Jean confessed her mistake to Cousin Beth after they had returned home. There were just a few moments to spare before bedtime, after wishing Carlota and her aunt good night, and she sat on a little stool before the fire in the sitting-room.

“I hadn’t the least idea she was the Contessa. You know that tall woman with the stag hound, Cousin Beth—”

Mrs. Newell laughed softly, braiding her hair down into regular schoolgirl pigtails.

“That was Betty Goodwin. Betty loves to dress up. She plays little parts for herself all the time. I think today she was a Russian princess perhaps. The next time she will be a tailor-made English girl. Betty’s people have money enough to indulge her whims, and she has just had her portrait done by Morel as a sort of dream maiden, I believe. I caught a glimpse of it on exhibition last week. Looks as little like Betty as I do. Jean, child, paint if you must, but paint the thing as you see it, and do choose apple trees and red barns rather than dream maidens who aren’t real.”

“I don’t know what I shall paint,” Jean answered, with a little quick sigh. “She rather frightened me, I mean the Contessa. She thinks only real geniuses should paint.”

“Nonsense. Paint all you like. You’re seventeen, aren’t you, Jean?”

Jean nodded. “Eighteen in April.”

“You seem younger than that. If I could, I’d swamp you in paint and study for the next two years. By that time you would have either found out that you were tired to death of it, and wanted real life, or you would be doing something worth while in the art line. But in any event you would have no regrets. I mean you could trot along life’s highway contentedly, without feeling there was something you had missed. It was odd your meeting the Contessa as you did. She likes you very much. I wish it could be arranged for you to go over to Italy in a year, and be under her wing. It’s such a broadening experience for you, Jeanie. Perhaps I’ll be going myself by then and could take you. You would love it as I did, I know. There’s a charm and restfulness about old world spots that all the war clamour and devastation cannot kill. Now run along to bed. Tomorrow will be a quiet day. The Contessa likes it here because she can relax and as she says ‘invite her soul to peace.’ Good night, dear.”

When Jean reached her own room, she found a surprise. On the desk lay a letter from home that Minory had laid there. Minory was Cousin Beth’s standby, as she said. She was middle-aged, and had been “help” to the Peabodys ever since she was a girl. Matrimony had never attracted Minory. She had never been known to have a sweetheart. She was tall and spare, with a broad serene face, and sandy-red hair worn parted in the middle and combed smoothly back over her ears in old-fashioned style. Her eyes were as placid and contented as a cat’s, and rather greenish, too, in tint.

“Minory has reached Nirvana,” Cousin Beth would say, laughingly. “She always has a little smile on her lips, and says nothing. I’ve never seen her angry or discontented. She’s saved her earnings and bought property, and supports several indigent relatives who have no earthly right to her help. Her favorite flower, she says, is live forever, as we call it here in New England, or the Swiss edelweiss. She’s a faithful Unitarian, and her favorite charity is orphan asylums. All my life I have looked up to Minory and loved her. There’s a poem called ‘The Washer of the Ford,’ I think it is, and she has made me think of it often, for over and over at the passing out of dear ones in the family, it has been Minory’s hand on my shoulder that has steadied me, and her hand that has closed their eyes. She stands and holds the candle for the rest of us.”

It was just like her, Jean thought, to lay the home letter where it would catch her eye and make her happy before she went to sleep. One joy of a letter from home was that it turned out to be a budget as soon as you got it out of the envelope. The one on top was from the Motherbird, written just before the mail wagon came up the hill.

Jean sat for a few minutes after reading this, without unfolding the girls’ letters. Mothers were wonderful persons, she thought. Their brooding wings stretched so far over one, and gave forth a love and protectiveness such as nothing else in the world could do.

The next was from Helen, quite like her too. Brief and beautifully penned on her very own violet tinted note paper.

“Oh, Helenita, you little goose,” Jean laughed, shaking her head. The letter was so entirely typical of Helen and her vagaries. A mental flash of the dear old Contessa in a pearl cap came to her. She must remember to tell Cousin Beth about that tomorrow.

Doris’s letter was hurried and full of maternal cares.

Last of all was Kit’s, six sheets of pencilled scribbling, crowded together on both sides.

If it had not been too late, Jean felt she could have sat down then and there, and answered every one of them. They took her straight back to Greenacres and all the daily round of fun there. In the morning she read them all to Carlota, sitting on their favorite old Roman seat out in the big central greenhouse. Here were only ferns and plants like orchids, begonias, and delicate cyclamen. There was a little fountain in the center, and several frogs and gold fish down among the lily pads.

