This explanation brought sunshine back into the Haney castle, and its mistress went about the halls singing softly. In the afternoon, as she and Mart were starting on their "constitutional" she proposed that they call to see how Alice was. This Haney was glad to do. "I liked the little woman," said he; "she's sharp as a tack. And, besides, she listened to me gabble," he added. Miss Heath was stopping in the home of a friend--a rather handsome house, in the midst of thick shrubbery; and they found her wrapped in a blanket and sitting on the porch in a steamer-chair, with Ben reading to her. They were both instant and cordial in their demands that the Captain alight and come in, and Ben went down the walk to get him, while Alice, with envious, wistful eyes answered the glowing girl: "Oh no, I don't think the ride did me any harm. I have these little back-sets now and then. I'm glad you came." "How thin her hands are," thought Bertha. And she saw, too, that the delicate face was wrinkled and withered. Reading compassion in the girl's glance, Alice continued, brightly: "I'll be up to-morrow. I'm like a cork--nothing permanently depresses me. I'm suffering just now from an error of thought!" Bertha only smiled, and the gleam of her teeth, white and even as rows of corn, produced in her face the effect of innocent humor like that of a child. Then she said: "I've bought a new horse." "Have you, indeed?" "Yes, and I've been expecting you to ride up to the line fence and call me out--I wanted to show him to you. He's a cracker-jack, all right." "We'll come over in a day or two. I never stay _down_ more than three days." Haney, lumbering round the corner of the house, called out, mellowly: "Here you are! Now don't move a hair." He bent and offered a broad white hand. "How are ye the day?" "Better, thank you. Ben, put a chair beside me; I want to talk to Captain Haney. He was interrupted the other night in the very middle of one of his best stories, and I'm going to insist on his finishing it." Haney faced Bertha with a look of humorous amazement on his face. "Think o' that, now! She remembers one of my best." "Indeed I do, Captain, and I can tell you just where you left off. You had just sighted the camp of the robbers." Haney clicked with his tongue, as if listening to a child. "There now! I must have been taking more grape-juice than was good for me to start on that story, for it's all about meself and the great man I thought I was in those days." "I love to hear about people who can ride a hundred miles in a night, and live on roots and berries, and capture men who bristle with revolvers. Please go on. Ben, you needn't listen if you don't want to. You can show Mrs. Haney the automobile or the garden." Ben laughed. "I like to hear Captain Haney talk quite as well as anybody, but I'll be glad to show Mrs. Haney any of your neighbors' things she cares to see."