Life at Peaceful Valley and the home of Judson Walker fell into its usual monotony after Chip’s departure.

Each day Uncle Jud went about his chores and his crop-gathering and watched the leaves grow scarlet, then brown, and finally go eddying up and down the valley, or heap themselves into every nook and cranny for final sleep.

Existence had become something like this to him, but he could no longer anticipate a vernal budding forth as the leaves came, but only the sear and autumn for himself, with the small and sadly neglected churchyard at the Corners for its ending.

Snow came and piled itself into fantastic drifts. The stream’s summer chatter was hushed. The cows, chickens, and his horse, with wood-cutting, became his sole care. Once a week he journeyed to the Corners for his weekly paper and Mandy’s errands, always hoping for a message from Chip. Now and then one came, a little missive in angular chirography, telling how she longed to return to them, which they read and re-read by candlelight.

Somehow this strange wanderer, this unaccounted-for waif, had crept into his life and love as a flower would, and “Pattycake,” as he had named her, with her appealing eyes and odd ways, was never out of his thoughts.

And so the winter dragged its slow, chill course. Spring finally unlocked the brook once more, the apple and cherry blossoms came, the robins began nest-building, and one day Uncle Jud returned from the corner with a glad smile on his face.

“Pattycake’s school’s goin’ to close in a couple o’ weeks more, ’n’ then she’s comin’ home,” he announced, and Aunt Mandy, her face beaming, made haste to wipe her “specs” and read the joyous tidings.

For a few days Uncle Jud acted as if he had forgotten something and knew not where to look for it. He lingered about the house when he would naturally be at work. He peered into one room and then another, in an abstracted way, and finally Aunt Mandy caught him in the keeping room, with one curtain raised,–a thing unheard of,–seated in one of the haircloth chairs and looking around.

“Mandy,” he said, as she entered, “do you know, I think them picturs we’ve had hangin’ here nigh on to forty year is homely ’nuff to stop a horse, ’n’ they make me feel like I’d been to a funeral. Thar’s that ‘Death Bed o' Dan'l Webster,’ an’ ‘Death o' Montcalm,’ ’specially. I jest can’t stand ’em no longer, an’ ‘The Father o’ his Country.’ I’m gittin’ tired o’ that, ’n’ the smirk he’s got on his face. I feel jest as though I’d like to throw a stun at him this minute. You may feel sot on them picturs, but I’d like to chuck the hull kit ’n’ boodle into the cow shed. An’ them winder curtains,” he continued, looking around, “things so blue they make me shiver, an’ this carpet with the figgers o’ green and yaller birds, it sorter stuns me.

“Now Pattycake’s comin’ purty soon. She must ’a’ seen more cheerful keepin’ rooms’n ourn, ’n’ I’m callatin’ we’d best rip this ’un all up an’ fix it new. Then thar’s the front chamber–in fact, both on ’em–with the yaller spindle beds ’n’ blue curtains, an’ only a square of rag carpet front o’ the dressers. Say, Mandy,” he continued, looking around once more, “how’d we ever happen to git so many blue curtains?”

His discontent with their home now took shape in vigorous action, and Aunt Mandy came to share it. Trip after trip to the Riggsville store was made. Two new chamber sets and rolls of carpeting arrived at the station six miles away, and came up the valley. A paper-hanger was engaged and kept busy for ten days. The death-bed pictures were literally kicked into the cow shed, and in three weeks four rooms had been so reconstructed and fitted anew that no one would recognize them.

Meanwhile Uncle Jud had utterly neglected his “craps,” while he worked around the house. The wide lawn had been clipped close. A new picket fence, painted white, replaced the leaning, zigzag one around the garden. Weeds and brush disappeared, and only Aunt Mandy’s protest saved the picturesque brown house from a coat of paint.

And then “Pattycake” arrived.

Nearly a year before she had been brought here, a weary, bedraggled, dusty, half-starved waif. Now Uncle Jud met her at the station, his face shining; Aunt Mandy clasped her close to her portly person; and as Chip looked around and saw what had been done in her honor and to make her welcome, her eyes filled.