“Ah, but you are lucky,” Carlota cried in her quick way. “I am just myself, and it’s so monotonous. I wish I could go back with you, even for just a few days, and know them all. Kit must be so funny and clever.”

“Why couldn’t you? Mother’d love to have you, and the girls are longing to know what you look like. I’d love to capture you and carry you into our old hills. Perhaps by Easter you could go. Would the Contessa let you, do you think?”

Carlota laughed merrily, and laid her arm around Jean’s shoulder.

“I think she would let me do anything you wished. Let us go now and ask her.”

The Contessa had not joined them at breakfast. She preferred her tray in Continental fashion, brought up by Minory, and they found her lying in the flood of sunshine from the south window, on the big comfy chintz covered couch drawn up before the open fireplace. Over a faded old rose silk dressing gown she wore a little filmy lace shawl the tint of old ivory that matched her skin exactly. Jean never saw her then or in after years without marvelling at the perpetual youth of her eyes and smile. She held out both hands to her with an exclamation of pleasure, and kissed her on her cheeks.

“Ah, Giovanna mia,” she cried. “Good morning. Carlota has already visited me, and see, the flowers, so beautiful and dear, which your cousin sent up—roses and roses. They are my favorites. Other flowers we hold sentiment for, not for their own sakes, but because there are associations or memories connected with them, but roses bring forth homage. At my little villa in Tuscany which you must see some time, it is very old, very poor in many ways, but we have roses everywhere. Now, tell me, what is it you two have thought up. I see it in your eyes.”

“Could I take Carlota home with me for a little visit when I go?” asked Jean. “It isn’t so very far from here, just over in the corner of Connecticut where Rhode Island and Massachusetts meet, and by Easter it will be beautiful in the hills. And it’s perfectly safe for her up there. Nothing ever happens.”

The Contessa laughed at her earnestness.

“We must consult with your cousin first,” she said. “If we can have you with us in Italy then we must let Carlota go with you surely. We sail in June. I have word from my sister. Would you like to go, child?”

Jean sat down on the chair by the bedside and clasped her hands.

“Oh, it just couldn’t happen,” she said in almost a hushed tone. “I’m sure it couldn’t, Contessa. Perhaps in another year, Cousin Beth said she might be going over, and then I could be with her. But not yet.”

The Contessa lifted her eyebrows and smiled whimsically.

“But what if there is a conspiracy of happiness afoot? Then you have nothing to say, and I have talked with your cousin, and she has written to another cousin, Roxy, I think she calls her. Ah, you have such wonderful women cousins, Giovanna, they are all fairy godmothers I think.”

Jean liked to be called Giovanna. It gave her a curious feeling of belonging to that life Carlota told her of, in the terra cotta colored villa among the old terraces and rose gardens overlooking the sea. She remembered some of Browning’s short poems that she had always liked, the little fragment beginning,

“If you keep on day dreaming over possibilities, Jean Robbins,” she told herself in her mirror, “you’ll be quite as bad as Helen. You keep your two feet on the ground, and stop fluttering wings.”

Whereupon for the remainder of the stay at Cousin Beth’s, she bent to study with a will, until Easter week loomed near, and it was time to think of starting for the hills once more. Carlota was going with her, and so excited and expectant over the trip that the Contessa declared she almost felt like accompanying them, just to discover this marvelous charm that seemed to enfold Greenacres and its girls.

It was the Friday before Easter when they arrived. Jean looked around eagerly as she jumped to the platform, wondering which of the family would drive down to meet them, but instead of Kit or Shad, Ralph McRae stepped up to her with outstretched hand. All the way from Saskatoon, she thought, and just the same as he was a year before. As Kit had said then, in describing him:

“He doesn’t look as if he could be the hero, but he’d always be the hero’s best friend, like Mercutio was to Romeo, or Gratiano to Benvolio. If he couldn’t be Robin Hood, he’d be Will Scarlet, not Alan a Dale. I couldn’t imagine him ever singing serenades.”

Jean introduced him to Carlota, who greeted him in her pretty, half foreign way, and Mr. Briggs waved a welcome as he trundled the express truck past them down the platform.

“Looks a bit like rain. Good for the planters,” he called.

