The Harvester started through the woods on a rush, and as the exercise
warmed his heart, he grew wonderfully glad. At last he had found her.
Uncertainty was over. If ever a girl needed a home and care he thought
she did. He was so jubilant that he felt like crying aloud, shouting for
joy, but by and by the years of sober repression made their weight felt,
so he climbed into the wagon and politely requested Betsy to make her
best time to Onabasha. Betsy had been asked to make haste so frequently
of late that she at first almost doubted the sanity of her master, the
law of whose life, until recently, had been to take his time. Now he
appeared to be in haste every day. She had become so accustomed to
being urged to hurry that she almost had developed a gait; so at the
Harvester's suggestion she did her level best to Onabasha and the
hospital, where she loved to nose Belshazzar and rest near the watering
tap under a big tree.

The Harvester went down the hall and into the office on the run, and his
face appeared like a materialized embodiment of living joy. Doctor Carey
turned at his approach and then bounded half way across the room, his
hands outstretched.

"You've found her, David!"

The Harvester grabbed the hand of his friend and stood pumping it up and
down while he gulped at the lump in his throat, and big tears squeezed
from his eyes, but he could only nod his proud head.

"Found her!" exulted Doctor Carey. "Really found her! Well that's great!
Sit down and tell me, boy! Is she sick, as we feared? Did you only see
her or did you get to talk with her?"

"Well sir," said the Harvester, choking back his emotions, "you remember
that ginseng I told you about getting on the old Jameson place last
night. To-day, I learned I'd lost that hand-made mattock I use most, and
I went back for it, and there she was."

"In the country?"

"Yes sir!"

"Well why didn't we think of it before?"

"I suppose first we would have had to satisfy ourselves that she wasn't
in town, anyway."

"Sure! That would be the logical way to go at it! And so you found her?"

"Yes sir, I found her! Just Belshazzar and I! I was going along on my
way to the place, and he ran past me and made a stiff point, and when I
came up, there she was!"

"There she was?"

"Yes sir; there she was!"

They shook hands again.

"Then of course you spoke to her."

"Yes I spoke to her."

"Were you pleased?"

"With her speech and manner?----yes. But, Doc, if ever a woman needed
everything on earth!"

"Well did you get any kind of a start made?"

"I couldn't do so very much. I had to go a little slow for fear of
frightening her, but I tried to get her to come here and she won't until
a debt she owes is paid, and she's in no condition to work."

"Got any idea how much it is?"

"No, but it can't be any large sum. I tried to offer to pay it, but she
had no hesitation in telling me she preferred owing a man she knew to a
stranger."

"Well if she is so particular, how did she come to tell you first thing
that she was in debt?"

The Harvester explained.

"Oh I see!" said the doctor. "Well you'll have to baby her along with
the idea that she is earning money and pay her double until you get that
off her mind, and while you are at it, put in your best licks, my boy;
perk right up and court her like a house afire. Women like it. All of
them do. They glory in feeling that a man is crazy about them."

"Well I'm insane enough over her," said the Harvester, "but I'd hate
like the nation for her to know it. Seems as if a woman couldn't respect
such an addle-pate as I am lately."

"Don't you worry about that," advised the doctor. "Just you make love to
her. Go at it in the good old-fashioned way."

"But maybe the 'good old-fashioned way' isn't my way."

"What's the difference whose way it is, if it wins?"

"But Kipling says: 'Each man makes love his own way!'"

"I seem to have heard you mention that name be fore," said the doctor.
"Do you regard him as an authority?"

"I do!" said the Harvester. "Especially when he advises me after my own
heart and reason. Miss Jameson is not a silly girl. She's a woman,
and twenty-four at least. I don't want her to care for a trick or a
pretence. I do want her to love me. Not that I am worth her attention,
but because she needs some strong man fearfully, and I am ready and more
'willing' than the original Barkis. But, like him, I have to let her
know it in my way, and court her according to the promptings of my
heart."

"You deceive yourself!" said the doctor flatly. "That's all bosh! Your
tongue says it for the satisfaction of your ears, and it does sound
well. You will court her according to your ideas of the conventions, as
you understand them, and strictly in accordance with what you consider
the respect due her. If you had followed the thing you call the
'promptings of your heart,' you would have picked her up by main force
and brought her to my best ward, instead of merely suggesting it and
giving up when she said no. If you had followed your heart, you would
have choked the name and amount out of her and paid that devilish debt.
You walk away in a case like that, and then have the nerve to come here
and prate to me about following your heart. I'll wager my last dollar
your heart is sore because you were not allowed to help her; but on the
proposition that you followed its promptings I wouldn't stake a penny.
That's all tommy-rot!"

"It is," agreed the Harvester. "Utter! But what can a man do?"

"I don't know what you can do! I'd have paid that debt and brought her
to the hospital."

"I'll go and ask Mrs. Carey about your courtship. I want her help on
this, anyway. I can pick up Miss Jameson and bring her here if any man
can, but she is nursing a sick woman who depends solely on her for care.
She is above average size, and she has a very decided mind of her own.
I don't think you would use force and do what you think best for her, if
you were in my place. You would wait until you understood the situation
better, and knew that what you did was for the best, ultimately."

"I don't know whether I would or not. One thing is sure: I'm mighty glad
you have found her. May I tell my wife?"

"Please do! And ask her if I may depend on her if I need a woman's help.
Now I'll call off the valiant police and go home and take a good, sound
sleep. Haven't had many since I first saw her."

So Betsy trotted down the valley, up the embankment, crossed the
railroad, over the levee across Singing Water, and up the hill to the
cabin. As they passed it, the Harvester jumped from the wagon, tossed
the hitching strap to Belshazzar, and entered. He walked straight to her
door, unlocked it, and uncovering, went inside. Softly he passed from
piece to piece of the furniture he had made for her, and then surveyed
the walls and floor.

"It isn't half good enough," he said, "but it will have to answer until
I can do better. Surely she will know I tried and care for that, anyway.
I wonder how long it will take me to get her here. Oh, if I only could
know she was comfortable and happy! Happy! She doesn't appear as if she
ever had heard that word. Well this will be a good place to teach her.
I've always enjoyed myself here. I'm going to have faith that I can win
her and make her happy also. When I go to the stable to do my work for
the night if I could know she was in this cabin and glad of it, and if
I could hear her down here singing like a happy care-free girl, I'd
scarcely be able to endure the joy of it."



CHAPTER IX. THE HARVESTER GOES COURTING

"She is on Henry Jameson's farm, four miles west of Onabasha," said the
Harvester, as he opened his eyes next morning, and laid a caressing hand
on Belshazzar's head. "At two o'clock we are going to see her, and we
are going to prolong the visit to the ultimate limit, so we should make
things count here before we start."

He worked in a manner that accomplished much. There seemed no end to
his energy that morning. Despatching the usual routine, he gathered
the herbs that were ready, spread them on the shelves of the dry-house,
found time to do several things in the cabin, and polish a piece of
furniture before he ate his lunch and hitched Betsy to the wagon.
He also had recovered his voice, and talked almost incessantly as he
worked. When it neared time to start he dressed carefully. He stood
before his bookcase and selected several pamphlets published by the
Department of Agriculture. He went to his beds and gathered a large
arm load of plants. Then he was ready to make his first trip to see the
Dream Girl, but it never occurred to him that he was going courting.

He had decided fully that there would be no use to try to make love to
a girl manifestly so ill and in trouble. The first thing, it appeared to
him, was to dispel the depression, improve the health, and then do the
love making. So, in the most business-like manner possible and without
a shade of embarrassment, the Harvester took his herbs and books and
started for the Jameson woods. At times as he drove along he espied
something that he used growing beside the road and stopped to secure a
specimen.

He came down the river bank and reached the ginseng bed at half-past
one. He was purposely early. He laid down his books and plants,
and rolled the log on which she sat the day before to a more shaded
location, where a big tree would serve for a back rest. He pulled away
brush and windfalls, heaped dry brown leaves, and tramped them down
for her feet. Then he laid the books on the log, the arm load of plants
beside them, and went to the river to wash his soiled hands.

Belshazzar's short bark told him the Girl was coming, and between the
trees he saw the dog race to meet her and she bent to stroke his
head. She wore the same dress and appeared even paler and thinner. The
Harvester hurried up the bank, wiping his hands on his handkerchief.

"Glad to see you!" he greeted her casually. "I've fixed you a seat
with a back rest to-day. Don't be frightened at the stack of herbs. You
needn't gather all of those. They are only suggestions. They are just
common roadside plants that have some medicinal value and are worth
collecting. Please try my davenport."

"Thank you!" she said as she dropped on the log and leaned her head
against the tree. It appeared as if her eyes closed a few seconds in
spite of her, and while they were shut the Harvester looked steadily
and intently on a face of exquisite beauty, but so marred by pallor and
lines of care that search was required to recognize just how handsome
she was, and if he had not seen her in perfection in the dream the
Harvester might have missed glorious possibilities. To bring back that
vision would be a task worth while was his thought. With the first faint
quiver of an eyelash the Harvester took a few steps and bent over a
plant, and as he did so the Girl's eyes followed him.

He appeared so tall and strong, so bronzed by summer sun and wind, his
face so keen and intense, that swift fear caught her heart. Why was he
there? Why should he take so much trouble for her? With difficulty she
restrained herself from springing up and running away. Turning with
the plant in his hand the Harvester saw the panic in her eyes, and
it troubled his heart. For an instant he was bewildered, then he
understood.

"I don't want you to work when you are not able," he said in his most
matter-of-fact voice, "but if you still think that you are, I'll be very
glad. I need help just now, more than I can tell you, and there seem to
be so few people who can be trusted. Gathering stuff for drugs is really
very serious business. You see, I've a reputation to sustain with some
of the biggest laboratories in the country, not to mention the fact
that I sometimes try compounding a new remedy for some common complaint
myself. I rather take pride in the fact that my stuff goes in so fresh
and clean that I always get anywhere from three to ten cents a pound
above the listed prices for it. I want that money, but I want an
unbroken record for doing a job right and being square and careful, much
more."

He thought the appearance of fright was fading, and a tinge of interest
taking its place. She was looking straight at him, and as he talked he
could see her summoning her tired forces to understand and follow him,
so he continued:

"One would think that as medicines are required in cases of life and
death, collectors would use extreme caution, but some of them are
criminally careless. It's a common thing to gather almost any fern
for male fern; to throw in anything that will increase weight, to wash
imperfectly, and commit many other sins that lie with the collector;
beyond that I don't like to think. I suppose there are men who
deliberately adulterate pure stuff to make it go farther, but when it
comes to drugs, I scarcely can speak of it calmly. I like to do a thing
right. I raise most of my plants, bushes, and herbs. I gather exactly
in season, wash carefully if water dare be used, clean them otherwise
if not, and dry them by a hot air system in an evaporator I built
purposely. Each package I put up is pure stuff, clean, properly dried,
and fresh. If I caught any man in the act of adulterating any of it I'm
afraid he would get hurt badly--and usually I am a peaceable man. I
am explaining this to show how very careful you must be to keep things
separate and collect the right plants if you are going to sell stuff to
me. I am extremely particular."

The Girl was leaning toward him, watching his face, and hers was slowly
changing. She was deeply interested, much impressed, and more at ease.
When the Harvester saw he had talked her into confidence he crossed
the leaves, and sitting on the log beside her, picked up the books and
opened one.

"Oh I will be careful," said the Girl. "If you will trust me to collect
for you, I will undertake only what I am sure I know, and I'll do
exactly as you tell me."

"There are a dozen things that bring a price ranging from three to
fifteen cents a pound, that are in season just now. I suppose you would
like to begin on some common, easy things, that will bring the most
money."

Without a breath of hesitation she answered, "I will commence on
whatever you are short of and need most to have."

The heart of the Harvester gave a leap that almost choked him, for
he was vividly conscious of a broken shoe she was hiding beneath her
skirts. He wanted to say "thank you," but he was afraid to, so he turned
the leaves of the book.

"I am working just now on mullein," he said.

"Oh I know mullein," she cried, with almost a hint of animation in her
voice. "The tall, yellow flower stem rising from a circle of green felt
leaves!"

"Good!" said the Harvester. "What a pretty way to describe it! Do you
know any more plants?"

"Only a few! I had a high-school course in botany, but it was all about
flower and leaf formation, nothing at all of what anything was good for.
I also learned a few, drawing them for leather and embroidery designs."

"Look here!" cried the Harvester. "I came with an arm load of herbs and
expected to tell you all about foxglove, mullein, yarrow, jimson,
purple thorn apple, blessed thistle, hemlock, hoarhound, lobelia, and
everything in season now; but if you already have a profession, why do
you attempt a new one? Why don't you go on drawing? I never saw anything
so stupid as most of the designs from nature for book covers and
decorations, leather work and pottery. They are the same old subjects
worked over and over. If you can draw enough to make original copies,
I can furnish you with flowers, vines, birds, and insects, new, unused,
and of exquisite beauty, for every month in the year. I've looked into
the matter a little, because I am rather handy with a knife, and I carve
candlesticks from suitable pieces of wood. I always have trouble getting
my designs copied; securing something new and unusual, never! If you can
draw just well enough to reproduce what you see, gathering drugs is too
slow and tiresome. What you want to do is to reproduce the subjects I
will bring, and I'll buy what I want in my work, and sell the remainder
at the arts and crafts stores for you. Or I can find out what they pay
for such designs at potteries and ceramic factories. You have no time to
spend on herbs, when you are in the woods, if you can draw."

"I am surely in the woods," said the Girl, "and I know I can copy
correctly. I often made designs for embroidery and leather for the shop
mother and I worked for in Chicago."

"Won't they buy them of you now?"

"Undoubtedly."

"Do they pay anything worth while?"

"I don't know how their prices compare with others. One place was all I
worked for. I think they pay what is fair."

"We will find out," said the Harvester promptly.

"I----I don't think you need waste the time," faltered the Girl. "I had
better gather the plants for a while at least."

"Collecting crude drug material is not easy," said the Harvester.
"Drawing may not be either, but at least you could sit while you work,
and it should bring you more money. Besides, I very much want a moth
copied for a candlestick I am carving. Won't you draw that for me? I
have some pupae cases and the moths will be out any day now. If I'd
bring you one, wouldn't you just make a copy?"

The Girl gripped her hands together and stared straight ahead of her for
a second, then she turned to him.

"I'd like to," she said, "but I have nothing to work with. In Chicago
they furnished my material at the shop and I drew the design and was
paid for the pattern. I didn't know there would be a chance for anything
like that here. I haven't even proper pencils."

"Then the way for you to do this is to strip the first mullein plants
you see of the petals. I will pay you seventy-five cents a pound for
them. By the time you get a few pounds I can have material you need
for drawing here and you can go to work on whatever flowers, vines, and
things you can find in the woods, with no thanks to any one."

"I can't see that," said the Girl. "It would appear to me that I would
be under more obligations than I could repay, and to a stranger."

"I figure it this way," said the Harvester, watching from the corner
of his eye. "I can sell at good prices all the mullein flowers I can
secure. You collect for me, I buy them. You can use drawing tools; I
get them for you, and you pay me with the mullein or out of the ginseng
money I owe you. You already have that coming, and it's just as much
yours as it will be ten days from now. You needn't hesitate a second
about drawing on it, because I am in a hurry for the moth pattern.
I find time to carve only at night, you see. As for being under
obligations to a stranger, in the first place all the debt would be on
my side. I'd get the drugs and the pattern I want; and, in the second
place, I positively and emphatically refuse to be a stranger. It would
be so much better to be mutual helpers and friends of the kind worth
having; and the sooner we begin, the sooner we can work together to
good advantage. Get that stranger idea out of your head right now, and
replace it with thoughts of a new friend, who is willing"--the Harvester
detected panic in her eyes and ended casually--"to enter a partnership
that will be of benefit to both of us. Partners can't be strangers, you
know," he finished.

"I don't know what to think," said the Girl.

"Never bother your head with thinking," advised the Harvester with an
air of large wisdom. "It is unprofitable and very tiring. Any one can
see that you are too weary now. Don't dream of such a foolish thing as
thinking. Don't worry over motives and obligations. Say to yourself,
'I'll enter this partnership and if it brings me anything good, I'm that
much ahead. If it fails, I have lost nothing.' That's the way to look at
it."

Then before she could answer he continued: "Now I want all the mullein
bloom I can get. You'll see the yellow heads everywhere. Strip the
petals and bring them here, and I'll come for them every day. They must
go on the trays as fresh as possible. On your part, we will make out the
order now."

He took a pencil and notebook from his pocket.

"You want drawing pencils and brushes; how many, what make and size?"

The Girl hesitated for a moment as if struggling to decide what to do;
then she named the articles.

"And paper?"

He wrote that down, and asked if there was more.

"I think," he said, "that I can get this order filled in Onabasha. The
art stores should keep these things. And shouldn't you have water-colour
paper and some paint?"

Then there was a flash across the white face.

"Oh if I only could!" she cried. "All my life I have been crazy for a
box of colour, but I never could afford it, and of course, I can't now.
But if this splendid plan works, and I can earn what I owe, then maybe I
can."

"Well this 'splendid plan' is going to 'work,' don't you bother about
that," said the Harvester. "It has begun working right now. Don't worry
a minute. After things have gone wrong for a certain length of time,
they always veer and go right a while as compensation. Don't think of
anything save that you are at the turning. Since it is all settled that
we are to be partners, would you name me the figures of the debt that
is worrying you? Don't, if you mind. I just thought perhaps we could get
along better if I knew. Is it----say five hundred dollars?"

"Oh dear no!" cried the Girl in a panic. "I never could face that! It is
not quite one hundred, and that seems big as a mountain to me."

"Forget it!" he cried. "The ginseng will pay more than half; that I
know. I can bring you the cash in a little over a week."

She started to speak, hesitated, and at last turned to him.

"Would you mind," she said, "if I asked you to keep it until I can find
a way to go to town? It's too far to walk and I don't know how to send
it. Would I dare put it in a letter?"

"Never!" said the Harvester. "You want a draft. That money will be too
precious to run any risks. I'll bring it to you and you can write a note
and explain to whom you want it paid, and I'll take it to the bank for
you and get your draft. Then you can write a letter, and half your worry
will be over safely."

"It must be done in a sure way," said the Girl. "If I knew I had the
money to pay that much on what I owe, and then lost it, I simply could
not endure it. I would lie down and give up as Aunt Molly has."

"Forget that too!" said the Harvester. "Wipe out all the past that has
pain in it. The future is going to be beautifully bright. That little
bird on the bush there just told me so, and you are always safe when you
trust the feathered folk. If you are going to live in the country
any length of time, you must know them, and they will become a great
comfort. Are you planning to be here long?"

"I have no plans. After what I saw Chicago do to my mother I would
rather finish life in the open than return to the city. It is horrible
here, but at least I'm not hungry, and not afraid----all the time."

"Gracious Heaven!" cried the Harvester. "Do you mean to say that you are
afraid any part of the time? Would you kindly tell me of whom, and why?"

"You should know without being told that when a woman born and reared
in a city, and all her life confined there, steps into the woods for the
first time, she's bound to be afraid. The last few weeks constitute my
entire experience with the country, and I'm in mortal fear that snakes
will drop from trees and bushes or spring from the ground. Some places I
think I'm sinking, and whenever a bush catches my skirts it seems as
if something dreadful is reaching up for me; there is a possibility of
horror lurking behind every tree and----"

"Stop!" cried the Harvester. "I can't endure it! Do you mean to tell me
that you are afraid here and now?"

She met his eyes squarely.

"Yes," she said. "It almost makes me ill to sit on this log without
taking a stick and poking all around it first. Every minute I think
something is going to strike me in the back or drop on my head."

The Harvester grew very white beneath the tan, and that developed a
nice, sickly green complexion for him.

"Am I part of your tortures?" he asked tersely.

"Why shouldn't you be?" she answered. "What do I know of you or your
motives or why you are here?"

"I have had no experience with the atmosphere that breeds such an
attitude in a girl."

"That is a thing for which to thank Heaven. Undoubtedly it is gracious
to you. My life has been different."

"Yet in mortal terror of the woods, and probably equal fear of me, you
are here and asking for work that will keep you here."

"I would go through fire and flood for the money I owe. After that debt
is paid----"

She threw out her hands in a hopeless gesture. The Harvester drew forth
a roll of bills and tossed them into her lap.

"For the love of mercy take what you need and pay it," he said. "Then
get a floor under your feet, and try, I beg of you, try to force
yourself to have confidence in me, until I do something that gives you
the least reason for distrusting me."

She picked up the money and gave it a contemptuous whirl that landed it
at his feet.

"What greater cause of distrust could I have by any possibility than
just that?" she asked.

The Harvester arose hastily, and taking several steps, he stood with
folded arms, his back turned. The Girl sat watching him with wide eyes,
the dull blue plain in their dusky depths. When he did not speak, she
grew restless. At last she slowly arose and circling him looked into his
face. It was convulsed with a struggle in which love and patience fought
for supremacy over honest anger. As he saw her so close, his lips drew
apart, and his breath came deeply, but he did not speak. He merely stood
and looked at her, and looked; and she gazed at him as if fascinated,
but uncomprehending.

"Ruth!"

The call came roaring up the hill. The Girl shivered and became paler.

"Is that your uncle?" asked the Harvester.

She nodded.

"Will you come to-morrow for your drawing materials?"

"Yes."

"Will you try to believe that there is absolutely nothing, either
underfoot or overhead, that will harm you?"

"Yes."

"Will you try to think that I am not a menace to public safety, and that
I would do much to help you, merely because I would be glad to be of
service?"

"Yes."

"Will you try to cultivate the idea that there is nothing in all this
world that would hurt you purposely?"

"Ruth!" came a splitting scream in gruff man-tones, keyed in deep anger.

"That SOUNDS like it!" said the Girl, and catching up her skirts she ran
through the woods, taking a different route toward the house.

The Harvester sat on the log and tried to think; but there are times
when the numbed brain refuses to work, so he really sat and suffered.
Belshazzar whimpered and licked his hands, and at last the man arose
and went with the dog to the wagon. As they came through Onabasha, Betsy
turned at the hospital corner, but the Harvester pulled her around and
drove toward the country. Not until they crossed the railroad did he
lift his head and then he drew a deep breath as if starved for pure air
and spoke. "Not to-day Betsy! I can't face my friends just now. Someway
I am making an awful fist of things. Everything I do is wrong. She no
more trusts me than you would a rattlesnake, Belshazzar; and from all
appearance she takes me to be almost as deadly. What must have been her
experiences in life to ingrain fear and distrust in her soul at that
rate? I always knew I was not handsome, but I never before regarded my
appearance as alarming. And I 'fixed up,' too!"

The Harvester grinned a queer little twist of a grin that pulled and
distorted his strained face. "Might as well have gone with a week's
beard, a soiled shirt, and a leer! And I've always been as decent as I
knew! What's the reward for clean living anyway, if the girl you love
strikes you like that?"

Belshazzar reached across and kissed him. The Harvester put his arm
around the dog. In the man's disappointment and heart hunger he leaned
his head against the beast and said, "I've always got you to love and
protect me, anyway, Belshazzar. Maybe the man who said a dog was a man's
best friend was right. You always trusted me, didn't you Bel? And you
never regretted it but once, and that wasn't my fault. I never did it!
If I did, I'm getting good and well paid for it. I'd rather be kicked
until all the ribs of one side are broken, Bel, than to swallow the dose
she just handed me. I tell you it was bitter, lad! What am I going to
do? Can't you help me, Bel?"

Belshazzar quivered in anxiety to offer the comfort he could not speak.

"Of course you are right! You always are, Bel!" said the Harvester. "I
know what you are trying to tell me. Sure enough, she didn't have any
dream. I am afraid she had the bitterest reality. She hasn't been loving
a vision of me, working and searching for me, and I don't mean to her
what she does to me. Of course I see that I must be patient and bide my
time. If there is anything in 'like begetting like' she is bound to care
for me some day, for I love her past all expression, and for all she
feels I might as well save my breath. But she has got to awake some day,
Bel. She can make up her mind to that. She can't see 'why.' Over and
over! I wonder what she would think if I'd up and tell her 'why' with no
frills. She will drive me to it some day, then probably the shock will
finish her. I wonder if Doc was only fooling or if he really would do
what he said. It might wake her up, anyway, but I'm dubious as to the
result. How Uncle Henry can roar! He sounded like a fog horn. I'd love
to try my muscle on a man like that. No wonder she is afraid of him, if
she is of me. Afraid! Well of all things I ever did expect, Belshazzar,
that is the limit."



CHAPTER X. THE CHIME OF THE BLUE BELLS

The Harvester finished his evening work and went to examine the cocoons.
Many of the moths had emerged and flown, but the luna cases remained
in the bottom of the box. As he stood looking at them one moved and he
smiled.

"I'd give something if you would come out and be ready to work on by
to-morrow afternoon," he said. "Possibly you would so interest her that
she would forget her fear of me. I'd like mighty well to take you
along, because she might care for you, and I do need the pattern for my
candlestick. Believe I'll lay you in a warmer place."

The first thing the next morning the Harvester looked and found the open
cocoon and the wet moth clinging by its feet to a twig he had placed for
it.

"Luck is with me!" he exulted. "I'll carry you to her and be mighty
careful what I say, and maybe she will forget about the fear."

All the forenoon he cut and spread boneset, saffron, and hemlock on the
trays to dry. At noon he put on a fresh outfit, ate a hasty lunch, and
drove to Onabasha. He carried the moth in a box, and as he started he
picked up a rake. He went to an art store and bought the pencils and
paper she had ordered. He wanted to purchase everything he saw for her,
but he was fast learning a lesson of deep caution. If he took more than
she ordered, she would worry over paying, and if he refused to
accept money, she would put that everlasting "why" at him again. The
water-colour paper and paint he could not forego. He could make a desire
to have the moth coloured explain those, he thought.

Then he went to a furniture store and bought several articles, and
forgetting his law against haste, he drove Betsy full speed to the
river. He was rather heavily ladened as he went up the bank, and it
was only one o'clock. There was an hour. He rolled away the log, raked
together and removed the leaves to the ground. He tramped the earth
level and spread a large cheap porch rug. On this he opened and placed
a little folding table and chair. On the table he spread the pencils,
paper, colour box and brushes, and went to the river to fill the water
cup. Then he sat on the log he had rolled to one side and waited. After
two hours he arose and crept as close the house as he could through the
woods, but he could not secure a glimpse of the Girl. He went back and
waited an hour more, and then undid his work and removed it. When he
came to the moth his face was very grim as he lifted the twig and helped
the beautiful creature to climb on a limb. "You'll be ready to fly in
a few hours," he said. "If I keep you in a box you will ruin your wings
and be no suitable subject, and put you in a cyanide jar I will not. I
am hurt too badly myself. I wonder if what Doc said was the right way!
It's certainly a temptation."

Then he went home; and again Betsy veered at the hospital, and once more
the Harvester explained to her that he did not want to see the doctor.
That evening and the following forenoon were difficult, but the
Harvester lived through them, and in the afternoon went back to the
woods, spread his rug, and set up the table. Only one streak of luck
brightened the gloom in his heart. A yellow emperor had emerged in the
night, and now occupied the place of yesterday's luna. She never need
know it was not the one he wanted, and it would make an excuse for the
colour box.

He was watching intently and saw her coming a long way off. He noticed
that she looked neither right nor left, but came straight as if walking
a bridge. As she reached the place she glanced hastily around and then
at him. The Harvester forgave her everything as he saw the look of
relief with which she stepped upon the carpet. Then she turned to him.

"I won't have to ask 'why' this time," she said. "I know that you did it
because I was baby enough to tell what a coward I am. I'm sure you
can't afford it, and I know you shouldn't have done it, but oh, what a
comfort! If you will promise never to do any such expensive, foolish,
kind thing again, I'll say thank you this time. I couldn't come
yesterday, because Aunt Molly was worse and Uncle Henry was at home all
day."

"I supposed it was something like that," said the Harvester.

She advanced and handed him the roll of bills.

"I had a feeling you would be reckless," she said. "I saw it in your
face, so I came back as soon as I could steal away, and sure enough,
there lay your money and the books and everything. I hid them in the
thicket, so they will be all right. I've almost prayed it wouldn't rain.
I didn't dare carry them to the house. Please take the money. I haven't
time to argue about it or strength, but of course I can't possibly use
it unless I earn it. I'm so anxious to see the pencils and paper."

The Harvester thrust the money into his pocket. The Girl went to the
table, opened and spread the paper, and took out the pencils.

"Is my subject in here?" she touched the colour box.

"No, the other."

"Is it alive? May I open it?"

"We will be very careful at first," said the Harvester. "It only left
its case in the night and may fly. When the weather is so warm the wings
develop rapidly. Perhaps if I remove the lid----"

He took off the cover, exposing a big moth, its lovely, pale yellow
wings, flecked with heliotrope, outspread as it clung to a twig in the
box. The Girl leaned forward.

"What is it?" she asked.

"One of the big night moths that emerge and fly a few hours in June."

"Is this what you want for your candlestick?"

"If I can't do better. There is one other I prefer, but it may not come
at a time that you can get it right."

"What do you mean by 'right'?"

"So that you can copy it before it wants to fly."

"Why don't you chloroform and pin it until I am ready?"

"I am not in the business of killing and impaling exquisite creatures
like that."

"Do you mean that if I can't draw it when it is just right you will let
it go?"

"I do."

"Why?"

"I told you why."

"I know you said you were not in the business, but why wouldn't you take
only one you really wanted to use?"

"I would be afraid," replied the Harvester.

"Afraid? You!"

"I must have a mighty good reason before I kill," said the man. "I
cannot give life; I have no right to take it away. I will let my
statement stand. I am afraid."

"Of what please?"

"An indefinable something that follows me and makes me suffer if I am
wantonly cruel."

"Is there any particular pose in which you want this bird placed?"

"Allow me to present you to the yellow emperor, known in the books as
eagles imperialis," he said. "I want him as he clings naturally and life
size."

She took up a pencil.

"If you don't mind," said the Harvester, "would you draw on this other
paper? I very much want the colour, also, and you can use it on this.
I brought a box along, and I'll get you water. I had it all ready
yesterday."

"Did you have this same moth?"

"No, I had another."

"Did you have the one you wanted most?"

"Yes----but it's no difference."

"And you let it go because I was not here?"

"No. It went on account of exquisite beauty. If kept in confinement it
would struggle and break its wings. You see, that one was a delicate
green, where this is yellow, plain pale blue green, with a lavender rib
here, and long curled trailers edged with pale yellow, and eye spots
rimmed with red and black."

As the Harvester talked he indicated the points of difference with a
pencil he had picked up; now he laid it down and retreated beyond the
limits of the rug.

"I see," said the Girl. "And this is colour?"

She touched the box.

"A few colours, rather," said the Harvester. "I selected enough to fill
the box, with the help of the clerk who sold them to me. If they are not
right, I have permission to return and exchange them for anything you
want."

With eager fingers she opened the box, and bent over it a face filled
with interest.

"Oh how I've always wanted this! I scarcely can wait to try it. I do
hope I can have it for my very own. Was it quite expensive?"

"No. Very cheap!" said the Harvester. "The paper isn't worth mentioning.
The little, empty tin box was only a few cents, and the paints differ
according to colour. Some appear to be more than others. I was surprised
that the outfit was so inexpensive."

A skeptical little smile wavered on the Girl's face as she drew her
slender fingers across the trays of bright colour.

"If one dared accept your word, you really would be a comfort," she
said, as she resolutely closed the box, pushed it away, and picked up a
pencil.

"If you will take the trouble to inquire at the banks, post office,
express office, hospital or of any druggist in Onabasha, you will
find that my word is exactly as good as my money, and taken quite as
readily."

"I didn't say I doubted you. I have no right to do that until I feel
you deceive me. What I said was 'dared accept,' which means I must not,
because I have no right. But you make one wonder what you would do if
you were coaxed and asked for things and led by insinuations."

