Diane of the Green Van

As the dusty wanderers wound slowly down into southern Georgia on a mild bright day, a December snow storm broke with flake and flurry over the Westfall farm. Whirling, crooning, pirouetting, the mad white ghost swept down from the hills and hurled itself with a rattle of shutters and stiffened boughs against the frozen valley. By nightfall the wind was wailing eerily through the chimneys; but the checkerboard panes of light one glimpsed through the trees of the Westfall lane were bright and cheery.

In the comfortable sitting room of the farmhouse, Carl rose and drew the shades, added a log to the great, open fireplace and glanced humorously at his companion who was industriously playing Canfield.

"Well, Dick," said he, "on with your overcoat. Now that supper's done, we've a tramp ahead of us."

Wherry rebelled.

"Oh, Lord, Carl!" he exclaimed. "Hear the wind!" He rose and drew aside the shade. "The lane's thick with snow. Heavens, man, it's no night for a tramp. Allan's coming in with the mail and he looks like a snow man."

"You promised," reminded Carl inexorably. "How long since you've had a drink, Dick?"

"Nine weeks!" said Wherry, his boyish face kindling suddenly with pride.

"And your eyes and skin are clear and you're lean and hard as a race horse. But what a fight! What a fight!" Carl slipped his arm suddenly about the other's broad shoulders. "Come on, Dick," he urged gently. "It's discipline and endurance to-night. I want you to fight this icy wind and grit your teeth against it. Every battle won makes a force furrow in your will."

He met Wherry's eyes and smiled with a flash of the irresistible magnetism which somehow awoke unconscious response in those who beheld it. It flamed now in Wherry's clear young eyes, a look of dumb fidelity such as one sees now and then in the eyes of a faithful animal. Such a look had flashed at times in the bloated face of Hunch Dorrigan, in the eyes of young Allan Carmody here at the farm, and--in early manhood when Carl had lazily set a college by the ears--in the eyes of Philip Poynter. It was the nameless force which the faculty had dreaded, for it sent men flocking at the heels of one whose daring whims were as incomprehensible as they were unexpected and original.

Young Allan brought the mail in and Carl smilingly tossed a letter to Wherry, who colored and slipped it in his pocket with an air of studied indifference.

Carl slit the two directed to himself and rapidly scanned their contents. One was from Ann Sherrill jogging his memory about a promise to come to Palm Beach in January, the other from Aunt Agatha, whose trip to her cousin's in Indiana Carl had encouraged with a great flood of relief, for it had made possible this nine weeks with Wherry at the Glade Farm.