Diane of the Green Van

Two steps at a time, Wherry bounded up to his room. When he returned he was in better spirits than he had been for months.

"Come on, Carl," he exclaimed boyishly. "I'll walk down any gale to-night. And Allan says we're in for a blizzard."

Breasting the biting gale, the two men swung out through the snowy lane to the roadway.

Carl watched his companion in silence. It was a test--this wind--to see how much of a man had been made from the flabby, drunken wreck he had dragged to the Glade Farm weeks ago with a masterful command. It had been a bitter fight, with days of heavy sullenness on Wherry's part and swift apology when the mood was gone, days of hard riding and walking, of icy plunges after a racking grind of exercise for which Carl himself with his splendid strength inexorably set the pace, days of fierce rebellion when he had calmly thrashed his suffering young guest into submission and locked him in his room, days of horrible choking remorse and pleading when Carl had grimly turned away from the pitiful wreck Starrett had made of his clever young secretary.

Once Starrett had motored up officiously to bully Wherry into coming back to him. Carl smiled. Starrett had stumbled back to his waiting motor with a broken rib and a bruised and swollen face. Starrett was a coward--he would not come again.

Carl glanced again at Wherry. It was a man who walked beside him to-night. The battle was over. Chin up, shoulders squared against the bitter wind, he walked with the free, full stride of health and new endurance, tossing the snow from his dark, heavy hair with a laugh. There was clear red in his face and his eyes were shining.

Five miles in the teeth of a sleety blizzard and every muscle ached with the fight.

"Dick," said Carl suddenly, "I'm proud of you."

Wherry swung sturdily on his heel.

"But you won for me, Carl," he said quietly. "I'll not forget that."

In silence they tramped back through the heavy drifts to the farmhouse and left their snowy coats in the great warm kitchen where the Carmodys--old Allan and young Allan, young, shy, pretty Mary and old Mary, the sole winter servants of the Glade--were mulling cider over a red-hot stove.

By the fire in the sitting room Dick faced his host with hot color in his face.

"Carl," he said with an effort, "my letter to-night--it's from a girl up home in Vermont. I--I've never spoken of her before--I wasn't fit--"

"Yes?" said Carl.

"She's a little bit of a girl with wonderful eyes," said Wherry, his eyes gentle. "We used to play a lot by the brook, Carl, until I went away to college and forgot. I--I wrote her the whole wretched mess," he choked. "She says come back."