"I can tell you that," said the Harvester. "It would depend altogether
on who wanted anything of me and what they asked. If you would undertake
to coax and insinuate, you never would get it done, because I'd see what
you needed and have it at hand before you had time."

The Girl looked at him wonderingly.

"Now don't spring your recurrent 'why' on me," said the Harvester. "I'll
tell you 'why' some of these days. Just now answer me this question: Do
you want me to remain here or leave until you finish? Which way would
you be least afraid?"

"I am not at all afraid on the rug and with my work," she said. "If you
want to hunt ginseng go by all means."

"I don't want to hunt anything," said the Harvester. "But if you are
more comfortable with me away, I'll be glad to go. I'll leave the dog
with you."

He gave a short whistle and Belshazzar came bounding to him. The
Harvester stepped to the Girl's side, and dropping on one knee, he drew
his hand across the rug close to her skirts.

"Right here, Belshazzar," he said. "Watch! You are on guard, Bel."

"Well of all names for a dog!" exclaimed the Girl. "Why did you select
that?"

"My mother named my first dog Belshazzar, and taught me why; so each of
the three I've owned since have been christened the same. It means 'to
protect' and that is the office all of them perform; this one especially
has filled it admirably. Once I failed him, but he never has gone back
on me. You see he is not a particle afraid of me. Every step I take, he
is at my heels."

"So was Bill Sikes' dog, if I remember."

The Harvester laughed.

"Bel," he said, "if you could speak you'd say that was an ugly one,
wouldn't you?"

The dog sprang up and kissed the face of the man and rubbed a loving
head against his breast.

"Thank you!" said the Harvester. "Now lie down and protect this woman as
carefully as you ever watched in your life. And incidentally, Bel,
tell her that she can't exterminate me more than once a day, and the
performance is accomplished for the present. I refuse to be a willing
sacrifice. 'So was Bill Sikes' dog!' What do you think of that, Bel?"

The Harvester arose and turned to go.

"What if this thing attempts to fly?" she asked.

"Your pardon," said the Harvester. "If the emperor moves, slide the lid
over the box a few seconds, until he settles and clings quietly again,
and then slowly draw it away. If you are careful not to jar the table
heavily he will not go for hours yet."

Again he turned.

"If there is no danger, why do you leave the dog?"

"For company," said the Harvester. "I thought you would prefer an animal
you are not afraid of to a man you are. But let me tell you there is no
necessity for either. I know a woman who goes alone and unafraid through
every foot of woods in this part of the country. She has climbed, crept,
and waded, and she tells me she never saw but two venomous snakes this
side of Michigan. Nothing ever dropped on her or sprang at her. She
feels as secure in the woods as she does at home."

"Isn't she afraid of snakes?"

"She dislikes snakes, but she is not afraid or she would not risk
encountering them daily."

"Do you ever find any?"

"Harmless little ones, often. That is, Bel does. He is always nosing for
them, because he understands that I work in the earth. I think I have
encountered three dangerous ones in my life. I will guarantee you will
not find one in these woods. They are too open and too much cleared."

"Then why leave the dog?"

"I thought," said the Harvester patiently, "that your uncle might have
turned in some of his cattle, or if pigs came here the dog could chase
them away."

She looked at him with utter panic in her face.

"I am far more afraid of a cow than a snake!" she cried. "It is so much
bigger!"

"How did you ever come into these woods alone far enough to find the
ginseng?" asked the Harvester. "Answer me that!"

"I wore Uncle Henry's top boots and carried a rake, and I suffered
tortures," she replied.

"But you hunted until you found what you wanted, and came again to keep
watch on it?"

"I was driven--simply forced. There's no use to discuss it!"

"Well thank the Lord for one thing," said the Harvester. "You didn't
appear half so terrified at the sight of me as you did at the mere
mention of a cow. I have risen inestimably in my own self-respect.
Belshazzar, you may pursue the elusive chipmunk. I am going to guard
this woman myself, and please, kind fates, send a ferocious cow this
way, in order that I may prove my valour."

The Girl's face flushed slightly, and she could not restrain a laugh.
That was all the Harvester hoped for and more. He went beyond the edge
of the rug and sat on the leaves under a tree. She bent over her work
and only bird and insect notes and occasionally Belshazzar's excited
bark broke the silence. The Harvester stretched on the ground, his eyes
feasting on the Girl. Intensely he watched every movement. If a squirrel
barked she gave a nervous start, so precipitate it seemed as if it must
hurt. If a windfall came rattling down she appeared ready to fly in
headlong terror in any direction. At last she dropped her pencil and
looked at him helplessly.

"What is it?" he asked.

"The silence and these awful crashes when one doesn't know what is
coming," she said.

"Will it bother you if I talk? Perhaps the sound of my voice will help?"

"I am accustomed to working when people talk, and it will be a comfort.
I may be able to follow you, and that will prevent me from thinking.
There are dreadful things in my mind when they are not driven out.
Please talk! Tell me about the herbs you gathered this morning."

The Harvester gave the Girl one long look as she bent over her work. He
was vividly conscious of the graceful curves of her little figure, the
coil of dark, silky hair, softly waving around her temples and neck,
and when her eyes turned in his direction he knew that it was only the
white, drawn face that restrained him. He was almost forced to tell her
how he loved and longed for her; about the home he had prepared; of
a thousand personal interests. Instead, he took a firm grip and said
casually, "Foxglove harvest is over. This plant has to be taken when the
leaves are in second year growth and at bloom time. I have stripped my
mullein beds of both leaves and flowers. I finished a week ago. Beyond
lies a stretch of Parnassus grass that made me think of you, it was so
white and delicate. I want you to see it. It will be lovely in a few
weeks more."

"You never had seen me a week ago."

"Oh hadn't I?" said the Harvester. "Well maybe I dreamed about you then.
I am a great dreamer. Once I had a dream that may interest you some
day, after you've overcome your fear of me. Now this bed of which I was
speaking is a picture in September. You must arrange to drive home with
me and see it then."

"For what do you sell foxglove and mullein?"

"Foxglove for heart trouble, and mullein for catarrh. I get ten cents a
pound for foxglove leaves and five for mullein and from seventy-five to
a dollar for flowers of the latter, depending on how well I preserve the
colour in drying them. They must be sealed in bottles and handled with
extreme care."

"Then if I wasn't too childish to be out picking them, I could be
earning seventy-five cents a pound for mullein blooms?"

"Yes," said the Harvester, "but until you learned the trick of stripping
them rapidly you scarcely could gather what would weigh two pounds a
day, when dried. Not to mention the fact that you would have to stand
and work mostly in hot sunshine, because mullein likes open roads and
fields and sunny hills. Now you can sit securely in the shade, and in
two hours you can make me a pattern of that moth, for which I would pay
a designer of the arts and crafts shop five dollars, so of course you
shall have the same."

"Oh no!" she cried in swift panic. "You were charged too much! It isn't
worth a dollar, even!"

"On the contrary the candlestick on which I shall use it will be
invaluable when I finish it, and five is very little for the cream of my
design. I paid just right. You can earn the same for all you can do.
If you can embroider linen, they pay good prices for that, too and wood
carving, metal work, or leather things. May I see how you are coming
on?"

"Please do," she said.

The Harvester sprang up and looked over the Girl's shoulder. He could
not suppress an exclamation of delight.

"Perfect!" he cried. "You can surpass their best drafting at the shop!
Your fortune is made. Any time you want to go to Onabasha you can make
enough to pay your board, dress you well, and save something every week.
You must leave here as soon as you can manage it. When can you go?"

"I don't know," she said wearily. "I'd hate to tell you how full
of aches I am. I could not work much just now, if I had the best
opportunities in the world. I must grow stronger."

"You should not work at anything until you are well," he said. "It is a
crime against nature to drive yourself. Why will you not allow----"

"Do you really think, with a little practice, I can draw designs that
will sell?"

The Harvester picked up the sheet. The work was delicate and exact. He
could see no way to improve it.

"You know it will sell," he said gently, "because you already have sold
such work."

"But not for the prices you offer."

"The prices I name are going to be for NEW, ORIGINAL DESIGNS. I've got a
thousand in my head, that old Mother Nature shows me in the woods and on
the water every day."

"But those are yours; I can't take them."

"You must," said the Harvester. "I only see and recognize studies; I
can't materialize them, and until they are drawn, no one can profit by
them. In this partnership we revolutionize decorative art. There are
actually birds besides fat robins and nondescript swallows. The crane
and heron do not monopolize the water. Wild rose and golden-rod are not
the only flowers. The other day I was gathering lobelia. The seeds
are used in tonic preparations. It has an upright stem with flowers
scattered along it. In itself it is not much, but close beside it always
grows its cousin, tall bell-flower. As the name indicates, the flowers
are bell shape and I can't begin to describe their grace, beauty, and
delicate blue colour. They ring my strongest call to worship. My work
keeps me in the woods so much I remain there for my religion also.
Whenever I find these flowers I always pause for a little service of my
own that begins by reciting these lines:

     "'Neath cloistered boughs, each floral bell that swingeth
          And tolls its perfume on the passing air,
     Makes Sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth
          A call to prayer."


"Beautiful!" said the Girl.

"It's mighty convenient," explained the Harvester. "By my method, you
see, you don't have to wait for your day and hour of worship. Anywhere
the blue bell rings its call it is Sunday in the woods and in your
heart. After I recite that, I pray my prayer."

"Go on!" said the Girl. "This is no place to stop."

"It is always one and the same prayer, and there are only two lines of
it," said the Harvester. "It runs this way---- Let me take your pencil
and I will write it for you."

He bent over her shoulder, and traced these lines on a scrap of the
wrapping paper:

               "Almighty Evolver of the Universe:
          Help me to keep my soul and body clean,
     And at all times to do unto others as I would be done by.
                         Amen."


The Girl took the slip and sat studying it; then she raised her eyes to
his face curiously, but with a tinge of awe in them.

"I can see you standing over a blue, bell-shaped flower reciting those
exquisite lines and praying this wonderful prayer," she said. "Yesterday
you allowed the moth you were willing to pay five dollars for a drawing
of, to go, because you wouldn't risk breaking its wings. Why you are
more like a woman!"

A red stream crimsoned the Harvester's face.

"Well heretofore I have been considered strictly masculine," he said.
"To appreciate beauty or to try to be just commonly decent is not
exclusively feminine. You must remember there are painters, poets,
musicians, workers in art along almost any line you could mention, and
no one calls them feminine, but there is one good thing if I am. You
need no longer fear me. If you should see me, muck covered, grubbing in
the earth or on a raft washing roots in the lake, you would not consider
me like a woman."

"Would it be any discredit if I did? I think not. I merely meant that
most men would not see or hear the blue bell at all----and as for the
poem and prayer! If the woods make a man with such fibre in his soul, I
must learn them if they half kill me."

"You harp on death. Try to forget the word."

"I have faced it for months, and seen it do its grinding worst very
recently to the only thing on earth I loved or that loved me. I have no
desire to forget! Tell me more about the plants."

"Forgive me," said the Harvester gently. "Just now I am collecting
catnip for the infant and nervous people, hoarhound for colds and
dyspepsia, boneset heads and flowers for the same purpose. There is a
heavy head of white bloom with wonderful lacy leaves, called yarrow. I
take the entire plant for a tonic and blessed thistle leaves and flowers
for the same purpose."

"That must be what I need," interrupted the Girl. "Half the time I
believe I have a little fever, but I couldn't have dyspepsia, because I
never want anything to eat; perhaps the tonic would make me hungry."

"Promise me you will tell that to the doctor who comes to see your aunt,
and take what he gives you."

"No doctor comes to see my aunt. She is merely playing lazy to get out
of work. There is nothing the matter with her."

"Then why----"

"My uncle says that. Really, she could not stand and walk across a room
alone. She is simply worn out."

"I shall report the case," said the Harvester instantly.

"You better not!" said the Girl. "There must be a mistake about you
knowing my uncle. Tell me more of the flowers."

The Harvester drew a deep breath and continued:

"These I just have named I take at bloom time; next month come purple
thorn apple, jimson weed, and hemlock."

"Isn't that poison?"

"Half the stuff I handle is."

"Aren't you afraid?"

"Terribly," said the Harvester in laughing voice. "But I want the money,
the sick folk need the medicine, and I drink water."

The Girl laughed also.

"Look here!" said the Harvester. "Why not tell me just as closely as
you can about your aunt, and let me fix something for her; or if you are
afraid to trust me, let me have my friend of whom I spoke yesterday."

"Perhaps I am not so much afraid as I was," said the Girl. "I wish I
could! How could I explain where I got it and I wonder if she would take
it."

"Give it to her without any explanation," said the Harvester. "Tell her
it will make her stronger and she must use it. Tell me exactly how she
is, and I will fix up some harmless remedies that may help, and can do
no harm."

"She simply has been neglected, overworked, and abused until she has
lain down, turned her face to the wall, and given up hope. I think it is
too late. I think the end will come soon. But I wish you would try. I'll
gladly pay----"

"Don't!" said the Harvester. "Not for things that grow in the woods and
that I prepare. Don't think of money every minute."

"I must," she said with forced restraint. "It is the price of life.
Without it one suffers----horribly----as I know. What other plants do
you gather?"

"Saffron," answered the Harvester. "A beautiful thing! You must see it.
Tall, round stems, lacy, delicate leaves, big heads of bright yellow
bloom, touched with colour so dark it appears black--one of the
loveliest plants that grows. You should see my big bed of it in a week
or two more. It makes a picture."

The words recalled him to the Girl. He turned to study her. He forgot
his commission and chafed at conventions that prevented his doing what
he saw was required so urgently. Fearing she would notice, he gazed away
through the forest and tried to think, to plan.

"You are not making noise enough," she said.

So absorbed was the Harvester he scarcely heard her. In an attempt to
obey he began to whistle softly. A tiny goldfinch in a nest of thistle
down and plant fibre in the branching of a bush ten feet above him stuck
her head over the brim and inquired, "P'tseet?" "Pt'see!" answer the
Harvester. That began the duet. Before the question had been asked and
answered a half dozen times a catbird intruded its voice and hearing a
reply came through the bushes to investigate. A wren followed and became
very saucy. From----one could not see where, came a vireo, and almost at
the same time a chewink had something to say.

Instantly the Harvester answered. Then a blue jay came chattering to
ascertain what all the fuss was about, and the Harvester carried on
a conversation that called up the remainder of the feathered tribe. A
brilliant cardinal came tearing through the thicket, his beady black
eyes snapping, and demanded to know if any one were harming his mate,
brooding under a wild grape leaf in a scrub elm on the river embankment.
A brown thrush silently slipped like a snake between shrubs and trees,
and catching the universal excitement, began to flirt his tail and utter
a weird, whistling cry.

With one eye on the bird, and the other on the Girl sitting in amazed
silence, the Harvester began working for effect. He lay quietly, but in
turn he answered a dozen birds so accurately they thought their mates
were calling, and closer and closer they came. An oriole in orange and
black heard his challenge, and flew up the river bank, answering
at steady intervals for quite a time before it was visible, and in
resorting to the last notes he could think of a quail whistled "Bob
White" and a shitepoke, skulking along the river bank, stopped and
cried, "Cowk, cowk!"

At his limit of calls the Harvester changed his notes and whistled and
cried bits of bird talk in tone with every mellow accent and inflection
he could manage. Gradually the excitement subsided, the birds flew and
tilted closer, turned their sleek heads, peered with bright eyes, and
ventured on and on until the very bravest, the wren and the jay, were
almost in touch. Then, tired of hunting, Belshazzar came racing and the
little feathered people scattered in precipitate flight.

"How do you like that kind of a noise?" inquired the Harvester.

The Girl drew a deep breath.

"Of course you know that was the most exquisite sight I ever saw," she
said. "I never shall forget it. I did not think there were that many
different birds in the whole world. Of all the gaudy colours! And they
came so close you could have reached out and touched them."

"Yes," said the Harvester calmly. "Birds are never afraid of me. At
Medicine Woods, when I call them like that, many, most of them, in fact,
eat from my hand. If you ever have looked at me enough to notice bulgy
pockets, they are full of wheat. These birds are strangers, but I'll
wager you that in a week I can make them take food from me. Of course,
my own birds know me, because they are around every day. It is much
easier to tame them in winter, when the snow has fallen and food is
scarce, but it only takes a little while to win a bird's confidence at
any season."

"Birds don't know what there is to be afraid of," she said.

"Your pardon," said the Harvester, "but I am familiar with them, and
that is not correct. They have more to fear than human beings. No one is
going to kill you merely to see if he can shoot straight enough to hit.
Your life is not in danger because you have magnificent hair that some
woman would like for an ornament. You will not be stricken out in a
flash because there are a few bits of meat on your frame some one
wants to eat. No one will set a seductive trap for you, and, if you are
tempted to enter it, shut you from freedom and natural diet, in a cage
so small you can't turn around without touching bars. You are in a
secure and free position compared with the birds. I also have observed
that they know guns, many forms of traps, and all of them decide by the
mere manner of a man's passing through the woods whether he is a friend
or an enemy. Birds know more than many people realize. They do not
always correctly estimate gun range, they are foolishly venturesome
at times when they want food, but they know many more things than most
people give them credit for understanding. The greatest trouble with the
birds is they are too willing to trust us and be friendly, so they are
often deceived."

"That sounds as if you were right," said the Girl.

"I am of the woods, so I know I am," answered the Harvester.

"Will you look at this now?"

He examined the drawing closely.

"Where did you learn?" he inquired.

"My mother. She was educated to her finger tips. She drew, painted,
played beautifully, sang well, and she had read almost all the best
books. Besides what I learned at high school she taught me all I know.
Her embroidery always brought higher prices than mine, try as I might. I
never saw any one else make such a dainty, accurate little stitch as she
could."

"If this is not perfect, I don't know how to criticise it. I can and
will use it in my work. But I have one luna cocoon remaining and I would
give ten dollars for such a drawing of the moth before it flies. It may
open to-night or not for several days. If your aunt should be worse
and you cannot come to-morrow and the moth emerges, is there any way in
which I could send it to you?"

"What could I do with it?"

"I thought perhaps you could take a piece of paper and the pencils with
you, and secure an outline in your room. It need not be worked up with
all the detail in this. Merely a skeleton sketch would do. Could I leave
it at the house or send it with some one?"

"No! Oh no!" she cried. "Leave it here. Put it in a box in the bushes
where I hid the books. What are you going to do with these things?"

"Hide them in the thicket and scatter leaves over them."

"What if it rains?"

"I have thought of that. I brought a few yards of oilcloth to-day and
they will be safe and dry if it pours."

"Good!" she said. "Then if the moth comes out you bring it, and if I
am not here, put it under the cloth and I will run up some time in the
afternoon. But if I were you, I would not spread the rug until you know
if I can remain. I have to steal every minute I am away, and any day
uncle takes a notion to stay at home I dare not come."

"Try to come to-morrow. I am going to bring some medicine for your
aunt."

"Put it under the cloth if I am not here; but I will come if I can. I
must go now; I have been away far too long."

The Harvester picked up one of the drug pamphlets, laid the drawing
inside it, and placed it with his other books. Then he drew out his
pocket book and laid a five-dollar bill on the table and began folding
up the chair and putting away the things. The Girl looked at the money
with eager eyes.

"Is that honestly what you would pay at the arts and crafts place?"

"It is the customary price for my patterns."

"And are you sure this is as good?"

"I can bring you some I have paid that for, and let you see for yourself
that it is better."

"I wish you would!" she cried eagerly. "I need that money, and I would
like to have it dearly, if I really have earned it, but I can't touch it
if I have not."

"Won't you accept my word?"

"No. I will see the other drawings first, and if I think mine are as
good, I will be glad to take the money to-morrow."

"What if you can't come?"

"Put them under the oilcloth. I watch all the time and I think Uncle
Henry has trained even the boys so they don't play in the river on
his land. I never see a soul here; the woods, house, and everything is
desolate until he comes home and then it is like----" she paused.

"I'll say it for you," said the Harvester promptly. "Then it is like
hell."

"At its worst," supplemented the Girl. Taking pencils and a sheet of
paper she went swiftly through the woods. Before she left the shelter
of the trees, the Harvester saw her busy her hands with the front of
her dress, and he knew that she was concealing the drawing material. The
colour box was left, and he said things as he put it with the chair and
table, covered them with the rug and oilcloth, and heaped on a layer of
leaves.

Then he drove to the city and Betsy turned at the hospital corner
with no interference. He could face his friend that day. Despite
all discouragements he felt reassured. He was progressing. Means of
communication had been established. If she did not come, he could leave
a note and tell her if the moth had not emerged and how sorry he was to
have missed seeing her.

"Hello, lover!" cried Doctor Carey as the Harvester entered the office.
"Are you married yet?"

"No. But I'm going to be," said the Harvester with confidence.

"Have you asked her?"

"No. We are getting acquainted. She is too close to trouble, too ill,
and too worried over a sick relative for me to intrude myself; it would
be brutal, but it's a temptation. Doc, is there any way to compel a man
to provide medical care for his wife?"

"Can he afford it?"

"Amply. Anything! Worth thousands in land and nobody knows what in
money. It's Henry Jameson."

"The meanest man I ever knew. If he has a wife it's a marvel she has
survived this long. Won't he provide for her?"

"I suppose he thinks he has when she has a bed to lie on and a roof to
cover her. He won't supply food she can eat and medicine. He says she is
lazy."

"What do you think?"

"I quote Miss Jameson. She says her aunt is slowly dying from overwork
and neglect."

"David, doesn't it seem pretty good, when you say 'Miss Jameson'?"

"Loveliest sound on earth, except the remainder of it."

"What's that?"

"Ruth!"

"Jove! That is a beautiful name. Ruth Langston. It will go well, won't
it?"

"Music that the birds, insects, Singing Water, the trees, and the breeze
can't ever equal. I'm holding on with all my might, but it's tough, Doc.
She's in such a dreadful place and position, and she needs so much. She
is sick. Can't you give me a prescription for each of them?"

"You just bet I can," said the doctor, "if you can engineer their taking
them."

"I suppose you'd hold their noses and pour stuff down them."

"I would if necessary."

"Well, it is."

"All right----I'll fix something, and you see that they use it."

"I can try," said the Harvester.

"Try! Pah! You aren't half a man!"

"That's a half more than being a woman, anyway."

"She called you feminine, did she?" cried the doctor, dancing and
laughing. "She ought to see you harvesting skunk cabbage and blue flag
or when you are angry enough."

The doctor left the room and it was a half hour before he returned.

"Try that on them according to directions," he said, handing over a
couple of bottles.

"Thank you!" said the Harvester, "I will!"

"That sounds manly enough."

"Oh pother! It's not that I'm not a man, or a laggard in love; but I'd
like to know what you'd do to a girl dumb with grief over the recent
loss of her mother, who was her only relative worth counting, sick from
God knows what exposure and privation, and now a dying relative on her
hands. What could you do?"

"I'd marry her and pick her out of it!"

"I wouldn't have her, if she'd leave a sick woman for me!"

"I wouldn't either. She's got to stick it out until her aunt grows
better, and then I'll go out there and show you how to court a girl."

"I guess not! You keep the girl you did court, courted, and you'll have
your hands full. How does that appear to you?"

The Harvester opened the pamphlet he carried and held up the drawing of
the moth.

The doctor turned to the light.

"Good work!" he cried. "Did she do that?"

"She did. In a little over an hour."

"Fine! She should have a chance."

"She is going to. She is going to have all the opportunity that is
coming to her."

"Good for you, David! Any time I can help!"

The Harvester replaced the sketch and went to the wagon; but he left
Belshazzar in charge, and visited the largest dry goods store in
Onabasha, where he held a conference with the floor walker. When he came
out he carried a heaping load of boxes of every size and shape, with a
label on each. He drove to Medicine Woods singing and whistling.

"She didn't want me to go, Belshazzar!" he chuckled to the dog. "She was
more afraid of a cow than she was of me. I made some headway to-day, old
boy. She doesn't seem to have a ray of an idea what I am there for, but
she is going to trust me soon now; that is written in the books. Oh I
hope she will be there to-morrow, and the luna will be out. Got half a
notion to take the case and lay it in the warmest place I can find.
But if it comes out and she isn't there, I'll be sorry. Better trust to
luck."

The Harvester stabled Betsy, fed the stock, and visited with the birds.
After supper he took his purchases and entered her room. He opened the
drawers of the chest he had made, and selecting the labelled boxes he
laid them in. But not a package did he open. Then he arose and radiated
conceit of himself.

"I'll wager she will like those," he commented proudly, "because Kane
promised me fairly that he would have the right things put up for a girl
the size of the clerk I selected for him, and exactly what Ruth should
have. That girl was slenderer and not quite so tall, but he said
everything was made long on purpose. Now what else should I get?"

He turned to the dressing table and taking a notebook from his pocket
made this list:

     Rugs for bed and bath room.
     Mattresses, pillows and bedding,
     Dresses for all occasions.
     All kinds of shoes and overshoes.


"There are gloves, too!" exclaimed the Harvester. "She has to have some,
but how am I going to know what is right? Oh, but she needs shoes!
High, low, slippers, everything! I wonder what that clerk wears. I don't
believe shoes would be comfortable without being fitted, or at least the
proper size. I wonder what kind of dresses she likes. I hope she's fond
of white. A woman always appears loveliest in that. Maybe I'd better buy
what I'm sure of and let her select the dresses. But I'd love to have
this room crammed with girl-fixings when she comes. Doesn't seem as
if she ever has had any little luxuries. I can't miss it on anything a
woman uses. Let me think!"

Slowly he wrote again:

          Parasols.
          Fans.
          Veils.
          Hats.


"I never can get them! I think that will keep me busy for a few days,"
said the Harvester as he closed the door softly, and went to look at
the pupae cases. Then he carved on the vine of the candlestick for her
dressing table; with one arm around Belshazzar, re-read the story of
John Muir's dog, went into the lake, and to bed. Just as he was becoming
unconscious the beast lifted an inquiring head and gazed at the man.

"More 'fraid of cow," the Harvester was muttering in a sleepy chuckle.



CHAPTER XI. DEMONSTRATED COURTSHIP

When the Harvester saw the Girl coming toward the woods, he spread the
rug, opened and placed the table and chair, laid out the colour box, and
another containing the last luna.

"Did the green one come out?" she asked, touching the box lightly.

"It did!" said the Harvester proudly, as if he were responsible for the
performance. "It is an omen! It means that I am to have my long-coveted
pattern for my best candlestick. It also clearly indicates that the
gods of luck are with me for the day, and I get my way about everything.
There won't be the least use in your asking 'why' or interposing
objections. This is my clean sweep. I shall be fearfully dictatorial and
you must submit, because the fates have pointed out that they favour
me to-day, and if you go contrary to their decrees you will have a bad
time."

The Girl's smile was a little wan. She sank on a chair and picked up a
pencil.

"Lay that down!" cried the Harvester. "You haven't had permission from
the Dictator to begin drawing. You are to sit and rest a long time."

"Please may I speak?" asked the Girl.

The Harvester grew foolishly happy. Was she really going to play the
game? Of course he had hoped, but it was a hope without any foundation.

"You may," he said soberly.

"I am afraid that if you don't allow me to draw the moth at once, I'll
never get it done. I dislike to mention it on your good day, but Aunt
Molly is very restless. I got a neighbour's little girl to watch her and
call me if I'm wanted. It's quite certain that I must go soon, so if you
would like the moth----"

"When luck is coming your way, never hurry it! You always upset the bowl
if you grow greedy and crowd. If it is a gamble whether I get this moth,
I'll take the chance; but I won't change my foreordained programme for
this afternoon. First, you are to sit still ten minutes, shut your eyes,
and rest. I can't sing, but I can whistle, and I'm going to entertain
you so you won't feel alone. Ready now!"

The Girl leaned her elbows on the table, closed her eyes, and pressed
her slender white hands over them.

"Please don't call the birds," she said. "I can't rest if you do. It was
so exciting trying to see all of them and guess what they were saying."

"No," said the Harvester gently. "This ten minutes is for relaxation,
you know. You ease every muscle, sink limply on your chair, lean on the
table, let go all over, and don't think. Just listen to me. I assure you
it's going to be perfectly lovely."

Watching intently he saw the strained muscles relaxing at his suggestion
and caught the smile over the last words as he slid into a soft whistle.
It was an easy, slow, old-fashioned tune, carrying along gently, with
neither heights nor depths, just monotonous, sleepy, soothing notes,
that went on and on with a little ripple of change at times, only to
return to the theme, until at last the Girl lifted her head.

"It's away past ten minutes," she said, "but that was a real rest.
Truly, I am better prepared for work."

"Broke the rule, too!" said the Harvester. "It was, for me to say when
time was up. Can't you allow me to have my way for ten minutes?"

"I am so anxious to see and draw this moth," she answered. "And first of
all you promised to bring the drawings you have been using."

"Now where does my programme come in?" inquired the Harvester. "You are
spoiling everything, and I refuse to have my lucky day interfered with;
therefore we will ignore the suggestion until we arrive at the place
where it is proper. Next thing is refreshments."

He arose and coming over cleared the table. Then he spread on it a paper
tray cloth with a gay border, and going into the thicket brought out
a box and a big bucket containing a jug packed in ice. The Girl's eyes
widened. She reached down, caught up a piece, and holding it to drip a
second started to put it in her mouth.

"Drop that!" commanded the Harvester. "That's a very unhealthful
proceeding. Wait a minute."

From one end of the box he produced a tin of wafers and from the other
a plate. Then he dug into the ice and lifted several different varieties
of chilled fruit. From the jug he poured a combination that he made of
the juices of oranges, pineapples, and lemons. He set the glass, rapidly
frosting in the heat, and the fruit before the Girl.

"Now!" he said.

For one instant she stared at the table. Then she looked at him and in
the depths of her dark eyes was an appeal he never forgot.

"I made that drink myself, so it's all right," he assured her. "There's
a pretty stiff touch of pineapple in it, and it cuts the cobwebs on a
hot day. Please try it!"

"I can't!" cried the Girl with a half-sob. "Think of Aunt Molly!"

"Are you fond of her?"

"No. I never saw her until a few weeks ago. Since then I've seen nothing
save her poor, tired back. She lies in a heap facing the wall. But if
she could have things like these, she needn't suffer. And if my mother
could have had them she would be living to-day. Oh Man, I can't touch
this."

"I see," said the Harvester.

He reached over, picked up the glass, and poured its contents into the
jug. He repacked the fruit and closed the wafer box. Then he made a trip
to the thicket and came out putting something into his pocket.

"Come on!" he said. "We are going to the house."

She stared at him.

"I simply don't dare."

"Then I will go alone," said the Harvester, picking up the bucket and
starting.

The Girl followed him.

"Uncle Henry may come any minute," she urged.

"Well if he comes and acts unpleasantly, he will get what he richly
deserves."

"And he will make me pay for it afterward."

"Oh no he won't!" said the Harvester, "because I'll look out for that.
This is my lucky day. He isn't going to come."

When he reached the back door he opened it and stepped inside. Of all
the barren places of crude, disheartening ugliness the Harvester ever
had seen, that was the worst.

"I want a glass and a spoon," he said.

The Girl brought them.

"Where is she?"

"In the next room."

At the sound of their voices a small girl came to the kitchen door.

"How do you do?" inquired the Harvester. "Is Mrs. Jameson asleep?"

"I don't know," answered the child. "She just lies there."

The Harvester gave her the glass. "Please fill that with water," he
said. Then he picked up the bucket and went into the front room. When
the child came with the water he took a bottle from his pocket, filled
the spoon, and handed it to her.

"Hold that steadily," he said.

Then he slid his strong hands under the light frame and turned the face
of the faded little creature toward him.

"I am a Medicine Man, Mrs. Jameson," he said casually. "I heard you were
sick and I came to see if a little of this stuff wouldn't brace you up.
Open your lips."