“I never thought anybody would care for me like this,” she exclaimed, and then glancing at Uncle Jud, her eyes alight, she threw her arms about his neck and, for the first time, kissed him.

And never in all his life had he felt more amply paid for anything he had done.

Then and there, Chip resolved to do something that now lay in her power–to face shame and humbled pride and all the sacrifice it meant to her in the end, and reunite these two long-separated brothers. But not now, no, not yet.

Before her lay two golden joyous summer months. Aunt Abby was coming up later. She could not face her own humiliation now. She must wait until these happy days were past, then tell her wretched story, not sparing herself one iota, and then, if she must, go her way, an outcast into the world once more.

How utterly wrong she was in this conclusion, and how little she understood the broad charity of Uncle Jud, need not be explained. She was only a child as yet in all but stature. The one most bitter sneer of malicious Hannah still rankled and poisoned her common sense. Its effect upon Chip had been as usual on her nature and belief, and this waif of the wilderness, this gnome child, must not be judged by ordinary standards. Like reflections from grotesque mirrors, so had her ideas of right and duty been distorted by eerie influences and weird surroundings. There was first the unspeakable brutality of her father; then the menial years at Tim’s Place, with no more consideration than a horse or pig received, her only education being the uncanny teachings of Old Tomah. Under this baleful tuition, coupled with the ever present menace and mystery of a vast wilderness, she passed from childhood into womanhood, with the fixed belief that human kind were no better than brutes; that the forest was peopled by a nether world of spites, the shadowy forms of both man and beast; and worse than this, that all thought and action here must be the selfish ones of personal gain and personal protection. Like a dog forever expecting a blow, like any dumb brute ever on guard against superior force, so had Chip grown to maturity, a cringing, helpless, almost hopeless creature, and yet one whose inborn impulses and desires revolted at her surroundings.

Once removed from these, however, and in a purer atmosphere, she was like one born again. Her past impressions still remained, her queer belief of present and future conditions was still a motive force, and the cringing, blow-expecting nature was yet hers.

For this reason, and because this new world and these new people were so unaccountable and quite beyond her ken in tender influence and loving care, what they had done and for what purpose seemed all the more impressive. But it was in no wise wasted; instead, it was like God-given sunshine to a flower that has never known aught except the chilling shadow of a dense forest.

And now ensued an almost pathetic play of interest, for Chip set herself about the duty of giving instead of obtaining pleasure.

She became what she was at Tim’s Place,–a menial, so far as they would let her,–and from early morning until bedtime, some step, some duty, some kindly care for her benefactors, was assumed by her. She worked and weeded in the garden, she drove and milked the cows, she followed Uncle Jud to the hay-field, insisting that she must help, until at last he protested.

“I like ye ’round me all the time, girlie,” he assured her, “for ye’re the best o’ company, ’n’ I’d rather see yer face’n’ any posy that ever grew. But you’ve got to quit workin’ so much in the sun. ’Twill get yer hands all calloused ’n’ face freckled, an’ I won’t have it. I want ye to injie yourself, read books, pick flowers, ’n’ sit in the shade. I see ye’ve got into the habit o’ workin’, which ain’t a bad ’un, but thar ain’t no need on’t here.”

One day a stranger happened up this valley, so seldom travelled that its roadway ruts were obscured by grass. Chip noticed him that morning where the brook curved almost to the garden, a fair-haired young man with jaunty straw hat, delicate, shining rod, and new fish basket. He was garbed in a spick-span brown linen suit. He saw her also, looking over the garden wall, and raising his hat gracefully, strode on.

His appearance, so neat and dainty and so like pictures of fishermen in books, his courteous manner of touching his hat, without a rude stare or even a second glance at her, caught her attention, and she watched him a few moments.

He did not look back until he had cast his line into a few eddies some twenty rods away; and then he turned, looked at her, the house, barns, garden, all as one picture, and then continued up the brook.He was not seen again until almost twilight by her, and then he and Uncle Jud entered the sitting room.

