her voice. "I came home in the winter of my junior year. My father was one of the Harpeth Valley boys who went out into the world, and he came back to die under the roof where his fathers had fought off the Indians, and he brought poor little motherless me to leave with the aunts and Uncle Tucker. They loved me and cared for me just as they did Uncle Tucker's son, who was motherless, too, and a few years after he went out into the world to seek the fortune he felt so sure of, I was given my chance at college. In my senior year his tragedy came and I hurried back to find Uncle Tucker broken and old with the horror of it, and with the place practically sold to avoid open disgrace. His son died that year and left—left—some day I will tell you the rest of it. I might have gone back into the world and made a success of things and helped them in that way, from a distance—but what they needed was—was me. And so I sat here many sunset hours of loneliness and looked along Providence Road until—until I think the Master must have passed this way and left me His peace, though my mortal eyes didn't see Him. And now there lies my home nest swung in a bower of blossoms full of the old sweetie birds, the boy, the calf, puppy babies, pester chickens and—and I'm going to take a large, gray, prowling night-bird back and tuck him away for fear his cheeks will look hollow in the morning. I'm the mother bird, and while I know He watches with me all through the night, sometimes I sing in the dark because I and my nesties are close to Him and I'm not the least bit afraid."

 

"I hope you feel easy in your mind now"

"I hope you feel easy in your mind now"

 

CHAPTER IV

MOONLIGHT AND APPLE-BLOW

 

"I hope you feel easy in your mind, child, now you've put this whole garden to bed and tucked 'em under cover, heads and all," said Uncle Tucker, as he spread the last bit of old sacking down over the end of the row of little sprouting bean vines. "When I look at the garden I'm half skeered to go in the house to bed for fear I haven't got a quilt to my joints."

"Now, honey sweet, you know better than that," answered Rose Mary as she rose from weighting down the end 

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