to the great new life of the greater commune that is coming to us. Down
there in Riverfield I knew that there was sin and sorrow and birth and
death, but there was no starvation, and for every tragedy there was a
neighbor to reach out a helping hand, and for every joy there were hearty
and friendly rejoicings.

"Oh, and I'm one of them--I belong," I said to myself as I noted each
cottage into which I went and came at will, as friend and beloved neighbor.
Even at that distance I could see a small figure, which I knew to be Luella
Spain, running up the long avenue, and in its hand I detected something
that, I was sure, was a covered plate or dish. "And I'm making Elmnest
fulfil its destiny into the future--into the future that the great Evan
Baldwin is preaching about in town, instead of practicing out in the
fields. I wonder if he really knows a single thing about farming."

"He does," came an answer from right at my shoulder in Pan's flutiest
voice, and I turned to find him standing just behind me on the very edge of
the old tilting rock.

"How do you know?" I demanded of him as I took the clean white cloth tied
up at four corners, gypsy-fashion, which he offered me and which, I could
see, was fairly bursting with green leaves of a kind I had never seen
before.

"I was with him at the Metropolitan the night I saw Ann Craddock in Gale
Beacon's box, you know,--the night that Mr. G. Bird sang 'Delilah,' and
also I've slept on the bare ground with him in his woods in Michigan and on
his red clay in Georgia."

"Well, I hate him all the same for the insult of his offer to buy Elmnest,