end to their coming by going home. He had grown content with his surroundings; like a thistle seed that had been blown hither and thither through the air is at last forced into the ground and rooted. He had drifted about and settled at length in this little hut in California. Here, undisturbed, he had dreamt his dreams and modelled and remodelled his wax, always making shapes of some intended masterpiece, and breaking it up as soon as finished in despair, only to start as hopefully in a day or so again. So his evenings passed, and with the long letters from Mollie he felt he had still the sweet companionship he had never known what it was to have been without. The daytime of the years he spent in fruit-gathering for any one who would have his work. Thus he managed to save a little money, and, with luck unusual to him, saved enough to buy a tiny farm for himself; and on it was the little log hut he now sat in. He had almost made up his mind to sell out again and start for home,—the last letter of Mollie's filled him with a vague fear,—but another letter had come by the same post from his sister, asking him to take charge of a ne'er-do-well son.
