The Able McLaughlins
from the memory. He wouldn't even think of those things to spoil his few days at home. He gave himself up to the persuasive peace around him. He rode along, completely, unreasonably happy. He began to sing. Singing, he remembered Allen. How was it that he was here singing, and Allen, the singer, was dead! But the afternoon's glow took away soon even the bitterness of that question.
He came presently in sight of the McNairs' cabin. Though every other man of the neighborhood had been able, thanks to the wartime price of wheat, to build for his family a more decent shelter than the first one, that Alex McNair, fairly crazy with land-hunger, added acre to acre, regardless of his family's needs. Such a man Wully scorned with all the arrogance of youth. He had, moreover, understood and shared something of his mother's pity for her beloved friend, McNair's wife. He remembered distinctly that when his parents had been leaving the Ayrshire home for America, Jeannie had put into his hand a poke of sweeties to be divided by him among the other children during the journey. That had been a happy farewell, because Jeannie and her five were soon to follow. But when the ten flourishing McLaughlins again saw Jeannie on this side of the water, of her five there remained only her little Chirstie, and a baby boy. The bodies of the other three she had seen thrown out of the smallpox-smitten ship which the feasting sharks were following. Since then she
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