“Home was here now, and we had no wish to go back to a life that had so nearly been the end of both of us. For a time there was no doctor in the valley below us here, so I used to do what I could for the sick people in these mountains. My place at home was soon filled; the tasks I had left went on without me. By and by a younger man moved into this valley to take the work, so that I was free to try that experiment that I had long thought of—what Miriam calls my Christmas-tree Garden. I have helped again when there were epidemics in the valley and when our doctor went to war; but I am always glad to lay the burden down and come back to my trees. And the point of all my long story is, my dear, that some time in the course of our growing up, we must learn how to wait. To be eager and ardent is part of being young, but to learn that eagerness does not bring all things is a truth that the years bring us.”
He made a gesture toward the summit of Gray Cloud Mountain, a black mass against the twinkling stars.
“He is learning his lesson, too, that boy up there, camping in the dark and the silence, thinking it all out, coming nearer and nearer to the truth of things at last.”
“Do you—oh, do you think that he might change and come back to us in the end?” cried Beatrice in eager hope.
“I believe so. And when the time comes to act, you will know what to do.”
A very sleepy and comforted girl was tucked into bed by the doctor’s wife—a young person who thought she could not sleep on account of her many anxieties, but who was lost in slumber almost before the door was closed. She did not even hear the storm of wind and rain that swept over the cottage in the night, but awoke in the morning to see the sun shining, and to hear a camp-robber jay calling so loudly from the nearest tree that she could sleep no longer.
“Your horse is not fit to go back for a day or two,” Dr. Minturn said at breakfast. “You pushed him too hard when you climbed the pass, and you should leave him here to rest. I will lend you my brown Presto. He is not such a pony as Buck, I admit, but he will carry you safely enough. You can come back for your horse later, or I will send him over the range as soon as some one passes.”
The sun was high when she and Nancy set out together, shining above the pass as they mounted upward.
“But there is something the matter with it,” Beatrice declared to her sister; “there doesn’t seem to be any warmth in it, somehow.” And she shivered a little.
An unusual haze seemed to hang like a blanket between them and the sun, and the air held a strange chill. Even when wrapped in their warm coats, the two girls felt cold as they climbed to the summit of the pass and began the descent on the other side. Beatrice said very little, so busy was her mind with many difficult problems. Must she tell Aunt Anna what had happened, and let her know that all hopes of meeting her brother were at an end? Would John Herrick’s house soon be closed, and would Hester have to leave them too?