too hard," she laughed; and she panted as she rested her hand for a second against the edge of the bowl and looked up at Everett from under a black tendril curl that had fallen down across her forehead.

"Miss Rose Mary Alloway, you are one large, husky—witch," calmly remarked the hungry man as he finished disposing of the last half of one of the thin bread and butters. "Here I sit enchanted by—by a butter-paddle, when you and I both know that not two miles across the meadows there runs a train that ought to put me into New York in a little over forty-eight hours. Won't you, won't you let me go—back to my frantic and imploring employers?"

"Why no, I can't," answered Rose Mary as she pressed a yellow cake of butter on to a blue plate and deftly curled it up with her paddle into a huge yellow sunflower. "Uncle Tucker captured you roaming loose out in his fields and he trusts you to me while he is at work and I must keep you safe. He's fond of you and so are the Aunties and Stonewall Jackson and Shoofly and Sniffer and—"

"And anybody else?" demanded Everett, preparing to dispose of the last bite.

"Oh, everybody most along Providence Road," answered Rose Mary enthusiastically, though not raising her eyes from the manipulation of the third butter flower. "Can't you go out and dig up some more rocks and things? I feel sure you haven't got a sample of all of them. And there may be gold and silver and precious jewels just one inch deeper than you have dug. Are you certain you can't squeeze up some oil somewhere in the meadow? You told a whole lot of reasons to Uncle Tucker why you knew you would find some, and now you'll have to stay to prove yourself."

"No," answered Mark Everett quietly, and, as he spoke, he raised his eyes and looked at Rose Mary keenly; "no, there is no oil that I can discover, though the formation, as I explained to your uncle, is just as I expected to find it. I've spent three weeks going over every inch of the Valley and I can't find a trace of grease. I'm sorry."

"Well, I don't know that I care, except for your sake," answered Rose Mary unconcernedly, with her eyes still on her task. "We don't any of us like the smell of coal-oil, and it gives Aunt Viney asthma. It would be awfully disagreeable to have wells of it right here on the place. They'd be so ugly and smelly."

"But oil-wells mean—mean a great deal of wealth," ventured Everett.

"I know, but just think of the money Uncle Tucker gets for 

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