“There is some reason for all this distress that I am unable to discover,” she said.  “Joyce, maybe if you would go in and talk to her you might find out.”

“She must be lots worse than we were,” whispered Eugenia to Lloyd, as the high, shrill voice, so unlike Betty’s usual tones, went on complainingly in the next room.

“Hush!” warned Lloyd.  “She’s telling Joyce what the matter is.”  The words came out to them distinctly.  She was speaking with a nervous quickness as if her fever had almost reached delirium.

“I was trying to dig one of those roads,” wailed Betty, in a high, querulous voice.  “One that would last for ever, don’t you know? like the one they built for Tusitala.  You do know, don’t you?” she insisted, feverishly, but Joyce had to acknowledge that she had never heard of it, and Betty cried again, because she felt too nervous and ill to explain.

“There, there! never mind!” said Joyce, soothingly, thinking that Betty’s mind was wandering.  “You can tell me all about it when you get well.”

“But I want you to know now!” sobbed Betty, with all the unreasoning impatience of a sick child.  “It is all in my ‘Good times book.’  I cut it out of an old Youth’s Companion, just after I came, and the piece is inside the cover of that little white and gold book in the writing-desk.  Read it, won’t you?  Then you will understand.”

Joyce took the slip of paper to the window, and glanced rapidly along the lines.

“No, read it aloud!” demanded Betty, fretfully.  “I want to hear it, too.  It is such a sweet story, and I read it over every day to help me remember.”

Mrs. Sherman and the girls, sitting outside the door, leaned forward to listen, as Joyce read aloud the newspaper clipping that Betty counted among her chief treasures.  This is what they heard: 

“THE ROAD OF THE LOVING HEART."[1]

“Remembering the great love of his highness, Tusitala, and his loving care when we were in prison and sore distressed, we have prepared him an enduring present, this road which we have dug for ever.”

* * * * *

In a far-off island, thousands of miles from the mainland, and unconnected with the world by cable, stands this inscription.  It was set up at the corner of a new road, cut through a tropical jungle, and bears at its head the title of this article, signed by the names of ten prominent chiefs.  This is the story of the road, and why it was built: 

Some years ago a Scotchman, broken in health and expecting an early death, sought out this lonely spot, because here the climate was favourable to the disease from which he suffered.  He settled here for what remained to him of life.

He bought an estate of several hundred acres, and threw himself earnestly into the life of the natives of the island.  There was great