It is a well-worn, yet none the less true saying that every human life is a chain of causes and effects; each effect a cause, and each cause an effect, stretching back to an unimagined and unimaginable First Cause; and on and on into endless, undreamed of vistas of the future. Yet the realization of this vague, yet tremendous fact comes but seldom even to the thoughtful mind, so busy are we forging link on link of the chain which binds us alike to past and future.

Barbara Preston, stopping aimlessly to read the notice of an auction of farm stock and household furniture advertised to take place in a neighboring township, could not guess that the trivial impulse that stayed her feet by the big chestnut at the roadside linked itself with events already slowly shaping in her future. The notice was printed in bold red letters on a buff background, calculated to seize and hold the eye of the passerby, and set forth the fact that one Thomas Bellows, Auctioneer, would, on the twenty-fifth day of April, sell to the highest bidder, on the premises of the owner, four milch cows, three farm horses, and sixty-four sheep. Also one young carriage horse, well broken, sound, kind, and willing. Other items relating to household gear and poultry followed, set down in due order of their relative importance.

The red letters on the buff ground passed into Barbara’s eyes—as indeed they were purposefully intended—and impressed themselves on her memory. She considered them half angrily as she pursued her way to the post-office, picturing to herself the day when Thomas Bellows or another, would noisily exploit the contents of her own well-loved home. There was little there to bring money, and the mortgage covered stock and furniture as well as the land itself. She had learned this from a curt letter addressed to her by Stephen Jarvis in reply to questions of her own as concisely put.

Apart from her half-dazed recollection of the rainy afternoon a week since, their relations as ruthless creditor and hopeless debtor appeared to be unchanged. During the interval she had gone doggedly about her self-imposed labors, rising in the faint light of dawn to set strawberry and lettuce plants, wintered carefully on the south side of the big barns, with the vague unreasoning hope that somehow or other she might be permitted to reap the fruit of her toil. Between times she was casting about for another home and other modes of livelihood for herself and Jimmy. It would be difficult, if not impossible, she was told, to secure a position to teach. Only normal-school graduates stood any chance of preferment, and there appeared to be no prospect of a vacancy of any kind before fall. To become a dressmaker’s apprentice was possible; but the woman who provided the opportunity offered instruction for the first six months in lieu of wages. And obviously one could not live on information alone, however valuable. Household servants were always in brisk demand, she had been reminded; but pride of race wrestled with the untold humiliation of such a lot. Besides, there was Jimmy. Her heart grew faint at the thought of the loving, carefully-shielded child in the cold shelter of an “asylum” or the bound property of some shrewd farmer, an investment involving a grudging expenditure of coarse food and scanty, insufficient clothing and forced to yield an ever-increasing increment of labor. Oh, life was cruel at its best. Her flesh and her soul cried out at the thought of what its worst might be. If there was a way of escape, why not accept it?

She was turning these things wearily over in her mind when the quick whir of wheels sounded at her back. She stepped aside to allow the vehicle to pass, without raising her eyes.

A harsh, domineering voice, the sort of voice to be slavishly obeyed, ordered the horse to stand still.

She looked up quickly to meet the eager gaze of the man who was in her thoughts. A vivid color, of which she was angrily conscious, rose to her forehead. She stammered some sort of greeting, her eyes drooping before the dominant insistence in his.

“I was just on my way to your house,” he said.

His voice, as well as his eyes, was eager, insistent.

“Get in, won’t you, and ride with me? I have something to say to you.”

The girl hesitated, her cheeks paling. He sprang to the ground, speaking sharply to his young, restive horse.

“Allow me to assist you,” he said, with a politeness wholly unfamiliar to Barbara.

She gave him an astonished look, which he interpreted correctly, with the acumen of a trained politician.

“You have been thinking that I was exceedingly abrupt—even rude, in the way I spoke to you the other day,” he said, as he took her firmly by the hand and lifted her to a seat in the vehicle which was “dreaded more’n pison snakes” by the delinquent debtors in the countryside, according to Peg Morrison.

He bent to look keenly into her face, as he seated himself at her side. “Isn’t that so,—Barbara?”

At the sound of her name in that new, strange voice of his the girl started and almost shivered. She was beginning to be afraid of herself—this no less new and strange self, who was tired of being poor and hardworked and anxious, and who longed after comfort and ease and affection of some strong, compelling sort. She lifted her eyes to his.

“I have been thinking many things,” she murmured, “since—since you——”

He laughed under his breath.

“Yes; and you have been doing some things, too,” he said. “I heard you were looking for a place to teach, and—it didn’t encourage me to suppose that you were thinking very favorably of what I proposed. Did you secure a position?”

“N-o, I didn’t,” she acknowledged. She hesitated visibly, then added, “They told me you were a school commissioner, and that I must apply to you.”

“Why didn’t you apply to me?” he wanted to know. “Didn’t you think I would be a good sort of person to help you in your desire for independence?”

