"She got your letter and cried and she most alwus never cries so shaky, Aunt Cheerful Loring I mean. Oh, please _do_ come! She feels so awful bad and once when I was awful sick this winter she lived three days in this old shanty here with me and sat up all night account of medacines and no other bed and she read me every day bout Lord Chesterfield and I'd like to do something big for her she's so awful brave and so awful lame. Sometimes like to-night when I looked in the winda she sings to keep her spirits up. Oh, please, please Mr. Loring, can't we maybe surprise her for Christmas? I do most everything I can for her but just one thing you could do would be more than all. Five years is awful long. Most likely you won't know who I am unless she wrote. She calls me Lord Chesterfield and lots of folks here call me Doc and the hermut but, sir, I have the honer to sine myself-- "NORMAN VARIAN." For so Lord Chesterfield fancied his illustrious namesake might finish such a letter. And as he sealed the letter, the boy looked wistfully up at a ragged photograph of his dead father tacked carefully above the table and very slowly he read aloud the single line of writing beneath it. "Always remember, little son," it read, "that first of all, though you've seen hard times, you're a gentleman!" And suddenly Lord Chesterfield's brave little head went forward upon his hands with a choking sob, for after all he was only a proud and lonely little bachelor who had greatly loved his father. So the little hermit's letter went forth upon a Christmas mission to come to its final goal in a luxurious suite of offices in Denver on the desk of Robert Loring. And Robert Loring read the eloquent plea with unwonted color in his face and a startled shame in his fine eyes, for, unconsciously vivid, the boy's letter had strikingly bared the inner life of his brave and cheerful mother. "Five years!" said Robert Loring aghast. "It can't be!" But swiftly reviewing the years crowded with activity he knew that the little hermit had written the truth, and he flushed again. For the thought of his mother's lonely life in Pine Tree Lane subtly dwarfed the urgent calls of effort and ambition which had kept him from her. A giant hand of rebuke indeed that Lord Chesterfield had wielded. So, swiftly over the night wires went a telegram to one Norman Varian, and even as Robert Loring wrote the lad's name, he stared at it very thoughtfully. VI From the Shadow of the Pine-Boughs VI WILDLY the Christmas moon rose over Westowe, silvering the snowy hill-gables to the north and the covered bridge; trailing a snow-white ribbon of light through Pine Tree Lane, and mantling the cottage among the pines with the peaceful moon-fire of a Christmas Eve.