Sped by the kindly farewells of Miriam, Beatrice and Dr. Minturn set out next day on their return ride across the pass and reached the cabin without undue adventure. During the doctor’s long interview with Aunt Anna, the two girls sat beside the fire, holding each other’s hands tightly, neither speaking a word to voice her hopes or fears. When the doctor came out, however, one glimpse of his smiling face was enough to cheer them both.

“Nothing seriously wrong,” was his verdict, “and you have brought her to just the climate and just the sort of life to make her well.” He gave them long and careful directions as to what they were to do and then got up to say good-by. “I am going over to John Herrick’s to spend the night, and I will see you again before I go back.”

He visited the village also before his departure, for he seemed interested in the progress of the trouble there. He had a long talk with Nancy and Beatrice out under the pines beside the stream the next morning.

“Your aunt will get well,” he assured them. “She is anxious and unhappy and troubled, besides her illness. You say that you don’t understand why, but in time she may tell you.”

“Did she tell you?” Nancy asked him suddenly for he was the sort of person to invite confidences.

“No, she told me very little, but old doctors guess a great deal. She will tell you herself some day.”

He went on to explain that a sleeping-porch must be added to the cabin, since it was imperative that she sleep out of doors.

“I spoke about it to John Herrick and he can send some one over to build it for you,” he said. “Old Tim who works for him is a carpenter of sorts, though he is rather tottery and slow and you must not be impatient if the work seems to drag. Now I believe that is all.”

“I wish I could tell you——” Beatrice began as he got up. She wanted to thank him for breaking out of his long retirement and rendering services for which he would accept no fee. He cut short her halting words at once.

“I don’t want to hear anything about that,” he declared. “Just be careful of your aunt and get her confidence if you can. I will be here again before so very long. That situation in the village bears watching and I want to see how it turns out. I never saw anything quite like it—all the idle men wrangling and quarreling, since there is no one outside to quarrel with. The fellow that got away with the money and shut down the works, he is the one they are after, but since neither they nor the sheriff nor that clever reporter fellow can find him, they have to take out their bad humor on one another. It is a dangerous place, a town full of ugly-tempered men, especially when they have some one like that Thorvik to keep the agitation boiling.”

“But who could have taken the money?” asked Nancy.

“Blessed if I know,” returned the doctor. “There wasn’t even a masked man with a black horse and a pair of automatics such as the movies tell us belong to an affair like that. Well, I must be getting back to Miriam. Good-by.”

He clambered, with his awkward length, into the saddle, and set off, leaving the girls much lighter of heart than they had been before his visit. It would be hard to measure the extent of their gratitude.

Next day old Tim, with his tools over his shoulder and a creaking wagon-load of lumber following him up to the gate, came to begin on the sleeping-porch. It was quite true that he worked very slowly and that after ten days the porch was still not finished, but his efforts to make everything as comfortable as possible were so earnest that the girls could not grow impatient with him. At the end of that time he appeared one morning with a helper, a broad-shouldered boy of about eighteen with tow-colored hair and the widest and most friendly smile Beatrice had ever seen.

“Who is he? Did he come from the village?” she asked, but old Tim answered evasively. He was just some one staying at John Herrick’s for a while, and he thought he would come over and help. Beyond that she could learn nothing, although she noticed that when supplies were wanted from Ely it was always old Tim who went for them, never his younger helper. The boy worked hard and was as shy of speech as Tim was fluent. After his coming the building went on rapidly. All sorts of improvements were added besides the porch. Cupboards in the kitchen had been demanded by Nancy, but they had not dreamed of dormer-windows for their little rooms under the roof, high-backed settles for the fireplace, and a palatial box stall for Buck. The request “for a few shelves for pots and kettles” was materialized into a spacious pantry rich in cupboards, shelves, drawers, and pegs for the hanging of each utensil and into a transformed kitchen with everything rearranged to the great increase of comfort and convenience.

“We wanted John Herrick to come over and see what we had done,” Tim said one day, “but somehow he doesn’t do it, though he is always asking about the work. A lot of the things we have done were his suggestion. Those sliding shutters on the porch were his special idea. There couldn’t be anything better to keep out the rain and snow.”

“Snow?” echoed Nancy, who was standing beside him to admire his work as he loved to have her do. “Why, we are only going to be here for the summer!”

“It can snow any day it wants to in these mountains,” Tim returned. “There’s more in January than in June, to be sure, but you may wake up any morning and find the ground white. It can snow just as easy as rain hereabouts.”

Beatrice had been watching Tim’s helper keenly from day to day with a growing suspicion lurking in her mind. Besides giving assistance with the building he came to the house daily with the milk and eggs that Hester supplied. One morning when she was astir early she saw him meet Christina on the path below the house and watched him take from her the basket in which she was bringing their marketing. In the thin quiet air their voices came up to her window more clearly than they seemed to realize.