He held out the spoon and the amazed woman swallowed the contents before
she realized what she was doing. Then the Harvester ran a hand under
her shoulders and lifting her gently he tossed her pillow with the other
hand.

"You are a light little body, just like my mother," he commented. "Now I
have something else sick people sometimes enjoy."

He held the fruit juice to her lips as he slightly raised her on the
pillow. Her trembling fingers lifted and closed around the sparkling
glass.

"Oh it's cool!" she gasped.

"It is," said the Harvester, "and sour! I think you can taste it. Try!"

She drank so greedily he drew away the glass and urged caution, but the
shaking fingers clung to him and the wavering voice begged for more.

"In a minute," said the Harvester gently. But the fevered woman would
not wait. She drank the cooling liquid until she could take no more.
Then she watched him fill a small pitcher and pack it in a part of the
ice and lay some fruit around it.

"Who, Ruth?" she panted.

"A Medicine Man who heard about you."

"What will Henry say?"

"He won't know," explained the Girl, smoothing the hot forehead. "I'll
put it in the cupboard, and slip it to you while he is out of the room.
It will make you strong and well."

"I don't want to be strong and well and suffer it all over again. I want
to rest. Give me more of the cool drink. Give me all I want, then I'll
go to sleep."

"It's wonderful," said the Girl. "That's more than I've heard her talk
since I came. She is much stronger. Please let her have it."

The Harvester assented. He gave the child some of the fruit, and told
her to sit beside the bed and hold the drink when it was asked for. She
agreed to be very careful and watchful. Then he picked up the bucket,
and followed by the Girl, returned to the woods.

"Now we have to begin all over again," he said, as she seated herself at
the table. "Because of the walk in the heat, this time the programme is
a little different."

He replaced the wafer box and opened it, filled the glass, and heaped
the cold fruit.

"Your aunt is going to have a refreshing sleep now," he said, "and
your mind can be free about her for an hour or two. I am very sure your
mother would not want you deprived of anything because she missed it, so
you are to enjoy this, if you care for it. At least try a sample."

The Girl lifted the glass to her lips with a trembling hand.

"I'm like Aunt Molly," she said; "I wish I could drink all I could
swallow, and then lie down and go to sleep forever. I suppose this is
what they have in Heaven."

"No, it's what they drink all over earth at present, but I have a
conceit of my own brand. Some of it is too strong of one fruit or of the
other, and all too sweet for health. This is compounded scientifically
and it's just right. If you are not accustomed to cold drinks, go
slowly."

"You can't scare me," said the Girl; "I'm going to drink all I want."

There was a note of excitement in the Harvester's laugh.

"You must have some, too!"

"After a while," he said. "I was thirsty when I made it, so I don't care
for any more now. Try the fruit and those wafers. Of course they are not
home made--they are the best I could do at a bakery. Take time enough to
eat slowly. I'm going to tell you a tale while you lunch, and it's about
a Medicine Man named David Langston. It's a very peculiar story,
but it's quite true. This man lives in the woods east of Onabasha,
accompanied by his dog, horse, cow, and chickens, and a forest full of
birds, flowers, and matchless trees. He has lived there in this manner
for six long years, and every spring he and his dog have a seance and
agree whether he shall go on gathering medicinal herbs and trying his
hand at making medicine or go to the city and live as other men. Always
the dog chooses to remain in the woods.

"Then every spring, on the day the first bluebird comes, the dog also
decides whether the man shall go on alone or find a mate and bring her
home for company. Each year the dog regularly has decided that they live
as always. This spring, for some unforeseen reason, he changed his mind,
and compelled the man, according to his vow in the beginning, to go
courting. The man was so very angry at the idea of having a woman in
his home, interfering with his work, disturbing his arrangements, and
perhaps wanting to spend more money than he could afford, that he struck
the dog for making that decision; struck him for the very first time in
his life----I believe you'd like those apricots. Please try one."

"Go on with the story," said the Girl, sipping delicately but constantly
at the frosty glass.

The Harvester arose and refilled it. Then he dropped pieces of ice over
the fruit.

"Where was I?" he inquired casually.

"Where you struck Belshazzar, and it's no wonder," answered the Girl.

Without taking time to ponder that, the Harvester continued:

"But that night the man had a wonderful, golden dream. A beautiful girl
came to him, and she was so gracious and lovely that he was sufficiently
punished for striking his dog, because he fell unalterably in love with
her."

"Meaning you?" interrupted the Girl.

"Yes," said the Harvester, "meaning me. I----if you like----fell in love
with the girl. She came so alluringly, and I was so close to her that
I saw her better than I ever did any other girl, and I knew her for all
time. When she went, my heart was gone."

"And you have lived without that important organ ever since?"

"Without even the ghost of it! She took it with her. Well, that dream
was so real, that the next day I began building over my house, making
furniture, and planting flowers for her; and every day, wherever I went,
I watched for her."

"What nonsense!"

"I can't see it."

"You won't find a girl you dreamed about in a thousand years."

"Wrong!" cried the Harvester triumphantly. "Saw her in little less than
three months, but she vanished and it took some time and difficult work
before I located her again; but I've got her all solid now, and she
doesn't escape."

"Is she a 'lovely and gracious lady'?"

"She is!" said the Harvester, with all his heart.

"Young and beautiful, of course!"

"Indeed yes!"

"Please fill this glass. I told you what I was going to do."

The Harvester refilled the glass and the Girl drained it.

"Now won't you set aside these things and allow me to go to work?" she
asked. "My call may come any minute, and I'll never forgive myself if I
waste time, and don't draw your moth pattern for you."

"It's against my principles to hurry, and besides, my story isn't
finished."

"It is," said the Girl. "She is young and lovely, gentle and a lady, you
have her 'all solid,' and she can't 'escape'; that's the end, of course.
But if I were you, I wouldn't have her until I gave her a chance to get
away, and saw whether she would if she could."

"Oh I am not a jailer," said the Harvester. "She shall be free if I
cannot make her love me; but I can, and I will; I swear it."

"You are not truly in earnest?"

"I am in deadly earnest."

"Honestly, you dreamed about a girl, and found the very one?"

"Most certainly, I did."

"It sounds like the wildest romancing."

"It is the veriest reality."

"Well I hope you win her, and that she will be everything you desire."

"Thank you," said the Harvester. "It's written in the book of fate
that I succeed. The very elements are with me. The South Wind carried
a message to her for me. I am going to marry her, but you could make it
much easier for me if you would."

"I! What could I do?" cried the Girl.

"You could cease being afraid of me. You could learn to trust me. You
could try to like me, if you see anything likeable about me. That would
encourage me so that I could tell you of my Dream Girl, and then you
could show me how to win her. A woman always knows about those things
better than a man. You could be the greatest help in all the world to
me, if only you would."

"I couldn't possibly! I can't leave here. I have no proper clothing to
appear before another girl. She would be shocked at my white face. That
I could help you is the most improbable dream you have had."

"You must pardon me if I differ from you, and persist in thinking that
you can be of invaluable assistance to me, if you will. But you can't
influence my Dream Girl, if you fear and distrust me yourself. Promise
me that you will help me that much, anyway."

"I'll do all I can. I only want to make you see that I am in no position
to grant any favours, no matter how much I owe you or how I'd like to.
Is the candlestick you are carving for her?"

"It is," said the Harvester. "I am making a pair of maple to stand on a
dressing table I built for her. It is unusually beautiful wood, I think,
and I hope she will be pleased with it."

"Please take these things away and let me begin. This is the only thing
I can see that I can do for you, and the moth will want to fly before I
have finished."

The Harvester cleared the table and placed the box, while the Girl
spread the paper and began work eagerly.

"I wonder if I knew there were such exquisite things in all the world,"
she said. "I scarcely think I did. I am beginning to understand why you
couldn't kill one. You could make a chair or a table, and so you feel
free to destroy them; but it takes ages and Almighty wisdom to evolve a
creature like this, so you don't dare. I think no one else would if they
really knew. Please talk while I work."

"Is there a particular subject you want discussed?"

"Anything but her. If I think too strongly of her, I can't work so
well."

"Your ginseng is almost dry," said the Harvester. "I think I can bring
you the money in a few days."

"So soon!" she cried.

"It dries day and night in an even temperature, and faster than you
would believe. There's going to be between seven and eight pounds of
it, when I make up what it has shrunk. It will go under the head of the
finest wild roots. I can get eight for it sure."

"Oh what good news!" cried the Girl. "This is my lucky day, too. And the
little girl isn't coming, so Aunt Molly must be asleep. Everything goes
right! If only Uncle Henry wouldn't come home!"

"Let me fill your glass," proffered the Harvester.

"Just half way, and set it where I can see it," said the Girl. She
worked with swift strokes and there was a hint of colour in her face, as
she looked at him. "I hope you won't think I'm greedy," she said, "but
truly, that's the first thing I've had that I could taste in----I can't
remember when."

"I'll bring a barrel to-morrow," offered the Harvester, "and a big piece
of ice wrapped in coffee sacking."

"You mustn't think of such a thing! Ice is expensive and so are fruits."

"Ice costs me the time required to saw and pack it at my home. I almost
live on the fruit I raise. I confess to a fondness for this drink. I
have no other personal expenses, unless you count in books, and a very
few clothes, such as I'm wearing; so I surely can afford all the fruit
juice I want."

"For yourself, yes."

"Also for a couple of women or I am a mighty poor attempt at a man,"
said the Harvester. "This is my day, so you are not to talk, because it
won't do any good. Things go my way."

"Please see what you think of this," she said.

The Harvester arose and bent over her.

"That will do finely," he answered. "You can stop. I don't require all
those little details for carving, I just want a good outline. It is
finished. See here!"

He drew some folded papers from his pocket and laid them before her.

"Those are what I have been working from," he said.

The Girl took them and studied each carefully.

"If those are worth five dollars to you," she said gently, "why then I
needn't hesitate to take as much for mine. They are superior."

"I should say so," laughed the Harvester as he took up the drawing and
laid down the money.

"If you would make it half that much I'd feel better about it," she
said.

"How could I?" asked the Harvester. "Your fingers are well trained and
extremely skilful. Because some one has not been paying you enough for
your work is no reason why I should keep it up. From now on you must
have what others get. As soon as you can arrange for work, I want to
tell you about some designs I have studied out from different things,
show you the plants and insects, and have you make some samples. I'll
send them to proper places, and see what experts say about the ideas and
drawing. Work in the woods is healthful, with proper precautions;
it's easy compared with the exactions of being bound to sewing or
embroidering in the confinement of a room; it's vividly interesting
in the search for new subjects, changes of material, and differing
harmonious combinations; it's truly artistic; and it brings the prices
high grade stuff always does."

"Almost you give me hope," said the Girl. "Almost, Man----almost! Since
mother died, I haven't thought or planned beyond paying for the medicine
she took and the shelter she lies in. Oh I didn't mean to say that----!"

She buried her face in her hands. The Harvester suffered until he
scarcely knew how to bear it.

"Please finish," he begged. "You hadn't planned beyond the debt, you
were saying----"

The Girl lifted her tired, strained face.

"Give me a little more of that delicious drink," she said. "I am
ravenous for it. It puts new life in me. This and what you say bring a
far away, misty vision of a clean, bright, peaceful room somewhere, and
work one could love and live on in comfort; enough to give a desire to
finish life to its natural end. Oh Man, you make me hope in spite of
myself!"

"'Praise God from whom all blessings flow;'" quoted the Harvester
reverently. "Now try one of these peaches. It's juicy and cold. Get that
room right in focus in your brain, and nurture the idea. Its walls shall
be bright as sunshine, its floor creamy white, and it shall open into a
little garden, where only yellow flowers grow, and the birds shall sing.
The first ray of sun that peeps over the hills of morning shall fall
through its windows across your bed, and you shall work only as you
please, after you've had months of play and rest; and it's coming true
the instant you can leave here. Dream of it, make up your mind to it,
because it's coming. I have a little streak of second sight, and I see
it on the way."

"You are talking wildly," said the Girl, "else you are a good genie
trying to conjure a room for me."

"This room I am talking of is ready whenever you want to take
possession," said the Harvester. "Accept it as a reality, because I tell
you I know where it is, that it is waiting, and you can earn your way
into it with no obligation to any one."

The Girl stretched out her right hand and slowly turned and opened and
closed it. Then she glanced at the Harvester with a weary smile.

"From somewhere I feel a glimmering of the spirit, but Oh, dear Lord,
the flesh is weak!" she said.

"That's where nourishing foods, appetizing drinks, plenty of pure, fresh
air, and good water come in. Now we have talked enough for one day, and
worked too much. The fruit and drink go with you. I will carry it to the
house, and you can hide it in your room. I am going to put a bottle of
tonic on top that the best surgeon in the state gave me for you. Try to
eat something strengthening and then take a spoonful of this, and use
all the fruit you want. I'll bring more to-morrow and put it here, with
plenty of ice. Now suppose you let the moth go free," he suggested to
avoid objections. "You must take my word for it, that it is perfectly
harmless, lacking either sting or bite, and hold your hand before it, so
that it will climb on your fingers. Then stand where a ray of sunshine
falls and in a few minutes it will go out to live its life."

The Girl hesitated a second as she studied the clean-cut, interested
face of the man; then she held out her hand, and he urged the moth to
climb on her fingers. She stepped where a ray of strong light fell on
the forest floor and held the moth in it. The brightness also touched
her transparent hand and white face and the gleaming black hair. The
Harvester choked down a rising surge of desire for her, and took a new
grip on himself.

"Oh!" she cried breathlessly, as the clinging feet suddenly loosened and
the luna slowly flew away among the trees. She turned on the Harvester.
"You teach me wonders!" she cried. "You give life different meanings.
You are not as other men."

"If that be true, it is because I am of the woods. The Almighty does not
evolve all his wonders in animal, bird, and flower form; He keeps some
to work out in the heart, if humanity only will go to His school, and
allow Him to have dominion. Come now, you must go. I will come back and
put away all the things and tomorrow I will bring your ginseng money.
Any time you cannot come, if you want to tell me why, or if there is
anything I can do for you, put a line under the oilcloth. I will carry
the bucket."

"I am so afraid," she said.

"I will only go to the edge of the woods. You can see if there is any
one at the house first. If not, you can send the child away, and then I
will carry the bucket to the door for you, and it will furnish comfort
for one night, at least."

They went to the cleared land and the Girl passed on alone. Soon she
reappeared and the Harvester saw the child going down the road. He took
up the bucket and set it inside the door.

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Nothing but go, before you make trouble."

"Will you hide that stuff and walk back as far as the woods with me?
There is something more I want to say to you."

The Girl staggered under the heavy load, and the man turned his head and
tried to pretend he did not see. Presently she came out to him, and they
returned to the line of the woods. Just as they entered the shade there
was a flash before them, and on a twig a few rods away a little gray
bird alighted, while in precipitate pursuit came a flaming wonder of
red, and in a burst of excited trills, broken whistles, and imploring
gestures, perched beside her.

The Harvester hastily drew the Girl behind some bushes.

"Watch!" he whispered. "You are going to see a sight so lovely and so
rare it is vouchsafed to few mortals ever to behold."

"What are they fighting about?" she whispered.

"You are witnessing a cardinal bird declare his love," breathed the
Harvester.

"Do cardinals love different birds?"

"No. The female is gray, because if she is coloured the same as the
trees and branches and her nest, she will have more chance to bring off
her young in safety. He is blood red, because he is the bravest, gayest,
most ardent lover of the whole woods," explained the Harvester.

The Girl leaned forward breathlessly watching and a slow surge of colour
crept into her cheeks. The red bird twisted, whistled, rocked, tilted,
and trilled, and the gray sat demurely watching him, as if only half
convinced he really meant it. The gay lover began at the beginning and
said it all over again with more impassioned gestures than before, and
then he edged in touch and softly stroked her wing with his beak.
She appeared startled, but did not fly. So again the fountain of
half-whistled, half-trilled notes bubbled with the acme of pleading
intonation and that time he leaned and softly kissed her as she reached
her bill for the caress. Then she fled in headlong flight, while the
streak of flame darted after her. The Girl caught her breath in a swift
spasm of surprise and wonder. She turned to the Harvester.

"What was it you wanted to say to me?" she asked hurriedly.

The Harvester was not the man to miss the goods the gods provided. Truly
this was his lucky day. Unhesitatingly he took the plunge.

"Precisely what he said to her. And if you observed closely, you noticed
that she didn't ask him 'why.'"

Before she could open her lips, he was gone, his swift strides carrying
him through the woods.



CHAPTER XII. "THE WAY OF A MAN WITH A MAID"

The next day the Harvester lifted the oilcloth, and picking up a folded
note he read----

"Aunt Molly found rest in the night. She was more comfortable than she
had been since I have known her. Close the end she whispered to me to
thank you if I ever saw you again. She will be buried to-morrow. Past
that, I dare not think."

The Harvester sat on the log and studied the lines. She would not come
that day or the next. After a long time he put the note in his pocket,
wrote an answer telling her he had been there, and would come on the
following day on the chance of her wanting anything he could do, and the
next he would bring the ginseng money, so she must be sure to meet him.

Then he went back to the wagon, turned Betsy, and drove around the
Jameson land watching closely. There were several vehicles in the barn
lot, and a couple of men sitting under the trees of the door yard. Faded
bedding hung on the line and women moved through the rooms, but he could
not see the Girl. Slowly he drove on until he came to the first house,
and there he stopped and went in. He saw the child of the previous day,
and as she came forward her mother appeared in the doorway.

The Harvester explained who he was and that he was examining the woods
in search of some almost extinct herbs he needed in his business.
Then he told of having been at the adjoining farm the day before and
mentioned the sick woman. He added that later she had died. He casually
mentioned that a young woman there seemed pale and ill and wondered
if the neighbours would see her through. He suggested that the place
appeared as if the owner did not take much interest, and when the woman
finished with Henry Jameson, he said how very important it seemed to him
that some good, kind-hearted soul should go and mother the poor girl,
and the woman thought she was the very person. Without knowing exactly
how he did it, the Harvester left with her promise to remain with the
Girl the coming two nights. The woman had her hands full of strange and
delicious fruit without understanding why it had been given her, or why
she had made those promises. She thought the Harvester a remarkably fine
young man to take such interest in strangers and she told him he was
welcome to anything he could find on her place that would help with his
medicines.

The Harvester just happened to be coming from the woods as the woman
freshly dressed left the house, so he took her in the wagon and drove
back to the Jameson place, because he was going that way. Then he
returned to Medicine Woods and worked with all his might.

First he polished floors, cleaned windows, and arranged the rooms
as best he could inside the cabin; then he gave a finishing touch to
everything outside. He could not have told why he did it, but he thought
it was because there was hope that now the Girl would come to Onabasha.
If he found opportunity to bring her to the city, he hoped that possibly
he might drive home with her and show Medicine Woods, so everything
must be in order. Then he worked with flying fingers in the dry-house,
putting up her ginseng for market, and never was weight so liberal.

The next morning he drove early to Onabasha and came home with a loaded
wagon, the contents of which he scattered through the cabin where it
seemed most suitable, but the greater part of it was for her. He glanced
at the bare floors and walls of the other rooms, and thought of trying
to improve them, but he was afraid of not getting the right things.

"I don't know much about what is needed here," he said, "but I am
perfectly safe in buying anything a girl ever used."

Then he returned to the city, explained the situation to the doctor, and
selected the room he wanted in case the Girl could be persuaded to come
to the hospital. After that he went to see the doctor's wife, and
made arrangements for her to be ready for a guest, because there was a
possibility he might want to call for help. He had another jug of fruit
juice and all the delicacies he could think of, also a big cake of ice,
when he reached the woods. There were only a few words for him.

"I will come to-morrow at two, if at all possible; if not, keep the
money until I can."

There was nothing to do except to place his offering under the oilcloth
and wait, but he simply was compelled to add a line to say he would be
there, and to express the hope that she was comfortable as possible and
thinking of the sunshine room. Then he returned to Medicine Woods to
wait, and found that possible only by working to exhaustion. There were
many things he could do, and one after another he finished them, until
completely worn out; and then he slept the deep sleep of weariness.

At noon the next day he bathed, shaved, and dressed in fresh, clean
clothing. He stopped in Onabasha for more fruit, and drove to the
Jameson woods. He was waiting and watching the usual path the Girl
followed, when her step sounded on the other side. The Harvester arose
and turned. Her pallor was alarming. She stepped on the rug he had
spread, and sank almost breathless to the chair.

"Why do you come a new way that fills you with fear?" asked the
Harvester.

"It seems as if Uncle Henry is watching me every minute, and I didn't
dare come where he could see. I must not remain a second. You must take
these things away and go at once. He is dreadful."

"So am I," said the Harvester, "when affairs go too everlastingly wrong.
I am not afraid of any man living. What are you planning to do?"

"I want to ask you, are you sure about the prices of my drawing and the
ginseng?"

"Absolutely," said the Harvester. "As for the ginseng it went in fresh
and early, best wild roots, and it brought eight a pound. There were
eight pounds when I made up weight and here is your money."

He handed her a long envelope addressed to her.

"What is the amount?" she asked.

"Sixty-four dollars."

"I can't believe it."

"You have it in your fingers."

"You know that I would like to thank you properly, if I had words to
express myself."

"Never mind that," said the Harvester. "Tell me what you are planning.
Say that you will come to the hospital for the long, perfect rest now."

"It is absolutely impossible. Don't weary me by mentioning it. I
cannot."

"Will you tell me what you intend doing?"

"I must," she said, "for it depends entirely on your word. I am going
to get Uncle Henry's supper, and then go and remain the night with the
neighbour who has been helping me. In the morning, when he leaves, she
is coming with her wagon for my trunk, and she is going to drive with me
to Onabasha and find me a cheap room and loan me a few things, until I
can buy what I need. I am going to use fourteen dollars of this and my
drawing money for what I am forced to buy, and pay fifty on my debt.
Then I will send you my address and be ready for work."

She clutched the envelope and for the first time looked at him.

"Very well," said the Harvester. "I could take you to the wife of my
best friend, the chief surgeon of the city hospital, and everything
would be ease and rest until you are strong; she would love to have
you."

The Girl dropped her hands wearily.

"Don't tire me with it!" she cried. "I am almost falling despite the
stimulus of food and drink I can touch. I never can thank you properly
for that. I won't be able to work hard enough to show you how much I
appreciate what you have done for me. But you don't understand. A woman,
even a poverty-poor woman, if she be delicately born and reared, cannot
go to another woman on a man's whim, and when she lacks even the barest
necessities. I don't refuse to meet your friends. I shall love to, when
I can be so dressed that I will not shame you. Until that times comes,
if you are the gentleman you appear to be, you will wait without urging
me further."

"I must be a man, in order to be a gentleman," said the Harvester. "And
it is because the man in me is in hot rebellion against more loneliness,
pain, and suffering for you, that the conventions become chains I do not
care how soon or how roughly I break. If only you could be induced to
say the word, I tell you I could bring one of God's gentlest women to
you."

"And probably she would come in a dainty gown, in her carriage or motor,
and be disgusted, astonished, and secretly sorry for you. As for me, I
do not require her pity. I will be glad to know the beautiful, refined,
and gentle woman you are so certain of, but not until I am better
dressed and more attractive in appearance than now. If you will give me
your address, I will write you when I am ready for work."

Silently the Harvester wrote it. "Will you give me permission to take
these things to your neighbour for you?" he asked. "They would serve
until you can do better, and I have no earthly use for them."

She hesitated. Then she laughed shortly.

"What a travesty my efforts at pride are with you!" she cried. "I begin
by trying to preserve some proper dignity, and end by confessing abject
poverty. I yet have the ten you paid me the other day, but twenty-four
dollars are not much to set up housekeeping on, and I would be more glad
than I can say for these very things."

"Thank you," said the Harvester. "I will take them when I go. Is there
anything else?"

"I think not."

"Will you have a drink?"

"Yes, if you have more with you. I believe it is really cooling my
blood."

"Are you taking the medicine?"

"Yes," she said, "and I am stronger. Truly I am. I know I appear ghastly
to you, but it's loss of sleep, and trying to lay away poor Aunt Molly
decently, and----"

"And fear of Uncle Henry," added the Harvester.

"Yes," said the Girl. "That most of all! He thinks I am going to stay
here and take her place. I can't tell him I am not, and how I am to hide
from him when I am gone, I don't know. I am afraid of him."

"Has he any claim on you?"

"Shelter for the past three months."

"Are you of age?"

"I am almost twenty-four," she said.

"Then suppose you leave Uncle Henry to me," suggested the Harvester.

"Why?"

"Careful now! The red bird told you why!" said the man. "I will not
urge it upon you now, but keep it steadily in the back of your head that
there is a sunshine room all ready and waiting for you, and I am going
to take you to it very soon. As things are, I think you might allow me
to tell you----"

She was on her feet in instant panic. "I must go," she said. "Uncle
Henry is dogging me to promise to remain, and I will not, and he is
watching me. I must go----"

"Can you give me your word of honour that you will go to the neighbour
woman to-night; that you feel perfectly safe?"

She hesitated. "Yes, I----I think so. Yes, if he doesn't find out and
grow angry. Yes, I will be safe."

"How soon will you write me?"

"Just as soon as I am settled and rest a little."

"Do you mean several days?"

"Yes, several days."

"An eternity!" cried the Harvester with white lips. "I cannot let you
go. Suppose you fall ill and fail to write me, and I do not know where
you are, and there is no one to care for you."

"But can't you see that I don't know where I will be? If it will satisfy
you, I will write you a line to-morrow night and tell you where I am,
and you can come later."

"Is that a promise?" asked the Harvester.

"It is," said the Girl.

"Then I will take these things to your neighbour and wait until
to-morrow night. You won't fail me?"

"I never in all my life saw a man so wild over designs," said the Girl,
as she started toward the house.

"Don't forget that the design I'm craziest about is the same as the red
bird's," the Harvester flung after her, but she hurried on and made no
reply.

He folded the table and chair, rolled the rug, and shouldering them
picked up the bucket and started down the river bank.

"David!"

Such a faint little call he never would have been sure he heard anything
if Belshazzar had not stopped suddenly. The hair on the back of his neck
arose and he turned with a growl in his throat. The Harvester dropped
his load with a crash and ran in leaping bounds, but the dog was before
him. Half way to the house, Ruth Jameson swayed in the grip of her
uncle. One hand clutched his coat front in a spasmodic grasp, and with
the other she covered her face.

The roar the Harvester sent up stayed the big, lifted fist, and the dog
leaped for a throat hold, and compelled the man to defend himself. The
Harvester never knew how he covered the space until he stood between
them, and saw the Girl draw back and snatch together the front of her
dress.

"He took it from me!" she panted. "Make him, oh make him give back my
money!"

Then for a few seconds things happened too rapidly to record. Once the
Harvester tossed a torn envelope exposing money to the Girl, and again a
revolver, and then both men panting and dishevelled were on their feet.

"Count your money, Ruth?" said the Harvester in a voice of deadly quiet.

"It is all here," said she.

"Her money?" cried Henry Jameson. "My money! She has been stealing the
price of my cattle from my pockets. I thought I was short several times
lately."

"You are lying," said the Harvester deliberately. "It is her money. I
just paid it to her. You were trying to take it from her, not the other
way."

"Oh, she is in your pay?" leered the man.

"If you say an insulting word I think very probably I will finish you,"
said the Harvester. "I can, with my naked hands, and all your neighbours
will say it is a a good job. You have felt my grip! I warn you!"

"How does my niece come to be taking money from you!"

"You have forfeited all right to know. Ruth, you cannot remain here. You
must come with me. I will take you to Onabasha and find you a room."

A horrible laugh broke from the man.

"So that is the end of my saintly niece!" he said.

"Remember!" cried the Harvester advancing a step. "Ruth, will you go to
the rest I suggested for you?"

"I cannot."

"Will you go to Doctor Carey's wife?"

"Impossible!"

"Will you marry me and go to the shelter of my home with me?"

Wild-eyed she stared at him.

"Why?"

"Because I love you, and want life made easier for you, above anything
else on earth."

"But your Dream Girl!"

"YOU ARE THE DREAM GIRL! I thought the red bird told you for me! I
didn't know it would be a shock. I believed I had made you understand."

By that time she was shaking with a nervous chill, and the sight
unmanned the Harvester.

"Come with me!" he urged. "We will decide what you want to do on the
way. Only come, I beg you."

"First it was marry, now it's decide later," broke in Henry Jameson,
crazed with anger. "Move a step and I'll strike you down. I'd better
than see you disgraced----"

The Harvester advanced and Jameson stepped back.

"Ruth," said the Harvester, "I know how impossible this seems. It is
giving you no chance at all. I had intended, when I found you, to court
you tenderly as girl ever was wooed before. Come with me, and I'll do
it yet. The new home was built for you. The sunshine room is ready and
waiting for you. There is pure air, fresh water, nothing but rest and
comfort. I'll nurse you back to health and strength, and you shall be
courted until you come to me of your own accord."

"Impossible!" cried the girl.

"Only if you make it so. If you will come now, we can be married in a
few hours, and you can be safe in your own home. I realize now that
this is unexpected and shocking to you, but if you will come with me and
allow me to restore you to health and strength, and if, say, in a year,
you are convinced that you do not love me, I will set you free. If
you will come, I swear to you that you shall be my wife first, and my
honoured guest afterward, until such time as you either tell me you love
me or that you never can. Will you come on those terms, Ruth?"

"I cannot!"

"It will end fear, uncertainty, and work, until you are strong and well.
It will give you home, rest, and love, that you will find is worth your
consideration. I will keep my word; of that you may be sure."

"No," she cried. "No! But take back this money! Keep it until I tell you
to whom to pay it."

She started toward him holding out the envelope.

Henry Jameson, with a dreadful oath, sprang for it, his contorted face
a drawn snarl. The Harvester caught him in air and sent him reeling. He
snatched the revolver from the Girl and put the money in his pocket.

"Ruth, I can't leave you here," he said. "Oh my Dream Girl! Are you
afraid of me yet? Won't you trust me? Won't you come?"

"No."

"You are right about that, my lady; you will come back to the house,
that's what you'll do," said Henry Jameson, starting toward her.

"No!" cried the Girl retreating. "Oh Heaven help me! What am I to do?"

"Ruth, you must come with me," said the Harvester. "I don't dare leave
you here."

She stood between them and gave Henry Jameson one long, searching look.
Then she turned to the Harvester.

"I am far less afraid of you. I will accept your offer," she said.

"Thank you!" said the Harvester. "I will keep my word and you shall have
no regrets. Is there anything here you wish to take with you?"

"I want a little trunk of my mother's. It contains some things of hers."

"Will you show me where it is?"

She started toward the house; he followed, and Henry Jameson fell in
line. The Harvester turned on him. "You remain where you are," he said.
"I will take nothing but the trunk. I know what you are thinking,
but you will not get your gun just now. I will return this revolver
to-morrow."

"And the first thing I do with it will be to use it on you," said Henry
Jameson.

"I'll report that threat to the police, so that they can see you
properly hanged if you do," retorted the Harvester, as he followed the
girl.

"Where is his gun?" he asked as he overtook her. When he reached the
house he told her to watch the door. He went inside, broke the lock from
the gun in the corner, found the trunk, and swinging it to his shoulder,
passed Henry Jameson and went back through the woods. The Harvester set
the trunk in the wagon, helped the Girl in, and returned for the load
he had dropped at her call. Then he took the lines and started for
Onabasha.

The Girl beside him was almost fainting. He stopped to give her a drink
and tried to encourage her.

"Brace up the best you can, Ruth," he said. "You must go with me for a
license; that is the law. Afterward, I'll make it just as easy for
you as possible. I will do everything, and in a few hours you will be
comfortable in your room. You brave girl! This must come out right!
You have suffered more than your share. I will have peace for you the
remainder of the way."

She lifted shaking hands and tried to arrange her hair and dress. As
they neared the city she spoke.

"What will they ask me?"