“This is Mr. Goodnow, Mandy,” Uncle Jud explained, nodding to the newcomer and glancing at Aunt Mandy and Chip. “He says he follered the brook further up’n he figgered on. It’s four miles to the Corners, ’n’ he wants us to keep him over night. I ’lowed we could, if you was willin’.”

“I shall be most grateful if you kind ladies will permit my intrusion,” the stranger added. “I have been so captivated by this delightful brook that I quite forgot where I was or the distance to the village until I saw that the sun was setting. If you can take care of me until morning, any payment you will accept shall be yours.”

“I guess we can ’commodate ye,” responded Aunt Mandy, pleasantly. And so this modern Don Juan found lodgement in the home of these people.

“I am an enthusiast on trout-catching,” he explained, after all had gathered on the vine-enclosed porch and he had presented Uncle Jud with an excellent cigar. “About all I do summers is to hunt for brooks. I came to the village below here yesterday, having heard of this stream, and never before have I found one quite so attractive.”Then followed a more or less fictitious account of his own station and occupation in life, all very plausible, entirely frank, and quite convincing.

“I am unfortunate in one respect,” he said, “in that I have no fixed occupation. My father, now dead, was a prominent physician. I was educated for the same profession and had just begun its practice when he died. An uncle also left me a large bequest at about the same time. My mother insisted that I give up practice, and now I am an enforced idler.”

He was such an entirely new specimen of manhood, so charming of manner, so smooth of speech, that Chip watched and listened while he talked on and on, quite enthralled. She had seen similar gentlemen pass and repass Tim’s Place, not quite so dainty and suave, perhaps, but dressed much the same. She had now and then noticed a pictured reproduction of one in some magazine. Insensibly, she compared this Mr. Goodnow with Ray, to the latter’s discredit, and when the evening was ended and she was alone in her room, this new arrival’s delicately chiselled face, smiling blue eyes, slightly curled mustache, and refined manners followed her.

“He’s a purty slick talker,” Uncle Jud admitted to his wife later on, “a sorter chinaware, pictur-book feller ’thout much harm in him. I kinder felt sorry for him, so I ’lowed we’d keep him over night. Guess he ain’t much use in the world.”

How little use and how much harm he was capable of may be gleaned from a brief rÉsumÉ of this stranger’s history.

He was, as he stated, without occupation and with plenty of money. He also, as stated, loved trout brooks and wildwood life–not wildwood life in its true sense, but the summer-day kind, where, clad as he was, he could follow some meadow brook or sit in the shade and watch it while indulging in day-dreams and smoking. He loved these things, but he loved fair ladies–collectively–still more. He had stumbled upon Peaceful Valley by accident, coming to it from a fashionable resort to escape an intrigue with a foolish grande dame and consequent irate husband. Chip’s face and form had caught his eyes as he strolled by that day, and admission to the home of Uncle Jud and opportunity to meet, and, if possible, impress this handsome country lass, had been a matter of shrewd calculation with him. He had purposely remained up the brook until nightfall. He watched for and intercepted Uncle Jud in the nick of time, persuaded that confiding man that he was too tired to reach the village, and with all the blandishments of speech at his command, had obtained entry to this home.

But he failed to impress Chip as he had hoped. She was no fool, if she had been reared at Tim’s Place. A certain shiftiness in his eyes when he looked at her, a covert, sideways glance, never firm but ever elusive, was soon noted and awoke her suspicion. Then the glib story he had told of himself was soon contradicted by him in a few minor details. Like all liars, he lacked a perfect memory, and, talking freely, he occasionally crossed his own tracks.

Unfortunately for him, he also showed more interest in her than in the brook the next day, and the following one he capped the climax by asking her to go fishing with him–an invitation which she promptly refused.

“I don’t like that Mr. Goodnow,” she asserted to Uncle Jud a little later. “I think he’s a deceitful man. He pesters me every chance he can, and I wish he’d go away.”

That was enough for Uncle Jud, and after supper he harnessed his horse and politely but firmly requested Mr. Goodnow’s company to the village.