“We’ll be back in a few weeks, and then I’ll show you what I learned in Argentina.  We have to hurry now to get across the valley.  Some of the fine sheep over at Plunkett’s are down with foot rash, and I want to be there by noon.  Luck to you all.”  With these words Pan led me around the corner of the house, through the old garden, and out into the woods, Mr. G. Bird still following at the smock-pocket.

“We’ll have to go back and lock him up; he’ll follow me,” I said, as I paused and took the Golden Bird’s proud head in my hand and let him peck at a dull gold circle on my third finger, which, I am sure, Pan himself had hammered out of a nugget for me.

“No, let’s take him.  I want to show him over at Plunkett’s and then in Providence and Hillsboro, to grade up their poultry.  I doubt if there’s his equal in America,” answered Pan as he went on ahead of me to break the undergrowth into which he was leading me underneath the huge old trees.

“I didn’t write you to let that fool Belgian prune the whole place like that,” Pan remarked as we paused at old Tilting Rock and looked down upon the orderly and repaired Elmnest in the sunset glow.

“Write?” I murmured weakly, while my mind accused Uncle Cradd, and rightly too, as I learned later after a search in his pockets.

“Wasn’t any use sending any letter after that New Orleans one, because I traveled on the return trip all the way myself.  Still you did pretty well to get the wedding and all ready at the hour I set, even if you did make that awful flummery mistake.  I’ll forgive you even that after I get over the shock of seeing you look that way.”

“The hour you set?” I again murmured a weak question.

“I thought of writing you to get ready by nine o’clock in the morning, but I knew I’d have to stop in Hayesville for that bit of red tape, so I said five o’clock and had to hustle to make it.  I knew you’d be ready.  Now you’ll have to travel, for we have five miles to go and it takes the pot two hours to simmer.  Are you hungry?”

I hadn’t the strength to answer.  I had just enough to pad along behind at his heels with Mr. G. Bird at mine.  However, as I padded, I suddenly felt return that strength of ten women which I had put from me the morning I fled from the empty Elmnest, and I knew that it had come upon me to abide.

I needed every bit of the energy of ten ordinary women to keep up with Pan’s commands, as I helped him make camp beside a cool spring that bubbled out of a rock in a little cove that was swung high up on the side of Paradise Ridge.  I washed the bundle of greens he had brought to the wedding and set them to simmer with the inevitable black walnut kernels in a pot that he produced from under a log in the edge of the woods, along with a couple of earthen bowls like the ones he kept secreted in the spring-house at Elmnest.