I was wild with anxiety about Peter and the play and the poor little heroine; I didn't know whether she was being murdered or separated for life from the hero. Still, it was good to have Sam to myself for long, quiet, hot evenings out on the front porch under the brooding doves in the eaves above us. Sam never talks much but he listens to me, and sometimes he tells me things from way down inside himself. And little by little I began to understand all about the things he had been too busy doing to tell me about. "You see, it is this way, Bettykin," he said, one evening when the young moon was attempting to silver the dark all around us as we sat on the front steps, with mother away rounding off the second pair of socks for Peter. "There wasn't one cent of money for me to take Byrd and Mammy and make a start in New York. Even with the best sort of a backing, it is always a ten-year pull for a youngster before he counts in the world. I could have sold The Briers, but I couldn't make up my mind to do it, and then while I hesitated I--I"--he paused a minute and steadied his voice, while I took his hand and held on to it tight--"I got a call--a land call that I had to answer. God just picked me up and planted me here on my bit of land, and I've got to root and grow or--or dishonor Him." "Oh, Sam, you have, you have honored Him," I said as I crept closer to his arm. "I've been all uprooted and pruned, Betty, and I've lost--lost--you know! But for Him I must go on just the same and bear fruit." At the pain in Sam's low voice something in me throbbed. "Lost? Oh, Sam, what?" I exclaimed, as I hugged his arm against my breast. "What's happened to you, Sam? Tell--" But just here we were interrupted by a clatter and a clash of hoofs, a wild shout in Peter's voice, and a cheer in the fledgling's high treble. The biggest mule lurched up to the gate, and two figures took a flying leap from his back to the pavement. With a rush they swept up the path and brought up panting at the bottom of our steps. "Peter!" I gasped, descending to be sure that neither of them was bodily broken or demented. "It's across! it's across!" shouted Peter as he reached out his arms and grabbed me in a wild embrace. "What?" Sam and I both demanded, though, of course, in a way we knew. "The play!" exclaimed Peter, putting his head down on my shoulder and fairly sobbing out his relief. "Farrington is going to begin rehearsals from the first two acts I've sent him, and I am to go right on to New York with the third that I finished an hour before the wire came over from the cross-roads station. You'll go with me, won't you, Betty? I can't go without you and Sam." And as he hugged me close Peter reached out and grasped Sam's big hand that rested on his arm.