" As they moved forward, the man and the girl fell into more general chat, the feeling of irritation at Johnnie's beauty, her superior air, growing rather than diminishing in the young fellow's mind.

It was Johnnie's first view of a big valley, a river, or a city.

Do you think she could have meant it, Johnnie?" The faded eyes, clouded now by tears, stared up into Johnnie's clear young orbs.

" For no reason that she could assign, and very much against her will, Johnnie's face flushed deeply.

By noon every nerve in Johnnie's body quivered with excitement and overstrain; yet when Mandy came for her at the dinner hour she showed her a face still resolute, and asked that a snack be brought her to the mill.

Say, I seen you in the halldid you know who you was talking to?" The red flooded Johnnie's face as she knelt before her loom interrogating its workings with a dexterous hand; even the white nape of her neck showed pink to Mandy's examining eye; but she managed to reply in a fairly even tone: "Yes, that was Mr. Stoddard.

" Both of them knew that Johnnie's reluctance had nothing to do with the question of church-time.

" Johnnie's face whitened.

" Johnnie's tense, almost tragic manner relaxed.

"Johnnie's quareshe is thatI'll never deny it; but I

GIVE ME JOHNNIE'S SILVER MINE!"] "Nobetter'n that.

Evelyn Toler loaned me the trimmin' o' this hatain't it sightly?" Johnnie's distressed eyes met the pale gaze of Aunt Mavity across the little oilcloth-covered coffer.

" "Well, I never aimed to skeer her that-a-way," said Himes; "but the little fool" Johnnie's flaming glance silenced him, and his voice died away, a sort of a rasp in his throat.

It showed Lydia Sessions not only where she stood with Gray, but it brought home to her startlingly, and as nothing had yet done, the strength of Johnnie's hold upon him; while it forced Gray himself to realize that ever since that morning when he met the girl on the bridge going to put her little brothers and sisters in the Victory mill, he had behaved more like a sulky, disappointed lover than a staunch friend.

"I'm the stepdaddy of the childrenand Johnnie's stepdaddy too, for the matter of thatand what I say goes.

" By the light of these statements Stoddard read what poor Johnnie's persecution had been.

When her child was brought home to her, dying as they all thought, Laurella had rallied her forces and got up from the pallet on which she lay to tend on the little thing; but she broke down in the course of a few hours, and seemed about to add another patient to Johnnie's cares.

But Johnnie's heart was as lead when she glanced back at the motionless figure in the tonneau, the white, blood-streaked face that lay on her uncle's arm.

An' yet Johnnie's quare.

"She's fat an' slick," he admitted, "but Johnnie's fat an' slick, too.

Johnnie's little brothers and sisters having written these words, rose from the floor on which they had been seated, and with blushes and modest pride presented the parcel.

" "Then I suppose I'd better give you Johnnie's letter," said Barbara, "because he is so angryquite furious, really."

She had no time, however, to learn what it meant, for, with a shout like a war-whoop, Johnnie's voice was heard below, and presently, as it were, driving his little brothers and sisters before him, Johnnie himself came blundering up-stairs at full speed with Crayshaw on his back.

The weeds in the garden began to take courage after long persecution, while Mr. Swan might frequently be seen reading aloud by Johnnie's bedside, sometimes the Bible, sometimes the newspaper, Master A.J. Mortimer deriving in his intervals of ease a grave satisfaction from the old man's peculiar style and his quaint remarks.

It was above all things needful to keep up Johnnie's spirits, and not discourage him.