!["'To-morrow,' he replied, 'and all the to-morrows!'" [Page 334.]](https://oldbook.b-cdn.net/kitaplar/6/pg58680-h/images/img-front.jpg)
"'To-morrow,' he replied, 'and all the to-morrows!'" [Page 334.]
The
LAND of CONTENT
BY
EDITH BARNARD DELANO
THOMAS LANGTON
TORONTO
1913
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1911-1912. by S. H. Moore Co.
Printed in the United States of America
To J.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"'To-morrow,' he replied, 'and all the to-morrows!'" … Frontispiece
"One thing after another came back to her"
"A small crowd gathered in an incredibly short time"
"It was Rosamund whose eyes smiled into his"
The LAND of CONTENT
I
It was earliest spring, and almost the close of a daywhose sunshine and warmth had coaxed intobloom many timid roadside flowers, and sent thewhite petals of farmyard cherries trembling to earthlike tiny, belated snowfalls. Already the rays of thesetting sun were gilding the open space on the top ofthe mountain where ridge-road and turnpike meet.The ridge-road was only one of the little mountainby-ways that wind through woods and up and downdale as the necessities of the mountain people wearthem; the turnpike was an ancient artery connectingNorth and South, threading cities and villages andfarms along its length like trophies on a chain. Theshy windings of the mountain road knew nothingmore modern than the doctor's vehicle drawn byWhite Rosy, nothing more exciting than the littlecompanies of armed, silent men who tramped over itby night, or crossed it stealthily by day; but along thepike coaches and motor cars pounded and rolled, anda generation or so earlier an army had swung northwardover it in pride and hope and eagerness, to driftsouthward again, a few days later, with only prideleft. If, after that, the part of the old road that ledfrom the plain up to the higher valley seemed to liein a torpor, as if stunned by the agony of that retreat,none the less it remained one of the strong warpthreads in Fate's fabric.
Yet Destiny chooses her own disguises. A sickbaby had kept John Ogilvie on a sleepless vigil in thebackwoods for the past fifty hours; and it was not theview from the crossroads, nor the doctor's habit ofdrawing rein to look out upon it for a moment or two,that made old Rosy stop there on this spring afternoon.It was nothing more than a particularly lusciouspatch of green by the roadside, and the consciousnessof her long climb having earned such a reward.Rosy was an animal of experience and judgment, wellaccustomed to the ways of her master, knowing aswell as he the houses where he stopped, capable oftaking him home unguided from anywhere, as shewould take him home this afternoon in her own goodtime. She had come thus far unguided; for when thesick child's even breathing told the success of hisefforts, John Ogilvie had almost stumbled out of thecabin and in