Princess took the long curved hill from the station splendidly, and Jean lifted her head to it all, the long overlapping hill range that unfolded as they came to the first stretch of level road, the rich green of the pines gracing their slopes, and most of all the beautiful haze of young green that lay like a veil over the land from the first bursting leaf buds.

“Oh, it’s good to be home,” she exclaimed. “Over at Cousin Beth’s the land seems so level, and I like hills.”

“They were having some sort of Easter exercises at school, and the girls could not drive down,” Ralph said. “Honey and I arrived two days ago, and I asked for the privilege of coming down. Shad’s busy planting out his first lettuce and radishes in the hotbeds, and Mrs. Robbins is up at the Judge’s today. Billie’s pretty sick, I believe.”

“Billie?” cried Jean. “Not Billie?”

Even to think of Billie’s being ill was absurd. It was like saying a raindrop had the measles, or the wind seemed to have an attack of whooping cough. He had never been sick all the years he had lived up there, bare headed winter and summer, free as the birds and animals he loved. All the long drive home she felt subdued in a way.

“He came back from school Monday and they are afraid of typhoid. I believe conditions at the school were not very good this spring, and several of the boys came down with it. But I’m sure if anybody could pull him through it would be Mrs. Ellis,” said Ralph.

But even with the best nursing and care, things looked bad for Billie. It was supper time before Mrs. Robbins returned. Carlota had formed an immediate friendship with Mr. Robbins, and they talked of her father, whom he had known before his departure for Italy. For anyone to have known and appreciated her father, was a sure passport to Carlota’s favor. It raised them immensely in her estimation, and she was delighted to find, as she said, “somebody whose eyes have really looked at him.”

Kit was indignant and stunned at the blow that had fallen on her chum, Billie. She never could take the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in the proper humble spirit anyway.

“The idea that Billie should have to be sick,” she cried. “How long will he be in bed, Mother?”

“I don’t know, dear,” Mrs. Robbins said. “He’s sturdy and strong, but the fever usually has to run its course. Dr. Gallup came right over.”

“Bless him,” Kit put in fervently. “He’ll get him well in no time. I don’t think there ever was a doctor so set on making people well. I’d rather see him come in the door, no matter what ailed me, sit down and tell me I had just a little distemper, open his cute little black case, and mix me up that everlasting mess that tastes like cinnamon and sugar, than have a whole line up of city specialists tapping me.”

Helen and Doris clung closely to Jean, taking her and Carlota around the place to show her all the new chicks, orphans and otherwise. Greenacres really was showing signs of full return this year for the care and love spent on its rehabilitation. The fruit trees, after Shad’s pruning and fertilizing, and general treatment that made them look like swaddled babies, were blossoming profusely, and on the south slope of the field along the river, rows and rows of young peach trees had been set out. The garden too, had come in for its share of attention. Helen loved flowers, and had worked there more diligently than she usually could be coaxed to on any sort of real labor. Shad had cleared away the old dead canes first, and had plowed up the central plot, taking care to save all the perennials.

“You know what I wish, Mother dear,” said Helen, standing with earth stained fingers in the midst of the tangle of old vines and bushes. “I wish we could lay out paths and put stones down on them, flat stones, I mean, like flags. And have flower beds with borders. Could we, do you think? And maybe a sun dial. I’d love to have a sun dial in our family.”

Her earnestness made Mrs. Robbins smile, but she agreed to the plan, and Cousin Roxy helped out with slips from her flower store, so that the prospect for a garden was very good. And later Honey Hancock came up with Piney to advise and help too. The year out west had turned the bashful country boy into a stalwart, independent individual whom even Piney regarded with some respect. He was taller than her now, broad shouldered, and sure of himself.

“I think Ralph has done wonders with him,” Piney said. “Mother thinks so too. He can pick her right up in his arms now, and walk around with her. She doesn’t seem to mind going west any more, after seeing what it’s made of Honey, and hearing him tell of it. And Ralph says we’ll always keep the home here so that when we want to come back, we can. I think he likes Gilead someway. He says it never seems just like home way out west. You need to walk on the earth where your fathers and grandfathers have trod, and even to breathe the same air. Mother says the only place she hates to leave behind is our little family burial plot over in the woods.”

