“I am going on with it; you needn't worry about that. But I've got to change to other flowers. I've stripped the violet beds. There's quite a crop of berries coming, but they are not ripe yet, and a tragedy to pick. The pond lilies are just beginning to open by the thousand. The lake border is blue with sweet-flag that is lovely and the marsh pale gold with cowslips. The ferns are prime and the woods solid sheets of every colour of bloom. I believe I'll go ahead with the wild flowers.” “I would too! David, you do feel better, don't you?” “I certainly do, Doctor. Surely it won't be long now!” The Harvester was so hopeful that he whistled and sang on the return to Medicine Woods, and that night for the first time in many days he sat long over a candlestick, and took a farewell peep into her room before he went to bed. The next day he worked with all his might harvesting the last remnants of early spring herbs, in the dry-room and store-house, and on furniture and candlesticks. Then he went back to flower gathering and every day offered bunches of exquisite wood and field flowers and white and gold water lilies from door to door. Three weeks later the Harvester, perceptibly thin, pale, and worried entered the office. He sank into a chair and groaned wearily. “Isn't this the bitterest luck!” he cried. “I've finished the town. I've almost walked off my legs. I've sold flowers by the million, but I've not had a sight of her.” “It's been almost a tragedy with me,” said the doctor gloomily. “I've killed two dogs and grazed a baby, because I was watching the sidewalks instead of the street. What are you going to do now?” “I am going home and bring up the work to the July mark. I am going to take it easy and rest a few days so I can think more clearly. I don't know what I'll try next. I've punched up the depot and the policemen again. When I get something new thought out I'll let you know.” Then he began emptying his pockets of money and heaping it on the table, small coins, bills, big and little. “What on earth is that?” “That,” said the Harvester, giving the heap a shove of contempt, “that is the price of my pride and humiliation. That is what it cost people who allowed me to cheek my way into their homes and rob them, as one maid said, for my own purposes. Doc, where on earth does all the money come from? In almost every house I entered, women had it to waste, in many cases to throw away. I never saw so much paid for nothing in all my life. That whole heap is from mushrooms and flowers.” “What are you piling it there for?” “For your free ward. I don't want a penny of it. I wouldn't keep it, not if I was starving.” “Why David! You couldn't compel any one to buy. You offered something they wanted, and they paid you what you asked.”