To Pippin the last month had passed like a watch in the night; say rather in the day, a watch on a hillside under a clear sky, with the sound of flutes in the air. But at Cyrus Poor Farm it had been a long month, and things had gone rather heavily. Brand, weaving baskets in his corner, thought it one of the longest months he had ever known. There had been many wet, cold days when the barn had been too chilly to work in, and though he loved the big kitchen, he preferred solitude for his work hours,--solitude, that is, enlivened by snatches of cheery talk as Jacob Bailey came and went about his own work, by whiffs of fragrant clover and hay, by the sunlight that lay warm upon him as he sat in the wide doorway, by the friendly whinnying of Molly, the pretty black mare, in her loose box close by. Then Flora May would come drifting in, and would sit down beside him, and rub her smooth cheek against his, and coo and murmur like a white pigeon. They were intimate, the blind man and the simple girl. He was Uncle Brand, she was his little gal. They spoke little as they sat together, but now and then he would pat her fair head and say, "We knowed it, little gal!" and she would nestle closer and repeat, "We knowed it!" That was all the speech they needed. But now Flora May seldom came to the barn; she seemed almost to avoid him, Brand thought. Maybe it was just the bad weather; she was apt to be moody in bad weather. But even in the house she was changed, somehow. She used always to give him a pat or a coo when she passed him; now--but he must not be demanding. Blind folks were apt to be demanding, he had once been told, and had resolved no one should have cause to say it of him. There were other trials, too, that month. Some tramps came, asking shelter for the winter, pleading illness, promising work. Jacob Bailey had taken them in, not too willingly, but feeling it his duty to do so; and had thereby roused the indignation of all his other "boarders," except Brand. For three days the usually cheerful house had seethed like a witches' cauldron; then the tramps departed by night, carrying with them such small personal property as they could lay hands on, and peace reigned again. Meantime Old Man Blossom was growing weaker day by day. The poor old body, sodden with drink and worse than drink, was nearly worn out. The machine worked feebly; at any moment it might run down and stop. One thing only, Mrs. Bailey thought as she watched beside the bed, kept him alive: the longing for his child. She spent every moment she could spare, good soul, sitting beside him, knitting in hand, ready to answer the inevitable question when it came. He would lie for hours motionless, apparently sleeping. Then the lids would flutter open, the hands begin to wander and pluck at the bedclothes; the dim eyes, after rolling vacantly, would fix themselves on her, and recognition creep into them. "Ain't he come yet?" "Not yet, Mr. Blossom. He'll be here soon."