In the days following Easter, while Mrs. Robbins was over at the Ellis place helping care for Billie, Helen, Piney and Carlota formed a fast friendship, much to Jean and Kit’s wonderment. It was natural for Helen and Carlota to be chums, but Carlota was enthusiastic over Piney, her girl of the hills, as she called her.

“Oh, but she is glorious,” she cried, the first day, as she stood at the gate posts watching Piney dash down the hill road on Mollie. “My father would love to model her head. She is so fearless. And I am afraid of lots and lots of things. She is like the mountain girls at home. And her real name—Proserpine. It is so good to have a name that is altogether different. My closest girl friend at the convent was Signa Palmieri and she has a little sister named Assunta. I like them both, and I like yours, Jean. What does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” Jean answered, musingly, as she bent to lift up a convolvulus vine that was trying to lay its tendrils on the old stone wall. “It is the feminine of John, isn’t it?”

“Then it means beloved. That suits you.” Carlota regarded her seriously. “My aunt says you have the gift of charm and sympathy.”

Jean colored a little. She was not quite used to the utter frankness of Carlota’s Italian nature. While she and the other girls never hesitated to tell just what they thought of each other, certainly, as Kit would have said, nobody tossed over these little bouquets of compliment. It was entirely against the New England temperament.

Just as Carlota started to say more there came a long hail from the hill, and coming down they saw Kit and Sally Peckham, with long wooden staffs. Sally dawned on Carlota with quite as much force as Piney had. Her heavy red gold hair hung today in two long plaits down her back. She wore a home-made blue cloth skirt and a loose blouse of dark red, with the neck turned in, and one of her brothers’ hats, a grey felt affair that she had stuck a quail’s wing in.

“Hello,” called Kit, “we’ve been for a hike, clear over to the village. Mother ’phoned she needed some things from the drug store, so we thought we’d walk over and get them. Billie’s just the same. He don’t know a soul, and all he talks about is making his math. exams. I think it’s perfectly shameful to take a boy like that who loves reading and nature and natural things, and grind him down to regular stuff.”

She reached the stone gateway, and sat down on a rock to rest, while Jean introduced Sally, who bowed shyly to the slim strange girl in black.

“I didn’t know you had company, excepting Mr. McRae,” she said. “Kit wanted me to walk over with her.”

“I love a good long hike,” interrupted Kit. “Specially when I feel bothered or indignant. We’ve kept up the hike club ever since the roads opened up, Jean. It’s more fun than anything out here, I never realized there was so much to know about just woods and fields until Sally taught me where to hunt for things. Do you like to hike, Carlota?”

“Hike?” repeated Carlota, puzzled. “What is it?”

“A hike is a long walk.”

Carlota laughed in her easy-going way.

“I don’t know. Not too long. I think I’d rather ride.”

“I also,” Helen said flatly. “I don’t see a bit of fun dragging around like Kit does, through the woods and over swamps, climbing hills, and always wanting to get to the top of the next one.”

“Oh, but I love to,” Kit chanted. “Maybe I’ll be a mountain climber yet. Children, you don’t grasp that it is something strange and interesting in my own special temperament. The longing to attain, the—the insatiable desire to seize adventure and follow her fleeing footsteps, the longing to tap the stars on their foreheads and let them know I’m here.”

“Kit’s often like this,” said Helen, confidentially to Carlota. “You mustn’t mind her a bit. You see, she believes she is the genius of the family, and sometimes, I do too, almost.”

“There may be a spark in each of us,” Kit said generously. “I’ll not claim it all. Let’s get back to the house. I’m famished, and I’ve coaxed Sally to stay and lunch with us.”

“What good times many can have,” Carlota slipped her arm in Jean’s on the walk back through the garden. “Sometimes I wish I had been many too, I mean with brothers and sisters. You feel so oddly when you are all the family in yourself.”

“Well,” laughed Jean, “it surely has some disadvantages, for every single one wants something different at the same identical moment, and that is comical now and then, but we like being a tribe ourselves. I think the more one has to divide their interests and sympathies, the more it comes back to them in strength. Cousin Roxy said that to me once, and I liked it. She said no human beings should have all their eggs in one nest, but make a beautiful omelet of them for the feeding of the multitude. Isn’t that good?”

Carlota had not seen Cousin Roxy yet. With Billie down seriously ill, the Judge’s wife had shut out the world at large, and instituted herself his nurse in her own sense of the word, which meant not only caring for him, but enfolding him in such a mantle of love and inward power of courage that it would have taken a cordon of angels to get him away from her.

