In early spring he came home, still thin and worn, and even more silent than was his wont. Callista had kept her word; she was domiciled in the cabin on Lance's Laurel, and she had Sylvane get her truck patch almost ready. In the well nigh feverish activity of first motherhood, she had learned in these few months to be a really superior housewife, and a master hand at all that a mountain housekeeper should know. Roxy Griever was but too willing to teach, and Callista had needed only to have her energies and attention enlisted. She had a sound, noble physique; maternity had but developed her; and she was very obviously mistress of herself as well as of the [250] house when Lance came over from the sawmill cabin to find her there with his son, awaiting him. He stopped a moment on the threshold. His appreciative glance traveled over the neat interior, and he sniffed the odors of a supper preparing. This was a homecoming indeed. Here, surely, were the coasts of his island; and Callista, bending over his child, drawing the cover around the baby before she turned to greet Lance, a figure to comfort a man's heart. "You look fine here," he told her, entering, hanging up his hat, and disposing of the bundles he had been carrying. Callista advanced smiling to him and lifted her face to be kissed. Self-absorbed, wholly pleased with her house and her baby, and her newly discovered gift for work, and for administration, she never noted the quick, wild question of his eyes, which was as swiftly veiled. "The baby's asleep already," she announced softly. "We got to be right quiet." Nodding silently. Lance picked up some of the things he had brought, and carried them out to the shed, whence Callista, later, summoned him to supper. Old Kimbro proved to be right. Lance, having held by his contract till Spring, was able to collect the poor little balance of his wages, and on this they proposed to live while he got the place in the Gap in some shape to support them. Satan [251] was well now, but it fretted Lance unreasonably that he could not buy Cindy back from Flenton Hands. With characteristic insouciance and unusual energy, he set to work on the gigantic task of subduing his large tract of steep, wild, mountain land. No doubt he worked too hard that summer; people of Lance's temperament are always working too hard--or not working at all. As for Callista, the first eagerness of her mere passion for Lance was satisfied. She was no more the warm, tender, young girl, almost pathetically in love,--even though proud and wilful and somewhat spoiled--but the composed, dignified mother of a son and mistress of a home. She had once been too little of a house-mother for her man, and now she was rather too much.