One raw March evening, when the wind was roaring among the gray branches of the maples like a lion in wrath, some one knocked on the door.

"Come in!" shouted Anson, who was giving baby her regular ride on his boots.

"Come in!" added Flaxen.

Gearheart walked in slowly, closed the door behind his back, and stood devouring the cheerful scene. He was poorly dressed and wore a wide, limp hat; they did not know him till he bared his head.

"Bert!" yelled Anson, tossing the baby to his shoulder and leaping toward his chum, tramping and shaking and clapping like a madman, scaring the child.

"My gosh-all-hemlock! I'm glad to see ye! Gimme that paw again. Come to the fire. This is Flaxie" (as though he had not had his eyes on her face all the time). "Be'n sick?"

Bert's hollow cough prompted this question.

"Yes. Had some kind of a fever down in Arizony. Oh, I'm all right now,"

he added in reply to an anxious look from Flaxen.

"An' this is----"

"Baby--Elsie," she replied, putting a finishing touch to the little one's dress, mother-like.

"Where's he?" he asked a little later.

Anson replied with a little gesture, which silenced Bert at the same time that it explained. And when Flaxen was busy a few moments later, Anson said:

"Gone up the spout."

At the table they grew quite gay, talking over old times, and Bert's pale face grew rosier, catching a reflection of the happy faces opposite.

"Say, Bert, do you remember the time you threw that pan o' biscuits I made out into the gra.s.s an' killed every dog in the township?" Then they roared.

"I remember your flapjacks that always split open in the middle, an' no amount o' heat could cook 'em inside," Bert replied.

Then they grew sober again when Bert said with a pensive cadence: "Well, I tell you, those were days of hard work; but many's the time I've looked back at 'em these last three years, wishin' they'd never ended an' that we'd never got scattered."

"We won't be again, will we, pap?"

"Not if I can help it," Anson replied.

"But how are you, Bert? Rich?"

Bert put his hand into his pocket and laid a handful of small coins on the table.

"That's the size o' my pile--four dollars," he said, smiling faintly; "the whole o' my three years' work."

"Well, never mind, ol' man. I've got a chance fer yeh. Still an ol'

bach?"

"Still an old bach." He looked at Flaxen, irresistibly drawn to her face. She dropped her eyes; she could not have told why.

And so "Wood & Gearheart" was painted on the sides of the drays, and they all continued to live in the little yellow cottage, enjoying life much more than the men, at least, had ever dared to hope; and little Elsie grew to be a "great girl," and a nuisance with her desire to "yide" with "g'an'pap."

There is no spot more delightful in early April than the sunny side of the barn, and Ans and Bert felt this, though they did not say it. The eaves were dripping, the doves cooing, the hens singing their harsh-throated, weirdly suggestive songs, and the thrilling warmth and vitality of the sun and wind of spring made the great, rude fellows shudder with a strange delight. Anson held out his palm to catch the sunshine in it, took off his hat to feel the wind, and mused:

"This is a great world--and a great day. I wish't it was always spring."

"Say," began Bert abruptly, "it seems pretty well understood that you're her father--but where do I come in?"

"You ought to be her husband." A light leaped into the younger man's face. "But go slow," Anson went on gravely. "This package is marked 'Gla.s.s; handle with care.'"

THE END.