“I hope you won’t go,” John said quickly. “We need some one to cook for us--good nourishing food--and I was going to ask your wife--?” The old man’s eyes still pierced him. “Ye think Sim Tetlow ’ll get well on food ’t my Ellen ’d cook?--Choke him!” he said. John waited a minute. “I was n’t going to tell him who cooked it--I thought he did n’t need to know.” He turned and looked at the man beside him. “He needs all the help we can give him, Hugh. He’s desperate.” A slow, deep smile had come into the Scotch eyes--They glimmered to little points and sought the distant horizon. “He must e’en take his fate,” said the old man grimly, “wi’ the rest o’ us.” “But we can help him,” said John. “I feel it. _You_ can help--” “I ’ll do naught for him,” said the man sternly. “She’s within door, and ye can ask _her_. If she ’ll cook for Sim Tetlow, I ’ll bide by what she says. I ’ll not lift a hand to hinder--or help.” He moved toward the bam, walking with huge strides, like some grim, implacable fate. John watched him for a moment. Then he turned and knocked on the farmhouse door. When he lifted the latch, the little old woman by the stove looked up, bending gentle eyes upon him. She set down the frying-pan and came forward, The smile in her face like the October sunshine outside. “It’s Johnny Bennett,” she said, “and I was telling Hugh, but the morning, I’d be glad to see him.” The young man took the outstretched hand with a sudden lifting of heart. He forgot the gaunt figure striding from him and saw only the gentle, wrinkled face in its prim Scotch cap, beaming with light. In a dozen words he had laid the story before her. She listened with intent eyes, her fingers plaiting the edge of her apron in tiny folds. When he had finished, the apron dropped from her fingers and she smoothed the pleats one by one. “He’s been a hard man to us, Johnny.” “Yes.” “But I ’ll do it for ye.” “I knew you would.” It came from a full heart, and she smiled a little to him as she gave a final, smoothing touch to the apron. “He sent us the check, and it was bitter bread we bought wi’ it. But the bread I bake for him will be sweet,” she said. “Thank you, Ellen.” He held out his hand. “It ’s good in you to do it, and what money can pay for--you shall have, you know.” “Money won’t pay for the bread I shall bake him, Johnny,” she said slowly. “But he’s welcome to it and may the Lord bless it--to him.” XXIII SIMEON Tetlow, in the little house by the creek, was growing stronger. There had been days of waiting-long, slow days, when he sat dully passive, staring before him, or lay on the camp bed in a deep sleep. When he woke, he took the food that John brought him and fell asleep again.