Still, those were long anxious days through the remainder of April. Mrs. Gorham and Jean managed the other house, while Mrs. Robbins helped out at the sick room. There was a trained nurse on hand too, but her duties were largely to wait on Cousin Roxy, and as Mrs. Robbins said laughingly, it was the only time in her life when she had seen a trained nurse browbeaten.

Kit was restless and uneasy over her chum’s plight. She would saddle Princess and ride over on her twice a day to see what the bulletins were, and sometimes sit out in the old fashioned garden watching the windows of the room where Cousin Roxy kept vigil. She almost resented the joyous activity of the bees and birds in their spring delirium when she thought of their comrade Billie, lying there fighting the fever.

And oddly enough, the old Judge would join her, he who had lived so many years ignoring Billie’s existence, sit and hold her hand in his, gazing out at the sunlight and the growing things of the old garden, and now and then giving vent to a heavy sigh. He, too, missed his boy, and realized what it might mean if the birds and bees and ants and all the rest of Billie’s small brotherhood, were to lose their friend.

Jean never forget the final night. She had a call over the telephone from her mother about nine, to leave Mrs. Gorham in charge, and come to her.

“Dear, I want you here. It’s the crisis, and we can’t be sure what may happen. Billie’s in a heavy sleep now, and the old Doctor says we can just wait. Cousin Roxy is with him.”

Jean laid off her outer cloak and hat, and went in where old Dr. Gallup sat. It always seemed foolish to call him old although his years bordered on three score. His hair was gray and straggled boyishly as some football hero’s, his eyes were brown and bright, and his smile something so much better than medicine that one just naturally revived at the sight of him, Cousin Roxy used to say. He sat by the table, looking out the window, one hand tapping the edge, the other deep in his pocket. One could not have said whether he was taking counsel of Mother Nature, brooding out there in the shadowy spring night, or lifting up his heart to a higher throne.

“Hello, Jeanie, child,” he said, cheerily. “Going to keep me company, aren’t you? Did you come up alone?”

“Shad drove me over. Doctor, Billie is all right, isn’t he?”

“We hope so,” answered the old doctor. “But what is it to be all right? If the little lad’s race is run, it has been a good one, Jeanie, and he goes out fearlessly, and if not, then he is all right too, and we hope to hold him with us. But when this time comes and it’s the last sleep before dawn, there’s nothing to do but watch and wait.”

“But do you think—”

Jean hesitated. She could not help feeling he must know what the hope was.

“He’s got a fine fighting chance,” said the doctor. “Now, I’m going in with Mrs. Ellis, and you comfort the Judge and brace him up. He’s in the study there.”

It was dark in the study. Jean opened the door gently, and looked in. The old Judge sat in his deep, old arm chair by the desk, and his head was bent forward. She did not say a word, but tiptoed over, and knelt beside him, her cheek against his sleeve. And the Judge laid his arm around her shoulders in silence, patting her absent-mindedly. So they sat until out of the windows the garden took on a lighter aspect, and there came the faint twittering of birds wakening in their nests.

Jean, watching the beautiful miracle of the dawn, marvelled. The dew lent a silvery radiance to every blade of grass, every leaf and twig. There was an unearthly, mystic beauty to the whole landscape and the garden. She thought of a verse the girls had found once, when they had traced Piney’s name in poesy for Kit’s benefit, one from “The Garden of Proserpine.” Something about the pale green garden, and these lines,

And just then the old doctor put his head in the door and sang out cheerily,

“It’s all right. Billie’s awake.”

Carlota’s stay was lengthened from one week to three at Jean’s personal solicitation. The Contessa wrote that so long as the beloved child was enjoying herself and benefiting in health among “the hills of rest,” she would not dream of taking her back to the city, while spring trod lightly through the valleys.

“Isn’t she poetical, though?” Kit said, thoughtfully, as she knelt to make some soft meal for a new batch of Doris’s chicks. Carlota had read the letter aloud to the family at the breakfast table, and they could hear her now playing the piano and singing with Jean and Helen, “Pippa’s” song:

“No wonder Carlota is posted on all the romance and poetry of the old world. All Helen has done since she came is moon around and imagine herself Rosamunda in her garden. It makes me tired with all the spring work hanging over to be done. How many broods does this make, Dorrie?”

