"No, I may not take your hand."





CHAPTER I

OF A GREAT WHITE BIRD UPON A LAKE

Spring was stealing lightly over the Connecticut hills, a shy, tender
thing of delicate green winging its way with witch-rod over the wooded
ridges and the sylvan paths of Diane Westfall's farm. And with the
spring had come a great hammering by the sheepfold and the stables
where a smiling horde of metropolitan workmen, sheltered by night in
the rambling old farmhouse, built an ingenious house upon wheels and
flirted with the house-maids.

Radiantly the spring swept from delicate shyness into a bolder glow of
leaf and flower. Dogwood snowed along the ridges, Solomon's seal
flowered thickly in the bogs, and following the path to the lake one
morning with Rex, a favorite St. Bernard, at her heels, Diane felt with
a thrill that the summer itself had come in the night with a
wind-flutter of wild flower and the fluting of nesting birds.

The woodland was deliciously green and cool and alive with the piping
of robins. Over the lake which glimmered faintly through the trees
ahead came the whir and hum of a giant bird which skimmed the lake with
snowy wing and came to rest like a truant gull. Of the habits of this
extraordinary bird Rex, barking, frankly disapproved, but finding his