"What's she trying to raise there--corn?" Kate inspected the soil with a professional eye. "She won't do it--not in that soil! It needs fertilizing." Her companion remarked impartially, "Ben raisin' corn thar a right smart while." "All the more reason to give it a rest! I suppose you've never heard of rotation of crops?" "Yes, I hev," was the unexpected reply. "Fum Teacher." He spat with great success, and added, "We-all ain't much on new-fangled idees." Kate attempted no more conversation. She began to feel the fatigue of the hurried journey, and to her secret fears was added a growing dread of the end of it, a sudden shyness about meeting not only Jacqueline, but Philip, after the conclusion to which her long meditations had led her. She had recalled again and again, and always with a sharp twinge of shame, the hurt bewilderment on Philip's face when she had offered him Jacqueline in marriage. What a blind and stubborn fool she had been not to understand! If he still had that look in his eyes, that patient acquiescence in her will, Kate felt that she could not bear it.... But surely he had forgotten her, now that he was with Jacqueline? Surely the girl was lovely enough, and piteous enough in her great need of him, to drive any other woman out of his mind? After many miles, the mountaineer volunteered a remark: "Thar's the school buildin's." She saw on the rise beyond a group of log-cabins, the central one small and old, the two wings much larger and evidently of recent construction. In the doorway of one a man stood, looking out; and as he started down the slope toward them Kate recognized him. It was Philip. "Mother!--At last!" he cried out. "I would have gone to meet you, but she could not spare me. She's been asking for you every moment.--Wait, let me help you!" The tone of his voice laid to rest all her misgivings with regard to him. Even as he welcomed her, he was thinking of his wife.--As for Philip, if he remembered a time when to call this woman "mother" would have been like a knife-thrust in his breast, he thought only that the time was very long ago. Kate sprang down unaided, her fatigue forgotten. "Jacqueline?" she demanded eagerly. "A little stronger to-day. But--the baby--" Kate gave a cry. Her unspoken fears had been true. "A baby?" "Yes. It did not live.--That is why I asked you to bring little Kitty." Kate put her hands before her eyes. "My poor little girl! Oh, my poor little girl!--Let me go to her." At the door she was not surprised to find Jemima, in a neat nursing-dress, her eyes heavily lined with fatigue. "I've been here several days. Jacky forgot to make them promise not to send for me. She never thought of me," she explained humbly.... "Oh Mother, it has been pretty bad! Jacky was so--so brave!" She broke down a little in Kate's arms. "Steady, there," whispered Philip behind them. "She can't stand any excitement yet."