"Yesterday, Harry, your mother laid a hand upon my arm, and, turning to me with a curious, far-away light in her eyes, said: 'How time flies, David!'"

And I looked down at her proudly, as though this were another of the innumerable new and clever ideas which she has a way of discovering and expressing so concisely.

"What made you think of that, Penelope?"

She pointed over the tangled briers to the woods, to the very spot where the path breaks through the bushes and leads to the brook.

"Yesterday, David—it seems but yesterday—I dragged you out of the deep pool, and to-day—a moment ago—I heard Harry there, shouting."

"He has probably caught a trout," said I as I lighted a cigar. "A small boy always shouts when he lands a fish."

Penelope laughed.

"And if," I went on, between critical puffs—"if he falls in, James is with him and James will pull him out. You must not think that these woods are full of small girls with blue ribbons in their hair who are watching for an opportunity to rescue drowning boys."

"How stupid you are, David!" said Penelope, "And yet at times you have been monstrously stupid. Of course, I know that Harry is perfectly safe with James; but what I meant was that it seems only yesterday——"

"Since you pulled me out of the brook?" I said.

Then I tucked her hand beneath my arm, and, standing there in the deep weeds and briers, we looked about the clearing. Even the Professor's care had long been missing. The roof of the cabin had fallen in years ago, and the end of a single log, poking through a mass of green, marked the stable from which the white mule had regarded me so critically. Yet the mountains rose above us, the same mountains; the same ridge sloped upward to the south, and above it was the same blue sky and a white cloud hovering in it. A crow cawed from the pines. It might have been the same crow that in other days called to me, now cawing his welcome. It did seem but yesterday. How fast the weeds and briers had grown, defying the Professor's languid hoe! How suddenly had the timbers snapped which held the roof! And doubtless Nathan's home went down in a gust of wind.

"Yesterday, Penelope," I said, "you led me out of the woods, dripping wet—don't you remember? from my tumble into the pool. Right there your father stood, looking at that very cloud, wistfully."

"And yesterday," Penelope said, pointing over the clearing, "in the morning early, father and I were sitting by that very door, when we heard a shout and, looking, saw you running toward us through the brush. Don't you remember, David? You fell down out there—why, a juniper tree has grown up there since yesterday."

Then Penelope was very quiet. I saw her glance to the bushes, and her hand gripped mine. I knew what was in her mind. I saw the same picture; I could almost hear the brush crackling under the Professor's flying feet, and leaning down over her I said: "Don't cry, little one; I'll take care of you."

That was really yesterday, Harry, and really yesterday Penelope and I rode again over the trail along which the white mule had carried us at such a terrible pace. We climbed the ridge, and at its crest Penelope reined in her horse and pointed over the valley. I followed her raised hand over the land, over the green of the fields and the white of blossoming orchards, to the great barn, gleaming cheerfully in the noonday sun, and to the dark roof nestling in the foliage of giant oaks.

Penelope turned to me with smiling eyes and said: "It's all right,
David. Yon's our home!"

*****

Produced by Al Haines

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