“You bet I’ll drop over often!” George replied, as he climbed excitedly into his Ford.  “I want to see more of those milking machines!  We’re going to have ’em some day ourselves!  A dynamo too!”

And at home, down by the ruined mill he again set about rebuilding the dam.

Roger felt himself growing stronger.  His sleeps were sound, and his appetite had come back to a surprising degree.  The mountain air had got into his blood and George’s warm vigor into his soul.  One afternoon, watching the herd come home, some thirty huge animals swinging along with a slow heavy power in their limbs, he breathed the strong sweet scent of them on the mountain breeze.  George came running by them and stopped a moment by Roger’s side, watching closely and eagerly every animal as it passed.  And Roger glanced at George’s face.  The herd passed on and George followed behind, his collie dog leaping and barking beside him.  And Roger looked up at a billowy cloud resting on a mountain top and wondered whether after all that New York doctor had been right.

He followed the herd into the barn.  In two long rows, the great heads of the cattle turned hungrily, lowing and sniffing deep, breathing harshly, stamping, as the fodder cart came down the lines.  What a splendidly wholesome work for a lad, growing up with his roots in the soil, in these massive simple forces of life.  What of Edith’s other children?  Would they be willing to stay here long?  Each morning Roger breakfasted with Bruce the baby by his side.  “What a thing for you, little lad,” he thought, “if you could live here all your days.  But will you?  Will you want to stay?  Won’t you, too, get the fever, as I did, for the city?” In the joyous, shining, mysterious eyes of the baby he found no reply.  He had many long talks with Betsy, who was eager to go away to school, and with Bob and little Tad who were going to school in the village that fall.  And the feeling came to Roger that surely he would see these lives, at least for many years ahead.  They were so familiar and so real, so fresh and filled with hopes and dreams.  And he felt himself so a part of them all.

But one morning, climbing the steep upper field to a spring George wanted to show him, Roger suddenly swayed, turned faint.  He caught hold of a boulder on the wall and held himself rigid, breathing hard.  It passed, and he looked at his grandson.  But George had noticed nothing.  The boy had turned and his brown eyes were fixed on a fallow field below.  Wistfully Roger watched his face.  They both stood motionless for a long time.

As the summer drew slowly to a close, Roger spent many quiet hours alone by the copse of birches, where the glory of autumn was already stealing in and out among the tall slender stems of the trees.  And he thought of the silent winter there, and of the spring which would come again, and the long fragrant summer.  And he watched the glow on the mountains above and the rolling splendors of the clouds.