The lad found that his heart was filled with conflicting emotions. The scorn his sister's pride and selfishness would have aroused in him at another time was crowded out by pity for her. She had suffered enough without his rebuke. Then there was the dread that the cabin might not be saved, for well he knew the sorrow its loss would bring to his father, but, above all, there was something in his heart he had never felt before, a warm glow of admiration for a girl who was not his sister. What he said was, "Jane, dear, quiet yourself. We can do nothing but wait." And a long, long wait they were destined to have. The hands of the clock moved slowly to four, then five and then six. Jane's poor efforts at paring the potatoes received much comment from the children alone in the kitchen. "Gee," Gerald confided to his small sister, "something must have happened if it upset Jane so she didn't know what she was doing. She surely didn't, or she wouldn't have tried to pare potatoes and stain those lily hands of hers." Try as the small boy might, he could not keep the scorn out of his voice. But Julie was more forgiving. "Gerry, don't be too hard on Jane. She acts awfully worried about something. I don't believe she saw a bear or anything that scared her. I think it's something in her heart that's troubling her. I think she's sorry about something she's done." "Well, she sure ought to be." The boy was less sympathetic. "She's been dirt mean to us ever since she's been home from that hifalutin' seminary, and what's more, she's none too good to Dan. I'd hate her, that's what, if she wasn't my sister, and if she didn't look just like our mother. But even for all of that, I'm going to let myself hate her hard if she isn't better to you, Jule. The way she lets you do the work, and she setting around reading novels to keep her hands white so's folks will admire them! Aren't you the same family as she is, and shouldn't your hands be kept just as white? Tell me that now!" The boy, who was holding the bread knife, whirled with such an indignant expression on his freckled face that Julie laughed merrily, which broke the spell. "Oh, Gerry, you do look so funny! If I had time, I'd find some riggins to make you into a pirate. It could be done easy, 'cause your face looks just like their pictures and that knife would do for a dagger." Meanwhile, on the front porch, the two who had long watched and waited, were getting momentarily more anxious, and often Dan walked to the top of the steep stairway, down which he gazed at the zig-zagging mountain road. At last he saw a pony climbing, oh, so slowly, as though it could hardly take another step; and at its side there walked a girl. Dan leaped back to the porch and snatched up his hat. "Jane," he said, "you and the children have your supper. I'm going up to the Heger cabin and get one of their horses. Meg's pony is worn out, and I'm not going to have that brave girl walk all the way up the mountain, just to serve us."