The beautiful summer was over, and those in the cottage, which they had named “Spindrift,” must bid farewell to the rocks and waves, to the blueberry bushes and the sombre woods. The song sparrows had flown and the wild ducks had come. Cap’n Belah’s apples were gathered in, and the door of his house, which had stood wide open all summer, was now closed against the searching winds.

The little steamboat was now making but one trip a day. The young man who all summer had run a jitney, now had departed for larger fields, so those who wished to reach the wharf must “foot it,” as Cap’n Belah said. The sun had not been up very long when the party from “Spindrift” cottage started down the road, Reed and Tom carrying bags and suit-cases, and Beulah lumbering along in the rear, weighted down with bundles. As most of the summer visitors had left, there were but few to wave farewell as the little boat steamed off.

“But we’ll all come back next summer, won’t we?” said Mabel brightly as they turned a point which hid the island from view.

“I shall if I have to swim,” responded Tom.

“And I, too, if I have to walk,” Reed avowed.

“And I, if I have to hire an a?roplane,” Ellen said laughing.

“We can count on you, can’t we, Miss Rindy?” Mabel asked.

“I make no rash promises,” was the answer. “Who knows where we all may be another summer?”

This somewhat subdued the exuberance and confidence of the young people, and they began to chatter and make plans for the day which they would spend in Portland before taking the night train. The two young men had arranged to go as far as New York with their friends, and Mabel had decided to spend a few days there with her aunt. She tried to dissuade Ellen from going on to Marshville with her cousin. “I don’t see why both of you can’t stop off for a little while,” she urged.

“And what would we do with Beulah?”

“Make a bale of her and send her by freight,” suggested Reed; “ship her as dry-goods, or, better still, as foodstuff, marked perishable.”

“Food-stuffed, you’d better say,” remarked Ellen, looking over toward the corner where Beulah, having partaken of an insufficient breakfast, was munching such left-overs as she had been able to stow away in a capacious pocket.

Even Miss Rindy laughed, but agreed with Ellen that the problem of how to dispose of Beulah in New York would be too intricate to be considered. “If she adds much more to her weight, they will be charging us double fare,” she remarked. “I think she must have gained twenty pounds.”

So on they went to Marshville, Ellen expecting to join Mabel in New York when the joint exhibition of pictures should take place. Reed was to look after this, and Ellen knew he could be depended upon.

Therefore the next day saw them back at home, and soon everything was going on as before, and the summer was remembered as a lovely dream.

Caro was the first to give them greeting. She came first thing in the morning to give and receive news. Sally Cooper was engaged to a man from Meadowville, but wasn’t going to be married for a year, as her family thought she was too young. Clyde Fawcett was going with a girl from the city; she was a niece of Mrs. Craig Hale, and had been visiting Marshville. Frank Ives was just getting over typhoid fever, had been ill all summer, as Ellen knew from Caro’s letters. Then Ellen told of her good times, but not a word did she say of her windfall; that could wait, or not be told at all. So they talked till Jeremy Todd came in and Caro left. To Jeremy Ellen unburdened her heart, and learned from him that he, too, had been remembered in the will of his old friend Peter Barstow, and that an annuity of five hundred dollars was to be his. After his death this was to be continued, under certain conditions, paid to the person or persons named in a private letter left with the testator’s lawyer.

“I can imagine that dear Don Pedro rather enjoyed creating a little mystery,” remarked Ellen. “I am so glad, dear Music Master, that this has come to you.”

“I am pleased, too,” asserted Mr. Todd. “Strange that it should win one more respect from some quarters.”

Ellen wondered if he referred to his wife, and hoped he did. Anything which increased her respect for her husband was not to be regretted.

Frank Ives, still very wan and pale, lost no time in coming to call. His illness, which took him very near to the dark valley, had subdued him and had taken away a certain over-confidence, so that Ellen liked him better. There never had been anything snobbish about Frank, but he had been a little too self-satisfied. If Ellen was kinder than before, it was that her sympathies were aroused, and she made promises to ride and walk with the lad, promises which sent him away in a happy mood.

Thus the autumn passed. Reed wrote often, reporting progress of his affairs. Mr. Barstow’s studio was his until the lease was up in the spring. Tom Clayton was sharing it with him. They were going over the pictures and hoped to have the exhibition and sale some time in December.

Mabel wrote sometimes from New York, sometimes from Baltimore. She said less about her vocation and more about improving her mind. Ellen wondered when she would settle down to anything stable. “She will be steadfast enough once she really makes up her mind what she wants to do,” Ellen said to Miss Rindy.