“I didn’t ask you,” she said, “because——”

“Well?” he questioned sharply. “You didn’t ask me for help because——”

“How could I?” she demanded, with a spirited lift of her head. “I asked you for help before and you refused.”

He looked at her with piercing keenness.

“Did I?” he said gravely. “Well, I offered you—a position. You haven’t forgotten, have you?”

Barbara’s heart beat suffocatingly fast. His eyes were on her face, compelling her, mastering her.

“Would you—Could I take care of Jimmy just the same?” she asked, in a muffled voice.

He gave his horse a sharp cut with the whip before he answered.

“I can’t see why you should bring the boy into our affairs,” he said coldly. “But he can live with us—for the present, if you like. Then there is the Preston farm; as I’ve already told you, you may do as you like with it.”

Barbara looked mistily away over the fields past which they were driving, the sound of meadow-larks, calling and answering, and the soft jubilant gurgle of a bluebird on a nearer fence-rail reaching her like vaguely reproachful voices out of a dead past. Then as now had the meadow-larks called “Sweet! oh, my sweet!”—in the one spring-time when David Whitcomb loved her.

“I shall have to—to think,” she murmured. “I am afraid——”

“Of what?” he demanded. “Of me?”

She did not answer, and again he cut the horse impatiently with his keen whip-lash, holding the spirited creature with a strong grasp on the reins as he did so.

“Well,” he said, after a long silence, “I’m afraid I can’t make myself over, even for you. But I’ll tell you something, my girl, there are worse men in the world than Stephen Jarvis, and perhaps you’ll fall in with some of ’em, if you turn me down. Look at me, will you?”

Unwillingly she turned her face to his.

“I shall not take a silly no for an answer,” he said under his breath. “I never have, and I shan’t begin with you. I need you, and you need me.”

His eyes held her powerfully.

“Do you love another man?”

“No,” said Barbara faintly. She could not bring herself to uncover her one dead love before those pitiless eyes, while the meadow-larks were calling and answering with such piercing sweetness. David Whitcomb was dead. If she had ever loved him it was as another self in a dim past, growing ever dimmer.

“Then,” said the Honorable Stephen Jarvis quietly, “you will marry me.” He broke into a short laugh. “Do you know I couldn’t bear to think of your loving another man? Is that being in love? Tell me, Barbara.”

He laughed again softly, as he bent to peer into her averted face. She felt herself yielding, her weak hold on past and future loosening.

She did not answer, but her red mouth quivered.

He experienced a sudden thrilling desire to touch the fresh innocent lips with his.

“It would be curious,” he murmured unsteadily, “if I should learn what love is for the first time. Shall I tell you how old I am, Barbara?”

She looked up at him without curiosity.

“Well, I’m thirty-seven; and I’ve never loved any woman—I have never loved anything, except money and success. But now—Barbara!”

He bent toward her, his cold eyes alive with passion.

“No—no!” she cried, shrinking from him in sudden terror.

His face stiffened into its accustomed mask.

“You’re thinking I’ve waited too long,” he said bitterly, and the curling lash stung the bay horse in the flank.

Neither spoke again while the wheels spun dizzily along over the mile of road which brought them to the big stone gate-posts of the Preston farm.

He drew up his foaming horse sharply.

“I won’t come in,” he said, “if you’ll get out here.”

She felt herself vaguely humiliated as she stepped down from the high vehicle without assistance.

“Stop!” he ordered as she passed quickly inside, as if in haste to gain shelter.

She looked up at him uncertainly, her eyes wide with an emotion akin to terror.

“I shall not humiliate myself by coaxing or cajoling you,” he said haughtily. “You are best left alone for the present.”

He lifted his hat with a sweeping bow, and the red-wheeled buggy dashed away.

Barbara drew a long, struggling sigh. She felt curiously light and free, as if she had made a breathless escape from some grasping hand, outstretched to seize her.

The sight of Jimmy running swiftly down the driveway toward her heightened the sensation to almost passionate relief.

“Hello, Barb’ra!” shouted the little boy. “I came home from school, an’ you wasn’t here. An’ you can’t guess what I’ve got for you!”

The child’s face, glowing rosily with health and mischief, was uplifted to hers. She stooped and kissed it tenderly.

“What have you got for me, Jimmy?”

“Guess!”

“I can’t guess,” she answered soberly. “You’ll have to tell me.”

“You ain’t cross wiv me, are you, Barb’ra?”

“No, dear, of course I’m not. Why should I be cross? Why, it—it’s a letter! Where did you get it, Jimmy?”

“It’s the one I lost,” said the child, puckering up his chin disappointedly. “I fought you’d be glad. Peg found it. He said he ’membered the wind was blowin’ that day; so he looked all along the road on bof sides, an’ he found it right under a bush.”

Barbara hastily tore the sodden envelope apart. Her fingers trembled as she unfolded the large stained sheet.

“Is it all spoiled?” asked Jimmy anxiously. “Can’t you read it?”