"I don't know. But I am sure the law requires you to appear in person
now. I can take you somewhere and find out first."

"That will take time. I want to reach my room. What would you think?"

"If you are of age, where you were born, if you are a native of this
country, what your father and mother died of, how old they were, and
such questions as that. I'll help you all I can. You know those things.
don't you?"

"Yes. But I must tell you----"

"I don't want to be told anything," said the Harvester. "Save your
strength. All I want to know is any way in which I can make this easier
for you. Nothing else matters. I will tell you what I think; if you have
any objections, make them. I will drive to the bank and get a draft for
what you owe, and have that off your mind. Then we will get the license.
After that I'll take you to the side door, slip you in the elevator and
to the fitting room of a store where I know the manager, and you shall
have some pretty clothing while I arrange for a minister, and I'll come
for you with a carriage. That isn't the kind of wedding you or any other
girl should have, but there are times when a man only can do his best.
You will help me as much as you can, won't you?"

"Anything you choose. It doesn't matter----only be quick as possible."

"There are a few details to which I must attend," said the Harvester,
"and the time will go faster trying on dresses than waiting alone. When
you are properly clothed you will feel better. What did you say the
amount you owe is?"

"You may get a draft for fifty dollars. I will pay the remainder when I
earn it."

"Ruth, won't you give me the pleasure of taking you home free from the
worry of that debt?"

"I am not going to 'worry.' I am going to work and pay it."

"Very well," said the Harvester. "This is the bank. We will stop here."

They went in and he handed her a slip of paper.

"Write the name and address on that?" he said.

As the slip was returned to him, without a glance he folded it and slid
it under a wicket. "Write a draft for fifty dollars payable to that
party, and send to that address, from Miss Ruth Jameson," he said.

Then he turned to her.

"That is over. See how easy it is! Now we will go to the court house. It
is very close. Try not to think. Just move and speak."

"Hello, Langston!" said the clerk. "What can we do for you here?"

"Show this girl every consideration," whispered the Harvester, as he
advanced. "I want a marriage license in your best time. I will answer
first."

With the document in his possession, they went to the store he
designated, where he found the Girl a chair in the fitting room, while
he went to see the manager.

"I want one of your most sensible and accommodating clerks," said the
Harvester, "and I would like a few words with her."

When she was presented he scrutinized her carefully and decided she
would do.

"I have many thanks and something more substantial for a woman who will
help me to carry through a slightly unusual project with sympathy and
ability," he said, "and the manager has selected you. Are you willing?"

"If I can," said the clerk.

"She has put up your other orders," interposed the manager; "were they
satisfactory?"

"I don't know," said the Harvester. "They have not yet reached the one
for whom they were intended. What I want you to do," he said to the
clerk, "is to go to the fitting room and dress the girl you find there
for her wedding. She had other plans, but death disarranged them, and
she has only an hour in which to meet the event most girls love to
linger over for months. She has been ill, and is worn with watching; but
some time she may look back to her wedding day with joy, and if only
you would help me to make the best of it for her, I would be, as I said,
under more obligations than I can express."

"I will do anything," said the clerk.

"Very well," said the Harvester. "She has come from the country entirely
unprepared. She is delicate and refined. Save her all the embarrassment
you can. Dress her beautifully in white. Keep a memorandum slip of what
you spend for my account."

"What is the limit?" asked the clerk.

"There is none," said the Harvester. "Put the prettiest things on her
you have in the right sizes, and if you are a woman with a heart, be
gentle!"

"Is she ready?" inquired the manager at the door an hour later.

"I am," said the Girl stepping through.

The astounded Harvester stood and stared, utterly oblivious of the
curious people.

"Here, here, here!" suddenly he whistled it, in the red bird's most
entreating tones.

The Girl laughed and the colour in her face deepened.

"Let us go," she said.

"But what about you?" asked the manager of the Harvester.

"Thunder!" cried the man aghast. "I was so busy getting everything else
ready, I forgot all about myself. I can't stand before a minister beside
her, can I?"

"Well I should say not," said the manager.

"Indeed yes," said the Girl. "I never saw you in any other clothing. You
would be a stranger of whom I'd be afraid."

"That settles it!" said the Harvester calmly. "Thank all of you more
than words can express. I will come in the first of the week and tell
you how we get along."

Then they went to the carriage and started for the residence of a
minister.

"Ruth, you are my Dream Girl to the tips of your eyelashes," said the
Harvester. "I almost wish you were not. It wouldn't keep me thinking so
much of the remainder of that dream. You are the loveliest sight I ever
saw."

"Do I really appear well?" asked the Girl, hungry for appreciation.

"Indeed you do!" said the Harvester. "I never could have guessed that
such a miracle could be wrought. And you don't seem so tired. Were they
good to you?"

"Wonderfully! I did not know there was kindness like that in all the
world for a stranger. I did not feel lost or embarrassed, except the
first few seconds when I didn't know what to do. Oh I thank you for
this! You were right. Whatever comes in life I always shall love to
remember that I was daintily dressed and appeared as well as I could
when I was married. But I must tell you I am not real. They did
everything on earth to me, three of them working at a time. I feel an
increase in self-respect in some way. David, I do appear better?"

When she said "David," the Harvester looked out of the window and gulped
down his delight. He leaned toward her.

"Shut your eyes and imagine you see the red bird," he said. "In my
soul, I am saying to you again and again just what he sang. You are
wonderfully beautiful, Ruth, and more than wonderfully sweet. Will you
answer me a question?"

"If I can."

"I love you with all my heart. Will you marry me?"

"I said I would."

"Then we are engaged, aren't we?"

"Yes."

"Please remove the glove from your left hand. I want to put on your
ring. This will have to be a very short engagement, but no one save
ourselves need know."

"David, that isn't necessary."

"I have it here, and believe me, Ruth, it will help in a few minutes;
and all your life you will be glad. It is a precious symbol that has a
meaning. This wedding won't be hurt by putting all the sacredness into
it we can. Please, Ruth!"

"On one condition."

"What is it?"

"That you will accept and wear my mother's wedding ring in exchange,"
she said. "It is all I have."

"Ruth, do you really wish that?"

"I do."

"I am more pleased than I can tell you. May I have it now?"

She took off her glove and the Harvester held her hand closely a second,
then lifted it to his lips, passionately kissed it and slipped on a
ring, the setting a big, lustrous pearl.

"I looked at some others," he said, "but nothing got a second glance
save this. They knew you were coming down the ages, and so they got the
pearls ready. How beautiful it is on your hand! Put on the glove and
wear that ring as if you had owned it for the long, happy year of
betrothal every girl should have. You can start yours to-day, and if by
this time next year I have not won you to my heart and arms, I'm no
man and not worthy of you. Ruth, you will try just a little to love me,
won't you?"

"I will try with all my heart," she said instantly.

"Thank you! I am perfectly happy with that. I never expected to marry
you before a year, anyway. All the difference will be the blessed fact
that instead of coming to see you somewhere else, I now can have you in
my care, and court you every minute. You might as well make up your mind
to capitulate soon. It's on the books that you do."

"If an instant ever comes when I realize that I love you, I will come
straight and tell you; believe me, I will."

"Thank you!" said the Harvester. "This is going to be quite a proper
wedding after all. Here is the place. It will be over soon and you on
the home way. Lord, Ruth----!"

The Girl smiled at him as he opened the carriage door, helped her up the
steps and rang the bell.

"Be brave now!" he whispered. "Don't lose your lovely colour. These
people will be as kind as they were at the store."

The minister was gentle and wasted no time. His wife and daughter, who
appeared for witnesses, kissed Ruth, and congratulated her. She and the
Harvester stood, took the vows, exchanged rings, and returned to the
carriage, a man and his wife by the laws of man.

"Drive to Seaton's cafe'," the Harvester said.

"Oh David, let us go home!"

"This is so good I hate to stop it for something you may not like so
well. I ordered lunch and if we don't eat it I will have to pay for it
anyway. You wouldn't want me to be extravagant, would you?"

"No," said the Girl, "and besides, since you mention it, I believe I am
hungry."

"Good!" cried the Harvester. "I hoped so! Ruth, you wouldn't allow me
to hold your hand just until we reach the cafe'? It might save me from
bursting with joy."

"Yes," she said. "But I must take off my lovely gloves first. I want to
keep them forever."

"I'd hate the glove being removed dreadfully," said the Harvester, his
eyes dancing and snapping.

"I'm sorry I am so thin and shaky," said the Girl. "I will be steady and
plump soon, won't I?"

"On your life you will," said the Harvester, taking the hand gently.

Now there are a number of things a man deeply in love can think of to do
with a woman's white hand. He can stroke it, press it tenderly, and lay
it against his lips and his heart. The Harvester lacked experience
in these arts, and yet by some wonderful instinct all of these things
occurred to him. There was real colour in the Girl's cheeks by the time
he helped her into the cafe'. They were guided to a small room, cool and
restful, close a window, beside which grew a tree covered with talking
leaves. A waiting attendant, who seemed perfectly adept, brought in
steaming bouillon, fragrant tea, broiled chicken, properly cooked
vegetables, a wonderful salad, and then delicious ices and cold fruit.
The happy Harvester leaned back and watched the Girl daintily manage
almost as much food as he wanted to see her eat.

When they had finished, "Now we are going home," he said. "Will you try
to like it, Ruth?"

"Indeed I will," she promised. "As soon as I grow accustomed to the
dreadful stillness, and learn what things will not bite me, I'll be
better."

"I'll have to ask you to wait a minute," he said. "One thing I forgot. I
must hire a man to take Betsy home."

"Aren't you going to drive her yourself?"

"No ma'am! We are going in a carriage or a motor," said the Harvester.

"Indeed we are not!" contradicted the Girl. "You have had this all your
way so far. I am going home behind Betsy, with Belshazzar at my knee."

"But your dress! People will think I am crazy to put a lovely woman like
you in a spring wagon."

"Let them!" said the Girl placidly. "Why should we bother about other
people? I am going with Betsy and Belshazzar."

The Harvester had been thinking that he adored her, that it was
impossible to love her more, but every minute was proving to him that he
was capable of feeling so profound it startled him. To carry the Girl,
his bride, through the valley and up the hill in the little spring wagon
drawn by Betsy--that would have been his ideal way. But he had supposed
that she would be afraid of soiling her dress, and embarrassed to ride
in such a conveyance. Instead it was her choice. Yes, he could love her
more. Hourly she was proving that.

"Come this way a few steps," he said. "Betsy is here."

The Girl laid her face against the nose of the faithful old animal, and
stroked her head and neck. Then she held her skirts and the Harvester
helped her into the wagon. She took the seat, and the dog went wild with
joy.

"Come on, Bel," she softly commanded.

The dog hesitated, and looked at the Harvester for permission.

"You may come here and put your head on my knee," said the Girl.

"Belshazzar, you lucky dog, you are privileged to sit there and lay your
head on the lady's lap," said the Harvester, and the dog quivered with
joy.

Then the man picked up the lines, gave a backward glance to the bed
of the wagon, high piled with large bundles, and turned Betsy toward
Medicine Woods. Through the crowded streets and toward the country they
drove, when a big red car passed, a man called to them, then reversed
and slowly began backing beside the wagon. The Harvester stopped.

"That is my best friend, Doctor Carey, of the hospital, Ruth," he said
hastily. "May I tell him, and will you shake hands with him?"

"Certainly!" said the Girl.

"Is it really you, David?" the doctor peered with gleaming eyes from
under the car top.

"Really!" cried the Harvester, as man greets man with a full heart when
he is sure of sympathy. "Come, give us your best send-off, Doc! We were
married an hour ago. We are headed for Medicine Woods. Doctor Carey,
this is Mrs. Langston."

"Mighty glad to know you!" cried the doctor, reaching a happy hand.

The Girl met it cordially, while she smiled on him.

"How did this happen?" demanded the doctor. "Why didn't you let us know?
This is hardly fair of you, David. You might have let me and the Missus
share with you."

"That is to be explained," said the Harvester. "It was decided on very
suddenly, and rather sadly, on account of the death of Mrs. Jameson. I
forced Ruth to marry me and come with me. I grow rather frightened when
I think of it, but it was the only way I knew. She absolutely refused my
other plans. You see before you a wild man carrying away a woman to his
cave."

"Don't believe him, Doctor!" laughed the Girl. "If you know him, you
will understand that to offer all he had was like him, when he saw my
necessity. You will come to see us soon?"

"I'll come right now," said the doctor. "I'll bring my wife and arrive
by the time you do."

"Oh no you won't!" said the Harvester. "Do you observe the bed of
this wagon? This happened all 'unbeknownst' to us. We have to set up
housekeeping after we reach home. We will notify you when we are ready
for visitors. Just you subside and wait until you are sent for."

"Why David!" cried the astonished Girl.

"That's the law!" said the Harvester tersely. "Good-bye, Doc; we'll be
ready for you in a day or two."

He leaned down and held out his hand. The grip that caught it said all
any words could convey; and then Betsy started up the hill.



CHAPTER XIII. WHEN THE DREAM CAME TRUE

At first the road lay between fertile farms dotted with shocked wheat,
covered with undulant seas of ripening oats, and forests of growing
corn. The larks were trailing melody above the shorn and growing fields,
the quail were ingathering beside the fences, and from the forests on
graceful wings slipped the nighthawks and sailed and soared, dropping
so low that the half moons formed by white spots on their spread wings
showed plainly.

"Why is this country so different from the other side of the city?"
asked the Girl.

"It is older," replied the Harvester, "and it lies higher. This was
settled and well cultivated when that was a swamp. But as a farming
proposition, the money is in the lowland like your uncle's. The crops
raised there are enormous compared with the yield of these fields."

"I see," said she. "But this is much better to look at and the air is
different. It lacks a soggy, depressing quality."

"I don't allow any air to surpass that of Medicine Woods," said the
Harvester, "by especial arrangement with the powers that be."

Then they dipped into a little depression and arose to cross the
railroad and then followed a longer valley that was ragged and unkempt
compared with the road between cultivated fields. The Harvester was busy
trying to plan what to do first, and how to do it most effectively, and
working his brain to think if he had everything the Girl would require
for her comfort; so he drove silently through the deepening shadows. She
shuddered and awoke him suddenly. He glanced at her from the corner of
his eye.

Her thoughts had gone on a journey, also, and the way had been rough,
for her face wore a strained appearance. The hands lying bare in her lap
were tightly gripped, so that the nails and knuckles appeared blue.
The Harvester hastily cast around seeking for the cause of the
transformation. A few minutes ago she had seemed at ease and
comfortable, now she was close open panic. Nothing had been said that
would disturb her. With brain alert he searched for the reason. Then
it began to come to him. The unaccustomed silence and depression of the
country might have been the beginning. Coming from the city and crowds
of people to the gloomy valley with a man almost a stranger, going she
knew not where, to conditions she knew not what, with the experiences of
the day vivid before her. The black valley road was not prepossessing,
with its border of green pools, through which grew swamp bushes and
straggling vines. The Harvester looked carefully at the road, and ceased
to marvel at the Girl. But he disliked to let her know he understood, so
he gave one last glance at those gripped hands and casually held out the
lines.

"Will you take these just a second?" he asked. "Don't let them touch
your dress. We must not lose of our load, because it's mostly things
that will make you more comfortable."

He arose, and turning, pretended to see that everything was all right.
Then he resumed his seat and drove on.

"I am a little ashamed of this stretch through here," he said
apologetically. "I could have managed to have it cleared and in better
shape long ago, but in a way it yields a snug profit, and so far I've
preferred the money. The land is not mine, but I could grub out this
growth entirely, instead of taking only what I need."

"Is there stuff here you use?" the Girl aroused herself to ask, and the
Harvester saw the look of relief that crossed her face at the sound of
his voice.

"Well I should say yes," he laughed. "Those bushes, numerous everywhere,
with the hanging yellow-green balls, those, in bark and root, go into
fever medicines. They are not so much used now, but sometimes I have a
call, and when I do, I pass the beds on my----on our land, and come down
here and get what is needed. That bush," he indicated with the whip,
"blooms exquisitely in the spring. It is a relative of flowering
dogwood, and the one of its many names I like best is silky cornel.
Isn't that pretty?"

"Yes," she said, "it is beautiful."

"I've planted some for you in a hedge along the driveway so next spring
you can gather all you want. I think you'll like the odour. The bark
brings more than true dogwood. If I get a call from some house that uses
it, I save mine and come down here. Around the edge are hop trees, and
I realize something from them, and also the false and true bitter-sweet
that run riot here. Both of them have pretty leaves, while the berries
of the true hang all winter and the colour is gorgeous. I've set your
hedge closely with them. When it has grown a few months it's going to
furnish flowers in the spring, a million different, wonderful leaves
and berries in the summer, many fruits the birds love in the fall, and
bright berries, queer seed pods, and nuts all winter."

"You planted it for me?"

"Yes. I think it will be beautiful in a season or two; it isn't so bad
now. I hope it will call myriads of birds to keep you company. When
you cross this stretch of road hereafter, don't see fetid water and
straggling bushes and vines; just say to yourself, this helps to fill
orders!"

"I am perfectly tolerant of it now," she said. "You make everything
different. I will come with you and help collect the roots and barks
you want. Which bush did you say relieved the poor souls scorching with
fever?"

The Harvester drew on the lines, Betsy swerved to the edge of the road,
and he leaned and broke a branch.

"This one," he answered. "Buttonbush, because those balls resemble round
buttons. Aren't they peculiar? See how waxy and gracefully cut and set
the leaves are. Go on, Betsy, get us home before night. We appear our
best early in the morning, when the sun tops Medicine Woods and begins
to light us up, and in the evening, just when she drops behind Onabasha
back there, and strikes us with a few level rays. Will you take the
lines until I open this gate?"

She laid the twig in her lap on the white gloves and took the lines.
As the gate swung wide, Betsy walked through and stopped at the usual
place.

"Now my girl," said the Harvester, "cross yourself, lean back, and take
your ease. This side that gate you are at home. From here on belongs to
us."

"To you, you mean," said the Girl.

"To us, I mean," declared the Harvester. "Don't you know that the
'worldly goods bestowal' clause in a marriage ceremony is a partial
reality. It doesn't give you 'all my worldly goods,' but it gives you
one third. Which will you take, the hill, lake, marsh, or a part of all
of them."

"Oh, is there water?"

"Did I forget to mention that I was formerly sole owner and proprietor
of the lake of Lost Loons, also a brook of Singing Water, and many cold
springs. The lake covers about one third of our land, and my neighbours
would allow me ditch outlet to the river, but they say I'm too lazy to
take it."

"Lazy! Do they mean drain your lake into the river?"

"They do," said the Harvester, "and make the bed into a cornfield."

"But you wouldn't?"

She turned to him with confidence.

"I haven't so far, but of course, when you see it, if you would prefer
it in a corn----Let's play a game! Turn your head in this direction,"
he indicated with the whip, "close your eyes, and open them when I say
ready."

"All right!"

"Now!" said the Harvester.

"Oh," cried the Girl. "Stop! Please stop!"

They were at the foot of a small levee that ran to the bridge crossing
Singing Water. On the left lay the valley through which the stream swept
from its hurried rush down the hill, a marshy thicket of vines, shrubs,
and bushes, the banks impassable with water growth. Everywhere flamed
foxfire and cardinal flower, thousands of wild tiger lilies lifted
gorgeous orange-red trumpets, beside pearl-white turtle head and moon
daisies, while all the creek bank was a coral line with the first
opening bloom of big pink mallows. Rank jewel flower poured gold from
dainty cornucopias and lavender beard-tongue offered honey to a million
bumbling bees; water smart-weed spread a glowing pink background, and
twining amber dodder topped the marsh in lacy mist with its delicate
white bloom. Straight before them a white-sanded road climbed to the
bridge and up a gentle hill between the young hedge of small trees and
bushes, where again flowers and bright colours rioted and led to the
cabin yet invisible. On the right, the hill, crowned with gigantic
forest trees, sloped to the lake; midway the building stood, and from
it, among scattering trees all the way to the water's edge, were immense
beds of vivid colour. Like a scarf of gold flung across the face of
earth waved the misty saffron, and beside the road running down the
hill, in a sunny, open space arose tree-like specimens of thrifty
magenta pokeberry. Down the hill crept the masses of colour, changing
from dry soil to water growth.

High around the blue-green surface of the lake waved lacy heads of wild
rice, lower cat-tails, bulrushes, and marsh grasses; arrowhead lilies
lifted spines of pearly bloom, while yellow water lilies and blue water
hyacinths intermingled; here and there grew a pink stretch of water
smartweed and the dangling gold of jewel flower. Over the water,
bordering the edge, starry faces of white pond lilies floated. Blue
flags waved graceful leaves, willows grew in clumps, and vines clambered
everywhere.

Among the growth of the lake shore, duck, coot, and grebe voices
commingled in the last chattering hastened splash of securing supper
before bedtime; crying killdeers crossed the water, and overhead the
nighthawks massed in circling companies. Betsy climbed the hill and at
every step the Girl cried, "Slower! please go slower!" With wide eyes
she stared around her.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME IT WOULD BE LIKE THIS?" she demanded in awed
tones.

"Have I had opportunity to describe much of anything?" asked the
Harvester. "Besides, I was born and reared here, and while it has been
a garden of bloom for the past six years only, it always has been a
picture; but one forgets to say much about a sight seen every day and
that requires the work this does."

"That white mist down there, what is it?" she marvelled.

"Pearls grown by the Almighty," answered the Harvester. "Flowers that I
hope you will love. They are like you. Tall and slender, graceful, pearl
white and pearl pure----those are the arrowhead Lilies."

"And the wonderful purplish-red there on the bank? Oh, I could kneel and
pray before colour like that!'

"Pokeberry!" said the Harvester. "Roots bring five cents a pound. Good
blood purifier."

"Man!" cried the Girl. "How can you? I'm not going to ask what another
colour is. I'll just worship what I like in silence."

"Will you forgive me if I tell you what a woman whose judgment I respect
says about that colour?"

"Perhaps!"

"She says, 'God proves that He loves it best of all the tints in His
workshop by using it first and most sparingly.' Now are you going to
punish me by keeping silent?"

"I couldn't if I tried." Just then they came upon the bridge crossing
Singing Water, and there was a long view of its border, rippling bed,
and marshy banks; while on the other hand the lake resembled a richly
incrusted sapphire.

"Is the house close?"

"Just a few rods, at the turn of the drive."

"Please help me down. I want to remain here a while. I don't care what
else there is to see. Nothing can equal this. I wish I could bring down
a bed and sleep here. I'd like to have a table, and draw and paint. I
understand now what you mean about the designs you mentioned. Why, there
must be thousands! I can't go on. I never saw anything so appealing in
all my life."

Now the Harvester's mother had designed that bridge and he had built
it with much care. From bark-covered railings to solid oak floor and
comfortable benches running along the sides it was intended to be a part
of the landscape.

"I'll send Belshazzar to the cabin with the wagon," he said, "so you can
see better."

"But you must not!" she cried. "I can't walk. I wouldn't soil these
beautiful shoes for anything."

"Why don't you change them?" inquired the Harvester.

"I am afraid I forgot everything I had," said the Girl.

"There are shoes somewhere in this load. I thought of them in getting
other things for you, but I had no idea as to size, and so I told that
clerk to-day when she got your measure to put in every kind you'd need."

"You are horribly extravagant," she said. "But if you have them here,
perhaps I could use one pair."

The Harvester mounted the wagon and hunted until he found a large box,
and opening it on the bench he disclosed almost every variety of shoe,
walking shoe and slipper, a girl ever owned, as well as sandals and high
overshoes.

"For pity sake!" cried the Girl. "Cover that box! You frighten me.
You'll never get them paid for. You must take them straight back."

"Never take anything back," said the Harvester. "'Be sure you are right,
then go ahead,' is my motto. Now I know these are your correct size
and that for differing occasions you will want just such shoes as other
girls have, and here they are. Simple as life! I think these will serve
because they are for street wear, yet they are white inside."

He produced a pair of canvas walking shoes and kneeling before her held
out his hand.

When he had finished, he loaded the box on the wagon, gave the hitching
strap to Belshazzar, and told him to lead Betsy to the cabin and hold
her until he came. Then he turned to the Girl.

"Now," he said, "look as long as you choose. But remember that the law
gives you part of this and your lover, which same am I, gives you the
remainder, so you are privileged to come here at any hour as often as
you please. If you miss anything this evening, you have all time to come
in which to re-examine it."

"I'd like to live right here on this bridge," she said. "I wish it had a
roof."

"Roof it to-morrow," offered the Harvester. "Simple matter of a few
pillars already cut, joists joined, and some slab shingles left from the
cabin. Anything else your ladyship can suggest?"

"That you be sensible."

"I was born that way," explained the Harvester, "and I've cultivated the
faculty until I've developed real genius. Talking of sense, there never
was a proper marriage in which the man didn't give the woman a present.
You seem likely to be more appreciative of this bridge than anything
else I have, so right here and now would be the appropriate place to
offer you my wedding gift. I didn't have much time, but I couldn't have
found anything more suitable if I'd taken a year."

He held out a small, white velvet case.

"Doesn't that look as if it were made for a bride?" he asked.

"It does," answered the Girl. "But I can't take it. You are not doing
right. Marrying as we did, you never can believe that I love you; maybe
it won't ever happen that I do. I have no right to accept gifts and
expensive clothing from you. In the first place, if the love you ask
never comes, there is no possible way in which I can repay you. In the
second, these things you are offering are not suitable for life and work
in the woods. In the third, I think you are being extravagant, and I
couldn't forgive myself if I allowed that."

"You divide your statements like a preacher, don't you?" asked the
Harvester ingenuously. "Now sit thee here and gaze on the placid lake
and quiet your troubled spirit, while I demolish your 'perfectly good'
arguments. In the first place, you are now my wife, and you have a
right to take anything I offer, if you care for it or can use it in any
manner. In the second, you must recognize a difference in our positions.
What seems nothing to you means all the world to me, and you are less
than human if you deprive me of the joy of expressing feelings I am in
honour bound to keep in my heart, by these little material offerings. In
the third place, I inherited over six hundred acres of land and water,
please observe the water----it is now in evidence on your left. All my
life I have been taught to be frugal, economical, and to work. All I've
earned either has gone back into land, into the bank, or into books,
very plain food, and such clothing as you now see me wearing. Just the
value of this place as it stands, with its big trees, its drug crops
yielding all the year round, would be difficult to estimate; and I don't
mind telling you that on the top of that hill there is a gold mine, and
it's mine----ours since four o'clock."

"A gold mine!"

"Acres and acres of wild ginseng, seven years of age and ready to
harvest. Do you remember what your few pounds brought?"

"Why it's worth thousands!"

"Exactly! For your peace of mind I might add that all I have done or got
is paid for, except what I bought to-day, and I will write a check for
that as soon as the bill is made out. My bank account never will feel it
Truly, Ruth, I am not doing or going to do anything extravagant. I can't
afford to give you diamond necklaces, yachts, and trips to Europe; but
you can have the contents of this box and a motor boat on the lake, a
horse and carriage, and a trip----say to New York perfectly well. Please
take it."

"I wish you wouldn't ask me. I would be happier not to."

"Yes, but I do ask you," persisted the Harvester. "You are not the
only one to be considered. I have some rights also, and I'm not so
self-effacing that I won't insist upon them. From your standpoint I
am almost a stranger. You have spent no time considering me in near
relations; I realize that. You feel as if you were driven here for
a refuge, and that is true. I said to Belshazzar one day that I must
remember that you had no dream, and had spent no time loving me, and
I do I know how this wedding seems to you, but it's going to mean
something different and better soon, please God. I can see your side;
now suppose you take a look at mine. I did have a dream, it was my
dream, and beyond the sum of any delight I ever conceived. On the
strength of it I rebuilt my home and remodelled these premises. Then
I saw you, and from that day I worked early and late. I lost you and I
never stopped until I found you; and I would have courted and won you,
but the fates intervened and here you are! So it's my delight to court
and win you now. If you knew the difference between having a dream that
stirred the least fibre of your being and facing the world in a demand
for realization of it, and then finding what you coveted in the palm
of your hand, as it were, you would know what is in my heart, and
why expression of some kind is necessary to me just now, and why I'll
explode if it is denied. It will lower the tension, if you will accept
this as a matter of fact; as if you rather expected and liked it, if you
can."

The Harvester set his finger on the spring.

"Don't!" she said. "I'll never have the courage if you do. Give it to me
in the case, and let me open it. Despite your unanswerable arguments, I
am quite sure that is the only way in which I can take it."

The Harvester gave her the box.

"My wedding gift!" she exclaimed, more to herself than to him. "Why
should I be the buffet of all the unkind fates kept in store for a girl
my whole life, and then suddenly be offered home, beautiful gifts, and
wonderful loving kindness by a stranger?"

The Harvester ran his fingers through his crisp hair, pulled it into
a peak, stepped to the seat and sitting on the railing, he lifted his
elbows, tilted his head, and began a motley outpouring of half-spoken,
half-whistled trills and imploring cries. There was enough similarity
that the Girl instantly recognized the red bird. Out of breath the
Harvester dropped to the seat beside her.

"And don't you keep forgetting it!" he cried. "Now open that box and
put on the trinket; because I want to take you to the cabin when the sun
falls level on the drive."

She opened the case, exposing a thread of gold that appeared too slender
for the weight of an exquisite pendant, set with shimmering pearls.

"If you will look down there," the Harvester pointed over the railing to
the arrowhead lilies touched with the fading light, "you will see that
they are similar."

"They are!" cried the Girl. "How lovely! Which is more beautiful I do
not know. And you won't like it if I say I must not."

She held the open case toward the Harvester.

"'Possession is nine points in the law,'" he quoted. "You have taken
it already and it is in your hands; now make the gift perfect for me by
putting it on and saying nothing more."

"My wedding gift!" repeated the Girl. Slowly she lifted the beautiful
ornament and held it in the light. "I'm so glad you just force me to
take it," she said. "Any half-normal girl would be delighted. I do
accept it. And what's more, I am going to keep and wear it and my ring
at suitable times all my life, in memory of what you have done to be
kind to me on this awful day."

"Thank you!" said the Harvester. "That is a flash of the proper spirit.
Allow me to put it on you."

"No!" said the Girl. "Not yet! After a while! I want to hold it in my
hands, where I can see it!"

"Now there is one other thing," said the Harvester.

"If I had known for any length of time that this day was coming and
bringing you, as most men know when a girl is to be given into their
care, I could have made it different. As it is, I've done the best I
knew. All your after life I hope you will believe this: Just that if you
missed anything to-day that would have made it easier for you or more
pleasant, the reason was because of my ignorance of women and the
conventions, and lack of time. I want you to know and to feel that in my
heart those vows I took were real. This is undoubtedly all the marrying
I will ever want to do. I am old-fashioned in my ways, and deeply imbued
with the spirit of the woods, and that means unending evolution along
the same lines.

"To me you are my revered and beloved wife, my mate now; and I am sure
nothing will make me feel any different. This is the day of my marriage
to the only woman I ever have thought of wedding, and to me it is joy
unspeakable. With other men such a day ends differently from the close
of this with me. Because I have done and will continue to do the level
best I know for you, this oration is the prologue to asking you for
one gift to me from you, a wedding gift. I don't want it unless you can
bestow it ungrudgingly, and truly want me to have it. If you can, I will
have all from this day I hope for at the hands of fate. May I have the
gift I ask of you, Ruth?"

She lifted startled eyes to his face.

"Tell me what it is?" she breathed.

"It may seem much to you," said the Harvester; "to me it appears only
a gracious act, from a wonderful woman, if you will give me freely, one
real kiss. I've never had one, save from a Dream Girl, Ruth, and you
will have to make yours pretty good if it is anything like hers. You are
woman enough to know that most men crush their brides in their arms and
take a thousand. I'll put my hands behind me and never move a muscle,
and I won't ask for more, if you will crown my wedding day with only one
touch of your lips. Will you kiss me just once, Ruth?"

