The great March storm seemed to clear the way for an early spring. The winter had been unusually cold and long; even honeysuckle and ivy vines were winter-killed. The great old honeysuckle vine on the Gaumer porch died down to the ground and hung a mass of brown stems, through which the wind blew with a crackling sound. Day after day Millerstown had had to thaw out its pumps. To Sarah Ann Mohr, who had once read an account on the inside pages of the Millerstown "Star" of the delicate balance of meteorological conditions, the signs were ominous.

"It means something," insisted Sarah Ann. "Once when my mom was little they had such a winter and then the snow fell in June on the wheat. The wheat was already in the head when the snow fell on it. If it gets only a little colder than that, the people die."

But spring returned. Sarah Ann beheld with a thankful heart the hyacinths and narcissus in her flower beds pushing their heads through the soil, the rhubarb sprouting in her garden; she breathed in with unspeakable delight the first balmy breeze. Sarah Ann's friends were slipping rapidly away from her; she was one of the last survivors of her generation; but her appetite was still good, her step firm, her eye bright. Sarah Ann was a devout and trustful Christian, but she had never been able to understand why a heaven had not been provided on the beautiful earth for those who were worthy.

The dogwood put out earlier than usual its shelf-like boughs of bloom; before the end of April bluets starred the meadows round the Weygandt dam, and everywhere there was the scent of apple blossoms. Grandmother Gaumer's garden, with its vine-covered wall, its box-bordered paths, its innumerable varieties of flowers, was a place of magic. Though its mistress was away, it had never been so beautiful, so sweet.

In it Katy walked up and down in the May twilight. She moved slowly as though she were very idle or very tired, or as though no duties waited her. Her face was white; in the black dress which she had had made for her grandfather's funeral and which her grandmother had persuaded her to lay away, she seemed taller and more slender than she was.

Each time she turned at the end of the garden walk, she looked at the house and then away quickly. She did not mean to look at all, but involuntarily she raised her eyes. The parlor windows behind which Grandmother Gaumer's lamp had shone so long were blank. In the room above, which had been Grandfather and Grandmother Gaumer's there was now a light. Every few seconds the light was darkened by the shadow cast by the passing to and fro of a large figure. From the same room came the sound of a child's voice, the little voice of "Ehre sei Gott" in the Christmas entertainment long ago. Now it was raised in cheerful laughter. In the kitchen, Edwin Gaumer sat by the table, a page of accounts before him. There were now more persons in the house than there had been since Katy had been taken there as a baby, but the house was, nevertheless, intolerably lonely. Grandmother Gaumer's life was ended; she had been laid beside her husband in the Millerstown cemetery. She had had a long life; she had outlived almost all those whom she had loved, even all her children but one; she needed no mourning.

But Katy sorrowed and would not be comforted.

"She was all I had. I have a few other friends like the squire and Sarah Ann, but these are old, too."

Katy walked more and more slowly along the garden path. Even her grandmother's death had brought from Alvin no letter.

"I cannot understand it," whispered Katy to herself; "I cannot understand it!"

It seemed to Katy that there was no subject in the world upon which her thoughts could rest comfortably, no refuge to which her weary, sorrowful soul could flee. During her grandmother's illness, she had dreamed of Alvin, of his progress at school, of the time when he should come home and they should plan together. He had kissed her again and again; she belonged to him forever. But why, oh, why did he not write? There was for poor Katy only anxiety and humiliation in the world.

"And I am in debt!" she mourned. Her constant reading of the Bible to her grandmother had furnished her with quotations for all the experiences of life. It was a textual knowledge which many preachers would have envied her. It gave her now a vehicle with which to express her woes. "I am like David in the cave," said she. "I am in distress and in debt."

"Fifty dollars!" whispered Katy as she walked up and down the garden paths. "I am fifty dollars in debt!"

It was true that the squire had insisted that the money must be a gift. But the squire had not the least suspicion of the purpose to which his gift had been devoted.

"They have nothing for Alvin," said Katy to herself. "Alvin has had no chance. He will surely pay it back to me. I am certain he will pay it back!"

The dew fell damp about her, but still Katy walked on and on, up and down the garden paths. When, finally, she went into the kitchen, her Uncle Edwin looked up at her blinking. In his rugged face was all the kindness and sober steadfastness of the Gaumers.

