the high creek-bank. Arlie gazed at it. Suddenly, as she gazed, bright wings flashed out and were gone.

Wilsy said that she adored old Wayne. He had told her there was n't a thing in the world the matter with her. Or almost

She smiled at Roddy, lifting her arms to tuck back a resplendent lock of hair. Her white dress fluttered about her in the river wind.

"Don't fly away this morning," said Roddy.

ARLIE and Wilsy sat on a sun-warmed ledge of limestone above the creek and showed each other their eager, active, restless minds. Wilsy smiled as she spoke; but Arlie, being six years younger, was serious.

They had finished with their minds and got to their palms when they became aware of Roddy deflecting toward them from the mountain road.

"Let's see yours," said Arlie, by way of greeting.

"Plain as a pikestaff," said Roddy, presenting his palm for inspection.

"Men's usually are," said Wilsy, crushingly.

Half a glance sufficed to reveal Roddy's deep, flawless, pink heart-line sweeping boldly to the base of the forefinger; his serviceable head-line marked with the ruler of common sense straight across his palm; his double life-line looped warily around both thumbs, to make quite sure; his fine, clear line of happy fate. There were no moony vagaries in Roddy's hand.

"He's going to live forever," said Wilsy, "and be perfectly satisfied with his life."

The two girls exchanged a glance, as if they were sorry for Roddy.

"Too bad it 's not more exciting," said Roddy. He added to Arlie, "Now I'll have a look at yours."

But Arlie crumpled up her moon-struck palms and hid them away behind her.

Roddy sat down on the ledge, too, slightly below Wilsy, and on a level with Arlie, although a few feet away.

"How do you like old Wayne?" asked Roddy of Wilsy.

culine insistence on the absolute truth. "That's about the best news I ever heard," said Roddy. "And how do you like my mountains?"

"I'm afraid I'll have to take them home with me," said Wilsy.

"Then," said Roddy, "I must come up here and look at them a lot this winter."

He pretended to be shielding his eyes from the setting sun as he spoke, but in reality he was glancing across at Arlie. Wilsy could see his eyes, awakened and tender, through his curving fingers. Arlie felt them. Her cool cheek turned hot. She stole a look across to Roddy.

It was very odd to Wilsy, sitting there just above them both, to watch it begin that way.

"I'm going in to write a letter for you to mail for me," she said to Roddy.

She went off up the slope, smiling to herself, and glancing over her left shoulder at the valley.

Roddy moved closer to Arlie. The sunrays were long and yellow. The distance was violet and golden in streaks and patches. A smoke of mist showed where the river ran far below.

"Are n't you glad to be back, Arlie?" asked Roddy, imploringly. "For aa visit," said Arlie. Roddy felt wing-edges flutter against his

palm.

"Come for a walk along the bank," he said.

They strolled in silence by the loud. creek, and paused in a tiny ravine filled to the brim with pale purple asters. Arlie stood among them, lifting her face to the

new moon.

"It 's holding water," said Arlie. Roddy watched her with open tender

ness.

"Arlie," he said, putting out a hand.

"Wilsy will be through her letter by now," said Arlie, hastily. "Shall we take her some of these?"

Roddy accepted his rebuff stoically. He gathered Wilsy an armful of purple asters and took them to her. He filled her brown pottery jar with spring water, helped her arrange the asters, and told her where they looked prettiest, on the funny little bracket between her two windows.

Arlie had vanished, and Roddy sat on the porch-steps with Wilsy. She would talk about the war.

"We can't realize it," said Wilsy.

Roddy wished that he could say that. He changed the subject as soon as he could, and asked Wilsy if she'd made a wish for the new moon over the pines up there.

Wilsy said she had; that she had made a beautiful wish for Roddy.

Presently Wilsy was not the only clever

person.

Roddy, walking with his head in the clouds or the stars, supposed himself to resemble any ordinary young man going about the every-day business of life, and he was much startled at something Mary said to him one evening. They were at the piano, a little apart from the family group by the fire.

"How," said Mary, picking up a handful of notes, and letting them drop slowly back, "would you like it if Chard Campbell made love to me?"

More men than Roddy have wondered at the remarkable things women will say. "What do you mean?" he flashed.

"I mean what you think I mean," said Mary, diabolically.

"It's totally and entirely different," said Roddy in an enraged undertone, "and I think it very questionable taste in an engaged girl to ask any such question."

Mary picked up another handful of notes, and Roddy left the room.

Mary looked over her shoulder at her father and mother.

"Roddy 's perfectly wild about Arlie," she said, "and she does n't encourage him a bit. You'd think he 'd have some pride."

Now, Kathy had not the faintest desire for Roddy to marry into old Campbell's mountain clan, but she could not help a flare of indignation.

"Pray, what does Arlie want?" she inquired spiritedly.

"She says she does n't wish to marry any one," said Mary. "She says a woman's own life is automatically ended the minute sh gets married, if she loves her husband."

"No true woman wants any life of her own apart from her husband's," said Kathy. "Arlie will find out some day that she's been talking great nonsense."

"What do you think about it, Mary?" asked Ivor, who had been listening behind his book, amused, but approving Kathy's correct sentiments.

"Oh," said Mary, confidently, “Geoff and I would n't always be wanting different things."

She returned to her music, and Ivor crossed the hall to the library.

He found Roddy there, poking the fire in pure absent-mindedness. Sometimes he made the sparks fly, and sometimes he rested his hands on the poker in a brown study. Ivor looked over his evening papers in silence. They were more than usually interesting and angering, and he kept at them a good while. When he finally flung them aside the rustle and movement brought Roddy's eyes his way.

