"It is so beautiful!" she exclaimed with a deep narrow love of her
land. "I never see it without thinking of it as it will be years
hence. I can see you riding over it then and your children playing
around the house and some one sitting here where we stand, watching
them at their play and watching you in the distance at your work.
But I have been waiting a long time for her to take my place--and
to take her own," and she leaned heavily on his arm as a sign of
her dependence but out of weakness also (for she did not tell him
all). "I am impatient to hear the voice of your children, Rowan.
Do you never wish to hear them yourself?"

As they stood silent, footsteps approached through the hall and
turning they saw Dent with a book in his hand.

"Are you grand people never coming to breakfast?" he asked,
frowning with pretended impatience, "so that a laboring man may go
to his work?"

He was of short but well-knit figure. Spectacles and a thoughtful
face of great refinement gave him the student's stamp. His
undergraduate course at college would end in a few weeks.
Postgraduate work was to begin during the summer. An assistant
professorship, then a full professorship--these were successive
stations already marked by him on the clear track of life; and he
was now moving toward them with straight and steady aim. Sometimes
we encounter personalities which seem to move through the discords
of this life as though guided by laws of harmony; they know neither
outward check nor inward swerving, and are endowed with that
peaceful passion for toil which does the world's work and is one of