“One year of this, and Mr. Penway was called to Europe again, this time on business. I had been in regular correspondence with my parents, and they insisted on my coming home for a visit during Mr. Penway’s sojourn abroad. I went and for the first time in nearly six years met Lannie. My first impulse was to throw myself into his arms, regardless of the presence of my parents, but I managed to control myself. However, during my stay there, I naturally roamed in the woods, through the mills; in that way saw much of Lannie. Dear old Lannie. With the same clock-like regularity he performed his duties; the same broad shoulders and the same tender blue eyes. If time had wrought changes in him, it was for the better. He seemed so mature with the full soft beard that covered his face. His words were all uttered in kindness. I asked my parents about him, and they told me how he had applied himself to my father’s interests, not losing a day from the confining duties of business and labor; in fact, he was the mainstay. If the head sawyer was sick or off duty, Lannie laid the master hand on the lever and the saws and the dust flew as the lumber piles grew higher and higher. If the engineer or fireman was absent, it was Lannie’s touch that put the machinery in motion, and his willing hands that heaved the great slabs into the furnace to make the steam. If any of the little colony were sick and needed attention, it was Lannie who kept the lonely vigil through the dark and solemn hours of blackest night, and when morning came he, mighty as the sun, shone all day, beaming with good nature; and when (as was often the case) the fever so prevalent in the swamps claimed a victim, it was Lannie’s gentle hands that folded the arms across the quiet breast and closed the staring eyes. It was his soothing, reassuring words which brought comfort to the poor mother whose heart bled in sorrow for her darling child; it was Lannie who would put his great, strong arms around the father and husband, as the clods fell with that sickening thud on the rough box that contained all that was left of the dearest treasure they had ever known; again, it was Lannie who took into his arms the fatherless children and told them that the father of all was God. In this way Lannie had lived, pouring out the generous love of his great warm nature, while I—Ugh! I shudder to think of it. I had been encased in a sheet of ice trying to freeze my emotion, trying to smother my heart throbs, lest, like some wild beast which in search of freedom and prey, plunges through the iron bars of its cage, it would bound through my breast, tearing and breaking the cords and crushing the coat of mail beyond repair.