“The trouble is that she has no set duty,” Miss Rindy answered. “She is the sort of girl who should marry and have something to tie to. I wish she would. Does she ever mention Tom Clayton? He is the man for her.”

“She mentions him once in a while, calls him a dear old thing. I sometimes wonder if she would mention him more, or less, if she were really interested in him.”

“It’s just like a woman to take that sly way of covering her tracks and keep you guessing,” Miss Rindy asserted.

But Mabel did not keep them guessing very long, for before the first of the year Ellen received a letter which said: “Rejoice with me! I have found my vocation and its name is David Harland. Are you surprised, dear? I can assure you that I am. How such a wise, steady, unworldly being could be attracted to a girl brought up in such an atmosphere as I have been is a mystery to me. David is professor of botany and is going to South America next year, it being his Sabbatical year. He is some years older than I am, but we are very congenial, and I am as happy as the day is long. We shall be married just before we sail in June. Of course Gran thinks I am a first-class idiot because I did not choose a social star, but she is somewhat compensated by the fact that she will bring out my frivolous little cousin next winter, and will have the joy of directing her costumes and witnessing her conquests. Tell Miss Rindy she is the daughter of a prophet. How could she have foreseen that I was to fly so far away?”

Then followed loving messages, and promises to write more fully another time. Ellen folded the letter with a sigh. “Poor Tom,” she said.

“Are you sure it is ‘poor Tom’?” asked Miss Rindy.

“I surmise so, but one can’t be sure. He certainly was devoted last summer, and I know Mabel liked him.”

“But not well enough to marry him. Well, she certainly has given us a big surprise. Has she ever mentioned this man to you?”

“Once or twice very casually. I imagine she was quite bowled over early in the game, but was not sure how he felt, and so didn’t want to reveal her interest in him. I’m crazy to see him, aren’t you?”

“I’d like to, yes. I hope he is the right man for her.”

Ellen sighed again. “This puts an end to all our plans for next summer,” she said.

“I warned you, my child, not to count on anything but changes.”

But what changes were in store for them no one could foresee, especially Orinda Crump, who prophesied them. Ellen found her one day, just before Christmas, sitting with her hands in her lap, looking aimlessly out of the window.

“There wasn’t any mail, Cousin Rindy,” Ellen announced. “I looked in our box on my way home from practising.”

“I brought it home,” Miss Rindy told her, “and I wish I had lost it, or that the mail bag had burned up before it reached here or anything that would have spared me from getting that letter.” She pointed tragically to one which she had flung from her.

“Is it bad news?” asked Ellen anxiously.

“I don’t know whether it is bad or good; some might call it good news, I suppose, but I’m not going; I’m not, so there.”

“Going where?” Ellen looked bewildered. “Do tell me what has happened.”

“You may as well know first as last. I have had a letter from my brother. His wife is dead, leaving a daughter about twelve years old, and Al asks me to go out and take charge of things, says he is in poor health, has enough means to assure me a comfortable home, sentimentalizes over our childhood days—a happy childhood I had, didn’t I? After all these years pretends he has just awakened to the fact that he might have been a less indifferent brother. Now when he needs me he begins to see the light; just like him.”

“But you aren’t going, are you?” Ellen knelt down and took one of her cousin’s hands, fondling it as she spoke.

“Oh, Ellen, I don’t know. I said I wouldn’t, but perhaps it’s my duty, and I don’t believe I ever was one to shirk. It’s a hard question to decide, a hard question.”

“Oh, Cousin Rindy, please don’t go. Just as things are getting easier for us it would be too bad. What with my little windfall and what will be realized from the sale of my father’s pictures we shall not have to pinch and screw as we have done. I have been rejoicing that I could do something toward lifting your burdens, and now——”

“Nonsense! as if you hadn’t lifted my burdens times without number. I’m not one to palaver, as you know, but I tell you, Ellen, that you have been the greatest comfort to me. Of course we’ve had our spats; and I’ve been as much to blame in them as you, but take it by and large I don’t believe two persons could live together more harmoniously than we have done. How do I know what that child of Al’s is like? Spoiled, probably, and hard to manage. With you I’ve had it all my own way, with no one to interfere if I wanted to shake you or box your ears.”

“Oh, Cousin Rindy, you never did such things,” Ellen expostulated.

“Did I say I had? I only said I might have wanted to, which no doubt I did sometimes. I repeat, there was no one to interfere, and in Al’s home I should have to answer to him. Well, I’ll have to think it over. It isn’t to be decided ‘hot off the bat,’ as my boys used to say.”

“But what would become of me if you deserted me?” asked Ellen dolorousl............