heart to let them go, even if they are of the wrong persuasion. I
always love them better than I do the little heifers, because I have
to give them up. I don't like to have things I love go away. You see
you mustn't think of going to New York until the spring is all over
and summer comes for good," she continued, with the most delightful
ingenuousness, as she shaped the last of the ten flowers and glanced
from her task at him with the most solicitous concern. "Of course, you
feel as if the smash your lung got in that awful rock slide has healed
all up, and I know it has, but you'll have to do as the doctor tells
you about not running any risks with New York spring gales, won't
you?"

"Oh, yes, I suppose I will," answered Everett, with a trace of
restlessness in his voice. "I'm just as sound as a dollar now and I'm
wild to go with that gang the firm is sending up into British Columbia
to thrash out that copper question. I know they counted on me for the
final tests. Some other fellow will find it and get the fortune and
the credit, while I--I--"

He stared moodily out the door of the milk-house and down Providence
Road that wound its calm, even way from across the ridge down through
the green valley. Rose Mary's milk-house was nestled between the
breasts of a low hill, upon which was perched the wide-winged, old
country house which had brooded the fortunes of the Alloways since the
wilderness days. The spring which gushed from the back wall of the
milk-house poured itself into a stone trough on the side of the Road,
which had been placed there generations agone for the refreshment of
beast, while man had been entertained within the hospitable stone
walls. And at the foot of the Briars, as the Alloway home, hill,
spring and meadows had been called from time immemorial, clustered the