But Martha Perkins never failed him. On his next visit the articles he had left were always returned to him, washed, ironed, and oven mended, and Martha always asked, as if there were some chance of doubt, if they were his. Although he had never thanked Martha for her kindness, Dr. Emory was deeply sensible of it, an many a time as he came walking down the river-bank and saw the Perkins home, with its friendly, smoke curling up through the trees, a lively feeling of gratitude stirred in him. He had a habit of talking to him-self--gossiping, indeed, for it was only to himself that he discussed neighbourhood matters or his own affairs. "Martha's a good girl," he said to himself one night as he came down the long Souris hill, "a very good girl. She puts a conscientious darn on the heel of a sock, quiet, unobtrusive, like herself. Martha should marry. Twenty years from now if Martha's not married she will be lonesome ... and gray and sad. I can see her, bent a little--good still, and patient, but when all alone ... quite sad. It is well to live alone and be free when one is young ... the world is wide ... but the time comes when one would like ...company--all one's own ...some one who ... cares." The old man suddenly came to himself and looked around suspiciously at the bare oaks and willows that fringed the road. Not even to them would he impart the secret of his heart. But some vision of the past seemed to trouble him for he walked more slowly and seemed to be quite insensible of the beauty of the scene around him. The setting, sun threw long shafts of crimson light across the snowbound valley and lit the windows of the distant farmhouse into flame. A white rabbit flashed across the road and disappeared in the brown scrub. The wind, which had blown all day, had ceased as evening approached, and now not a branch stirred in the quiet valley, over which the purple shades of the winter evening were creeping. "It's a good world," he said at last, as if trying to convince himself--"it is full of beauty and music. I think there must be another world . . . over beyond the edge of things . . . a world that is perhaps a little kinder and more just--it must be. I think it will be--" A flock of prairie chickens rose out of the snow almost at his feet and flew rapidly across the river and up over the other hill. His eye followed their flight--he loved those brave birds, who stay with us through the longest winter and whose stout hearts no storm can daunt. Then softly he began to sing, a brave song of love and pain and enduring, a song that helped him to believe that: "Good will fall, At last, far off, at last--to all, And every winter change to spring." His voice wavered and trembled at first, as if it, too, felt the weariness of the years, but by the time he had sung the first verse all trace of sadness had vanished, and he went up the other, bank walking briskly and singing almost gaily.