to trouble him most was leaving the cottage and Eden Village.  He had grown very fond of both.  Already they seemed far more like home to him than Craig’s Camp or any place he had known.  There had been nothing in that brief, unsatisfactory note intimating that he was expected to leave Eden Village, but he was quite sure that his departure would be the best thing for all concerned.  The Doctor, to whom he had confided his plan, had thought differently, and had begged him to wait and see if things didn’t change.  The Doctor was a mighty good sort, but—­well, he hadn’t read Eve’s note!

He wasn’t leaving Eden Village for good and all.  There was comfort in that thought.  Some day, probably next summer, he would come back.  By that time he would have gotten over it in all probability.  Until such time Mr. Zenas Prout and Zephania, in fact the whole Prout family, there to take care of the cottage.  Zephania was to sweep it once a month from top to bottom.  Wade smiled.  He hadn’t suggested such care as that, but Zephania had insisted.  Zephania, he reflected with a feeling of gratitude, had been rather cut up about his departure.

Of course it was nobody’s fault but his own.  He had deliberately fallen in love, scorning consequences.  Now he was staring at the consequences and didn’t like their looks.  Thank Heaven, he was a worker, and there was plenty of work to do.  Whitehead and the others out there would be surprised to see him coming into camp again so soon.  Well, that was nothing.  Perhaps, too, it was just as well he was going back early.  There was the new shaft-house to get up, and the sooner that was ready the sooner they could work the new lead.  He raised his head, conscious of a disturbing factor, and then arose and closed the door into the hall.  Closing the door muffled the strains that floated down from upstairs, where Zephania, oppressed, but defiant of sorrow, was singing: 

  “’My days are gliding swiftly by,
    And I, a pilgrim stranger,
  Would not detain them as they fly! 
    Those hours of toil and danger.’”

After awhile, his pipe having gone out again from neglect, he strapped and locked the trunk, glanced at his watch and took up his hat.  He passed out through the immaculate kitchen, odorous of soapsuds and sunlight, and down through the orchard, which Zenas Third with his saw and shears had converted from a neglected and scrubby riot into a spruce and orderly parade.  Unconsciously his feet led him over the same course he had taken on that first walk of his, which ended in an unintentional and disconcerting visit to The Cedars.  As before, he followed the brook, much less a brook now than then by reason of the summer drought, and speculated as to the presence of fish therein.  He had intended all along to stroll down here some day and try for sunfish, but he had never done it.  Well, that was one of several dreamed-of things which had not come to pass.