"Would you make a fuss about it, Father," he asked deliberately, "if I could get Arlie to have me?"

"Would it make any difference if I did?" asked Ivor, not taking Roddy with any great seriousness.

"Not if I could get her," admitted Roddy. His tone was harassed. Even Ivor felt an indignant twinge.

"Can't you?" he asked rather incredulously.

But Roddy shook his head.

"She loves me," he said, finding a sharp relief in words after so much silence, "and she won't have me. She talks the utterest

stuff, but she means it. I could get rid of a condition in life, but I can't get rid of a condition in Arlie's mind. She 's got me going. I don't know what to do. If she gets away from me now I'll never get her. She'll keep away-because she 's afraid." He flung the poker to its rest, and turned abruptly to Ivor.

"Father," he said, her." He looked in Ivor had a shock. He ceased to take Roddy's affair of the heart lightly. No more than Kathy and Mary did he care for Roddy to marry into the Campbell clan, but not altogether the same reasons moved him. Still, he concluded to keep his hands off. He had paid Roddy that compliment for some time now. He got up, walked away, walked back, looked at Roddy, who had taken out his watch, and said:

"Well, you can give her she 'll have yours."

my

love-if

Roddy's disturbed face cleared for the moment.

"You don't think me too much of an ass, then?"

"Not a bit of it," said Ivor, heartily. "She 's too good for you."

He did n't in the least think any girl in the world too good for Roddy; but he really did think Arlie, with her beauty and brightness, good enough, and he was glad he had stretched a point, because it sent his boy up the mountain road looking a little happier.

Though it was not quite eight when Roddy reached Campbells', the light in Wilsy's cabin was already out. Wilsy, after a long day's climbing about with her kodak, had gone early to bed; but the light from the deep little windows of the front room lay across the porch, and Arlie herself opened its door to him.

It was a good deal like having a door opened into a story-book, though Arlie and Roddy, being blinded by familiarity, never guessed this. The front room was oblong, with a large fireplace midway its length on one side. The doors and mantelpiece, like ceiling and rafters, showed the rich natural color of hundredyear-old seasoned pine. Deer-horns on the wall, a large and a small spinning-wheel in a corner, an immense settle, over which was flung one of the few remaining buffalo robes in the country, took the interior back to the frontier period. A red-and-gray rag-carpet made by Arlie's mother covered the floor, and Chard had contributed the

Arlie gave Roddy her father's chair, and took a corner of the green settle, herself.

At first they found unimportant things of which to speak; but finally one of the silences they were coming to dread fell upon them. Arlie could find nothing better to break it with than:

"There 's Chard come in." She looked interestedly toward one of the room's six doors. Behind it Chard was to be heard whistling a lively air.

Roddy had laid hold of Arlie's poker by now. He had to be using his restless hands. He was leaning over, and he looked up at Arlie.

"Shall we call him in?" asked Roddy in an inimical tone.

"N-o-o," said Arlie.

"My father sent you his love," said Roddy, watching Arlie's face. This had been one of her defenses, that his father would make a row.

"That 's sweet of him," said Arlie, presently.

"On a condition," continued Roddy. She looked away, making a negative. gesture.

"We could be so happy," said Roddy in a heart-shaking voice.

Arlie's hand crumpled nervously at a newspaper she had been reading when Roddy tapped at her door.

"We have n't any right to be happy off to ourselves when such things are going on in the world," said Arlie.

Roddy had not even looked at that day's paper. He had been so desperately absorbed in the upheaval of his heart that for weeks he had scarcely remembered that there was a war.

"So you 've a new reason," said Roddy. However, he put out his hand for the paper, and Arlie, after a motion as if to withhold it, drew back hers. She sat tense and still, watching Roddy read.

He had been pale; but, as he read, a smoldering anger nearly three years old flamed up in cheek and eye.

down, picked up the poker again, and prodded the logs viciously.

Arlie watched the sparks showering. She did n't know what to do, either. She could give Roddy up while she still had him, as she had him, for instance, that evening; but to imagine. herself giving him up altogether made a cold hand close on her heart.

Roddy's face turned slowly to hers. The hurt in it made Arlie say to herself that she was n't being fair to Roddy; that she had better cut short her time at home and get back to her work. She would ask to be put on some good hard case, some woman who did n't really have anything the matter with her.

Maybe she could give

Arlie would n't answer. She turned, stooping to pat Rob, Roddy's setter, which had followed him up, and now lay at his feet.

Rob, intensely flattered, reared himself, and stood with his paws on Arlie's knee.

"Down, sir!" ordered Roddy, sternly. "Don't be so cross with him, Roddy," said Arlie. She laid an impulsive arm about Rob's brown neck.

Roddy reached over deliberately, took hold of his dog's collar, set him firmly on his four feet, got up, went to the door, and opened it.

"Get out!" he said to Rob, the words sounding like an oath.

"I never saw anything so childish in my life!" flared Arlie. Roddy gave Arlie a driven look.

That look silenced Arlie. Roddy sat

Roddy up if she had enough to take up her time and occupy her mind. She glanced

inquiringly at Roddy, who had risen.

"No good my staying," said Roddy, humbly; "I don't seem able to behave myself to-night."

With yearning eyes on Arlie, he fumbled for his hat on the table behind him. "Very well," said Arlie, looking pale. She stood up politely.

"Please tell Wilsy I'm sorry I did n't get to see her," said Roddy. He swung off to the door.

"Roddy," said Arlie, faintly.

"Yes," said Roddy, quickly, a flicker of hope in his eyes.

"Good night," said Arlie, beseechingly. She held out her hand.

Roddy looked at it.

"Good night," he said. He went off without touching the hand.

Arlie's hand dropped to her side as