it back and get credit for it ... doesn’t go with anything else we’ve got— Oh, all right! All right, I say! Keep it! Good lord, keep it!” He murmured snatches of long-forgotten talk, relived a portion of his interview with Granny Manders when she confided her dream of having her son’s son’s son “fotched on,” and at the end looked at the girl with clear and unclouded gaze.

[53]

“You keep away from that Hill crowd, hear? You mind me! Poor Effie, your poor mother, she came down here as friendly as a fox terrier, and what’d they do? Snubbed her, and cold-shouldered her, and looked right through her, that’s what they did, damn ’em! Crushed her, and broke her heart, and killed her, damn ’em—killed her! Damn their souls!” shouted the doctor with amazing vigor, and, damning, died, entirely in character, as he had lived.

The two doctors, one old and one young, were kind, and the nurse was kind, and Glen was civil in her appreciation, but she turned to her two friends, stumbling blindly down the stairs to find them.

The shabby teacher put thin arms about her and held her close. She knew, she said, none better, what it meant to lose a father.... Glen was to lie down at once, and she would bring her a cup of tea.[54] She had—happily—put the kettle on a half hour earlier, and she pushed Glen gently down into the easiest of the chairs and tiptoed swiftly to the kitchen.

[54]

Luke Manders did not speak to her, but he came and stood before her, towering over her like a young pine, and his black eyes were very bright. He took the hand that she gropingly held out to him and held it hard in his own hard hand, and it went through her mind that it was like taking hold of a stalwart tree for support—like leaning upon solid rock, like the strength of the hills. Looking up at him through tears she wondered, even in that hour, if her father had talked to him as he had to her, but she heard Miss Ada’s pattering return and pulled her hand away. She must be careful now with her two friends—her only friends—who were not friends with each other.

The young mountaineer was no longer openly rude to the faded gentlewoman: to the boldness and poise which he had brought down from the heights he had added a grave courtesy which sat well upon him, and he hooded the scorn in his keen eyes. Miss Ada, for her part, was obliged to admit and did admit, very pleasantly, to Glen, that the youth had made amazing progress, not only in his studies but in his 

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