"Sit down once, Katy," said he, neither in command nor in request, but with gentle entreaty. "I want to talk to you a little."

Katy sat down on the edge of the old settle. She would listen to no condolences; every fiber in her body bristled at the first sign of sympathy. Sympathy made her cry, and she hated to cry. Katy hated to be anything but cheerful and happy and prosperous and in high hope.

Several minutes passed before Uncle Edwin began upon his subject. Though he loved Katy, he stood in awe of her, gentle and weak though she appeared in her black dress.

His first question was unfortunately worded.

"What are you going to do now, Katy, that gran'mom is gone?"

Katy looked at him sharply. She was not well; she was worried and unhappy; she found it easy to misunderstand.

"For my living, you mean?" said Katy, cruelly.

Uncle Edwin gazed, open-mouthed at his niece. He would have been ludicrous if he had not been so greatly distressed.

"Ach, Katy!" protested he, in bewilderment.

"What do you mean, then?"

Uncle Edwin had at that moment not the faintest idea of what he meant. He hesitated for an instant, then he stammered out an answer.

"I mean, Katy, when are you going to school?"

The room swam round before Katy's dull eyes. School! She was never going to school; she could not go to school. But a more acute anxiety threatened; the moment when she must give an account of her two hundred dollars was probably at hand. Katy's very heart stood still.

"I am not going to school," said she.

Again Uncle Edwin's mouth opened.

"Why, you are, Katy!"

"Do you mean"—wildly Katy seized upon any weapon of defense she could grasp: it was easy to confuse Uncle Edwin's mind—"do you mean when am I going away from here?"

Now Uncle Edwin's blue eyes filled with tears.

"Ach, Katy!" cried he. "We are only too glad to have you. You know how I wanted to take you when you were a little baby, and Aunt Sally wanted you. This is your home forever, Katy. But you always talked so of school and education!"

"I do not care for education."

Uncle Edwin's head shook with the activity of the mental processes within it.

"What!" he exclaimed, incredulously. Then he took a fresh start. Katy's ill-temper was incomprehensible, but when she heard what his plans were, she would be cross no longer.

"You have two hundred dollars in the bank, Katy. The two hundred that the governor sent you a while back, haven't you, Katy?"

He did not ask the question for information, but to establish the points of his simple discourse.

"Well," said Katy, faintly, from her agitation.

"That is a good start. Now the squire will help and I will help. We have this all arranged between us. Then, when you come of age you will get the money your gran'mom left you. But that you are not to touch for your education. That you will leave by me, because I am your guardian in the law. You were faithful to your gran'mom till the end, and you are not to spend your own money for education. The squire and I will look after that."

The muscles of Katy's face had stiffened and utterance was impossible. All the old, dear, eager hope filled her heart. But Alvin was still precious to her; her sacrifice had been made for him; the sacrifice whose extent she was just beginning to understand. This, however, was no time to think of Alvin. She forced herself to say again quietly that she was not going to school.

"Not—going—to—school!" cried Uncle Edwin with long pauses between his words.

"No," repeated Katy. "I am not going to school."

Then Katy sought her room and her bed.

When Uncle Edwin reported his interview with Katy to the squire, the squire laughed.

"Ach, she just talks that way! She is a little contrary, like all the women when they are tired or not so well. Of course she is going! She was in here not long ago talking about it and I gave her some money for books and other things."

The next day the squire himself spoke to Katy.

"Are you getting ready for school, Katy?"

"I am not going to school."

"Since when have you changed your mind?"

"This long time."

The squire turned and looked at Katy over his glasses.

"Why, it is only a little while since I gave you money for books!"

"You didn't give me money," corrected Katy, stammering. "It was a loan; I said it was a loan. Else I wouldn't have taken it."

"Humbug, Katy!"

If the squire had been Katy's guardian, she would have gone promptly to school. But Uncle Edwin held that office and he could not have brought himself to compel Katy to do anything. The squire argued and coaxed and cajoled and Katy looked at him with a white face and stubborn eyes.

"It wasn't right to take the two hundred dollars from Daniel in the beginning if you didn't intend to use it for schooling, Katy. What are you going to do?"