“Eight,” said Dorrie, “and more coming. Shad said he understood we were going to sell off all the incubated ones at ten cents apiece, and keep the real brooders for the family.”

“Oh, dear!” Kit leaned back against the side of the barn, and looked lazily off at the widening valley vista before her. “I am so afraid that Dad will get too much interested in chicken raising and crops and soils and things, so that we’ll stay on here forever. Somehow I didn’t mind it half as much all through the winter time, but now that spring is here, it is just simply awful to have to pitch in and work from the rising of the sun even unto its going down. I want to be a ‘lily of the field.’ ”

Overhead the great fleecy, white clouds sailed up from the south in a squadron of splendor. A new family of bluebirds lately hatched was calling hungrily from a nest in the old cherry tree nearby, and being scolded lustily by a catbird for lack of patience. There was a delicate haze lingering still over the woods and distant fields. The new foliage was out, but hardly enough to make any difference in the landscape’s coloring. After two weeks of almost daily showers there had come a spell of close warm weather that dried up the fields and woods, and left them as Cousin Roxy said “dry as tinder and twice as dangerous.”

“How’s Billie?” asked Doris, suddenly. “I’ll be awfully glad when he’s out again.”

“They’ve got him on the veranda bundled up like a mummy. He’s so topply that you can push him over with one finger-tip and Cousin Roxy treats him as if she had him wadded up in pink cotton. I think if they just stopped treating him like a half-sick person, and just let him do as he pleased he’d get well twice as fast.”

Doris had been gazing up at the sky dreamily. All at once she said,

“What a funny cloud that is over there, Kit.”

It hung over a big patch of woods towards the village, a low motionless, pearl colored cloud, very peculiar looking, and very suspicious, and the odd part about it was that it seemed balanced on a base of cloud, like a huge mushroom or a waterspout in shape.

“What on earth is that?” exclaimed Kit, springing to her feet. “That’s never a cloud, and it is right over the old Ames place. Do you suppose they’re out burning brush with the woods so dry?”

“There’s nobody home today. Don’t you know it’s Saturday, and Astrid said they were all going to the auction at Woodchuck hill.”

Kit did not wait to hear any more. She sped to the house like a young deer and, with eyes quite as startled, she burst into the kitchen and called up the back stairs.

“Mother, do you see that smoke over the Ames’s woods?”

“Smoke,” echoed Mrs. Robbins’ voice. “Why, no, dear, I haven’t noticed any. Wait a minute, and I’ll see.”

But Kit was by nature a joyous alarmist. She loved a new thrill, and in the daily monotony that smothered one in Gilead anything that promised an adventure came as a heaven sent relief. She flew up the stairs, stopping to call in at Helen’s door, and send a hail over the front banister to Jean and Carlota. Her father and mother were standing at the open window when she entered their room, and Mr. Robbins had his field glasses.

“It is a fire, isn’t it, Dad?” Kit asked, eagerly, and even as she spoke there came the long, shrill blast of alarm on the Peckham mill whistle. There was no fire department of any kind for fourteen miles around. Nothing seemed to unite the little outlying communities of the hill country so much as the fire peril, but on this Saturday it happened that nearly all the available men had leisurely jaunted over to the Woodchuck Hill auction. This was one of the characteristics of Gilead, shunting its daily tasks when any diversion offered.

“Oh, listen,” exclaimed Helen, who had hurried in also. “There’s the alarm bell ringing up at the church too. It must be a big one.”

Even as she spoke the telephone bell rang downstairs, while Shad called from the front garden:

“Fearful big fire just broke out between here and Ames’s. I’m going over with the mill boys to help fight it.”

“Can I go too, Shad?” cried Joe eagerly. “I won’t be in the way, honest, I won’t.”

“Go ’long, you stay here, an’ if you see that wing of smoke spreadin’ over this way, you hitch up, quick as you can, an’ drive the folks out of its reach.” Shad started off up the road with a shovel over one shoulder and a heavy mop over the other. Jean was at the telephone. It was Judge Ellis calling.

“He’s worried over Cousin Roxy, Mother,” Jean called up the stairs. “Cynthy wanted her to come over to her place today to get some carpet rags, and Cousin Roxy drove over there about an hour ago. He says her place lies right in the path of the fire. Mrs. Gorham has gone away for the day to the auction with Ben, and the Judge will have to stay with Billie. He’s terribly anxious.”