The Girl lifted a piteous face down which big tears suddenly rolled.

"Oh Man, you shame me!" she cried. "What kind of a heart have I that it
fails to respond to such a plea? Have I been overworked and starved so
long there is no feeling in me? I don't understand why I don't take you
in my arms and kiss you a hundred times, but you see I don't. It doesn't
seem as if I ever could."

"Never mind," said the Harvester gently. "It was only a fancy of mine,
bred from my dream and unreasonable, perhaps. I am sorry I mentioned it.
The sun is on the stoop now; I want you to enter your home in its light.
Come!"

He half lifted her from the bench. "I am going to help you up the
drive as I used to assist mother," he said, fighting to keep his voice
natural. "Clasp your hands before you and draw your elbows to your
sides. Now let me take one in each palm, and you will scoot up this
drive as if you were on wheels."

"But I don't want to 'scoot'," she said unsteadily. "I must go slowly
and not miss anything."

"On the contrary, you don't want to do any such thing----you should
leave most of it for to-morrow."

"I had forgotten there would be any to-morrow. It seems as if the day
would end it and set me adrift again."

"You are going to awake in the gold room with the sun shining on your
face in the morning, and it's going to keep on all your life. Now if
you've got a smile in your anatomy, bring it to the surface, for just
beyond this tree lies happiness for you."

His voice was clear and steady now, his confidence something contagious.
There was a lovely smile on her face as she looked at him, and stepped
into the line of light crossing the driveway; and then she stopped
and cried, "Oh lovely! Lovely! Lovely!" over and over. Then maybe the
Harvester was not glad he had planned, worked unceasingly, and builded
as well as he knew.

The cabin of large, peeled, golden oak logs, oiled to preserve them,
nestled like a big mushroom on the side of the hill. Above and behind
the building the trees arose in a green setting. The roof was stained
to their shades. The wide veranda was enclosed in screening, over which
wonderful vines climbed in places, and round it grew ferns and deep-wood
plants. Inside hung big baskets of wild growth; there was a wide
swinging seat, with a back rest, supported by heavy chains. There were
chairs and a table of bent saplings and hickory withes. Two full
stories the building arose, and the western sun warmed it almost to
orange-yellow, while the graceful vines crept toward the roof.

The Girl looked at the rapidly rising hedge on each side of her, at the
white floor of the drive, and long and long at the cabin.

"You did all this since February?" she asked.

"Even to transforming the landscape," answered the Harvester.

"Oh I wish it was not coming night!" she cried. "I don't want the dark
to come, until you have told me the name of every tree and shrub of that
wonderful hedge, and every plant and vine of the veranda; and oh I want
to follow up the driveway and see that beautiful little creek--listen
to it chuckle and laugh! Is it always glad like that? See the ferns
and things that grow on the other side of it! Why there are big beds of
them. And lilies of the valley by the acre! What is that yellow around
the corner?"

"Never mind that now," said the Harvester, guiding her up the steps,
along the gravelled walk to the screen that he opened, and over a flood
of gold light she crossed the veranda, and entered the door.

"Now here it appears bare," said the Harvester, "because I didn't know
what should go on the walls or what rugs to get or about the windows.
The table, chairs, and couch I made myself with some help from a
carpenter. They are solid black walnut and will age finely."

"They are beautiful," said the Girl, softly touching the shining table
top with her fingers. "Please put the necklace on me now, I have to use
my eyes and hands for other things."

She held out the box and the Harvester lifted the pendant and clasped
the chain around her neck. She glanced at the lustrous pearls and then
the fingers of one hand softly closed over them. She went through the
long, wide living-room, examining the chairs and mantel, stopping to
touch and exclaim over its array of half-finished candlesticks. At the
door of his room she paused. "And this?" she questioned.

"Mine," said the Harvester, turning the knob. "I'll give you one peep
to satisfy your curiosity, and show you the location of the bridge over
which you came to me in my dream. All the remainder is yours. I reserve
only this."

"Will the 'goblins git me' if I come here?"

"Not goblins, but a man alive; so heed your warning. After you have seen
it, keep away."

The floor was cement, three of the walls heavy screening with mosquito
wire inside, the roof slab shingled. On the inner wall was a bookcase,
below it a desk, at one side a gun cabinet, at the other a bath in a
small alcove beside a closet. The room contained two chairs like those
of the veranda, and the bed was a low oak couch covered with a thick
mattress of hemlock twigs, topped with sweet fern, on which the sun
shone all day. On a chair at the foot were spread some white sheets, a
blanket, and an oilcloth. The sun beat in, the wind drifted through,
and one lying on the couch could see down the bright hill, and sweep the
lake to the opposite bank without lifting the head. The Harvester drew
the Girl to the bedside.

"Now straight in a line from here," he said, "across the lake to that
big, scraggy oak, every clear night the moon builds a bridge of molten
gold, and once you walked it, my girl, and came straight to me, alone
and unafraid; and you were gracious and lovely beyond anything a man
ever dreamed of before. I'll have that to think of to-night. Now come
see the dining-room, kitchen, and hand-made sunshine."

He led her into what had been the front room of the old cabin, now
a large, long dining-room having on each side wide windows with deep
seats. The fireplace backwall was against that of the living-room, but
here the mantel was bare. All the wood-work, chairs, the dining table,
cupboards, and carving table were golden oak. Only a few rugs and
furnishings and a woman's touch were required to make it an unusual and
beautiful room. The kitchen was shining with a white hard-wood floor,
white wood-work, and pale green walls. It was a light, airy, sanitary
place, supplied with a pump, sink, hot and cold water faucets,
refrigerator, and every modern convenience possible to the country.

Then the Harvester almost carried the Girl up the stairs and showed her
three large sleeping rooms, empty and bare save for some packing cases.

"I didn't know about these, so I didn't do anything. When you find
time to plan, tell me what you want, and I'll make--or buy it. They
are good-sized, cool rooms. They all have closets and pipes from the
furnace, so they will be comfortable in winter. Now there is your place
remaining. I'll leave you while I stable Betsy and feed the stock."

He guided her to the door opening from the living-room to the east.

"This is the sunshine spot," he said. "It is bathed in morning light,
and sheltered by afternoon shade. Singing Water is across the drive
there to talk to you always. It comes pelting down so fast it never
freezes, so it makes music all winter, and the birds are so numerous
you'll have to go to bed early for they'll wake you by dawn. I noticed
this room was going to be full of sunshine when I built it, and I craved
only brightness for you, so I coaxed all of it to stay that I could.
Every stroke is the work of my hands, and all of the furniture. I hope
you will like it. This is the room of which I've been telling you, Ruth.
Go in and take possession, and I'll entreat God and all His ministering
angels to send you sunshine and joy."

He opened the door, guided her inside, closed it, and went swiftly to
his work.

The Girl stood and looked around her with amazed eyes. The floor was
pale yellow wood, polished until it shone like a table top. The casings,
table, chairs, dressing table, chest of drawers, and bed were solid
curly maple. The doors were big polished slabs of it, each containing
enough material to veneer all the furniture in the room. The walls
were of plaster, tinted yellow, and the windows with yellow shades were
curtained in dainty white. She could hear the Harvester carrying the
load from the wagon to the front porch, the clamour of the barn yard;
and as she went to the north window to see the view, a shining peacock
strutted down the walk and went to the Harvester's hand for grain, while
scores of snow-white doves circled over his head. She stepped on deep
rugs of yellow goat skins, and, glancing at the windows on either side,
she opened the door.

Outside it lay a porch with a railing, but no roof. On each post stood a
box filled with yellow wood-flowers and trailing vines of pale green.
A big tree rising through one corner of the floor supplied the cover. A
gate opened to a walk leading to the driveway, and on either side lay
a patch of sod, outlined by a deep hedge of bright gold. In it saffron,
cone-flowers, black-eyed Susans, golden-rod, wild sunflowers, and jewel
flower grew, and some of it, enough to form a yellow line, was already
in bloom. Around the porch and down the walk were beds of yellow
violets, pixie moss, and every tiny gold flower of the woods. The Girl
leaned against the tree and looked around her and then staggered inside
and dropped on the couch.

"What planning! What work!" she sobbed. "What taste! Why he's a poet!
What wonderful beauty! He's an artist with earth for his canvas, and
growing things for colours."

She lay there staring at the walls, the beautiful wood-work and
furniture, the dressing table with its array of toilet articles, a
low chair before it, and the thick rug for her feet. Over and over she
looked at everything, and then closed her eyes and lay quietly, too
weary and overwhelmed to think. By and by came tapping at the door, and
she sprang up and crossing to the dressing table straightened her hair
and composed her face.

"Ajax demands to see you," cried a gay voice.

The Girl stepped outside.

"Don't be frightened if he screams at you," warned the Harvester as she
passed him. "He detests a stranger, and he always cries and sulks."

It was a question what was in the head of the bird as he saw the strange
looking creature invading his domain, and he did scream, a wild, high,
strident wail that delighted the Harvester inexpressibly, because it
sent the Girl headlong into his arms.

"Oh, good gracious!" she cried. "Has such a beautiful bird got a noise
in it like that? Why I've fed them in parks and I never heard one
explode before."

Then how the Harvester laughed.

"But you see you are in the woods now, and this is not a park bird. It
will be the test of your power to see how soon you can coax him to your
hand."

"How do I work to win him?"

"I am afraid I can't tell you that," said the Harvester. "I had to
invent a plan for myself. It required a long time and much petting, and
my methods might not avail for you. It will interest you to study that
out. But the member of the family it is positively essential that you
win to a life and death allegiance is Belshazzar. If you can make him
love you, he will protect you at every turn. He will go before you into
the forest and all the crawling, creeping things will get out of his
way. He will nose around the flowers you want to gather, and if he
growls and the hair on the back of his neck rises, never forget that
you must heed that warning. A few times I have not stopped for it, and I
always have been sorry. So far as anything animate or uncertain footing
is concerned, you are always perfectly safe if you obey him. About
touching plants and flowers, you must confine yourself to those you
are certain you know, until I can teach you. There are gorgeous and
wonderfully attractive things here, but some of them are rank poison.
You won't handle plants you don't know, until you learn, Ruth?"

"I will not," she promised instantly.

She went to the seat under the porch tree and leaning against the trunk
she studied the hill, and the rippling course of Singing Water where it
turned and curved before the cabin, and started across the vivid little
marsh toward the lake. Then she looked at the Harvester. He seated
himself on the low railing and smiled at her.

"You are very tired?" he asked.

"No," she said. "You are right about the air being better up here. It is
stimulating instead of depressing."

"So far as pure air, location, and water are concerned," said the
Harvester, "I consider this place ideal. The lake is large enough to
cool the air and raise sufficient moisture to dampen it, and too small
to make it really cold and disagreeable. The slope of the hill gives
perfect drainage. The heaviest rains do not wet the earth for more than
three hours. North, south, and west breezes sweep the cool air from the
water to the cabin in summer. The same suns warm us here on the winter
hillside. My violets, spring beauties, anemones, and dutchman's breeches
here are always two weeks ahead of those in the woods. I am not afraid
of your not liking the location or the air. As for the cabin, if
you don't care for that, it's very simple. I'll transform it into a
laboratory and dry-house, and build you whatever you want, within my
means, over there on the hill just across Singing Water and facing
the valley toward Onabasha. That's a perfect location. The thing that
worries me is what you are going to do for company, especially while I
am away."

"Don't trouble yourself about anything," she said. "Just say in your
heart, 'she is going to be stronger than she ever has been in her life
in this lovely place, and she has more right now than she ever had or
hoped to have.' For one thing, I am going to study your books. I never
have had time before. While we sewed or embroidered, mother talked by
the hour of the great writers of the world, told me what they wrote,
and how they expressed themselves, but I got to read very little for
myself."

"Books are my company," said the Harvester.

"Do your friends come often?"

"Almost never! Doc and his wife come most, and if you look out some day
and see a white-haired, bent old woman, with a face as sweet as dawn,
coming up the bank of Singing Water, that will be my mother's friend,
Granny Moreland, who joins us on the north over there. She is frank and
brusque, so she says what she thinks with unmistakable distinctness,
but her heart is big and tender and her philosophy keeps her sweet and
kindly despite the ache of rheumatism and the weight of seventy years."

"I'd love to have her come," said the Girl. "Is that all?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Your favourite word," laughed the Harvester. "The reason lies with me,
or rather with my mother. Some day I will tell you the whole story,
and the cause. I think now I can encompass it in this. The place is an
experiment. When medicinal herbs, roots, and barks became so scarce that
some of the most important were almost extinct, it occurred to me that
it would be a good idea to stop travelling miles and poaching on the
woods of other people, and turn our land into an herb garden. For four
years before mother went, and six since, I've worked with all my might,
and results are beginning to take shape. While I've been at it, of
course, my neighbours had an inkling of what was going on, and I've been
called a fool, lazy, and a fanatic, because I did not fell the trees and
plow for corn. You readily can see I'm a little short of corn ground out
there," he waved toward the marsh and lake, "and up there," he indicated
the steep hill and wood. "But somewhere on this land I've been able to
find muck for mallows, water for flags and willows, shade for ferns,
lilies, and ginseng, rocky, sunny spaces for mullein, and open, fertile
beds for Bouncing Bet----just for examples. God never evolved a place
better suited for an herb farm; from woods to water and all that goes
between, it is perfect."

"And indescribably lovely," added the Girl.

"Yes, I think it is," said the Harvester. "But in the days when I didn't
know how it was coming out, I was sensitive about it; so I kept quiet
and worked, and allowed the other fellow to do the talking. After a
while the ginseng bed grew a treasure worth guarding, and I didn't
care for any one to know how much I had or where it was, as a matter
of precaution. Ginseng and money are synonymous, and I was forced to be
away some of the time."

"Would any one take it?"

"Certainly!" said the Harvester. "If they knew it was there, and what
it is worth. Then, as I've told you, much of the stuff here must not be
handled except by experts, and I didn't want people coming in my absence
and taking risks. The remainder of my reason for living so alone is
cowardice, pure and simple."

"Cowardice? You! Oh no!"

"Thank you!" said the Harvester. "But it is! Some day I'll tell you of
a very solemn oath I've had to keep. It hasn't been easy. You wouldn't
understand, at least not now. If the day ever comes when I think you
will, I'll tell you. Just now I can express it by that one word. I
didn't dare fail or I felt I would be lost as my father was before me.
So I remained away from the city and its temptations and men of my age,
and worked in the woods until I was tired enough to drop, read books
that helped, tinkered with the carving, and sometimes I had an idea,
and I went into that little building behind the dry-house, took out my
different herbs, and tried my hand at compounding a new cure for some of
the pains of humanity. It isn't bad work, Ruth. It keeps a fellow at
a fairly decent level, and some good may come of it. Carey is trying
several formulae for me, and if they work I'll carry them higher. If you
want money, Girl, I know how to get it for you."

"Don't you want it?"

"Not one cent more than I've got," said the Harvester emphatically.
"When any man accumulates more than he can earn with his own hands, he
begins to enrich himself at the expense of the youth, the sweat, the
blood, the joy of his fellow men. I can go to the city, take a look, and
see what money does, as a rule, and it's another thing I'm afraid of.
You will find me a dreadful coward on those two points. I don't want to
know society and its ways. I see what it does to other men; it would be
presumption to reckon myself stronger. So I live alone. As for money,
I've watched the cross cuts and the quick and easy ways to accumulate
it; but I've had something in me that held me to the slow, sure, clean
work of my own hands, and it's yielded me enough for one, for two even,
in a reasonable degree. So I've worked, read, compounded, and carved. If
I couldn't wear myself down enough to sleep by any other method, I went
into the lake, and swam across and back; and that is guaranteed to put
any man to rest, clean and unashamed."

"Six years," said the Girl softly, as she studied him. "I think it has
set a mark on you. I believe I can trace it. Your forehead, brow,
and eyes bear the lines and the appearance of all experience, all
comprehension, but your lips are those of a very young lad. I shouldn't
be surprised if I had that kiss ready for you, and I really believe I
can make it worth while."

"Oh good Lord!" cried the Harvester, turning a backward somersault over
the railing and starting in big bounds up the drive toward the stable.
He passed around it and into the woods at a rush and a few seconds later
from somewhere on the top of the hill his strong, deep voice swept down,
"Glory, glory hallelujah!"

He sang it through at the top of his lungs, that majestic old hymn,
but there was no music at all, it was simply a roar. By and by he came
soberly to the barn and paused to stroke Betsy's nose.

"Stop chewing grass and listen to me," he said. "She's here, Betsy!
She's in our cabin. She's going to remain, you can stake your oats
on that. She's going to be the loveliest and sweetest girl in all the
world, and because you're a beast, I'll tell you something a man never
could know. Down with your ear, you critter! She's going to kiss me,
Betsy! This very night, before I lay me, her lips meet mine, and maybe
you think that won't be glorious. I supposed it would be a year, anyway,
but it's now! Ain't you glad you are an animal, Betsy, and can keep
secrets for a fool man that can't?"

He walked down the driveway, and before the Girl had a chance to speak,
he said, "I wonder if I had not better carry those things into your
room, and arrange your bed for you."

"I can," she said.

"Oh no!" exclaimed the Harvester. "You can't lift the mattress and heavy
covers. Hold the door and tell me how."

He laid a big bundle on the floor, opened it, and took out the shoes.

"Your shoe box is in the closet there."

"I didn't know what that door was, so I didn't open it."

"That is a part of my arrangements for you," said the Harvester. "Here
is a closet with shelves for your covers and other things. They are bare
because I didn't know just what should be put on them. This is the shoe
box here in the corner; I'll put these in it now."

He knelt and in a row set the shoes in the curly maple box and closed
it.

"There you are for all kinds of places and varieties of weather.
This adjoining is your bathroom. I put in towels, soaps; brushes,
and everything I could think of, and there is hot water ready for
you----rain water, too."

The Girl followed and looked into a shining little bathroom, with its
white porcelain tub and wash bowl, enamelled wood-work, dainty green
walls, and white curtains and towels. She could see no accessory she
knew of that was missing, and there were many things to which she never
had been accustomed. The Harvester had gone back to the sunshine room,
and was kneeling on the floor beside the bundle. He began opening boxes
and handing her dresses.

"There are skirt, coat, and waist hangers on the hooks," he said. "I
only got a few things to start on, because I didn't know what you would
like. Instead of being so careful with that dress, why don't you take it
off, and put on a common one? Then we will have something to eat, and go
to the top of the hill and watch the moon bridge the lake."

While she hung the dresses and selected the one to wear, he placed the
mattress, spread the padding and sheets, and encased the pillow. Then he
bent and pressed the springs with his hands.

"I think you will find that soft and easy enough for health," he said.
"All the personal belongings I had that clerk put up for you are in that
chest of drawers there. I put the little boxes in the top and went down.
You can empty and arrange them to-morrow. Just hunt out what you will
need now. There should be everything a girl uses there somewhere. I told
them to be very careful about that. If the things are not right or not
to your taste, you can take them back as soon as you are rested, and
they will exchange them for you. If there is anything I have missed that
you can think of that you need to-night, tell me and I'll go and get
it."

The Girl turned toward him.

"You couldn't be making sport of me," she said, "but Man! Can't you see
that I don't know what to do with half you have here? I never saw such
things closely before. I don't know what they are for. I don't know how
to use them. My mother would have known, but I do not. You overwhelm me!
Fifty times I've tried to tell you that a room of my very own, such
a room as this will be when to-morrow's sun comes in, and these, and
these, and these," she turned from the chest of boxes to the dressing
table, bed, closet, and bath, "all these for me, and you know absolutely
nothing about me----I get a big lump in my throat, and the words that
do come all seem so meaningless, I am perfectly ashamed to say them. Oh
Man, why do you do it?"

"I thought it was about time to spring another 'why' on me," said the
Harvester. "Thank God, I am now in a position where I can tell you
'why'! I do it because you are the girl of my dream, my mate by every
law of Heaven and earth. All men build as well as they know when the one
woman of the universe lays her spell on them. I did all this for myself
just as a kind of expression of what it would be in my heart to do if I
could do what I'd like. Put on the easiest dress you can find and I will
go and set out something to eat."

She stood with arms high piled with the prettiest dresses that could be
selected hurriedly, the tears running down her white cheeks and smiled
through them at him.

"There wouldn't be any of that liquid amber would there?" she asked.

"Quarts!" cried the Harvester. "I'll bring some. ... Does it really hit
the spot, Ruth?" he questioned as he handed her the glass.

She heaped the dresses on the bed and took it.

"It really does. I am afraid I am using too much."

"I don't think it possibly can hurt you. To-morrow we will ask Doc. How
soon will you be ready for lunch?"

"I don't want a bite."

"You will when you see and smell it," said the Harvester. "I am an
expert cook. It's my chiefest accomplishment. You should taste the
dishes I improvise. But there won't be much to-night, because I want you
to see the moon rise over the lake."

He went away and the Girl removed her dress and spread it on the couch.
Then she bathed her face and hands. When she saw the discoloured cloth,
it proved that she had been painted, and made her very indignant. Yet
she could not be altogether angry, for that flush of colour had saved
the Harvester from being pitied by his friend. She stood a long time
before the mirror, staring at her gaunt, colourless face; then she went
to the dressing table and committed a crime. She found a box of cream
and rubbed it on for a foundation. Then she opened some pink powder, and
carefully dusted her cheeks.

"I am utterly ashamed," she said to the image in the mirror, "but he
has done so much for me, he is so, so----I don't know a word big
enough----that I can't bear him to see how ghastly I am, how little
worth it. Perhaps the food, better air, and outdoor exercise will give
me strength and colour soon. Until it does I'm afraid I'm going to help
out all I can with this. It is wonderful how it changes one. I really
appear like a girl instead of a bony old woman."

Then she looked over the dresses, selected a pretty white princesse,
slipped it on, and went to the kitchen. But the Harvester would not
have her there. He seated her at the dining table, beside the window
overlooking the lake, lighted a pair of his home-made candles in his
finest sticks, and placed before her bread, butter, cold meat, milk, and
fruit, and together they ate their first meal in their home.

"If I had known," said the Harvester, "Granny Moreland is a famous cook.
She is a Southern woman, and she can fry chicken and make some especial
dishes to surpass any one I ever knew. She would have been so pleased to
come over and get us an all-right supper."

"I'd much rather have this, and be by ourselves," said the Girl.

"Well, you can bank on it, I would," agreed the Harvester. "For
instance, if any one were here, I might feel restrained about telling
you that you are exactly the beautiful, flushed Dream Girl I have adored
for months, and your dress most becoming. You are a picture to blind the
eyes of a lonely bachelor, Ruth."

"Oh why did you say that?" wailed the Girl. "Now I've got to feel like a
sneak or tell you----and I didn't want you to know."

"Don't you ever tell me or any one else anything you don't want to,"
said the Harvester roundly. "It's nobody's business!"

"But I must! I can't begin with deception. I was fool enough to think
you wouldn't notice. Man, they painted me! I didn't know they were doing
it, but when it all washed off, I looked so ghastly I almost frightened
myself. I hunted through the boxes they put up for you and found some
pink powder----"

"But don't all the daintiest women powder these days, and consider it
indispensable? The clerk said so, and I've noticed it mentioned in the
papers. I bought it for you to use."

"Yes, just powder, but Man, I put on a lot of cold cream first to stick
the powder good and thick. Oh I wish I hadn't!"

"Well since you've told it, is your conscience perfectly at ease? No
you don't! You sit where you are! You are lovely, and if you don't use
enough powder to cover the paleness, until your colour returns, I'll
hold you and put it on. I know you feel better when you appear so that
every one must admire you."

"Yes, but I'm a fraud!"

"You are no such thing!" cried the Harvester hotly. "There hasn't a
woman in ten thousand got any such rope of hair. I have been seeing the
papers on the hair question, too. No one will believe it's real. If they
think your hair is false, when it is natural, they won't be any more
fooled when they think your colour is real, and it isn't. Very soon it
will be and no one need ever know the difference. You go on and fix up
your level best. To see yourself appearing well will make you ambitious
to become so as soon as possible."

"Harvester-man," said the Girl, gazing at him with wet luminous eyes,
"for the sake of other women, I could wish that all men had an oath to
keep, and had been reared in the woods."

"Here is the place we adjourn to the moon," cried the Harvester. "I
don't know of anything that can cure a sudden accession of swell
head like gazing at the heavens. One finds his place among the atoms
naturally and instantaneously with the eyes on the night sky. Should
you have a wrap? You should! The mists from the lake are cool. I don't
believe there is one among my orders. I forgot that. But upstairs with
mother's clothing there are several shawls and shoulder capes. All of
them were washed and carefully packed. Would you use one, Ruth?"

"Why not give it to me. Wouldn't she like me to wear her things better
than to have them lying in moth balls?"

The Harvester looked at her and shook his head, marvelling.

"I can't tell how pleased she would be," he said.

"Where are her belongings?" asked the Girl. "I could use them to help
furnish the house, and it wouldn't appear so strange to you."

The Harvester liked that.

"All the washed things are in those boxes upstairs; also some fine skins
I've saved on the chance of wanting them. Her dishes are in the bottom
of the china closet there; she was mighty proud of them. The furniture
and carpets were so old and abused I burned them. I'll go bring a wrap."

He took the candle and climbed the stairs, soon returning with a little
white wool shawl and a big pink coverlet.

"Got this for her Christmas one time," he said. "She'd never had a white
one and she thought it was pretty."

He folded it around the Girl's shoulders and picked up the coverlet.

"You're never going to take that to the woods!" she cried.

"Why not?"

She took it in her hands to find a corner.

"Just as I thought! It's a genuine Peter Hartman! It's one of the things
that money can't buy, or, rather, one that takes a mint of money to own.
They are heirlooms. They are not manufactured any more. At the art store
where I worked they'd give you fifty dollars for that. It is not faded
or worn a particle. It would be lovely in my room; you mustn't take a
treasure like that out of doors."

"Ruth, are you in earnest?" demanded the Harvester. "I believe there are
six of them upstairs."

"Plutocrat!" cried the Girl. "What colours?"

"More of this pinkish red, blue, and pale green."

"Famous! May I have them to help furnish with to-morrow?"

"Certainly! Anything you can find, any way on earth you want it, only
in my room. That is taboo, as I told you. What am I going to take
to-night?"

"Isn't the rug you had in the woods in the wagon yet? Use that!"

"Of course! The very thing! Bel, proceed!"

"Are you going to leave the house like this?"

"Why not?"

"Suppose some one breaks in!"

"Nothing worth carrying away, except what you have on. No one to get in.
There is a big swamp back of our woods, marsh in front, we're up here
where we can see the drive and bridge. There is nothing possible from
any direction. Never locked the cabin in my life, except your room, and
that was because it was sacred, not that there was any danger. Clear the
way, Bel!"

"Clear it of what?"

"Katydids, hoptoads, and other carnivorous animals."

"Now you are making fun of me! Clear it of what?"

"A coon that might go shuffling across, an opossum, or a snake going to
the lake. Now are you frightened so that you will not go?"

"No. The path is broad and white and surely you and Bel can take care of
me."

"If you will trust us we can."

"Well, I am trusting you."

"You are indeed," said the Harvester. "Now see if you think this is
pretty."

He indicated the hill sloping toward the lake. The path wound among
massive trees, between whose branches patches of moonlight filtered.
Around the lake shore and climbing the hill were thickets of bushes.
The water lay shining in the light, a gentle wind ruffled the surface
in undulant waves, and on the opposite bank arose the line of big
trees. Under a giant oak widely branching, on the top of the hill, the
Harvester spread the rug and held one end of it against the tree trunk
to protect the Girl's dress. Then he sat a little distance away and
began to talk. He mingled some sense with a quantity of nonsense, and
appreciated every hint of a laugh he heard. The day had been no amusing
matter for a girl absolutely alone among strange people and scenes.
Anything more foreign to her previous environment or expectations he
could not imagine. So he talked to prevent her from thinking, and worked
for a laugh as he laboured for bread.

"Now we must go," he said at last. "If there is the malaria I strongly
suspect in your system, this night air is none too good for you. I only
wanted you to see the lake the first night in your new home, and if it
won't shock you, I brought you here because this is my holy of holies.
Can you guess why I wanted you to come, Ruth?"

"If I wasn't so stupid with alternate burning and chills, and so
deadened to every proper sensibility, I suppose I could," she answered,
"but I'm not brilliant. I don't know, unless it is because you knew it
would be the loveliest place I ever saw. Surely there is no other spot
in the world quite so beautiful."

"Then would it seem strange to you," asked the Harvester going to the
Girl and gently putting his arms around her, "would it seem strange to
you, that a woman who once homed here and thought it the prettiest place
on earth, chose to remain for her eternal sleep, rather than to rest in
a distant city of stranger dead?"

He felt the Girl tremble against him.

"Where is she?"

"Very close," said the Harvester. "Under this oak. She used to say that
she had a speaking acquaintance with every tree on our land, and of them
all she loved this big one the best. She liked to come here in winter,
and feel the sting of the wind sweeping across the lake, and in summer
this was her place to read and to think. So when she slept the unwaking
sleep, Ruth, I came here and made her bed with my own hands, and then
carried her to it, covered her, and she sleeps well. I never have
regretted her going. Life did not bring her joy. She was very tired.
She used to say that after her soul had fled, if I would lay her here,
perhaps the big roots would reach down and find her, and from her frail
frame gather slight nourishment and then her body would live again in
talking leaves that would shelter me in summer and whisper her love in
winter. Of all Medicine Woods this is the dearest spot to me. Can you
love it too, Ruth?"

"Oh I can!" cried the Girl; "I do now! Just to see the place and hear
that is enough. I wish, oh to my soul I wish----"

"You wish what?" whispered the Harvester gently.

"I dare not! I was wild to think of it. I would be ungrateful to ask
it."

"You would be ungracious if you didn't ask anything that would give
me the joy of pleasing you. How long is it going to require for you
to learn, Ruth, that to make up for some of the difficulties life has
brought you would give me more happiness than anything else could? Tell
me now."

"No!"

He gathered her closer.

"Ruth, there is no reason why you should be actively unkind to me. What
is it you wish?"

She struggled from his arms and stood alone in white moonlight, staring
across the lake, along the shore, deep into the perfumed forest, and
then at the mound she now could distinguish under the giant tree.
Suddenly she went to him and with both shaking hands gripped his arm.

"My mother!" she panted. "Oh she was a beautiful woman, delicately
reared, and her heart was crushed and broken. By the inch she went to
a dreadful end I could not avert or allay, and in poverty and grime I
fought for a way to save her body from further horror, and it's all so
dreadful I thought all feeling in me was dried and still, but I am not
quite calloused yet. I suffer it over with every breath. It is never
entirely out of my mind. Oh Man, if only you would lift her from the
horrible place she lies, where briers run riot and cattle trample and
the unmerciful sun beats! Oh if only you'd lift her from it, and bring
her here! I believe it would take away some of the horror, the shame,
and the heartache. I believe I could go to sleep without hearing the
voice of her suffering, if I knew she was lying on this hill, under your
beautiful tree, close the dear mother you love. Oh Man, would you----?"

The Harvester crushed the Girl in his arms and shuddering sobs shook his
big frame, and choked his voice.

"Ruth, for God's sake, be quiet!" he cried. "Why I'd be glad to! I'll go
anywhere you tell me, and bring her, and she shall rest where the lake
murmurs, the trees shelter, the winds sing, and earth knows the sun only
in long rays of gold light."

She stared at him with strained face.

"You----you wouldn't!" she breathed.

"Ruth, child," said the Harvester, "I tell you I'd be happy. Look at
my side of this! I'm in search of bands to bind you to me and to this
place. Could you tell me a stronger than to have the mother you idolized
lie here for her long sleep? Why Girl, you can't know the deep and
abiding joy it would give me to bring her. I'd feel I had you almost
secure. Where is she Ruth?"

