"No one at all, just; a laggard by the roadside," she repeated, wistfully. And then she added in her own Donegal: "But don't ye let the lagging count for naught. Promise me that!" The sick man turned his head for a last look at her. "Such a simple promise--to throw away the fruits of a lifetime!" Bitterness was in his voice again, but Patsy caught the muttering under his breath. "I might think about the boy, though, if the Lord granted me time." "Amen!" whispered Patsy. She scrambled down the bank the way she had come. For a moment she stopped by the lake and skimmed a handful of white pebbles across its mirrored surface. She watched the ripples she had made spread and spread until they lost themselves in the lake itself, leaving behind no mark where they had been. "Yonder's the way with the going and coming of most of us, a little ripple and naught else--unless it is one more stone at the bottom." She heaved a sigh. "Well, the quest is over, and I've never laid eyes on the lad once. But it's ended well, I'm thinking; aye, it's ended right for him." XV ARDEN Summer must have made one day in June purposely as a setting for a pastoral comedy; and chance stole it, like a kindly knave, and gave it to the Sylvan Players. Never did a gathering of people look down from the rise of a natural amphitheater upon a fairer scene; a Forest of Arden, built by the greatest scenic artist since the world began. Birds flew about the trees and sang--whenever the orchestra permitted; a rabbit or two scuttled out from under rhododendron-bushes and skipped in shy ingenue fashion across the stage; while overhead a blue, windless sky spread radiance about players and audience alike. Shorn of so much of the theatricalism of ordinary stage performances, there was reality and charm about this that warmed the spectators into frequent bursts of spontaneous enthusiasm which were as draughts of elixir to the players. Those who were playing creditably played well; those who were playing well excelled themselves, and Patsy outplayed them all. She lived every minute of the three hours that spanned the throwing of Charles, the wrestler, and her promise "to make all this matter even." There was no touch of coarseness in her rollicking laughter, no hoydenish swagger in her masquerading; it was all subtly, irresistibly feminine. And George Travis, watching from the obscurity of a back seat, pounded his knee with triumph and swore he would make her the greatest Shakespearean actress of the day.