Cornelius Darby had lain in his beautifully decorated grave for three years, and a graceful white shaft pointing heavenward amid the shrubbery had become a landmark for the bunch of grubs who rode the Winnowoc local.

"Must be getting close to the deppo. Yonder is old Corn Darby's gravestone over on the bluff," they would say, as the train chuffed up out of the valley on either side of the station. That was all the memory of him that remained, save as now and then a girl in a far-away Kansas town remembered a June evening when a discus shied out from its course and rolled to the door of a rose-arbor.

But "Eden," as a country estate, lost nothing by the passing of the husband of its lady and mistress, who spared none of the Darby dollars to make both the town and country home delightful in all appointments, hoping and believing that in her policy of stubbornness and force she could have her way, and bring back to the East the girl whom she would never invite to return, the girl whose future she had determined to control. The three years had found Jerusha Darby's will to have Jerry Swaim become her heir under her own terms—mistaking dependence for appreciation, and idleness for happiness—had ceased to be will and become a mania, the ruling passion of her years of old age. She never dreamed that she was being adroitly managed by her husband's relative, Eugene Wellington, but she did recognize, and, strangely enough, resent, the fact that the Darby strain in his blood was proving itself in his ability, not to earn dollars, but to make dollars earn dollars once they were put plentifully into his hands.

Since Mrs. Darby had only one life-purpose—to leave her property to Jerry Swaim under her own terms—it galled her to think of it passing to the hands of the relatives of the late Cornelius. She believed that love of Eugene would bring Jerry back, for she was Lesa's own romance-loving child—even if the luxuries that wealth can offer should fail; and she had coddled Eugene Wellington for this very purpose. But after three years he had failed to satisfy her. She was becoming slowly but everlastingly set on one thing. She would put her property elsewhere by will—when she was through with it. She could not do without Eugene as long as she lived—which would be indefinitely, of course. But she would have her say—and (in a whisper) it would not be a Darby nor kin of a Darby who might be sitting around now, waiting for her to pass to her fathers, who would possess it.

In this intense state of mind she called Eugene out to "Eden" in the late May of the third year of Jerry Swaim's stay in Kansas. The rose-arbor was aglow with the same blossoming beauty as of old, and all the grounds were a dream of May-time verdure.

Eugene Wellington, driving out from the city in a big limousine car, found them more to his taste than ever before, and he took in the premises leisurely before going to the arbor to meet Mrs. Darby.

"If I could only persuade Jerry to come now, all would be well," he meditated. "And I have hopes. The last news of her tells me a few things. She hasn't fallen in love with York Macpherson. He'd hate me less if she had, and he detests me. I saw that, all right, when he was here last month. And she's pretty tired of the life of the wilderness. I know that. If she would come right now it would settle things forever. I'd go after her if the old lady would permit it. I'd go, anyhow, if I dared. But I must keep an eye on Uncle Cornie's widow day and night, and, hungry as I am for one glimpse of Jerry's sweet face, I couldn't meet Jerusha D. in her wrath if I disobeyed her."

Eugene had the chauffeur pause while he surveyed the lilac-walk and the big maples and the lotus-pond.

"If Jerry would come now," he began again, with himself, "she would be heir to all this. If she doesn't come soon, there's trouble ahead for Eugene of the soft snaps. To the rose-arbor, Henderson."

So Henderson whirled the splendid young product to the doorway of the pretty retreat.

Mrs. Darby met her nephew with a sterner face even than she was accustomed to wear.

"I want to see you at once," she said, as the young man loitered a moment outside.

"Yes, Aunt Jerry," he responded, dutifully enough—as to form.

"What have you heard from Jerry recently?" she demanded.

"What York Macpherson told us—that she has had a hard year's work in a school-room," Eugene replied.

"Humph! I knew that. What are you doing to bring her back to me?" Mrs. Darby snapped off the words.

"Nothing now!" the young man answered her.

"'Nothing now!' Why not?" Mrs. Darby was in her worst of humors.

"Because there is positively nothing to do but to wait," Eugene said, calmly. "She is not in love anywhere else. She is getting tired and disgusted with her plebeian surroundings, and as to her estate—"

"What of her estate? I refused to let York Macpherson say a word, although he tried to over-rule me. I told him two things: I'd never forgive Jerry if she didn't come back uninvited by me; and I'd never listen to him blow a big Kansas story of her wonderful possessions. What do you know? You'd be unprejudiced." The old woman had never seemed quite so imperious before.

"I have here a paper describing it. York Macpherson sent it to Uncle Cornelius the very week he died. I found it among some other papers shortly after his death and after Jerry left. When York was here he confirmed the report at my insistent request. Read it."

Jerusha Darby read, realizing, as she did so, that neither her husband nor York Macpherson had succeeded in doing what Eugene Wellington had done easily. Each had tried in vain to have her read that paper.

"You knew the condition of this estate for three years, and never told me. Why?" The old woman's face was very pale.

"I did not dare to do so," Eugene replied, that line of weakness in his face which Jerry had noted three years before revealing itself for the first time to her aunt.

"This is sufficient," she said, in a quiet sort of way. "To-morrow I make my will—just to be sure. I shall probably outlive many younger people than myself. Write and tell Jerry I have done it. This time to-morrow night will see my estate settled so far as the next generation is concerned. If I do not do it, Eugene, some distant and improvident relatives of Cornelius will claim it. Send the lawyer out in the morning."

"All right, Aunt Jerry. I must go now. I have a club meeting in the city and I can make it easily. The car runs like the wind with Henderson at the wheel. Good-by."

And Eugene Wellington was gone.

"Three years ago I'd have left everything to him if I had been ready to make a will then. I'm ready now, and any time in the next ten years I can change it if I want to. But this will bring things my way, after all. I told York I'd never forgive Jerry!"

Mrs. Darby paused, and a smile lighted her wrinkled face.

"To think of that girl just shouldering her burden and walking off with it. If she isn't Brother Jim over again! Never writing a word of complaint. Oh, Jerry! Jerry! I'll make it up to you to-morrow."

To Jerusha Darby money made up for everything. She sat long in the rose-arbor, thinking, maybe, of the years when Jerry's children and her children's children would dominate the Winnowoc countryside as they of the Swaim blood had always done. And then, because she was tired, and the afternoon sunshine was warm, and her willow rocking-chair was very comfortable—she fell asleep.

"Went just like her brother, the late Jeremiah Swaim," the papers said, the next evening.

Instead of the lawyer, it was the undertaker who came to officiate. And the last will and testament, and the too-late evidence of a forgiving good-will, all were impossible henceforth and forever.

The estate of the late Jerusha Darby, relict of the late Cornelius Darby, no will of hers having been found, passed, by agreement under law, to a distant relative of the late Cornelius, which relative being Eugene Wellington, whose knowledge of the said possible conditions of inheritance he had held in his possession for three years, since the day he accidentally found them among the private papers of his late uncle, knowing the while that any sudden notion of the late Jerusha might result in putting her possessions, by her own signature, where neither Jerry, as her favorite and heir apparent, nor himself, as heir-in-law without a will, could inherit anything. Truly Gene had had a bothersome time of it for three years, and he congratulated himself on having done well—excellently well, indeed. Truly only the good little snakes ever entered that "Eden" in the Winnowoc Valley in Pennsylvania.