"In that old unkept cemetery south of Onabasha, where it costs no money
to lay away your loved ones."

"Close here! Why I'll go to-morrow! I supposed she was in the city."

She straightened and drew away from him.

"How could I? I had nothing. I could not have paid even her fare and
brought her here in the cheapest box the decency of man would allow
him to make if her doctor had not given me the money I owe. Now do
you understand why I must earn and pay it myself? Save for him, it was
charity or her delicate body to horrors. Money never can repay him."

"Ruth, the day you came to Onabasha was she with you?"

"In the express car," said the Girl.

"Where did you go when you left the train shed?"

"Straight to the baggage room, where Uncle Henry was waiting. Men
brought and put her in his wagon, and he drove with me to the place and
other men lowered her, and that was all."

"You poor Girl!" cried the Harvester. "This time to-morrow night she
shall sleep in luxury under this oak, so help me God! Ruth, can you
spare me? May I go at once? I can't rest, myself."

"You will?" cried the Girl. "You will?"

She was laughing in the moonlight. "Oh Man, I can't ever, ever tell
you!"

"Don't try," said the Harvester. "Call it settled. I will start early
in the morning. I know that little cemetery. The man whose land it is
on can point me the spot. She is probably the last one laid there. Come
now, Ruth. Go to the room I made for you, and sleep deeply and in peace.
Will you try to rest?"

"Oh David!" she exulted. "Only think! Here where it's clean and cool;
beside the lake, where leaves fall gently and I can come and sit close
to her and bring flowers; and she never will be alone, for your dear
mother is here. Oh David!"

"It is better. I can't thank you enough for thinking of it. Come now,
let me help you."

He half carried her down the hill. Then he made the cabin a glamour of
light by putting candles in the sticks he had carved and placing them
everywhere.

"There is a lighting plant in the basement," he said, "but I had not
expected to use it until winter, and I have no acetylene. Candles were
our grandmothers' lights and they are the best anyway. Go bathe your
face, Ruth, and wash away all trace of tears. Put on the pink powder,
and in a few weeks you will have colour to outdo the wildest rose. You
must be as gay as you can the remainder of this night."

"I will!" cried the Girl. "I will! Oh I didn't know a thing on earth
could make me happy! I didn't know I really could be glad. Oh if the ice
in my heart would melt, and the wall break down, and the girlhood I've
never known would come yet! Oh David, if it would!"

"Before the Lord it shall!" vowed the Harvester. "It shall come with the
fulness of joy right here in Medicine Woods. Think it! Believe it! Keep
it before you! Work for it! Happiness is worth while! All of us have a
right to it! It shall be yours and soon."

"I will try! I will!" promised the Girl. "I'll go right now and I'll put
on the blessed pink powder so thickly you'll never know what is under
it, and soon it won't be needed at all."

She was laughing as she left the room. The Harvester restlessly walked
the floor a few minutes and then sat with a notebook and began entering
stems.

When the Girl returned, he brought the pillow from her bed, folded the
coverlet, and she lay on them in the big swing. He covered her with the
white shawl, and while Singing Water sang its loudest, katydids exulted
over the delightful act of their ancestor, and a million gauze-winged
creatures of night hummed against the screen, in a voice soft and low he
told her in a steady stream, as he swayed her back and forth, what each
sound of the night was, and how and why it was made all the way from the
rumbling buzz of the June bug to the screech of the owl and the splash
of the bass in the lake. All of it, as it appealed to him, was the story
of steady evolution, the natural processes of reproduction, the joy of
life and its battles, and the conquest of the strong in nature. At his
hands every sound was stripped of terror. The leaping bass was exulting
in life, the screeching owl was telling its mate it had found a fat
mouse for the children, the nighthawk was courting, the big bull frogs
booming around the lake were serenading the moon. There was not a thing
to fear or a voice left with an unsympathetic note in it. She was half
asleep when at last he helped her to her room, set a pitcher of frosty,
clinking drink on her table, locked her door and window screens inside,
spread Belshazzar's blanket on her porch, and set his door wide open,
that he might hear if she called, and then said good night and went back
to his memorandum book.

"No bad beginning," he muttered softly, "no bad beginning, but I'd
almost give my right hand if she hadn't forgotten----"

In her room the exhausted Girl slipped the pins from her hair and sank
on the low chair before the dressing-table. She picked up the shining,
silver backed brush and stared at the monogram, R. F. L, entwined on it.

"My soul!" she exclaimed. "WAS HE SO SURE AS THAT? Was there ever any
other man like him?"

She dropped the brush and with tired hands pushed back the heavy braids.
Then she arose and going to the chest of drawers began lifting lids to
find a night robe. As she searched the boxes she found every dainty,
pretty undergarment a girl ever used and at last the robes. She shook
out a long white one, slipped into it, and walked to the bed. That stood
as he had arranged it, white, clean, and dainty.

"Everything for me!" she said softly. "Everything for me! Shall there be
nothing for him? Oh he makes it easy, easy!"

She stepped to the closet, picked down a lavender silk kimona and
drawing it over her gown she gathered it around her and opening
the bathroom door, she stepped into a little hall leading to the
dining-room. As she entered the living-room the Harvester bent over his
book. Her step was very close when he heard it and turned his head. In
an instant she touched his shoulders. The Harvester dropped the pencil,
and palm downward laid his hands on the table, his promise strong in
his heart. The Girl slid a shaking palm under his chin, leaned his head
against her breast, and dropped a sweet, tear-wet face on his. With all
the strength of her frail arms she gripped him a second, and then gave
the kiss, into which she tried to put all she could find no words to
express.



CHAPTER XIV. SNOWY WINGS

The Harvester sat at the table in deep thoughts until the lights in the
Girl's room were darkened and everything was quiet. Then he locked
the screens inside and went into the night. The moon flooded all the
hillside, until coarse print could have been read with keen eyes in its
light. A restlessness, born of exultation he could not allay or control,
was on him. She had not forgotten! After this, the dream would be
effaced by reality. It was the beginning. He scarcely had dared hope for
so much. Surely it presaged the love with which she some day would
come to him and crown his life. He walked softly up and down the drive,
passing her windows, unable to think of sleep. Over and over he dwelt on
the incidents of the day, so inevitably he came to his promise.

"Merciful Heaven!" he muttered. "How can such things happen? The poor,
overworked, tired, suffering girl. It will give her some comfort. She
will feel better. It has to be done. I believe I will do the worst part
of it while she sleeps."

He went to the cabin, crept very close to one of her windows and
listened intently. Surely no mortal awake could lie motionless so long.
She must be sleeping. He patted Belshazzar, whispered, "Watch, boy,
watch for your life!" and then crossed to the dry-house. Beside it he
found a big roll of coffee sacks that he used in collecting roots, and
going to the barn, he took a spade and mattock. Then he climbed the hill
to the oak; in the white moonlight laid off his measurements and began
work. His heart was very tender as he lifted the earth, and threw it
into the tops of the big bags he had propped open.

"I'll line it with a couple of sheets and finish the edge with pond
lilies and ferns," he planned, "and I'll drag this earth from sight, and
cover it with brush until I need it."

Sometimes he paused in his work to rest a few minutes and then he stood
and glanced around him. Several times he went down the hill and slipped
close to a window, but he could not hear a sound. When his work was
finished, he stood before the oak, scraping clinging earth from the
mattock with which he had cut roots he had been compelled to remove.
He was tired now and he thought he would go to his room and sleep until
daybreak. As he turned the implement he remembered how through it he
had found her, and now he was using it in her service. He smiled as he
worked, and half listened to the steady roll of sound encompassing him.
A cool breath swept from the lake and he wondered if it found her wet,
hot cheek. A wild duck in the rushes below gave an alarm signal, and
it ran in subdued voice, note by note, along the shore. The Harvester
gripped the mattock and stood motionless. Wild things had taught him so
many lessons he heeded their warnings instinctively. Perhaps it was a
mink or muskrat approaching the rushes. Listening intently, he heard a
stealthy step coming up the path behind him.

The Harvester waited. He soundlessly moved around the trunk of the big
tree. An instant more the night prowler stopped squarely at the head of
the open grave, and jumped back with an oath. He stood tense a second,
then advanced, scratched a match and dropped it into the depths of the
opening. That instant the Harvester recognized Henry Jameson, and with
a spring landed between the man's shoulders and sent him, face down,
headlong into the grave. He snatched one of the sacks of earth, and
tipping it, gripped the bottom and emptied the contents on the head
and shoulders of the prostrate man. Then he dropped on him and feeling
across his back took an ugly, big revolver from a pocket. He swung to
the surface and waited until Henry Jameson crawled from under the weight
of earth and began to rise; then, at each attempt, he knocked him down.
At last he caught the exhausted man by the collar and dragged him to the
path, where he dropped him and stood gloating.

"So!" he said; "It's you! Coming to execute your threat, are you? What's
the matter with my finishing you, loading your carcass with a few stones
into this sack, and dropping you in the deepest part of the lake."

There was no reply.

"Ain't you a little hasty?" asked the Harvester. "Isn't it rather cold
blooded to come sneaking when you thought I'd be asleep? Don't you think
it would be low down to kill a man on his wedding day?"

Henry Jameson arose cautiously and faced the Harvester.

"Who have you killed?" he panted.

"No one," answered the Harvester. "This is for the victim of a member of
your family, but I never dreamed I'd have the joy of planting any of
you in it first, even temporarily. Did you rest well? What I should have
done was to fill in, tread down, and leave you at the bottom."

Jameson retreated a few steps. The Harvester laughed and advanced the
same distance.

"Now then," he said, "explain what you are doing on my premises, a few
hours after your threat, and armed with another revolver before I could
return the one I took from you this afternoon. You must grow them on
bushes at your place, they seem so numerous. Speak up! What are you
doing here?"

There was no answer.

"There are three things it might be," mused the Harvester. "You might
think to harm me, but you're watched on that score and I don't believe
you'd enjoy the result sure to follow. You might contemplate trying to
steal Ruth's money again, but we'll pass that up. You might want to go
through my woods to inform yourself as to what I have of value there.
But, in all prob-ability, you are after me. Well, here I am. Go ahead!
Do what you came to!"

The Harvester stepped toward the lake bank and Jameson, turning to watch
him, exposed a face ghastly through its grime.

"Look here!" cried the Harvester, sickening. "We will end this right
now. I was rather busy this afternoon, but I wasn't too hurried to take
that little weapon of yours to the chief of police and tell him where
and how I got it and what occurred. He was to return it to you
to-morrow with his ultimatum. When I have added the history of to-night,
reinforced by another gun, he will understand your intentions and know
where you belong. You should be confined, but because your name is the
same as the Girl's, and there is of your blood in her veins, I'll give
you one more chance. I'll let you go this time, but I'll report you, and
deliver this implement to be added to your collection at headquarters.
And I tell you, and I'll tell them, that if ever I find you on my
premises again, I'll finish you on sight. Is that clear?"

Jameson nodded.

"What I should do is to plump you squarely into confinement, as I could
easily enough, but that's not my way. I am going to let you off, but you
go knowing the law. One thing more: Don't leave with any distorted ideas
in your head. I saw Ruth the day she stepped from the cars in Onabasha
and I loved her. I wanted to court and marry her, as any man would the
girl he loves, but you spoiled that with your woman killing brutality.
So I married her in Onabasha this afternoon. You can see the records at
the county clerk's office and interview the minister who performed the
ceremony, if you doubt me. Ruth is in her room, comfortable as I can
make her, asleep and unafraid, thank God! This grave is for her mother.
The Girl wants her lifted from the horrible place you put her, and laid
where it is sheltered and pleasant. Now, I'll see you off my land. Hurry
yourself!"

With the Harvester following, Henry Jameson went back over the path he
had come, until he reached and mounted the horse he had ridden. As the
Harvester watched him, Jameson turned in the saddle and spoke for the
second time.

"What will you give me in cold cash to tell you who she is, and where
her mother's people are?"

The Harvester leaped for the bridle and missed. Jameson bent over
the horse and lashed it to a run. Half way to the oak the Harvester
remembered the revolver, but being unaccustomed to weapons, he had
forgotten it when he needed it most. He replaced the earth in the sack
and dragged it away, then plunged into the lake, and afterward went
to bed, where he slept soundly until dawn. First, he slipped into the
living-room and wrote a note to the Girl. Then he fed Belshazzar and ate
a hearty breakfast. He stationed the dog at her door, gave him the
note, and went to the oak. There he arranged everything neatly and as
he desired, and then hitching Betsy he quietly guided her down the drive
and over the road to Onabasha. He went to an undertaking establishment,
made all his arrangements, and then called up and talked with the
minister who had performed the marriage ceremony the previous day.

The sun shining in her face awoke Ruth and she lay revelling in the
light. "Maybe it will colour me faster than the powder," she thought.
"How peculiar for him to say what he did! I always thought men detested
it. But he is not like any one else." She lay looking around the
beautiful room and wondering where the Harvester was. She could not hear
him. Then, slowly and painfully, she dragged her aching limbs from the
bed and went to the door. The dog was gone from the porch and she could
not see the man at the stable. She selected a frock and putting it on
opened the door. Belshazzar arose and offered this letter:

DEAR RUTH:

I have gone to keep my promise. You are locked in with Bel. Please obey
me and do not step outside the door until four o'clock. Then put on a
pretty white dress, and with the dog, come to the bridge to meet me. I
hope you will not suffer and fret. Put away your clothing, arrange the
rooms to keep busy, or better yet, lie in the swing and rest. There is
food in the ice chest, pantry, and cellar. Forgive me for leaving you
to-day, but I thought you would feel easier to have this over. I am so
glad to bring your mother here. I hope it will make you happy enough
to meet us with a smile. Do not forget the pink box until the reality
comes.

With love,

DAVID.


The Girl went to the kitchen and found food. She offered to share with
Belshazzar, but she could see from his indifference he was not hungry.
Then she returned to the room flooded with light, and filled with
treasures, and tried to decide how she would arrange her clothing. She
spent hours opening boxes and putting dainty, pretty garments in the
drawers, hanging the dresses, and placing the toilet articles. Often
she wearily dropped to the chairs and couches, or gazed from door and
windows at the pictures they framed. "I wonder why he doesn't want me to
go outside," she thought. "I wouldn't be afraid in the least, with Bel.
I'd just love to go across to that wonderful little river of Singing
Water and sit in the shade; but I won't open the door until four
o'clock, just as he wrote."

When she thought of where he had gone, and why, the swift tears filled
her eyes, but she forced them back and resolutely went to investigate
the dining-room. Then for two hours she was a home builder, with a touch
of that homing instinct found in the heart of every good woman. First,
she looked where the Harvester had said the dishes were, and suddenly
sat on the floor exulting. There was a quantity of old chipped and
cracked white ware and some gorgeous baking powder prizes; but there
were also big blue, green, and pink bowls, several large lustre plates,
and a complete tea set without chip or blemish, two beautiful pitchers,
and a number of willow pieces. She set the green bowl on the dining
table, the blue on the living-room, and took the pink herself, while a
beautiful yellow one she placed in the dining-room window seat.

"Oh, if I only dared fill them with those lovely flowers!" She stood in
the window and gazed longingly toward the lake. "I know what colour I'd
like to put in each of them," she said, "but I promised not to touch
anything, and the ones I want most I never saw before, and I'm not to go
out anyway. I can't see the sense in that, when I'm not at all afraid,
but if he does this wonderful thing for me I must do what he asks. Oh
mother, mother! Are you really coming to this beautiful place and to
rest at last?"

She sank to the window seat and lay trembling, but she bravely
restrained the tears. After a time she remembered the upstairs and went
to see the coverlets. She found a half dozen beautiful ones, and smiled
as she examined the stiffly conventionalized birds facing each other in
the border designs, and in one corner of each blanket she read, woven in
the cloth----

     Peter and John
        Hartman
        Wooster
         Ohio
         1837

She took a blue and a green one, several fine skins from the fur box the
Harvester had told her about, and went downstairs. It required all her
strength to push the heavy tables before the fireplaces. She spread
papers on them to stand on, and tacked a skin above each mantel. She set
all of the candlesticks, except those she wanted to use, in the lower
part of an empty bookcase. A pair of black walnut she placed on the
living-room mantel, together with a big blue plate, a yellow one, and an
old brass candlestick. She admired the effect very much. She spread the
blue coverlet on the couch, and arranged the blue bowl and some books on
the table. Here and there she hung a skin across a chair back, or
spread it in a wide window seat. Having exhausted all her resources, she
returned to the dining-room, spread a skin before the hearth and in each
window seat, set a pink and green lustre plate on the mantel, and a pair
of oak candlesticks, and arranged the lustre tea set on the side table.
The pink coverlet she took for herself, and after resting a time she was
surprised on going back to the rooms to see how homelike they appeared.

At three o'clock she dressed and at almost four unlocked the screen,
called Belshazzar to her side, and slowly went down the drive to the
bridge. She had used the pink powder, put on a beautiful white dress,
carefully arranged her hair, and she wore the pearl ornament. Once her
fingers strayed to the pendant and she said softly, "I think both he and
mother would like me to wear it."

At the foot of the hill she stopped at a bench and sat in the shade
waiting. Belshazzar stretched beside her, and gazed at her with
questioning, friendly dog eyes. The Girl looked from Singing Water to
the lake, and up the hill to make sure it was real. She tried to quiet
her quivering muscles and nerves. He had asked her to meet him with a
smile. How could she? He could not have understood what it meant when
he made the request. There never would be any way to make him realize;
indeed, why should he? The smile must be ready. He had loved his mother
deeply, and yet he had said he did not grieve to lay her to rest. Earth
had not been kind. Then why should she sorrow for her mother? Again life
had been not only unkind, but bitterly cruel.

Belshazzar arose and watched down the drive. The Girl looked also.
Through the gate and up the levee came a strange procession. First
walked the Harvester alone, with bared head, and he carried an arm load
of white lilies. A carriage containing a man and several women followed.
Then came a white hearse with snowy plumes, and behind that another
carriage filled with people, and Betsy followed drawing men in the
spring wagon. The Girl arose and as she stepped to the drive she swayed
uncertainly an instant.

"Gracious Heaven!" she gasped. "He is bringing her in white, and with
flowers and song!"

Then she lifted her head, and with a smile on her lips she went to meet
him. As she reached his side, he tenderly put an arm around her, and
came on steadily.

"Courage Girl!" he whispered. "Be as brave as she was!"

Around the driveway and up the hill he half carried her, to a seat he
had placed under the oak. Before her lay the white-lined grave, and the
Harvester arranged his lilies around it. The teams stopped at the barn
and men came up the hill bearing a white burden. Behind them followed
the minister who yesterday had performed their marriage ceremony, and
after him a choir of trained singers softly chanting:

     "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord,
     For they shall cease from their labours."


"But David," panted the Girl, "It was mean and poor. That is not she!"

"Sush!" said the Harvester. "It is your mother. The location was high
and dry, and it has been only a short time. We wrapped her in white
silk, laid her on a soft cushion and pillow, and housed her securely.
She can sleep well now, Ruth. Listen!"

Covered with white lilies, slowly the casket sank into earth. At its
head stood the minister and as it began to disappear, the white doves,
frightened by the strange conveyances at the stable, came circling
above. The minister looked up. He lifted a clear tenor, and softly and
purely he sang, while at a wave of his hand the choir joined him:

     "Oh, come angel band!  Oh, come, and around me stand!
     Oh, bear me away on your snowy wings to my immortal home!"


He uttered a low benediction, and singing, the people turned and went
downhill. The Harvester gathered the Girl in his arms and carried her to
the lake. He laid her in his boat and taking the oars sent it along the
bank in the shade, and through cool, green places.

"Now cry all you choose!" he said.

The overstrained Girl covered her face and sobbed wildly. After a time
he began to talk to her gently, and before she realized it, she was
listening.

"Death has been kinder to her than life, Ruth," he said. "She is lying
as you saw her last, I think. We lifted her very tenderly, wrapped
her carefully, and brought her gently as we could. Now they shall rest
together, those little mothers of ours, to whom men were not kind; and
in the long sleep we must forget, as they have forgotten, and forgive,
as no doubt they have forgiven. Don't you want to take some lilies to
them before we go to the cabin? Right there on your left are unusually
large ones."

The Girl sat up, dried her eyes and gathered the white flowers. When the
last vehicle crossed the bridge, the Harvester tied the boat and helped
her up the hill. The old oak stretched its wide arms above two little
mounds, both moss covered and scattered with flowers. The Girl added her
store and then went to the Harvester, and sank at his feet.

"Ruth, you shall not!" cried the man. "I simply will not have that. Come
now, I will bring you back this evening."

He helped her to the veranda and laid her in the swing. He sat beside
her while she rested, and then they went into the cabin for supper. Soon
he had her telling what she had found, and he was making notes of what
was yet required to transform the cabin into a home. The Harvester left
it to her to decide whether he should roof the bridge the next day or
make a trip for furnishings. She said he had better buy what they
needed and then she could make the cabin homelike while he worked on the
bridge.



CHAPTER XV. THE HARVESTER INTERPRETS LIFE

They went through the rooms together, and the Girl suggested the
furnishings she thought necessary, while the Harvester wrote the list.
The following morning he was eager to have her company, but she was very
tired and begged to be allowed to wait in the swing, so again he drove
away and left her with Belshazzar on guard. When he had gone, she went
through the cabin arranging the furniture the best she could, then
dressed and went to the swinging couch. It was so wide and heavy a light
wind rocked it gently, and from it she faced the fern and lily carpeted
hillside, the majesty of big trees of a thousand years, and heard the
music of Singing Water as it sparkled diamond-like where the sun rays
struck its flow. Across the drive and down the valley to the brilliant
bit of marsh it hurried on its way to Loon Lake.

There were squirrels barking and racing in the big trees and over the
ground. They crossed the sodded space of lawn and came to the top step
for nuts, eating them from cunning paws. They were living life according
to the laws of their nature. She knew that their sharp, startling bark
was not to frighten her, but to warn straying intruders of other species
of their kindred from a nest, because the Harvester had told her so. He
had said their racing here and there in wild scramble was a game of tag
and she found it most interesting to observe.

Birds of brilliant colour flashed everywhere, singing in wild joy, and
tilted on the rising hedge before her, hunting berries and seeds. Their
bubbling, spontaneous song was an instinctive outpouring of their joy
over mating time, nests, young, much food, and running water. Their
social, inquiring, short cry was to locate a mate, and call her to good
feeding. The sharp wild scream of a note was when a hawk passed over, a
weasel lurked in the thicket, or a black snake sunned on the bushes. She
remembered these things, and lay listening intently, trying to interpret
every sound as the Harvester did.

Birds of wide wing hung as if nailed to the sky, or wheeled and sailed
in grandeur. They were searching the landscape below to locate a hare
or snake in the waving grass or carrion in the fields. The wonderful
exhibitions of wing power were their expression of exultation in life,
just as the song sparrow threatened to rupture his throat as he swung
on the hedge, and the red bird somewhere in the thicket whistled so
forcefully it sounded as if the notes might hurt him.

On the lake bass splashed in a game with each other. Grebes chattered,
because they were very social. Ducks dived and gobbled for roots and
worms of the lake shore, and congratulated each other when they were
lucky.

Killdeer cried for slaughter, in plaintive tones, as their white breasts
gleamed silver-like across the sky. They insisted on the death of their
ancient enemies, because the deer had trampled nests around the
shore, roiled the water, spoiled the food hunting, and had been wholly
unmindful of the laws of feathered folk from the beginning.

Behind the barn imperial cocks crowed challenges of defiance to each
other and all the world, because they once had worn royal turbans on
their heads, and ruled the forests, even the elephants and lions. Happy
hens cackled when they deposited an egg, and wandered through their park
singing the spring egg song unceasingly.

Upon the barn Ajax spread and exulted in glittering plumage, and
screamed viciously. He was sending a wireless plea to the forests of
Ceylon for a gray mate to come and share the ridge pole with him, and
help him wage red war on the sickening love making of the white doves he
hated.

Everything was beautiful, some of it was amusing, all instructive, and
intensely interesting. The Girl wanted to know about the brown, yellow,
and black butterflies sailing from flower to flower. She watched big
black and gold bees come from the forest for pollen and listened to
their monotonous bumbling. Her first humming bird poised in air, and
sipped nectar before her astonished eyes. It was marvellous, but more
wonderful to the Girl than anything she saw or heard was the fact that
because of the Harvester's teachings she now could trace through all of
it the ordained processes of the evolution of life. Everything was right
in its way, all necessary to human welfare, and so there was nothing to
fear, but marvels to learn and pictures to appreciate. She would have
taken Belshazzar and gone out, but the Harvester had exacted a promise
that she would not. The fact was, he could see that she was coming
gradually to a sane and natural view of life and living things, and he
did not want some sound or creature to frighten her, and spoil what he
had accomplished. So she swayed in the swing and watched, and tried to
interpret sights and sounds as he did.

Before an hour she realized that she was coming speedily into sympathy
with the wild life around her; for, instead of shivering and shrinking
at unaccustomed sounds, she was listening especially for them, and
trying to arrive at a sane version. Instead of the senseless roar
of commerce, manufacture, and life of a city, she was beginning to
appreciate sounds that varied and carried the Song of Life in unceasing
measure and absorbing meaning, while she was more than thankful for the
fresh, pure air, and the blessed, God-given light. It seemed to the Girl
that there was enough sunshine at Medicine Woods to furnish rays of gold
for the whole world.

"Bel," she said to the dog standing beside her, "it's a shame to
separate you from the Medicine Man and pen you here with me. It's a
wonder you don't bite off my head and run away to find him. He's gone to
bring more things to make life beautiful. I wanted to go with him, but
oh Bel, there's something dreadfully wrong with me. I was afraid I'd
fall on the streets and frighten and shame him. I'm so weak, I scarcely
can walk straight across one of these big, cool rooms that he has built
for me. He can make everything beautiful, Bel, a home, rooms, clothing,
grounds, and life----above everything else he can make life beautiful.
He's so splendid and wonderful, with his wide understanding and sane
interpretation and God-like sympathy and patience. Why Belshazzar, he
can do the greatest thing in all the world! He can make you forget that
the grave annihilates your dear ones by hideous processes, and set you
to thinking instead that they come back to you in whispering leaves and
flower perfumes. If I didn't owe him so much that I ought to pay, if
this wasn't so alluringly beautiful, I'd like to go to the oak and lie
beside those dear women resting there, and give my tired body to
furnish sap for strength and leaves for music. He can take its bitterest
sting----from death, Bel----and that's the most wonderful thing----in
life, Bel----"

Her voice became silent, her eyes closed; the dog stretched himself
beside her on guard, and it was so the Harvester found them when he
drove home from the city. He heaped his load in the dining-room, stabled
Betsy, carried the things he had brought where he thought they belonged,
and prepared food. When she awakened she came to him.

"How is it going, Girl?" asked the Harvester.

"I can't tell you how lovely it has been!"

"Do you really mean that your heart is warming a little to things here?"

"Indeed I do! I can't tell you what a morning I've had. There have been
such myriad things to see and hear. Oh, Harvester, can you ever teach me
what all of it means?"

"I can right now," said the Harvester promptly. "It means two things,
so simple any little child can understand----the love of God and the
evolution of life. I am not precisely clear as to what I mean when I say
God. I don't know whether it is spirit, matter, or force; it is that big
thing that brings forth worlds, establishes their orbits, and gives us
heat, light, food, and water. To me, that is God and His love. Just that
we are given birth, sheltered, provisioned, and endowed for our work.
Evolution is the natural consequence of this. It is the plan steadily
unfolding. If I were you, I wouldn't bother my head over these
questions, they never have been scientifically explained to the
beginning; I doubt if they ever will be, because they start with the
origin of matter and that is too far beyond man for him to penetrate.
Just enjoy to the depths of your soul----that's worship. Be thankful for
everything----that's praising God as the birds praise him. And 'do unto
others' that's all there is of love and religion combined in one fell
swoop."

"You should go before the world and tell every one that!"

"No! It isn't my vocation," said the Harvester. "My work is to provide
pain-killer. I don't believe, Ruth, that there is any one on the
footstool who is doing a better job along that line. I am boastfully
proud of it----just of sending in the packages that kill fever, refresh
poor blood, and strengthen weak hearts; unadulterated, honest weight,
fresh, and scrupulously clean. My neighbours have a different name for
it; I call it a man's work."

"Every one who understands must," said the Girl. "I wish I could help at
that. I feel as if it would do more to wipe out the pain I've suffered
and seen her endure than anything else. Man, when I grow strong enough I
want to help you. I believe that I am going to love it here."

"Don't ever suppress your feelings, Ruth!" hastily cried the Harvester.
"It will be very bad for you. You will become wrought up, and 'het up,'
as Granny Moreland says, and it will make you very ill. When we drive
the fever from your blood, the ache from your bones, the poison of
wrong conditions from your soul, and good, healthy, red corpuscles begin
pumping through your little heart like a windmill, you can stake your
life you're going to love it here. And the location and work are not
all you're going to care for either, honey. Now just wait! That was not
'nominated in the bond.' I'm allowed to talk. I never agreed not to SAY
things. What I promised was not to DO them. So as I said, honey, sit at
this table, and eat the food I've cooked; and by that time the furniture
van will be here, and the men will unload, and you shall reign on a
throne and tell me where and how."

"Oh if I were only stronger, David!"

"You are!" said the Harvester. "You are much better than you were
yesterday. You can talk, and that's all that's necessary. The rooms
are ready for furniture. The men will carry it where you want it. A
decorator is coming to hang the curtains. By night we will be settled;
you can lie in the swing while I read to you a story so wonderful that
the wildest fairy tale you ever heard never touched it."

"What will it be, David?"

"Eat all the red raspberries and cream, bread and butter, and drink all
the milk you can. There's blood, beefsteak, and bones in it. As I was
saying, you have come here a stranger to a strange land. The first thing
is for you to understand and love the woods. Before you can do that you
should master the history of one tree; just the same as you must learn
to know and love me before your childlike trust in all mankind returns
again. Understand? Well, the fates knew you were on the way, coming
trembling down the brink, Ruth, so they put it into the heart of a great
man to write largely of a wonderful tree, especially for your benefit.
After it had fallen he took it apart, split it in sections, and year
by year spread out history for all the world to read. It made a classic
story filled with unsurpassed wonders. It was a pine of a thousand
years, close the age of our mother tree, Ruth, and when we have learned
from Enos Mills how to wrest secrets from the hearts of centuries, we
will climb the hill and measure our oak, and then I will estimate, and
you will write, and we will make a record for our tree."

"Oh, I'd like that!"

"So would I," said the Harvester. "And a million other things I can
think of that we can learn together. It won't require long for me to
teach you all I know, and by that time your hand will be clasped in
mine, and our 'hearts will beat as one,' and you will give me a kiss
every night and morning, and a few during the day for interest, and we
will go on in life together and learn songs, miracles, and wonders until
the old oak calls us. Then we will ascend the hill gladly and lie down
and offer up our bodies, and our children will lay flowers over our
hearts, and gather the herbs and paint the pictures? Amen. I hear a van
on the bridge. Just you go to your room and lie down until I get things
unloaded and where they belong. Then you and the decorator can make us
home-like, and to-morrow we will begin to live. Won't that be great,
Ruth?"

"With you, yes, I think it will."

"That will do for this time," said the Harvester, as he opened the door
to her room. "Lie and rest until I say ready."

As he went to meet the men, she could hear him singing lustily, "Praise
God from whom all blessings flow."

"What a child he is!" she said. "And what a man!"

For an hour heavy feet sounded through the cabin carrying furniture to
different rooms. Then with a floor brush in one hand, and a polishing
cloth in the other, the Harvester tapped at her door and helped the Girl
upstairs. He had divided the space into three large, square sleeping
chambers. In each he had set up a white iron bed, a dressing table, and
wash stand, and placed two straight-backed and one rocking chair, all
white. The walls were tinted lightly with green added to the plaster.
There was a mattress and a stack of bedding on each bed, and a large rug
and several small ones on the floors. He led her to the rocking chair in
the middle room, where she could see through the open doors of the other
two.