“Oh, Dad,” exclaimed Kit, “couldn’t I please, please, go over and stay with Billie, and let the Judge come up to the fire, if he wants to. I’m sure he’s just dying to. Not but what I’m sure Cousin Roxy can take care of herself. May I? Oh, you dear. Tell him I’m coming, Jean.”

“Yes, you’re going,” said Helen, aggrievedly, “and you’ll ride Princess over there, and how on earth are the rest of us going to be rescued if the fire comes this way.”

“My dear child, and beloved sister, if you see yon flames sweeping down upon you, get hence to Little River, and stand in it midstream. I’m sure there isn’t one particle of danger. Just think of Astrid and Ingeborg coming back from the auction, and maybe finding their house just a pile of ashes.”

Carlota stood apart from the rest, her dark eyes wide with surprise and apprehension. A forest fire to her meant a great devastating, irresistible force which swept over miles of acreage. Her father had told her, back in the old villa, of camping days in the Adirondacks, when he had been caught in the danger zone, and had fought fires side by side with the government rangers. She did not realize that down here in the little Quinnibaug Hills, a wood fire in the spring of the year was looked upon as a natural visitation, rather calculated to provide amusement and occupation to the boys and men, as well as twenty cents an hour to each and every one who fought it.

Jean had left the telephone and was putting on her coat and hat.

“Mother,” she asked, “do you mind if Carlota and I just walk up the wood road a little way? We won’t go near the fighting line where the men are at all, and I’d love to see it. Besides I thought perhaps we might work our way around through that big back wood lot to Cynthy’s place and see if Cousin Roxy is there. Then, we could drive back with them.”

“Oh, can’t I go too?” asked Doris, eagerly. “I won’t be one bit in the way. Please say yes, Mother, please?”

“I can’t, dear,” Mrs. Robbins patted her youngest, hurriedly. “Why, yes, Jean, I think it’s safe for you to both go. Don’t you, Jerry?”

Mr. Robbins smiled at Jean’s flushed, excited face. It was so seldom the eldest robin lost her presence of mind, and really became excited.

“I don’t think it will hurt them a bit,” he said. “Dorrie and Helen had better stay here though. They will probably be starting back fires, and you two girls will have all you can do, to take to your own heels, without looking out for the younger ones.”

With a couple of golf capes thrown over their shoulders, the two girls started up the hill road for about three quarters of a mile. The church bell over at the Plains kept ringing steadily. At the top of the hill they came to the old wood road that formed a short cut over to the old Ames place. Here where the trees met overhead in an arcade the road was heavy with black mud, and they had to keep to the side up near the old rock walls. As they advanced farther there came a sound of driving wheels, and all at once Hedda’s mother appeared in her rickety wagon. She sat far forward on the seat, a man’s old felt hat jammed down over her heavy, flaxen hair, and an old overcoat with the collar upturned, thrown about her. Leaning forward with eager eyes, the reins slack on the horse’s back, giving him full leeway, she seemed to be thoroughly enthusiastic over this new excitement in Gilead.

“Looks like it’s going to be some fire, girls. I’m givin’ the alarm along the road. Giddap!” She slapped the old horse madly with the reins, and shook back the wind blown wisps of hair from her face like a Valkyrie scenting battle.

“Did you see?” asked Carlota, wonderingly. “She wore men’s boots too.”

“Yes, and she runs a ninety acre farm with the help of Hedda, thirteen years old, and two hired men. She gets right out into the fields with them and manages everything herself. I think she’s wonderful. They are Icelanders.”

Another team coming the opposite way held Mr. Rudemeir and his son August. An array of mops, axes, and shovels hung out over the back seat. Mr. Rudemeir was smoking his clay pipe, placidly, and merely waved one hand at the girls in salutation, but August called,

“It has broken out on the other side of the road, farther down.”

“Is it going towards the old Allan place?” asked Jean, anxiously. “Mrs. Ellis is down there with Cynthy, and the Judge telephoned over he’s anxious about them. That’s where we are going.”

“Better keep out,” called back old Rudemeir over his shoulder. “Like enough she’ll drive right across the river, if she sees the fire comin’. Can’t git through this way nohow.”

The rickety old farm wagon disappeared ahead of them up the road. Jean hesitated, anxiously. The smoke was thickening in the air, but they penetrated farther into the woods. Up on the hill to one side, she saw the Ames place, half obscured already by the blue haze. It lay directly in the path of the fire, unless the wind happened to change, and if it should change it would surely catch Carlota and herself if they tried to reach Cynthy’s house down near the river bank. Still she felt that she must take the chance. There was an old wood road used by the lumber men, and she knew every step of the way.

