He felt well. The companionship of the widowed wife of his closest friend, added interest to the new life in the woods. She had brought news and had awakened memories, but she had timed the Past and the Present to perfect measure. At last he could hope that the old wound was healed and that he could live among his people--his people! the thought thrilled him--with purpose and content. The rough men and women about him were drawing closer. He knew it in the innermost places of his heart. He was brightening their lives. He was holding their children for them, and opening a way for them to seek higher paths. It would all come out as he desired. It was a splendid field of work that had been given him--and he had rebelled so in his ignorance! How he wished that Philip Dale could have lived to see and know. Of all the men whom he had known, Dale was the one man who could have comprehended this opening for service. What a noble fellow he had been! How his personality and charm struck one at the first glance. He had been one of those men who claimed friends as they came his way, without pledge of time or intimacy. He knew what was his own in life, and gripped it without question or explanation. He had been the first to understand Drew's ambition, so different from the ones of the social set in which they both moved. "You'll always find me at your elbow, Drew," he had said, "in any scheme you start." But when the time came--Dale had slipped out of life as bravely and cheerfully as he had always lived. "And he had his own deep trouble," Drew mused as he prepared to bank the fire; "he never talked about it; but it made him what he was. One must go through some sort of fire to be of real service." A light tap on the door startled him. He had been, in thought, far, far from St. Ange. "Come!" The door opened slowly and Ruth Dale entered. She was all in white--a soft, long, trailing gown. Her hair had been loosened from the coronet, and fell in two shining braids over her shoulders. She looked very girlish as she came to the fire and dropped into a deep chair. "Please put on more logs," she said softly. "Father Confessor, I've come to confess." There was something under the playfulness that touched Drew. "I told Connie that I wanted to talk to you about a plan of mine; well, so it is, but I want you to put the stamp of your sage approval upon it." Drew shook his head. "Hardly that," he said with a laugh, "but I'm willing to plot with you." "I always think of you now," Ruth Dale continued, leaning toward the crackling logs, and holding her little benumbed hands open to the heat, "as 'the man who lives in his house by the side of the road, and is a friend to man'. Ralph, I need a friend! I must have one or I shall fail in that which I have set myself to do." There was no lightness in the woman's manner now. She looked tragic; almost desperate. Ralph Drew waited for her to go on. He was prepared to follow, but he could not lead.