"Now," said the Harvester, "I didn't know whether the room with two
windows toward the lake and one on the marsh, or two facing the woods
and one front, was the guest chamber. It seemed about an even throw
whether a visitor would prefer woods or water, so I made them both guest
chambers, and got things alike for them. Now if we are entertaining two,
one can't feel more highly honoured than the other. Was that a scheme?"

"Fine!" said the Girl. "I don't see how it could be surpassed."

"'Be sure you are right, then go ahead,'" quoted the Harvester. "Now
I'll make the beds and Mr. Rogers can hang the curtains. Is white
correct for sleeping rooms? Won't that wash best and always be fresh?"

"It will," said the Girl. "White wash curtains are much the nicest."

"Make them short Mr. Rogers; keep them off the floor," advised the
Harvester. "And simple----don't arrange any thing elaborate that will
tire a woman to keep in order. Whack them off the right length and pin
them to the poles."

"How about that, Mrs. Langston?" asked the decorator.

"I am quite sure that is the very best thing to do," said the Girl; and
the curtains were hung while the mattress was placed.

"Now about this?" inquired the Harvester. "Do I put on sheets and fix
these beds ready to use?"

"I would not," said the Girl. "I would spread the pad and the
counterpane and lay the sheets and pillows in the closet until they are
wanted. They can be sunned and the bed made delightfully fresh."

"Of course," said the Harvester.

When he had finished, he spread a cover on the dressing table and
laid out white toilet articles and grouped a white wash set with green
decorations on the stand. Then he brushed the floor, spread a big green
rug in the middle and small ones before the bed, stand, and table, and
coming out closed the door.

"Guest chamber with lake view is now ready for company," announced the
Harvester. "Repeat the operation on the woods room, finished also. Why
do some people make work of things and string them out eternally and
fuss so much? Isn't this simple and easy, Ruth?"

"Yes, if you can afford it," said the Girl.

"Forbear!" cried the Harvester. "We have the goods, the dealer has my
check. Excuse me ten minutes, until I furnish another room."

The laughing Girl could catch glimpses of him busy over beds and
dresser, floor and rugs; then he came where she sat.

"Woods guest chamber ready," he said. "Now we come to the interior
apartment, that from its view might be called the marsh room. Aside
from being two windows short, it is exactly similar to the others. It
occurred to me that, in order to make up for the loss of those windows,
and also because I may be compelled to ask some obliging woman to occupy
it in case your health is precarious at any time, and in view of the
further fact that if any such woman could be found, and would kindly and
willingly care for us, my gratitude would be inexpressible; on account
of all these things, I got a shade the BEST furnishings for this room."

The Girl stared at him with blank face.

"You see," said the Harvester, "this is a question of ethics. Now what
is a guest? A thing of a day! A person who disturbs your routine and
interferes with important concerns. Why should any one be grateful for
company? Why should time and money be lavished on visitors? They come.
You overwork yourself. They go. You are glad of it. You return the
visit, because it's the only way to have back at them; but why pamper
them unnecessarily? Now a good housekeeper, that means more than words
can express. Comfort, kindness, sanitary living, care in illness! Here's
to the prospective housekeeper of Medicine Woods! Rogers, hang those
ruffled embroidered curtains. Observe that whereas mere guest beds
are plain white, this has a touch of brass. Where guest rugs are floor
coverings, this is a work of art. Where guest brushes are celluloid,
these are enamelled, and the dresser cover is hand embroidered. Let me
also call your attention to the chairs touched with gold, cushioned
for ease, and a decorated pitcher and bowl. Watch the bounce of these
springs and the thickness of this mattress and pad, and notice that
where guests, however welcome, get a down cover of sateen, the lady of
the house has silkaline. Won't she prepare us a breakfast after a night
in this room?"

"David, are you in earnest?" gasped the Girl.

"Don't these things prove it?" asked the Harvester. "No woman can enter
my home, when my necessities are so great I have to hire her to come,
and take the WORST in the house. After my wife, she gets the best, every
time. Whenever I need help, the woman who will come and serve me is what
I'd call the real guest of the house. Friend? Where are your friends
when trouble comes? It always brings a crowd on account of the
excitement, and there is noise and racing; but if your soul is saved
alive, it is by a steady, trained hand you pay to help you. Friends
come and go, but a good housekeeper remains and is a business
proposition--one that if conducted rightly for both parties and on a
strictly common-sense basis, gives you living comfort. Now that we have
disposed of the guests that go and the one that remains, we will proceed
downward and arrange for ourselves."

"David, did you ever know any one who treated a housekeeper as you say
you would?"

"No. And I never knew any one who raised medicinal stuff for a living,
but I'm making a gilt-edged success of it, and I would of a housekeeper,
too."

"It doesn't seem----"

"That's the bedrock of all the trouble on the earth," interrupted the
Harvester. "We are a nation and a part of a world that spends our time
on 'seeming.' Our whole outer crust is 'seeming.' When we get beneath
the surface and strike the BEING, then we live as we are privileged by
the Almighty. I don't think I give a tinker how anything SEEMS. What
concerns me is how it IS. It doesn't 'seem' possible to you to hire a
woman to come into your home and take charge of its cleanliness and the
food you eat--the very foundation of life--and treat her as an honoured
guest, and give her the best comfort you have to offer. The cold room,
the old covers, the bare floor, and the cast off furniture are for her.
No wonder, as a rule, she gives what she gets. She dignifies her labour
in the same ratio that you do. Wait until we need a housekeeper, and
then gaze with awe on the one I will raise to your hand."

"I wonder----"

"Don't! It's wearing! Come tell me how to make our living-room less bare
than it appears at present."

They went downstairs together, followed by the decorator, and began work
on the room. The Girl was placed on a couch and made comfortable and
then the Harvester looked around.

"That bundle there, Rogers, is the curtains we bought for this room. If
you and my wife think they are not right, we will not hang them."

The decorator opened the package and took out curtains of tan-coloured
goods with a border of blue and brown.

"Those are not expensive," said the Harvester, "but to me a window
appears bare with only a shade, so I thought we'd try these, and when
they become soiled we'll burn them and buy some fresh ones."

"Good idea!" laughed the Girl. "As a house decorator you surpass
yourself as a Medicine Man."

"Fix these as you did those upstairs," ordered the Harvester. "We don't
want any fol-de-rols. Put the bottom even with the sill and shear them
off at the top."

"No, I am going to arrange these," said the decorator, "you go on with
your part."

"All right!" agreed the Harvester. "First, I'll lay the big rug."

He cleared the floor, spread a large rug with a rich brown centre and a
wide blue border. Smaller ones of similar design and colour were placed
before each of the doors leading from the room.

"Now for the hearth," said the Harvester, "I got this tan goat skin.
Doesn't that look fairly well?"

It certainly did; and the Girl and the decorator hastened to say so. The
Harvester replaced the table and chairs, and then sat on the couch at
the Girl's feet.

"I call this almost finished," he remarked. "All we need now is a
bouquet and something on the walls, and that is serious business.
What goes on them usually remains for a long time, and so it should be
selected with care. Ruth, have you a picture of your mother?"

"None since she was my mother. I have some lovely girl photographs."

"Good!" cried the Harvester. "Exactly the thing! I have a picture of my
mother when she was a pretty girl. We will select the best of yours and
have them enlarged in those beautiful brown prints they make in these
days, and we'll frame one for each side of the mantel. After that you
can decorate the other walls as you see things you want. Fifteen minutes
gone; we are ready to take up the line of march to the dining-room. Oh
I forgot my pillows! Here are a half dozen tan, brown, and blue for this
room. Ruth, you arrange them."

The Girl heaped four on the couch, stood one beside the hearth, and laid
another in a big chair.

"Now I don't know what you will think of this," said the Harvester. "I
found it in a magazine at the library. I copied this whole room. The
plan was to have the floor, furniture, and casings of golden oak and the
walls pale green. Then it said get yellow curtains bordered with green
and a green rug with yellow figures, so I got them. I had green leather
cushions made for the window seats, and these pillows go on them. Hang
the saffron curtains, Rogers, and we will finish in good shape for
dinner by six. By the way, Ruth, when will you select your dishes? It
will take a big set to fill all these shelves and you shall have exactly
what you want."

"I can use those you have very well."

"Oh no you can't!" cried the Harvester. "I may live and work in the
woods, but I am not so benighted that I don't own and read the best
books and magazines, and subscribe for a few papers. I patronize the
library and see what is in the stores. My money will buy just as much as
any man's, if I do wear khaki trousers. Kindly notice the word. Save in
deference to your ladyship I probably would have said pants. You see how
ELITE I can be if I try. And it not only extends to my wardrobe, to a
'yaller' and green dining-room, but it takes in the 'chany' as well. I
have looked up that, too. You want china, cut glass, silver cutlery, and
linen. Ye! Ye! You needn't think I don't know anything but how to dig in
the dirt. I have been studying this especially, and I know exactly what
to get."

"Come here," said the Girl, making a place for him beside her. "Now let
me tell you what I think. We are going to live in the woods, and our
home is a log cabin----"

"With acetylene lights, a furnace, baths, and hot and cold water----"
interpolated the Harvester.

The Girl and the decorator laughed.

"Anyway," said she, "if you are going to let me have what I would like,
I'd prefer a set of tulip yellow dishes with the Dutch little figures
on them. I don't know what they cost, but certainly they are not so
expensive as cut glass and china."

"Is that earnest or is it because you think I am spending too much
money?"

"It is what I want. Everything else is different; why should we have
dishes like city folk? I'd dearly love to have the Dutch ones, and
a white cloth with a yellow border, glass where it is necessary, and
silver knives, forks, and spoons."

"That would be great, all right!" endorsed the decorator. "And you have
got a priceless old lustre tea set there, and your willow ware is as
fine as I ever saw. If I were you, I wouldn't buy a dish with what you
have, except the yellow set."

"Great day!" ejaculated the Harvester. "Will you tell me why my great
grandmother's old pink and green teapot is priceless?"

The Girl explained pink lustre. "That set in the shop I knew in Chicago
would sell for from three to five hundred dollars. Truly it would! I've
seen one little pink and green pitcher like yours bring nine dollars
there. And you've not only got the full tea set, but water and dip
pitchers, two bowls, and two bread plates. They are priceless, because
the secret of making them is lost; they take on beauty with age, and
they were your great-grandmother's."

The Harvester reached over and energetically shook hands.

"Ruth, I'm so glad you've got them!" he bubbled. "Now elucidate on my
willow ware. What is it? Where is it? Why have I willow ware and am not
informed. Who is responsible for this? Did my ancestors buy better than
they knew, or worse? Is willow ware a crime for which I must hide
my head, or is it further riches thrust upon me? I thought I had
investigated the subject of proper dishes quite thoroughly; but I am
very certain I saw no mention of lustre or willow. I thought, in my
ignorance, that lustre was a dress, and willow a tree. Have I been
deceived? Why is a blue plate or pitcher willow ware?"

"Bring that platter from the mantel," ordered the Girl, "and I will show
you."

The Harvester obeyed and followed the finger that traced the design.

"That's a healthy willow tree!" he commented. "If Loon Lake couldn't go
ahead of that it should be drained. And will you please tell me why this
precious platter from which I have eaten much stewed chicken, fried ham,
and in youthful days sopped the gravy----will you tell me why this relic
of my ancestors is called a willow plate, when there are a majority of
orange trees so extremely fruitful they have neglected to grow a leaf?
Why is it not an orange plate? Look at that boat! And in plain sight of
it, two pagodas, a summer house, a water-sweep, and a pair of corpulent
swallows; you would have me believe that a couple are eloping in broad
daylight."

"Perhaps it's night! And those birds are doves."

"Never!" cried the Harvester. "There is a total absence of shadows.
There is no moon. Each orange tree is conveniently split in halves, so
you can see to count the fruit accurately; the birds are in flight. Only
a swallow or a stork can fly in decorations, either by day or by night.
And for any sake look at that elopement! He goes ahead carrying a cane,
she comes behind lugging the baggage, another man with a cane brings up
the rear. They are not running away. They have been married ten years
at least. In a proper elopement, they forget there are such things
as jewels and they always carry each other. I've often looked up the
statistics and it's the only authorized version. As I regard this
treasure, I grow faint when I remember with what unnecessary force my
father bore down when he carved the ham. I'll bet a cooky he split those
orange trees. Now me----I'll never dare touch knife to it again. I'll
always carve the meat on the broiler, and gently lift it to this
platter with a fork. Or am I not to be allowed to dine from my ancestral
treasure again?"

"Not in a green and yellow room," laughed the Girl. "I'll tell you what
I think. If I had a tea table to match the living-room furniture, and
it sat beside the hearth, and on it a chafing dish to cook in, and the
willow ware to eat from, we could have little tea parties in there, when
we aren't very hungry or to treat a visitor. It would help make that
room 'homey,' and it's wonderful how they harmonize with the other
things."

"How much willow ware have I got to 'bestow' on you?" inquired the
Harvester. "Suppose you show me all of it. A guilty feeling arises in my
breast, and I fear me I have committed high crimes!"

"Oh Man! You didn't break or lose any of those dishes, did you?"

"Show me!" insisted the Harvester.

The Girl arose and going to the cupboard he had designed for her china
she opened it, and set before him a teapot, cream pitcher, two plates, a
bowl, a pitcher, the meat platter, and a sugar bowl. "If there were all
of the cups, saucers, and plates, I know where they would bring five
hundred dollars," she said.

"Ruth, are you getting even with me for poking fun at them, or are you
in earnest?" asked the Harvester.

"I mean every word of it."

"You really want a small, black walnut table made especially for those
old dishes?"

"Not if you are too busy. I could use it with beautiful effect and much
pleasure, and I can't tell you how proud I'd be of them."

The Harvester's face flushed. "Excuse me," he said rising. "I have now
finished furnishing a house; I will go and take a peep at the engine."
He went into the kitchen and hearing the rattle of dishes the Girl
followed. She stepped in just in time to see him hastily slide something
into his pocket. He picked up a half dozen old white plates and saucers
and several cups and started toward the evaporator. He heard her coming.

"Look here, honey," he said turning, "you don't want to see the
dry-house just now. I have terrific heat to do some rapid work. I won't
be gone but a few minutes. You better boss the decorator.

"I'm afraid that wasn't very diplomatic," he muttered. "It savoured a
little of being sent back. But if what she says is right, and she
should know if they handle such stuff at that art store, she will feel
considerably better not to see this."

He set his load at the door, drew an old blue saucer from his pocket and
made a careful examination. He pulled some leaves from a bush and pushed
a greasy cloth out of the saucer, wiped it the best he could, and held
it to light.

"That is a crime!" he commented. "Saucer from your maternal ancestors'
tea set used for a grease dish. I am afraid I'd better sink it in the
lake. She'd feel worse to see it than never to know. Wish I could clean
off the grease! I could do better if it was hot. I can set it on the
engine."

The Harvester placed the saucer on the engine, entered the dry-house,
and closed the door. In the stifling air he began pouring seed from
beautiful, big willow plates to the old white ones.

"About the time I have ruined you," he said to a white plate, "some one
will pop up and discover that the art of making you is lost and you are
priceless, and I'll have been guilty of another blunder. Now there are
the dishes mother got with baking powder. She thought they were grand.
I know plenty well she prized them more than these blue ones or she
wouldn't have saved them and used these for every day. There they set,
all so carefully taken care of, and the Girl doesn't even look at them.
Thank Heaven, there are the four remaining plates all right, anyway! Now
I've got seed in some of the saucers; one is there; where on earth is
the last one? And where, oh unkind fates! are the cups?"

He found more saucers and set them with the plates. As he passed the
engine he noticed the saucer on it was bubbling grease, literally
exuding it from the particles of clay.

"Hooray!" cried the Harvester. He took it up, but it was so hot he
dropped it. With a deft sweep he caught it in air, and shoved it on
a tray. Then he danced and blew on his burned hand. Snatching out his
handkerchief he rubbed off all the grease, and imagined the saucer was
brighter.

"If 'a little is good, more is better,'" quoted the Harvester.

Wadding the handkerchief he returned the saucer to the engine. Then he
slipped out, dripping perspiration, glanced toward the cabin, and ran
into the work room. The first object he saw was a willow cup half full
of red paint, stuck and dried as if to remain forever. He took his knife
and tried to whittle it off, but noticing that he was scratching the cup
he filled it with turpentine, set it under a work bench, turned a tin
pan over it, and covered it with shavings. A few steps farther brought
one in sight, filled with carpet tacks. He searched everywhere, but
could find no more, so he went to the laboratory. Beside his wash bowl
at the door stood the last willow saucer. He had used it for years as a
soap dish. He scraped the contents on the bench and filled the dish with
water. Four cups held medicinal seeds and were in good condition. He
lacked one, although he could not remember of ever having broken it.
Gathering his collection, he returned to the dry-house to see how the
saucer was coming on. Again it was bubbling, and he polished off the
grease and set back the dish. It certainly was growing better. He
carried his treasures into the work room, and went to the barn to
feed. As he was leaving the stable he uttered a joyous exclamation
and snatched from a window sill a willow cup, gummed and smeared with
harness oil.

"The full set, by hokey!" marvelled the Harvester. "Say, Betsy, the only
name for this is luck! Now if I only can clean them, I'll be ready to
make her tea table, whatever that is. My I hope she will stay away until
I get these in better shape!"

He filled the last cup with turpentine, set it with the other under the
work bench, stacked the remaining pieces, polished the saucer he was
baking, and went to bring a dish pan and towel. He drew some water from
the pipes of the evaporator, put in the soap, and carried it to the work
room. There he carefully washed and wiped all the pieces, save two cups
and one saucer. He did not know how long it would require to bake the
grease from that, but he was sure it was improving. He thought he could
clean the paint cup, but he imagined the harness oil one would require
baking also.

As he stood busily working over the dishes, with light step the Girl
came to the door. She took one long look and understood. She turned
and swiftly went back to the cabin, but her shoulders were shaking.
Presently the Harvester came in and explained that after finishing in
the dry-house he had gone to do the feeding. Then he suggested that
before it grew dark they should go through the rooms and see how they
appeared, and gather the flowers the Girl wanted. So together they
decided everything was clean, comfortable, and harmonized.

Then they went to the hillside sloping to the lake. For the dining-room,
the Girl wanted yellow water lilies, so the Harvester brought his old
boat and gathered enough to fill the green bowl. For the living-room,
she used wild ragged robins in the blue bowl, and on one end of the
mantel set a pitcher of saffron and on the other arrowhead lilies. For
her room, she selected big, blushy mallows that grew all along Singing
Water and around the lake.

"Isn't that slightly peculiar?" questioned the Harvester.

"Take a peep," said the Girl, opening her door.

She had spread the pink coverlet on her couch, and when she set the big
pink bowl filled with mallows on the table the effect was exquisite.

"I think perhaps that's a little Frenchy," she said, "and you may have
to be educated to it; but salmon pink and buttercup yellow are colours I
love in combination."

She closed the door and went to find something to eat, and then to
the swing, where she liked to rest, look, and listen. The Harvester
suggested reading to her, but she shook her head.

"Wait until winter," she said, "when the days are longer and cold, and
the snow buries everything, and then read. Now tell me about my hedge
and the things you have planted in it."

The Harvester went out and collected a bunch of twigs. He handed her a
big, evenly proportioned leaf of ovate shape, and explained: "This is
burning bush, so called because it has pink berries that hang from long,
graceful stems all winter, and when fully open they expose a flame-red
seed pod. It was for this colour on gray and white days that I planted
it. In the woods I grow it in thickets. The root bark brings twenty
cents a pound, at the very least. It is good fever medicine."

"Is it poison?"

"No. I didn't set anything acutely poisonous in your hedge. I wanted it
to be a mass of bloom you were free to cut for the cabin all spring, an
attraction to birds in summer, and bright with colour in winter. To draw
the feathered tribe, I planted alder, wild cherry, and grape-vines.
This is cherry. The bark is almost as beautiful as birch. I raise it
for tonics and the birds love the cherries. This fern-like leaf is from
mountain ash, and when it attains a few years' growth it will flame with
colour all winter in big clusters of scarlet berries. That I grow in
the woods is a picture in snow time, and the bark is one of my standard
articles."

The Girl raised on her elbow and looked at the hedge.

"I see it," she said. "The berries are green now. I suppose they change
colour as they ripen."

"Yes," said the Harvester. "And you must not confuse them with sumac.
The leaves are somewhat similar, but the heads differ in colour and
shape. The sumac and buckeye you must not touch, until we learn what
they will do to you. To some they are slightly poisonous, to others not.
I couldn't help putting in a few buckeyes on account of the big buds
in early spring. You will like the colour if you are fond of pink and
yellow in combination, and the red-brown nuts in grayish-yellow, prickly
hulls, and the leaf clusters are beautiful, but you must use care. I put
in witch hazel for variety, and I like its appearance; it's mighty
good medicine, too; so is spice brush, and it has leaves that colour
brightly, and red berries. These selections were all made for a purpose.
Now here is wafer ash; it is for music as well as medicine. I have
invoked all good fairies to come and dwell in this hedge, and so I had
to provide an orchestra for their dances. This tree grows a hundred tiny
castanets in a bunch, and when they ripen and become dry the wind shakes
fine music from them. Yes, they are medicine; that is, the bark of
the roots is. Almost without exception everything here has medicinal
properties. The tulip poplar will bear you the loveliest flowers of all,
and its root bark, taken in winter, makes a good fever remedy."

"How would it do to eat some of the leaves and see if they wouldn't take
the feverishness from me?"

"It wouldn't do at all," said the Harvester. "We are well enough fixed
to allow Doc to come now, and he is the one to allay the fever."

"Oh no!" she cried. "No! I don't want to see a doctor. I will be all
right very soon. You said I was better."

"You are," said the Harvester. "Much better! We will have you strong and
well soon. You should have come in time for a dose of sassafras. Your
hedge is filled with that, because of its peculiar leaves and odour. I
put in dogwood for the white display around the little green bloom,
lots of alder for bloom and berries, haws for blossoms and fruit for the
squirrels, wild crab apples for the exquisite bloom and perfume, button
bush for the buttons, a few pokeberry plants for the colour, and I tried
some mallows, but I doubt if it's wet enough for them. I set pecks of
vine roots, that are coming nicely, and ferns along the front edge. Give
it two years and that hedge will make a picture that will do your eyes
good."

"Can you think of anything at all you forgot?"

"Yes indeed!" said the Harvester. "The woods are full of trees I have
not used; some because I overlooked them, some I didn't want. A hedge
like this, in perfection, is the work of years. Some species must be cut
back, some encouraged, but soon it will be lovely, and its colour and
fruit attract every bird of the heavens and butterflies and insects of
all varieties. I set several common cherry trees for the robins and some
blackberry and raspberry vines for the orioles. The bloom is pretty and
the birds you'll have will be a treat to see and hear, if we keep away
cats, don't fire guns, scatter food, and move quietly among them. With
our water attractions added, there is nothing impossible in the way of
making friends with feathered folk."

"There is one thing I don't understand," said the Girl. "You wouldn't
risk breaking the wing of a moth by keeping it when you wanted a drawing
very much; you don't seem to kill birds and animals that other people
do. You almost worship a tree; now how can you take a knife and peel the
bark to sell or dig up beautiful bushes by the root."

"Perhaps I've talked too much about the woods," said the Harvester
gently. "I've longed inexpressibly for sympathetic company here, because
I feel rooted for life, so I am more than anxious that you should care
for it. I may have made you feel that my greatest interest is in the
woods, and that I am not consistent when I call on my trees and plants
to yield of their store for my purposes. Above everything else, the
human proposition comes first, Ruth. I do love my trees, bushes, and
flowers, because they keep me at the fountain of life, and teach me
lessons no book ever hints at; but above everything come my fellow men.
All I do is for them. My heart is filled with feeling for the things
you see around you here, but it would be joy to me to uproot the most
beautiful plant I have if by so doing I could save you pain. Other men
have wives they love as well, little children they have fathered, big
bodies useful to the world, that are sometimes crippled with disease.
There is nothing I would not give to allay the pain of humanity. It is
not inconsistent to offer any growing thing you soon can replace, to
cure suffering. Get that idea out of your head! You said you could
worship at the shrine of the pokeberry bed, you feel holier before the
arrowhead lilies, your face takes on an appearance of reverence when you
see pink mallow blooms. Which of them would you have hesitated a second
in uprooting if you could have offered it to subdue fever or pain in the
body of the little mother you loved?"

"Oh I see!" cried the Girl. "Like everything else you make this
different. You worship all this beauty and grace, wrought by your
hands, but you carry your treasure to the market place for the good of
suffering humanity. Oh Man! I love the work you do!"

"Good!" cried the Harvester. "Good! And Ruth-girl, while you are about
it, see if you can't combine the man and his occupation a little."



CHAPTER XVI. GRANNY MORELAND'S VISIT

The following morning the Girl was awakened by wheels on the gravel
outside her window, and lifted her head to see Betsy passing with a load
of lumber. Shortly afterward the sound of hammer and saw came to her,
and she knew that Singing Water bridge was being roofed to provide shade
for her. She dressed and went to the kitchen to find a dainty breakfast
waiting, so she ate what she could, and then washed the dishes and
swept. By that time she was so tired she dropped on a dining-room window
seat, and lay looking toward the bridge. She could catch glimpses of
the Harvester as he worked. She watched his deft ease in handling heavy
timbers, and the assurance with which he builded. Sometimes he stood and
with tilted head studied his work a minute, then swiftly proceeded. He
placed three tree trunks on each side for pillars, laid joists across,
formed his angle, and nailed boards as a foundation for shingling.
Occasionally he glanced toward the cabin, and finally came swinging up
the drive. He entered the kitchen softly, but when he saw the Girl in
the window he sat at her feet.

"Oh but this is a morning, Ruth!" he said.

She looked at him closely. He radiated health and good cheer. His tanned
cheeks were flushed red with exercise, and the hair on his temples was
damp.

"You have been breaking the rules," he said. "It is the law that I am
to do the work until you are well and strong again. Why did you tire
yourself?"

"I am so perfectly useless! I see so many things that I would enjoy
doing. Oh you can do everything else, make me well! Make me strong!"

"How can I, when you won't do as I tell you?"

"I will! Indeed I will!"

"Then no more attempts to stand over dishes and clean big floors. You
mustn't overwork yourself at anything. The instant you feel in the least
tired you must lie down and rest."

"But Man! I'm tired every minute, with a dead, dull ache, and I don't
feel as if I ever would be rested again in all the world."

The Harvester took one of her hands, felt its fevered palm, fluttering
wrist pulse, and noticed that the brilliant red of her lips had extended
to spots on her cheeks. He formed his resolution.

"Can't work on that bridge any more until I drive in for some big
nails," he said. "Do you mind being left alone for an hour?"

"Not at all, if Bel will stay with me. I'll lie in the swing."

"All right!" answered the Harvester. "I'll help you out and to get
settled. Is there anything you want from town?"

"No, not a thing!"

"Oh but you are modest!" cried the Harvester. "I can sit here and name
fifty things I want for you."

"Oh but you are extravagant!" imitated the Girl. "Please, please, Man,
don't! Can't you see I have so much now I don't know what to do with it?
Sometimes I almost forget the ache, just lying and looking at all the
wonderful riches that have come to me so suddenly. I can't believe they
won't vanish as they came. By the hour in the night I look at my lovely
room, and I just fight my eyes to keep them from closing for fear
they'll open in that stifling garret to the heat of day and work I have
not strength to do. I know yet all this will prove to be a dream and a
wilder one than yours."

The face of the Harvester was very anxious.

"Please to remember my dream came true," he said, "and much sooner than
I had the least hope that it would. I'm wide awake or I couldn't be
building bridges; and you are real, if I know flesh and blood when I
touch it."

"If I were well, strong, and attractive, I could understand," she said.
"Then I could work in the house, at the drawings, help with the herbs,
and I'd feel as if I had some right to be here."

"All that is coming," said the Harvester. "Take a little more time. You
can't expect to sin steadily against the laws of health for years,
and recover in a day. You will be all right much sooner than you think
possible."

"Oh I hope so!" said the Girl. "But sometimes I doubt it. How I could
come here and put such a burden on a stranger, I can't see. I scarcely
can remember what awful stress drove me. I had no courage. I should have
finished in my garret as my mother did. I must have some of my father's
coward blood in me. She never would have come. I never should!"

"If it didn't make any real difference to you, and meant all the world
to me, I don't see why you shouldn't humour me. I can't begin to tell
you how happy I am to have you here. I could shout and sing all day."

"It requires very little to make some people happy."

"You are not much, but you are going to be more soon," laughed the
Harvester, as he gently picked up the Girl and carried her to the swing,
where he covered her, kissed her hot hand, and whistled for Belshazzar.
He pulled the table close and set a pitcher of iced fruit juice on it.
Then he left her and she could hear the rattle of wheels as he crossed
the bridge and drove away.

"Betsy, this is mighty serious business," said the Harvester. "The
Girl is scorching or I don't know fever. I wonder----well, one thing
is sure----she is bound to be better off in pure, cool air and with
everything I can do to be kind, than in Henry Jameson's attic with
everything he could do to be mean. Pleasant men those Jamesons! Wonder
if the Girl's father was much like her Uncle Henry? I think not or her
refined and lovely mother never would have married him. Come to think of
it, that's no law, Betsy. I've seen beautiful and delicate women fall
under some mysterious spell, and yoke their lives with rank degenerates.
Whatever he was, they have paid the price. Maybe the wife deserved it,
and bore it in silence because she knew she did, but it's bitter hard on
Ruth. Girls should be taught to think at least one generation ahead when
they marry. I wonder what Doc will say, Betsy? He will have to come and
see for himself. I don't know how she will feel about that. I had hoped
I could pull her through with care, food, and tonics, but I don't dare
go any farther alone. Betsy, that's a thin, hot, little hand to hold a
man's only chance for happiness."

"Well, bridegroom! I've been counting the days!" said Doctor Carey. "The
Missus and I made it up this morning that we had waited as long as we
would. We are coming to-night. David."

"It's all right, Doc," said the Harvester. "Don't you dare think
anything is wrong or that I am not the proudest, happiest man in this
world, because I appear anxious. I am not trying to conceal it from you.
You know we both agreed at first that Ruth should be in the hospital,
Doc. Well, she should! She is what would be a lovely woman if she were
not full of the poison of wrong food and air, overwork, and social
conditions that have warped her. She is all I dreamed of and more, but
I've come for you. She is too sick for me. I hoped she would begin to
gain strength at once on changed conditions. As yet I can't see any
difference. She needs a doctor, but I hate for her to know it. Could you
come out this afternoon, and pretend as if it were a visit? Bring Mrs.
Carey and watch the Girl. If you need an examination, I think she will
obey me. If you can avoid it, fix what she should have and send it back
to me by a messenger. I don't like to leave her when she is so ill."

"I'll come at once, David."

"Then she will know that I came for you, and that will frighten her. You
can do more good to wait until afternoon, and pretend you are making
a social call. I must go now. I'd have brought her in, but I have no
proper conveyance yet. I'm promised something soon, perhaps it is ready
now. Good-bye! Be sure to come!"

The Harvester drove to a livery barn and examined a little horse, a
shining black creature that seemed gentle and spirited. He thought
favourably of it. A few days before he had selected a smart carriage,
and with this outfit tied behind the wagon he returned to Medicine
Woods. He left the horse at the bridge, stabled Betsy, and then returned
for the new conveyance, driving it to the hitching post. At the sound of
unexpected wheels the Girl lifted her head and stared at the turnout.

"Come on!" cried the Harvester opening the screen. "We are going to the
woods to initiate your carriage."

She went with little cries of surprised wonder.

