"There will be knaves and fools enough who will try and put the idea of our using him into his simple heart without that.

No! Let him do as he likes with it--but let him be himself.

I'd rather have him come back to us even after he's lost the money--his old self and empty-handed--than try to change the stuff God put into him and make him more like others." The tone and manner were so different from Demorest's usual levity that Stacy was silent.

After a pause he said: "Well! we shall miss him on the hillside--won't we ?" Demorest did not reply.

Reaching out his hand abstractedly, he wrenched off a small slip from a sapling near him, and began slowly to pull the leaves off, one by one, until they were all gone.