“Oh, Uncle Timmy!  No matter how old it is or how shaky, we can use it.”

“Probably the older and shakier it is, the more valuable when it has been restored,” suggested Mrs. Burnside.

“I should say so,” declared Jarvis, with emphasis.  “You should have heard the Neil Chases rave over some of theirs.  Neil found a sideboard in an old cabin down South; it had the doors nailed on with strips of leather; they kept corn meal and molasses in it.  He wouldn’t take five hundred dollars for it now.”

“I don’t imagine,” said Uncle Timothy, cautiously, “that any of my things are as valuable as that, so don’t get your expectations too high, Sally.  But they may help you in the matter of supplying chairs and beds for your friends.  I take it this will be a hospitable homestead, when Sally is mistress of it.”

“How could it help being hospitable,” cried Sally, happily, “with friends like ours for guests?”

“Let’s make a circle on the hearth, for good luck,” proposed Josephine.

Beckoning, she led the way toward the fireplace, where the flames of the big logs, which had leaped and danced there all the evening, carefully fed by Bob from time to time, had now died down into a mass of brilliant coals.

On either side the sheaves of yellow corn-stalks stood like sentinels, and above a row of jack-o’-lanterns, whose candles had been renewed when they threatened to burn low, looked cheerfully down from the high chimney-piece.

“All join hands,” commanded Josephine, “and sing ‘Auld Lang Syne.’”

“Will you let such new acquaintances join in that song?” asked Mrs. Ferry, as Alec, who was next her, caught her hand in obedience to orders.

“Of course we will.  We hope that time will make you old friends,” answered Uncle Timothy, gallantly, stretching out his hand, as he stood next upon her other side.

It is rather curious how, in any such grouping, certain combinations come about.  Neither Jarvis Burnside nor Donald Ferry seemed to make any abrupt moves, and there certainly was a moment when it might have seemed the natural thing that Jarvis should grasp Uncle Timothy’s hand, Ferry seize upon Bob’s.  But so it did not turn out.

When the circle began slowly to revolve before the fire, one of Sally’s hands was in Jarvis’s, the other in that of the neighbour who could chop down trees as easily as he could address audiences, and whose hand, therefore, possessed a warm and even grip which suggested both friendliness and strength.  Upon Donald Ferry’s farther side was Josephine, and Max clasped her other hand.  As for Alec and Bob, it did not matter much to them whose hands they held, so that the circle moved briskly and sang lustily.  And this it surely did.

“Are you happy, little girl?” asked Jarvis, bending to speak into Sally’s ear, as the circle broke up.

Smiling, Sally dashed away a tear.  “So happy I’m almost crying,” she owned.  “It’s beginning to seem as if we were going to have a—­home, a real home once more—­as much as we ever can—­without—­”