“Isn’t it too heavy?” he questioned. “And you’re looking pale and tired. That—that Thorvik has been abusing you again. I’d like to get my hands on him.”

“No, no,” cried Christina in terror, “you must not let him or any one in the village see you. You promised John Herrick you would not go near the town until he found out how things stood for you. He said it was safer and easier that no one at all should know you were here. Thorvik does not harm me; it is only the—the things he says about my good friends.”

“I can’t stand by and see him make you miserable,” protested the boy hotly.

“You promised,” repeated Christina obstinately. “You can’t break the word you gave.”

“Then some day I will be giving John Herrick his promise back again,” he returned, his voice rising louder. “Thorvik will find——”

Christina, glancing anxiously at the windows, warned him to silence. They went together into the kitchen, leaving Beatrice to ponder what she had heard.

“That letter to Olaf got such a quick answer that it must have found him just back from a voyage,” she was reflecting. “And we never read what he wrote. It must have been to say that he was coming home. I suppose they kept his being here a secret even from us so that if any one asked us we would not know. There is always that Dabney Mills hanging about trying to find out things.”

The day was so full that she had little time to talk of the matter with Nancy until they sat by the fire late that evening. The blaze was always a grateful one on these nights that grew so chilly the moment the sun was gone. Aunt Anna had finally gone to bed on the new sleeping-porch, Nancy sat on one of Tim’s settles by the hearth, knitting busily, while Beatrice, openly idle and dreaming, sat opposite gazing into the changing flames. Her mind was running afar upon such various things that even now she did not come immediately to the question of Christina’s son.

“Nancy,” she said, “don’t you begin to feel like an entirely different person from the one you were when we came here?”

Her sister nodded in quick assent.

“I never knew before that I could do so—so much thinking,” she agreed rather vaguely. “I am busy every minute but there is time to turn things over in my mind, ever so many things about you and Aunt Anna and dad and myself and, oh—just about living. When I look back at last winter and all the time before, it seems as though we were always in a crowd of people, people who were all talking at once and all wanting me to do something with them in a hurry. I liked it, but I never had time to think about anything at all.”

“Yes,” returned Beatrice slowly, “there was always something to do and somewhere to go and that seemed all there was to living. Think of my head being so full of things that I forgot about having an uncle. I must have seen him and have heard dad and Aunt Anna talk of him, but I never noticed it at last when he never came any more and was never mentioned. But I think about him now. I think about him more—and more.”

Nancy laid down her knitting and leaned forward.

“Do you?” she questioned. “So do I. Do you think it could be because of him, someway, that Aunt Anna wanted to come here?”

“It may be,” said Beatrice, “but, if it is, where is he?”

They looked at each other, an unspoken question in their eyes.

“There is another thing,” pursued Beatrice. “That boy who has been helping Tim is Christina’s son Olaf. I had thought so before but to-day I am certain.”

“I had been suspecting that too,” said Nancy. “One day I asked her if she didn’t want us to write her another letter, and she laughed, so happily, and said, ‘Not just yet.’”

The door from the bedroom opened softly and Aunt Anna came in. Her cheeks were pink from the fresh air outside, her fair hair was ruffled, and she was wrapped in the dark fur robe that the girls had laid over her bed. She looked very pretty as she sat in the big chair that they pulled out for her, the glow of the fire lighting her face.

“I heard your voices,” she said, “and, though it is glorious out there with the sound of the water and with the tops of the trees showing against the stars, I was not able to sleep, so I thought I would come in and talk to you a little.” She leaned back in her chair and sighed blissfully. “What good care you take of me and how well I feel! I do not seem to be the same person.”

The girls laughed in unison, it was so like what they had been saying.

“Beatrice,” her aunt went on suddenly, “Dr. Minturn told me about your falling over the cliff when you went to fetch him for me.”

“It was not much of a cliff,” returned Beatrice sheepishly, involuntarily rubbing the bruised elbow that was now the one memento of her misadventure. She had meant to keep that incident from Aunt Anna’s knowledge.

“It frightened me,” her aunt said, “but it opened my eyes to what you were willing to do for me. We are all of us changed and we are all beginning to understand one another better. At home, with your rounds of shopping and motoring and dancing, I used to think we were not much more than casually acquainted. And there was something of which I always wanted to talk to you, but I wondered if a day would ever come when you would have time to listen and understand. I did not want you to hear unless you could see it all as clearly as I did myself.”

“And do you think,” asked Beatrice, her voice low and eager, “do you believe that the time has come now?”

“Yes,” was the answer, “I think the time has come now. It is right that you should hear at last what has been hanging heavy on my heart for these ten years—about why I came here—about my brother.”