"I am going to earn my living," answered Katy. Her debt to the squire was swelling to tremendous proportions; and there was also the much greater sum for which she could give no account. Katy was sick at heart. But she managed to end the interview lightly. "I'm going to earn money and save it, and be a rich, rich woman."

Once safely out of the squire's office, Katy walked up the mountain road. She must be alone, to think and plan what she must do. School? Her whole body and mind and soul longed for school. But she could never go to school. She must pay the squire his fifty dollars. Suppose he should ask her to show him the books and dresses she had bought! She must also replace the whole two hundred before they found her out. She could see the expression of amazement and disgust on the face of the squire at the mere suspicion of any close friendship between a Gaumer and a Koehler. People despised Alvin.

"But they have no right to," cried Katy. "I want to see Alvin. He will make it right, I am sure he will make it right. He is older than I!" Katy spoke as though this fact were only now known to her. "He has no right—" But Katy went no further: her love had been already sufficiently bruised and cheapened. "I have tied myself up in a knot! I have done it myself!"

Katy looked down upon the Hartman house. Rumor said that Mrs. Hartman was failing; the rare visitors to her kitchen found her on the settle in midday.

"It is nothing but dying in the world," mourned Katy. "We grow up like grass and are cut down."

But Katy had now no time to think of the Hartmans. She went on up the mountain road until she reached the Koehler house. The walls needed a coat of whitewash, the fences were brown, the garden was overgrown. It was a mean little place in its disorder.

"He never had a chance," protested Katy in answer to some inward accusation. Then Katy went drearily home.

By the first of June Alvin had still not written; by the end of June Katy was still looking for a letter. The term of the normal school had closed; it was time for him to be at home. Surely he could not mean to stay away forever!

Day after day Katy's relatives watched her solicitously, expecting her grief to soften, her old spirits to return; day by day Katy grew more silent, more depressed. Uncle Edwin now attacked her boldly.

"Do you forget how smart the governor thought you were, Katy?" Or, "It was bad enough for your gran'mom that you couldn't go to school for two years, Katy, but this would be much worse for her."

In July Uncle Edwin took fresh courage and began to reproach her. If she was going to school, no time must be lost, they must make plans, she must have an outfit.

"David Hartman is at home," said he. "He will be very learned. He is smart. But he is not so smart as you, Katy. Do you forget how you were up to him in school and he is older than you?"

Katy swallowed her coffee with a mighty effort.

"And Alvin Koehler was here to-day," went on Uncle Edwin. "He wants that the directors should give him the Millerstown school, now that Carpenter is no longer here. We think he should have it while he comes from Millerstown. He has made a good deal of himself. You would be surprised to see him. But you are much smarter than he, Katy!"

Katy put up her left hand to steady her cup.

"If he gets the school, he is going to get married," went on Uncle Edwin placidly. "It is a girl from away. I am surprised that Alvin had so much sense as to study good and then settle down and get married. He said he had such an agency in the school for hats and neckties and such things. That was how he got along. There is, I believe, a good deal more in Alvin than we thought. But you, Katy—Why, Katy!"

Katy had risen from the table, her face deathly pale.

"I have burned myself with coffee," said she.

Simultaneously Uncle Edwin and Aunt Sally and little Adam pushed back their chairs.

"Ach, Katy, here; take water, Katy!"

"No," protested Katy, "it is not so bad as that. But I will go and lie down a little. My head hurts me, too. I am tired and it is very hot. I will go to my room."

Stammering, Katy got herself to the stairway. There, having closed the door behind her, she started up the steps on hands and knees. At the top she sat down for a moment to rest before she crept across the room to her bed. Again it was an advantage to be "Bibelfest," she had once more an adequate vehicle for the expression of her woes.

"I am like Job," wept poor Katy. "I am afflicted. I am a brother to jackals and a companion to ostriches."

Once when Katy opened her eyes, she saw opposite her window a single, pink, sunset-tinted cloud floating high in the sky. Somehow the sight made her agony more bitter.

Down in the kitchen Uncle Edwin, alarmed, confused, distressed, found himself confronted by an irate spouse. He could not remember another occasion in all their married life when his Sally had lost patience with him.

"Now, pop," said she, "it is enough. You are to leave poor Katy be."