“Come on,” she said to Carlota. “I’m sure we can make it.”

They turned now from the main road into an old overgrown byway. Along its sides rambled ground pine, and wintergreen grew thickly in the shade of the old oaks. Jean took the lead, hurrying on ahead, and calling to Carlota that it was just a little way, and they were absolutely safe. When they came out on the river road, the little mouse colored house was in sight, and sure enough, Ella Lou stood by the hitching post.

Jean never stopped to rap at the door. It stood wide open, and the girls went through the entry into the kitchen. It was empty.

“Cousin Roxy,” called Jean, loudly. “Cousin Roxy, are you here?”

From somewhere upstairs there came an answering hail.

“Pity’s sakes, child!” exclaimed Cousin Roxy, appearing at the top of the stairs with her arms full of carpet rags. “What are you doing down here? Cynthy and I are just sorting out some things she wanted to take over to my place.”

“Haven’t you seen the smoke? All the woods are on fire up around the Ames place. The Judge was worried, and telephoned for us to warn you.”

“Land!” laughed Mrs. Ellis. “Won’t he ever learn that I’m big enough and old enough to take care of myself. I never saw a Gilead wood fire yet that put me in any danger.”

She stepped out of the doorway, pushed her spectacles up on her forehead and sniffed the air.

“ ’Tis kind of smoky, ain’t it,” she said. “And the wind’s beginning to shift.” She looked up over the rise of the hill in front of the house. Above it poured great belching masses of lurid smoke. Even as she looked the huge wing-like mass veered and swayed in the sky like some vast shapes of genii. Jean caught her breath as she gazed, but Carlota said anxiously,

“We must look out for the mare, she is frightened.”

Ella Lou, for the first time since Jean had known her, showed signs of being really frightened. She was tugging back at the rope halter that held her to the post, her eyes showing the whites around them, and her nostrils wide with fear. Cousin Roxy went straight down to her, unhitched her deftly, and held her by the bridle, soothing her and talking as one would to a human being.

“Jean, you go and get Cynthy quick as you can!” she called.

Jean ran to the house and met Cynthy groping her way nervously downstairs.

“What on earth is it?” she faltered. “Land, I ain’t had such a set-to with my heart in years. Is the fire comin’ this way? Where’s Roxy?”

“She says for you to come right away. Please, please hurry up, Miss Allan.”

But Cynthy sat down in a forlorn heap on the step, rocking her arms, and crying, piteously.

“Oh, I never, never can leave them, my poor, precious darlings. Can’t you get them for me, Jean? There’s General Washington and Ethan Allen, Betsy Ross and Pocahontas, and there’s three new kittens in my yarn basket in the old garret over the ‘L.’ ”

Jean realized that she meant her pet cats, dearer to her probably than any human being in the world. Supporting her gently, she got her out of the house, promising her she would find the cats. For the next five minutes, just at the most crucial moment, she hunted for the cats, and finally succeeded in coaxing all of them into meal bags. Every scurrying breeze brought down fluttering wisps of half burned leaves from the burning woods. The shouts of the men could be plainly heard calling to each other as they worked to keep the fire back from the valuable timber along the river front.

“I think we’ve just about time to get by before the fire breaks through,” said Mrs. Ellis, calmly. Jean was on the back seat, one arm supporting old Cynthy, her other hand pacifying the rebellious captives in the bag. Carlota was on the front seat. She was very quiet and smiling a little. Jean thought how much she must resemble her mother, the young Contessa Bianca, who had been in full charge of the Red Cross Hospital, across the sea, for months.

Not a word was said as Cousin Roxy turned Ella Lou’s white nose towards home, but they had not gone far before the mare stopped short of her own free will, snorting and backing. The wind had changed suddenly, and the full force of the smoke from the fire-swept area poured over them suffocatingly. Cynthy rose to her feet in terror, Jean’s arm around her waist, trying to hold her down, as she screamed.

“For land’s sakes, Cynthy, keep your head,” called Mrs. Ellis. “If it’s the Lord’s will that we should all go up in a chariot of fire, don’t squeal out like a stuck pig. Hold her close, Jean. I’m going to drive into the river.”