"This is how you travel to Onabasha to do your shopping, to call on Mrs.
Carey and the friends you will make, and visit the library. When I've
tried out Mr. Horse enough to prove him reliable as guaranteed, he is
yours, for your purposes only, and when you grow wonderfully well and
strong, we'll sell him and buy you a real live horse and a stanhope,
such as city ladies have; and there must be a saddle so that you can
ride."

"Oh I'd love that!" cried the Girl. "I always wanted to ride! Where are
we going?"

"To show you Medicine Woods," said the Harvester. "I've been waiting
for this. You see there are several hundred acres of trees, thickets,
shrubs, and herb beds up there, and if the wagon road that winds between
them were stretched straight it would be many miles in length, so we
have a cool, shaded, perfumed driveway all our own. Let me get you a
drink before you start and the little shawl. It's chilly there compared
with here. Now are you comfortable and ready?"

"Yes," said the Girl. "Hurry! I've just longed to go, but I didn't like
to ask."

"I am sorry," said the Harvester. "Living here for years alone and never
having had a sister, how am I going to know what a girl would like if
you don't tell me? I knew it would be too tiresome for you to walk, and
I was waiting to find a reliable horse and a suitable carriage."

"You won't scratch or spoil it up there?"

"I'll lower the top. It is not as wide as the wagon, so nothing will
touch it."

"This is just so lovely, and such a wonderful treat, do you observe that
I'm not saying a word about extravagance?" asked the Girl, as she leaned
back in the carriage and inhaled the invigorating wood air.

The horse climbed the hill, and the Harvester guided him down long, dim
roads through deep forest, while he explained what large thickets of
bushes were, why he grew them, how he collected the roots or bark, for
what each was used and its value. On and on they went, the way ahead
always appearing as if it were too narrow to pass, yet proving amply
wide when reached. Excited redbirds darted among the bushes, and the
Harvester answered their cry. Blackbirds protested against the unusual
intrusion of strange objects, and a brown thrush slipped from a late
nest close the road wailing in anxiety.

One after another the Harvester introduced the Girl to the best trees,
speculated on their age, previous history, and pointed out which brought
large prices for lumber and which had medicinal bark and roots. On and
on they slowly drove through the woods, past the big beds of cranesbill,
violets, and lilies. He showed her where the mushrooms were most
numerous, and for the first time told the story of how he had sold them
and the violets from door to door in Onabasha in his search for her, and
the amazed Girl sat staring at him. He told of Doctor Carey having seen
her once, and inquired as they passed the bed if the yellow violets had
revived. He stopped to search and found a few late ones, deep among the
leaves.

"Oh if I only had known that!" cried the Girl, "I would have kept them
forever."

"No need," said the Harvester. "Here and now I present you with the sole
ownership of the entire white and yellow violet beds. Next spring you
shall fill your room. Won't that be a treat?"

"One money never could buy!" cried the Girl.

"Seems to be my strong point," commented the Harvester. "The most I have
to offer worth while is something you can't buy. There is a fine fairy
platform. They can spare you one. I'll get it."

The Harvester broke from a tree a large fan-shaped fungus, the surface
satin fine, the base mossy, and explained to the Girl that these were
the ballrooms of the woods, the floors on which the little people dance
in the moonlight at their great celebrations. Then he added a piece
of woolly dog moss, and showed her how each separate spine was like a
perfect little evergreen tree.

"That is where the fairies get their Christmas pines," he explained.

"Do you honestly believe in fairies?"

"Surely!" exclaimed the Harvester. "Who would tell me when the maples
are dripping sap, and the mushrooms springing up, if the fairies didn't
whisper in the night? Who paints the flower faces, colours the leaves,
enamels the ripening fruit with bloom, and frosts the window pane to let
me know that it is time to prepare for winter? Of course! They are my
friends and everyday helpers. And the winds are good to me. They carry
down news when tree bloom is out, when the pollen sifts gold from the
bushes, and it's time to collect spring roots. The first bluebird always
brings me a message. Sometimes he comes by the middle of February, again
not until late March. Always on his day, Belshazzar decides my fate for
a year. Six years we've played that game; now it is ended in blessed
reality. In the woods and at my work I remain until I die, with a few
outside tries at medicine making. I am putting up some compounds in
which I really have faith. Of course they have got to await their time
to be tested, but I believe in them. I have grown stuff so carefully,
gathered it according to rules, washed it decently, and dried and mixed
it with such scrupulous care. Night after night I've sat over the books
until midnight and later, studying combinations; and day after day I've
stood in the laboratory testing and trying, and two or three will prove
effective, or I've a disappointment coming."

"You haven't wasted time! I'd much rather take medicines you make than
any at the pharmacies. Several times I've thought I'd ask you if you
wouldn't give me some of yours. The prescription Doctor Carey sent does
no good. I've almost drunk it, and I am constantly tired, just the
same. You make me something from these tonics and stimulants you've been
telling me about. Surely you can help me!"

"I've got one combination that's going to save life, in my expectations.
But Ruth, it never has been tried, and I couldn't experiment on the very
light of my eyes with it. If I should give you something and you'd grow
worse as a result--I am a strong man, my girl, but I couldn't endure
that. I'd never dare. But dear, I am expecting Carey and his wife out
any time; probably they will come to-day, it's so beautiful; and when
they do, for my sake, won't you talk with him, tell him exactly what
made you ill, and take what he gives you? He's a great man. He was
recently President of the National Association of Surgeons. Long ago he
abandoned general practice, but he will prescribe for you; all his art
is at your command. It's quite an honour, Ruth. He performs all kinds
of miracles, and saves life every day. He had not seen you, and what he
gave me was only by guess. He may not think it is the right thing at all
after he meets you."

"Then I am really ill?"

"No. You only have the germs of illness in your blood, and if you
will help me that much we can eliminate them; and then it is you for
housekeeper, with first assistant in me, the drawing tools, paint
box, and all the woods for subjects. So, as I was going to tell you,
Belshazzar and I have played our game for the last time. That decision
was ultimate. Here I will work, live, and die. Here, please God,
strong and happy, you shall live with me. Ruth, you have got to recover
quickly. You will consult the doctor?"

"Yes, and I wish he would hurry," said the Girl. "He can't make me new
too soon to suit me. If I had a strong body, oh Man, I just feel as if
you could find a soul somewhere in it that would respond to all these
wonders you have brought me among. Oh! make me well, and I'll try as
woman never did before to bring you happiness to pay for it."

"Careful now," warned the Harvester. "There is to be no talk of
obligations between you and me. Your presence here and your growing
trust in me are all I ask at the hands of fate at present. Long ago I
learned to 'labour and to wait.' By the way----here's my most difficult
labour and my longest wait. This is the precious gingseng bed."

"How pretty!" exclaimed the Girl.

Covering acres of wood floor, among the big trees, stretched the lacy
green carpet. On slender, upright stalks waved three large leaves, each
made up of five stemmed, ovate little leaves, round at the base, sharply
pointed at the tip. A cluster of from ten to twenty small green berries,
that would turn red later, arose above. The Harvester lifted a plant
to show the Girl that the Chinese name, Jin-chen, meaning man-like,
originated because the divided root resembled legs. Away through the
woods stretched the big bed, the growth waving lightly in the wind, the
peculiar odour filling the air.

"I am going to wait to gather the crop until the seeds are ripe," said
the Harvester, "then bury some as I dig a root. My father said that was
the way of the Indians. It's a mighty good plan. The seeds are delicate,
and difficult to gather and preserve properly. Instead of collecting and
selling all of them to start rivals in the business, I shall replant my
beds. I must find a half dozen assistants to harvest this crop in that
way, and it will be difficult, because it will come when my neighbours
are busy with corn."

"Maybe I can help you."

"Not with ginseng digging," laughed the Harvester. "That is not woman's
work. You may sit in an especially attractive place and boss the job."

"Oh dear!" cried the Girl. "Oh dear! I want to get out and walk."

Gradually they had climbed the summit of the hill, descended on the
other side, and followed the road through the woods until they reached
the brier patches, fruit trees; and the garden of vegetables, with big
beds of sage, rue, wormwood, hoarhound, and boneset. From there to the
lake sloped the sunny fields of mullein and catnip, and the earth was
molten gold with dandelion creeping everywhere.

"Too hot to-day," cautioned the Harvester. "Too rough walking. Wait
until fall, and I have a treat there for you. Another flower I want you
to love because I do."

"I will," said the Girl promptly. "I feel it in my heart."

"Well I am glad you feel something besides the ache of fever," said the
Harvester. Then noticing her tired face he added: "Now this little horse
had quite a trip from town, and the wheels cut deeply into this woods
soil and make difficult pulling, so I wonder if I had not better put
him in the stable and let him become acquainted with Betsy. I don't know
what she will think. She has had sole possession for years. Maybe she
will be jealous, perhaps she will be as delighted for company as her
master. Ruth, if you could have heard what I said to Belshazzar when he
decided I was to go courting this year, and seen what I did to him, and
then take a look at me now----merciful powers, I hope the dog doesn't
remember! If he does, no wonder he forms a new allegiance so easily.
Have you observed that lately when I whistle, he starts, and then turns
back to see if you want him? He thinks as much of you as he does of me
right now."

"Oh no!" cried the Girl. "That couldn't be possible. You told me I must
make friends with him, so I have given him food, and tried to win him."

"You sit in the carriage until I put away the horse, and then I'll help
you to the cabin, and save you being alone while I work. Would you like
that?"

"Yes."

She leaned her head against the carriage top the Harvester had raised to
screen her, and watched him stable the horse. Evidently he was very fond
of animals for he talked as if it were a child he was undressing and
kept giving it extra strokes and pats as he led it away. Ajax disliked
the newcomer instantly, noticed the carriage and the woman's dress, and
screamed his ugliest. The Girl smiled. As the Harvester appeared she
inquired, "Is Ajax now sending a wireless to Ceylon asking for a mate?"

The Harvester looked at her quizzically and saw a gleam of mischief in
the usually dull dark eyes that delighted him.

"That is the customary supposition when he finds voice," he said. "But
since this has become your home, you are bound to learn some of my
secrets. One of them I try to guard is the fact that Ajax has a temper.
No my dear, he is not always sending a wireless, I am sorry to say. I
wish he was! As a matter of fact he is venting his displeasure at any
difference in our conditions. He hates change. He learned that from me.
I will enjoy seeing him come for favour a year from now, as I learned
to come for it, even when I didn't get much, and the road lay west of
Onabasha. Ajax, stop that! There's no use to object. You know you think
that horse is nice company for you, and that two can feed you more than
one. Don't be a hypocrite! Cease crying things you don't mean, and learn
to love the people I do. Come on, old boy!"

The peacock came, but with feathers closely pressed and stepping
daintily. As the bird advanced, the Harvester retreated, until he stood
beside the Girl, and then he slipped some grain to her hand and she
offered it. But Ajax would not be coaxed. He was too fat and well fed.
He haughtily turned and marched away, screaming at intervals.

"Nasty temper!" commented the Harvester. "Never mind! He soon will
become accustomed to you, and then he will love you as Belshazzar does.
Feed the doves instead. They are friendly enough in all conscience. Do
you notice that there is not a coloured feather among them? The squab
that is hatched with one you may have for breakfast. Now let's go find
something to eat, and I will finish the bridge so you can rest there
to-night and watch the sun set on Singing Water."

So they went into the cabin and prepared food, and then the Harvester
told the Girl to make herself so pretty that she would be a picture and
come and talk to him while he finished the roof. She went to her room,
found a pale lavender linen dress and put it on, dusted the pink powder
thickly, and went where a wide bench made an inviting place in the
shade. There she sat and watched her lightly expressed whim take shape.

"Soon as this is finished," said the Harvester, "I am going to begin on
that tea table. I can make it in a little while, if you want it to match
the other furniture."

"I do," said the Girl.

"Wonder if you could draw a plan showing how it should appear. I am a
little shy on tea tables."

"I think I can."

The Harvester brought paper, pencil, and a shingle for a drawing pad.

"Now remember one thing," he said. "If you are in earnest about using
those old blue dishes, this has got to be a big, healthy table. A little
one will appear top heavy with them. It would be a good idea to set out
what you want to use, arranged as you would like them, and let me take
the top measurement that way."

"All right! I'll only indicate how its legs should be and we will
find the size later. I could almost weep because that wonderful set is
broken. If I had all of it I'd be so proud!"

The Girl bent over the drawing. The Harvester worked with his attention
divided between her, the bridge, and the road. At last he saw the big
red car creeping up the valley.

"Seems to be some one coming, Ruth! Guess it must be Doc. I'll go open
the gate?"

"Yes," said the Girl. "I'm so glad. You won't forget to ask him to help
me if he can?"

The Harvester wheeled hastily. "I won't forget!" he said, as he hurried
to the gate. The car ran slowly, and the Girl could see him swing to
the step and stand talking as they advanced. When they reached her they
stopped and all of them came forward. She went to meet them. She shook
hands with Mrs. Carey and then with the doctor.

"I am so glad you have come," she said.

"I hope you are not lonesome already," laughed the doctor.

"I don't think any one with brains to appreciate half of this ever could
become lonely here," answered the Girl. "No, it isn't that."

"A-ha!" cried the doctor, turning to his wife. "You see that the
beautiful young lady remembers me, and has been wishing I would come. I
always said you didn't half appreciate me. What a place you are making,
David! I'll run the car to the shade and join you."

For a long time they talked under the trees, then they went to see the
new home and all its furnishings.

"Now this is what I call comfort," said the doctor. "David, build us a
house exactly similar to this over there on the hill, and let us live
out here also. I'd love it. Would you, Clara?"

"I don't know. I never lived in the country. One thing is sure: If I
tried it, I'd prefer this to any other place I ever saw. David, won't
you take me far enough up the hill that I can look from the top to the
lake?"

"Certainly," said the Harvester. "Excuse us a little while, Ruth!"

As soon as they were gone the Girl turned to the doctor.

"Doctor Carey, David says you are great. Won't you exercise your art on
me. I am not at all well, and oh! I'd so love to be strong and sound."

"Will you tell me," asked the doctor, "just enough to show me what
caused the trouble?"

"Bad air and water, poor light and food at irregular times, overwork and
deep sorrow; every wrong condition of life you could imagine, with not a
ray of hope in the distance, until now. For the sake of the Harvester, I
would be well again. Please, please try to cure me!"

So they talked until the doctor thought he knew all he desired, and then
they went to see the gold flower garden.

"I call this simply superb," said he, taking a seat beneath the tree
roof of her porch. "Young woman, I don't know what I'll do to you if you
don't speedily grow strong here. This is the prettiest place I ever saw,
and listen to the music of that bubbling, gurgling little creek!"

"Isn't he wonderful?" asked the Girl, looking up the hill, where the
tall form of the Harvester could be seen moving around. "Just to see
him, you would think him the essence of manly strength and force. And
he is! So strong! Into the lake at all hours, at the dry-house, on the
hill, grubbing roots, lifting big pillars to support a bridge roof,
and with it all a fancy as delicate as any dreaming girl. Doctor, the
fairies paint the flowers, colour the fruit, and frost the windows for
him; and the winds carry pollen to tell him when his growing things are
ready for the dry-house. I don't suppose I can tell you anything new
about him; but isn't he a perpetual surprise? Never like any one else!
And no matter how he startles me in the beginning, he always ends by
convincing me, at least, that he is right."

"I never loved any other man as I do him," said the doctor. "I ushered
him into the world when I was a young man just beginning to practise,
and I've known him ever since. I know few men so scrupulously clean. Try
to get well and make him happy, Mrs. Langston. He so deserves it."

"You may be sure I will," answered the Girl.

After the visitors had gone, the Harvester told her to place the old
blue dishes as she would like to arrange them on her table, so he could
get a correct idea of the size, and he left to put a few finishing
strokes on the bridge cover. She went into the dining-room and opened
the china closet. She knew from her peep in the work-room that there
would be more pieces than she had seen before; but she did not think
or hope that a full half dozen tea set and plates, bowl, platter, and
pitcher would be waiting for her.

"Why Ruth, what made you tire yourself to come down? I intended to
return in a few minutes."

"Oh Man!" cried the laughing Girl, as she clung pantingly to a bridge
pillar for support, "I just had to come to tell you. There are fairies!
Really truly ones! They have found the remainder of the willow dishes
for me, and now there are so many it isn't going to be a table at all.
It must be a little cupboard especially for them, in that space between
the mantel and the bookcase. There should be a shining brass tea
canister, and a wafer box like the arts people make, and I'll pour tea
and tend the chafing dish and you can toast the bread with a long fork
over the coals, and we will have suppers on the living-room table, and
it will be such fun."

"Be seated!" cried the Harvester. "Ruth, that's the longest speech I
ever heard you make, and it sounded, praise the Lord, like a girl. Did
Doc say he would fix something for you?"

"Yes, such a lot of things! I am going to shut my eyes and open my mouth
and swallow all of them. I'm going to be born again and forget all I
ever knew before I came here, and soon I will be tagging you everywhere,
begging you to suggest designs for my pencil, and I'll simply force life
to come right for you."

The Harvester smiled.

"Sounds good!" he said. "But, Ruth, I'm a little dubious about force
work. Life won't come right for me unless you learn to love me, and
love is a stubborn, contrary bulldog element of our nature that won't
be driven an inch. It wanders as the wind, and strikes us as it will.
You'll arrive at what I hope for much sooner if you forget it and amuse
yourself and be as happy as you can. Then, perhaps all unknown to you,
a little spark of tenderness for me will light in your breast; and if it
ever does we will buy a fanning mill and put it in operation, and we'll
raise a flame or know why."

"And there won't be any force in that?"

"What you can't compel is the start. It's all right to push any growth
after you have something to work on."

"That reminds me," said the Girl, "there is a question I want to ask
you."

"Go ahead!" said the Harvester, glancing at her as he hewed a joist.

She turned away her face and sat looking across the lake for a long
time.

"Is it a difficult question, Ruth?" inquired the Harvester to help her.

"Yes," said the Girl. "I don't know how to make you see."

"Take any kind of a plunge. I'm not usually dense."

"It is really quite simple after all. It's about a girl----a girl I
knew very well in Chicago. She had a problem----and it worried her
dreadfully, and I just wondered what you would think of it."

The Harvester shifted his position so that he could watch the side of
the averted face.

"You'll have to tell me, before I can tell you," he suggested.

"She was a girl who never had anything from life but work and worry. Of
course, that's the only kind I'd know! One day when the work was most
difficult, and worry cut deepest, and she really thought she was losing
her mind, a man came by and helped her. He lifted her out, and rescued
all that was possible for a man to save to her in honour, and went his
way. There wasn't anything more. Probably there never would be. His
heart was great, and he stooped and pitied her gently and passed on.
After a time another man came by, a good and noble man, and he offered
her love so wonderful she hadn't brains to comprehend how or why it
was."

The Girl's voice trailed off as if she were too weary to speak further,
while she leaned her head against a pillar and gazed with dull eyes
across the lake.

"And your question," suggested the Harvester at last.

She roused herself. "Oh, the question! Why this----if in time, and
after she had tried and tried, love to equal his simply would not come
would----would----she be wrong to PRETEND she cared, and do the very
best she could, and hope for real love some day? Oh David, would she?"

The Harvester's face was whiter than the Girl's. He pounded the chisel
into the joist savagely.

"Would she, David?"

"Let me understand you clearly," said the man in a dry, breathless
voice. "Did she love this first man to whom she came under obligations?"

The Girl sat gazing across the lake and the tortured Harvester stared at
her.

"I don't know," she said at last. "I don't know whether she knew what
love was or ever could. She never before had known a man; her heart was
as undeveloped and starved as her body. I don't think she realized love,
but there was a SOMETHING. Every time she would feel most grateful and
long for the love that was offered her, that 'something' would awake and
hurt her almost beyond endurance. Yet she knew he never would come. She
knew he did not care for her. I don't know that she felt she wanted him,
but she was under such obligations to him that it seemed as if she must
wait to see if he might not possibly come, and if he did she should be
free."

"If he came, she preferred him?"

"There was a debt she had to pay----if he asked it. I don't know whether
she preferred him. I do know she had no idea that he would come, but the
POSSIBILITY was always before her. If he didn't come in time, would she
be wrong in giving all she had to the man who loved her?"

The Harvester's laugh was short and sharp.

"She had nothing to give, Ruth! Talk about worm-wood, colocynth apples,
and hemlock! What sort of husks would that be to offer a man who gave
honest love? Lie to him! Pretend feeling she didn't experience. Endure
him for the sake of what he offered her? Well I don't know how calmly
any other man would take that proceeding, Ruth, but tell your friend for
me, that if I offered a woman the deep, lasting, and only loving passion
of my heart, and she gave back a lie and indifferent lips, I'd drop her
into the deepest hole of my lake and take my punishment cheerfully."

"But if it would make him happy? He deserves every happiness, and he
need never know!"

The Harvester's laugh raised to an angry roar.

"You simpleton!" he cried roughly. "Do you know so little of human
passion in the heart that you think love can be a successful assumption?
Good Lord, Ruth! Do you think a man is made of wood or stone, that a
woman's lips in her first kiss wouldn't tell him the truth? Why Girl,
you might as well try to spread your tired arms and fly across the lake
as to attempt to pretend a love you do not feel. You never could!"

"I said a girl I knew!"

"'A Girl you knew,' then! Any woman! The idea is monstrous. Tell her so
and forget it. You almost scared the life out of me for a minute, Ruth.
I thought it was going to be you. But I remember your debt is to be paid
with the first money you earn, and you can not have the slightest idea
what love is, if you honestly ask if it can be simulated. No ma'am! It
can't! Not possibly! Not ever! And when the day comes that its fires
light your heart, you will come to me, and tell of a flood of delight
that is tingling from the soles of your feet through every nerve and
fibre of your body, and you will laugh with me at the time when you
asked if it could be imitated successfully. No, ma'am! Now let me help
you to the cabin, serve a good supper, and see you eat like a farmer."

All evening the Harvester was so gay he kept the Girl laughing and at
last she asked him the cause.

"Relief, honey! Relief!" cried the man. "You had me paralyzed for a
minute, Ruth. I thought you were trying to tell me that there was some
one so possessing your heart that it failed every time you tried
to think about caring for me. If you hadn't convinced me before you
finished that love never has touched you, I'd be the saddest man in the
world to-night, Ruth."

The Girl stared at him with wide eyes and silently turned away.

Then for a week they worked out life together in the woods. The
Harvester was the housekeeper and the cook. He added to his store many
delicious broths and stimulants he brought from the city. They drove
every day through the cool woods, often rowed on the lake in the
evenings, walked up the hill to the oak and scattered fresh flowers
on the two mounds there, and sat beside them talking for a time. The
Harvester kept up his work with the herbs, and the little closet for
the blue dishes was finished. They celebrated installing them by having
supper on the living-room table, with the teapot on one end, and the
pitcher full of bellflowers on the other.

The Girl took everything prescribed for her, bathed, slept all she
could, and worked for health with all the force of her frail being, and
as the days went by it seemed to the Harvester her weight grew lighter,
her hands hotter, and she drove herself to a gayety almost delirious. He
thought he would have preferred a dull, stupid sleep of malaria. There
was colour in plenty on her cheeks now, and sometimes he found her
wrapped in the white shawl at noon on the warmest days Medicine Woods
knew in early August; and on cool nights she wore the thinnest clothing
and begged to be taken on the lake. The Careys came out every other
evening and the doctor watched and worked, but he did not get the
results he desired. His medicines were not effective.

"David," he said one evening, "I don't like the looks of this. Your wife
has fever I can't break. It is eating the little store of vitality she
has right out of her, and some of these days she is coming down with a
crash. She should yield to the remedies I am giving her. She acts to
me like a woman driven wild by trouble she is concealing. Do you know
anything that worries her?"

"No," said the Harvester, "but I'll try to find out if it will help you
in your work."

After they were gone he left the Girl lying in the swing guarded by the
dog, and went across the marsh on the excuse that he was going to a bed
of thorn apple at the foot of the hill. There he sat on a log and tried
to think. With the mists of night rising around him, ghosts arose he
fain would have escaped. "What will you give me in cold cash to tell you
who she is, and who her people are?" Times untold in the past two weeks
he had smothered, swallowed, and choked it down. That question she had
wanted to ask----was it for a girl she had known, or was it for herself?
Days of thought had deepened the first slight impression he so bravely
had put aside, not into certainty, but a great fear that she had meant
herself. If she did, what was he to do? Who was the man? There was a
debt she had to pay if he asked it? What debt could a woman pay a man
that did not involve money? Crouched on a log he suffered and twisted
in agonizing thought. At last he arose and returned to the cabin. He
carried a few frosty, blue-green leaves of velvet softness and unusual
cutting, prickly thorn apples full of seeds, and some of the smoother,
more yellowish-green leaves of the jimson weed, to give excuse for his
absence.

"Don't touch them," he warned as he came to her. "They are poison
and have disagreeable odour. But we are importing them for medicinal
purposes. On the far side of the marsh, where the ground rises, there
is a waste place just suited to them, and so long as they will seed
and flourish with no care at all, I might as well have the price as
the foreign people who raise them. They don't bring enough to make them
worth cultivating, but when they grow alone and with no care, I can make
money on the time required to clip the leaves and dry the seeds. I must
go wash before I come close to you."

The next day he had business in the city, and again she lay in the swing
and talked to the dog while the Harvester was gone. She was startled as
Belshazzar arose with a gruff bark. She looked down the driveway, but no
one was coming. Then she followed the dog's eyes and saw a queer,
little old woman coming up the bank of Singing Water from the north. She
remembered what the Harvester had said, and rising she opened the screen
and went down the path. As the Girl advanced she noticed the scrupulous
cleanliness of the calico dress and gingham apron, and the snowy hair
framing a bronzed face with dancing dark eyes.

"Are you David's new wife?" asked Granny Moreland with laughing
inflection.

"Yes," said the Girl. "Come in. He told me to expect you. I am so sorry
he is away, but we can get acquainted without him. Let me help you."

"I don't know but that ought to be the other way about. You don't look
very strong, child."

"I am not well," said the Girl, "but it's lovely here, and the air is
so fine I am going to be better soon. Take this chair until you rest a
little, and then you shall see our pretty home, and all the furniture
and my dresses."

"Yes, I want to see things. My, but David has tried himself! I heard
he was just tearin' up Jack over here, and I could get the sound of the
hammerin', and one day he asked me to come and see about his beddin'. He
had that Lizy Crofter to wash for him, but if I hadn't jest stood over
her his blankets would have been ruined. She's no more respect for
fine goods than a pig would have for cream pie. I hate to see woollens
abused, as if they were human. My, but things is fancy here since what
David planted is growin'! Did you ever live in the country before?"

"No."

"Where do you hail from?"

"Well not from the direction of hail," laughed the Girl. "I lived in
Chicago, but we were----were not rich, and so I didn't know the luxury
of the city; just the lonely, difficult part."

"Do you call Chicago lonely?"

"A thousand times more so than Medicine Woods. Here I know the trees
will whisper to me, and the water laughs and sings all day, and the
birds almost split their throats making music for me; but I can imagine
no loneliness on earth that will begin to compare with being among the
crowds and crowds of a large city and no one has a word or look for you.
I miss the sea of faces and the roar of life; at first I was almost wild
with the silence, but now I don't find it still any more; the Harvester
is teaching me what each sound means and they seem to be countless."

"You think, then, you'll like it here?"

"I do, indeed! Any one would. Even more than the beautiful location, I
love the interesting part of the Harvester's occupation. I really think
that gathering material to make medicines that will allay pain is the
very greatest of all the great work a man can do."

"Good!" cried Granny Moreland, her dark eyes snapping. "I've always
said it! I've tried to encourage David in it. And he's just capital at
puttin' some of his stuff in shape, and combinin' it in as good medicine
as you ever took. This spring I was all crippled up with the rheumatiz
until I wanted to holler every time I had to move, and sometimes it got
so aggravatin' I'm not right sure but I done it. 'Long comes David and
says, 'I can fix you somethin',' and bless you, if the boy didn't take
the tucks out of me, until here I am, and tickled to pieces that I can
get here. This time last year I didn't care if I lived or not. Now seems
as if I'm caperish as a three weeks' lamb. I don't see how a man could
do a bigger thing than to stir up life in you like that."

"I think this place makes an especial appeal to me, because, shortly
before I came, I had to give up my mother. She was very ill and suffered
horribly. Every time I see David going to his little laboratory on
the hill to work a while I slip away and ask God to help him to fix
something that will ease the pain of humanity as I should like to have
seen her relieved."

"Why you poor child! No wonder you are lookin' so thin and peaked!"

"Oh I'll soon be over that," said the Girl. "I am much better than when
I came. I'll be coming over to trade pie with you before long. David
says you are my nearest neighbour, so we must be close friends."

"Well bless your big heart! Now who ever heard of a pretty young thing
like you wantin' to be friends with a plain old country woman?"

"Why I think you are lovely!" cried the Girl. "And all of us are on the
way to age, so we must remember that we will want kindness then more
than at any other time. David says you knew his mother. Sometime won't
you tell me all about her? You must very soon. The Harvester adored her,
and Doctor Carey says she was the noblest woman he ever knew. It's a
big contract to take her place. Maybe if you would tell me all you can
remember I could profit by much of it."

Granny Moreland watched the Girl keenly.

"She wa'ant no ordinary woman, that's sure," she commented. "And she
didn't make no common man out of her son, either. I've always contended
she took the job too serious, and wore herself out at it, but she
certainly done the work up prime. If she's above cloud leanin' over the
ramparts lookin' down----though it gets me as to what foundation they
use or where they get the stuff to build the ramparts----but if they
is ramparts, and she's peekin' over them, she must take a lot of solid
satisfaction in seeing that David is not only the man she fought and
died to make him, but he's give her quite a margin to spread herself
on. She 'lowed to make him a big man, but you got to know him close
and plenty 'fore it strikes you jest what his size is. I've watched him
pretty sharp, and tried to help what I could since Marthy went, and I'm
frank to say I druther see David happy than to be happy myself. I've had
my fling. The rest of the way I'm willin' to take what comes, with the
best grace I can muster, and wear a smilin' face to betoken the joy I
have had; but it cuts me sore to see the young sufferin'."

"Do you think David is unhappy?" asked the Girl eagerly.

"I don't see how he could be!" cried the old lady. "Of course he
ain't! 'Pears as if he's got everythin' to make him the proudest, best
satisfied of men. I'll own I was mighty anxious to see you. I know
the kind o' woman it would take to make David miserable, and it seems
sometimes as if men----that is good men----are plumb, stone blind when
it comes to pickin' a woman. They jest hitch up with everlastin' misery
easy as dew rolling off a cabbage leaf. It's sech a blessed sight to see
you, and hear your voice and know you're the woman anybody can see you
be. Why I'm so happy when I set here and con-tem'-plate you, I want
to cackle like a pullet announcin' her first egg. Ain't this porch the
purtiest place?"

"Come see everything," invited the Girl, rising.

Granny Moreland followed with alacrity.

"Bare floors!" she cried. "Wouldn't that best you? I saw they was
finished capital when I was over, but I 'lowed they'd be covered afore
you come. Don't you like nice, flowery Brissels carpets, honey?"

"No I don't," said the Girl. "You see, when rugs are dusty they can be
rolled, carried outside, and cleaned. The walls can be wiped, the floors
polished and that way a house is always fresh. I can keep this shining,
germ proof, and truly clean with half the work and none of the danger of
heavy carpets and curtains."

"I don't doubt but them is true words," said Granny Moreland earnestly.
"Work must be easier and sooner done than it was in my day, or people
jest couldn't have houses the size of this or the time to gad that women
have now. From the looks of the streets of Onabasha, you wouldn't think
a woman 'ud had a baby to tend, a dinner pot a-bilin', or a bakin' of
bread sence the flood. And the country is jest as bad as the city. We're
a apin' them to beat the monkeys at a show. I hardly got a neighbour
that ain't got figgered Brissels carpet, a fur