interests of science. By constant experiment and observation he
learned a great deal and his brothers and sisters thought his
extensive knowledge of their little world quite wonderful. Jem
always knew where the first and ripest berries grew, where the
first pale violets shyly wakened from their winter's sleep, and
how many blue eggs were in a given robin's nest in the maple
grove. He could tell fortunes from daisy petals and suck honey
from red clovers, and grub up all sorts of edible roots on the
banks of the pond, while Susan went in daily fear that they would
all be poisoned. He knew where the finest spruce-gum was to be
found, in pale amber knots on the lichened bark, he knew where
the nuts grew thickest in the beechwoods around the Harbour Head,
and where the best trouting places up the brooks were. He could
mimic the call of any wild bird or beast in Four Winds and he
knew the haunt of every wild flower from spring to autumn.

Walter Blythe was sitting under the White Lady, with a volume of
poems lying beside him, but he was not reading. He was gazing
now at the emerald-misted willows by the pond, and now at a flock
of clouds, like little silver sheep, herded by the wind, that
were drifting over Rainbow Valley, with rapture in his wide
splendid eyes. Walter's eyes were very wonderful. All the joy
and sorrow and laughter and loyalty and aspiration of many
generations lying under the sod looked out of their dark gray
depths.

Walter was a "hop out of kin," as far as looks went. He did not
resemble any known relative. He was quite the handsomest of the
Ingleside children, with straight black hair and finely modelled
features. But he had all his mother's vivid imagination and