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“Faith’s back there with her posies,” he said.

The young man hesitated, swallowing fiercely at the lump in his throat.

“Good-bye, Mr. Baker,” he faltered at length.

He walked slowly around the corner of the house, stopping a moment to pat the friendly collie that wagged his tail, welcomingly, in the path. A large mixed orchard-garden, surrounded by a row of sturdy soft maples, opened up before him; and, coming up its side path, with the most cautious of gingerly treads, was the big hired man, bearing a huge striped watermelon. He nodded in passing, and grinned with a meaning hospitality on the visitor.

At one corner of the garden an oblong mound of earth, bordered with bright stones and river-clam shells, marked the “posy” bed. Within its boundaries a collection of overgrown house plants, belated pinks, and seeding sweet-peas, fought for life with the early fall frosts. Landers looked steadily down at the sorry little garden. Like everything else he had seen that night, it told its pathetic tale of things that had been but would be no more.

As he looked, a multitude of homely blossoms that he had plucked in the past flowered anew in his memory. The mild faces of violets and pansies, the gaudy blotches of phlox, stood out like nature. He could almost smell the heavy odor of mignonette. A mist gathered over his eyes, and again, as at the good-bye of a moment ago, the lump rose chokingly in his throat.

He turned away from the tiny, damaged bed to send a searching look around the garden.

“Faith!” he called gently.

“Faith!”–louder.

A soft little sound caught his ear from the grass-plot at the border. He started swiftly toward it, but stopped half-way, for the sound was repeated, and this time came distinctly–a bitter, half-choked sob. With a motion of weariness and of pain the man passed his hand over his eyes, then walked on firmly, his footsteps muffled in the short grass.

A dainty little figure in the plainest of calico, lay curled up on the sod beneath the big maple. Her face was buried in both arms; her whole body trembled, as she struggled hard against the great sobs.

“Faith–” interrupted the man softly, “Faith–“

The sobs became more violent.

“Go away, Guy,” pleaded a tearful, muffled voice between the breaks. “Please go away, please–“

The man knelt swiftly down on the grass; irresistibly his arm spread over the dainty, trembling, little woman. Then as suddenly he drew back with a face white as moonlight, and a sound in his throat that was almost a groan.

He knelt a moment so, then touched her shoulder gently–as he would have touched earth’s most sacred thing.

“Faith–” he repeated uncertainly.

The girl buried her head more deeply.

“I won’t, I tell you,” she cried chokingly, “I won’t–” she could say no more. There were no words in her meagre vocabulary to voice her bitterness of heart.

The man got to his feet almost roughly, face and hands set like a lock. He stood a second looking passionately down at her.

“Good-bye, Faith,” he said, and his trembling voice was the gentlest of caresses. He started swiftly away down the path.

The girl listened a moment to the retreating steps, then raised a tear-stained face above her arms.

“Guy!” she called chokingly, “Guy!”

The man quickened his steps at the sound, but did not turn.

The girl sprang to her feet.

“Oh, Guy! Guy!” pleadingly, desperately. “Guy!”

The man had reached the open. With a motion that was almost insane, he clapped his hands over his ears, and ran blindly down the dusty path until he was tired, then dropped hopelessly by the roadside.

Overhead the big cottonwoods whispered softly in the starlight, and a solitary catbird sang its lonely night song.

The man flung his arms around the big, friendly tree, and sobbed wildly–as the girl had sobbed.

“Oh, Faith!” he groaned.

IV

A month had passed by, bringing to Guy Landers a new Heaven and a new earth. Already the prosy old university town had begun to assume an atmosphere of home. The well-clipped campus, with its huge oaks and its limestone walks, had taken on the familiar possessive plural “our campus,” and the solitary red squirrel which sported fearlessly in its midst had likewise become “our squirrel.” The imposing, dignified college buildings had ceased to elicit open-mouthed observance, and among the student-body surnames had yielded precedence to Christian names–oftener, though, to some outlandish sobriquet which satirized an idiosyncrasy of temperament or outward aspect.