Keith had a curious feeling.  Wickersham’s return meant that he was desperate.  In some way, too, Keith felt that Lois Huntington was concerned in his movements.  He was glad to think that she was abroad.

But Lois was being drawn again into his life in a way that he little knew.

In the seclusion and quietude of Ridgely at that season, Lois soon felt as if she had reached, at last, a safe harbor.  The care of the old Doctor gave her employment, and her mind, after a while, began to recover its healthy tone.  She knew that the happiness of which she had once dreamed would never be hers; but she was sustained by the reflection that she had tried to do her duty:  she had sacrificed herself for others.  She spent her time trying to help those about her.  She had made friends with Squire Rawson, and the old man found much comfort in talking to her of Phrony.

Sometimes, in the afternoon, when she was lonely, she climbed the hill and looked after the little plot in which lay the grave of her father.  She remembered her mother but vaguely:  as a beautiful vision, blurred by the years; but her father was clear in her memory.  His smile, his cheeriness, his devotion to her remained with her.  And the memory of him who had been her friend in her childhood came to her sometimes, saddening her, till she would arouse herself and by an effort banish him from her thoughts.

Often when she went up to the cemetery she would see others there:  women in black, with a fresher sorrow than hers; and sometimes the squire, who was beginning now to grow feeble and shaky with age, would be sitting on a bench among the shrubbery beside a grave on which he had placed flowers.  The grave was Phrony’s.  Once he spoke to her of Wickersham.  He had brought a suit against the old man, claiming that he had a title to all of the latter’s property.  The old fellow was greatly stirred up by it.  He denounced him furiously.

“He has robbed me of her,” he said “Let him beware.  If he ever comes across my path I shall kill him.”

So the Winter passed, and Spring was beginning to come.  Its harbingers, in their livery of red and green, were already showing on the hillsides.  The redbud was burning on the Southern slopes; the turf was springing, fresh and green; dandelions were dappling the grass like golden coins sown by a prodigal; violets were beginning to peep from the shelter of leaves caught along the fence-rows; and some favored peach-trees were blushing into pink.

For some reason the season made Lois sad.  Was it that it was Nature’s season for mating; the season for Youth to burst its restraining bonds and blossom into love?  She tried to fight the feeling, but it clung to her.  Dr Balsam, watching her with quickened eyes, grew graver, and prescribed a tonic.  Once he had spoken to her of Keith, and she had told him that he was to marry Mrs. Lancaster.  But the old man had made a discovery.  And he never spoke to her of him again.