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Show ',-' -'tf-'f-'f. b'.wn- t-i... ..... ,. , ... ... .., !.,.,. . Julia McFarlane had done all that. Born a McFarlane and married mar-ried to a distant cousin of the same name, she had dragged the old place back from desuetude alone, except for the fumbling, peppery encouragement of old John I. McFarlane. Mc-Farlane. Julia was slender and calm and merry, but Indomitable with it, and for a long time, longer than he liked to reckon, Dave Patterson Pat-terson knew that he had been in love with her. Not that he had let her know. To Dooley he was good old Dave, whose farm and handsome old brick house had been swallowed up by the encroaching power project, who was a big bewildered now, uprooted uproot-ed from the land that Pattersons had farmed for generations, trying to find himself again by running a bank and not being very happy at It. He was forty-seven and thinning on top, and one knee was stiff so the army would not have him, and his first wife had been dead for so long that her memory had faded to a small, silvery shadow. He crossed the porch and opened a french door without knocking, and instantly a young man in the tan .lllllll j 'ill , V 3 Julia (IJooley) Mrf-'ariane's husband, Richard, disappeared in World War I, leaving her with two children. She and her father-in-law, John I. McFarlane, have tried In vain to Hnd some trace o! Richard, either dead or alive. Twenty-live Twenty-live years later Rlc Is 21 and servlnj In the army of World War II while Jill, 21), professes an Interest In Spans Cordon, a young lieutenant. Julia still cllnes to the belief that Richard may yet be alive and refuses to have him declared legally dead. Her greatest worry Is that her daughter might marry Bpang, thus becoming an army wife, subject to the same grief she has endured en-dured for a quarter of a century without with-out word of Richard. CHAPTER II Julia twisted her hands together. togeth-er. "John I.," she began abruptly, "Ric didn't have a furlough when he came home. He traded for some other man's pass. Jill told me." The old man's mustache twitched. "I suppose If they put him in the guard-house you'd send him a fruitcake fruit-cake with a file in it!" "If they put him in the guardhouse guard-house his chances for a commission are gone." "Might be a good thing. Being a buck private might be good for him." He stood up, glared down at her fiercely. "Dooley, you spoiled that boy!" "I know," Julia said heavily, "but he was all I had! He needed me. Jill, didn't. She was always self-sufficient, self-sufficient, like you." '"She's a McFarlane. The Mc-Farlancs Mc-Farlancs stand on their own feet. But that young Richard he's another an-other " "Don't say it, John I.," Julia begged, pain in her eyes. "We've put that bitterness away. Don't let ' It come alive again." j "But it is coming alive again, whether you want it or not. I've seen it for years. I warned you i that that boy was growing up like his father." "I was his mother," Julia re- minded him. y "I've heard that, tool" Anger, ' swift and dark, rode the old man's face. He rose and towered, though he was four inches shorter than she. "For years I heard that. And I wasn't strong enough to defeat it. So now this thing starts all over again. Here's another McFarlane wearing the uniform of his country and wearing no honor with it! Julia smiled dryly, without mirth. "Do I hear a big wind blowing? Who hid the switches, I'd like to know, when he was little, when I'd v cut stout ones and laid down the J. law? Who sneaked upstairs with suckers and gingerbread? You needn't roar, John I., I know you like a book." "Dooley," he said grimly, "no matter what you say, I'm going to court next term and file that paper. I've listened to you long enough. You've got a right to a life of your own, and I'm going to see that you have it." Julia's face drained swiftly, and out of the whiteness her eyes were embers. "No. No, John I., I won't let you do it." He twisted his mouth. "You can't stop me if I want to do it" Julia's voice came, hoarse and thin. "I think I can stop you. And 1 I will!" I "He's been gone twenty-five years. If he were legally dead, everything would be cleared up. You're a fool a weak, sentimental fool!" "All right," she sighed, "I'm a fool. Leave it like that, John I." She walked away, setting her boots down firmly. John I. watched her go, frowning. frown-ing. A beautiful woman, a fine woman, too good for that worthless man she had married, the man who had been his own son. "I'll do it anyway!" he said aloud. Then he leaned back and thumbed tobacco into his pipe. Dave Patterson rode his horse slowly across the great dam. On his right the power lake slept, silvery sil-very and flat under the stars, a skittish young bass flinging himself as an offering to the frail platinum moon and falling back to mint great coins of shadowy quicksilver. A Remarkable Woman Is Julia At the lower end of the lane young pigs got up and skittered away hysterically hys-terically when the horse snorted at them. Every fence post glistened white, and beyond the wire the dew shone on rectangular roofs of rows of low houses. The homely farm smell was definite now, the mixture of pigs and hay and froggy cattle-pond cattle-pond that gave Dave a feeling of nostalgia. A naked bulb burned above a trate, shadowed by dark old trees, and Dave got down and tied his horse, opened the gate and passing through closed it carefully, walking across the shorn, ' quiet grass to the house. Behind high windows soft lights glowed, and the house itself loomed starkly white under the aged trees. Dave remembered the way it had looked not so long ago. Old and fadi-d, the mortar melting sadly from between the tired bricks, a little Hhclf of a porch with spindly railing nailing. Now it was pil-k pil-k l;in;rf and restored and proud, with J a Bw?':p of drive between Ivied I U;n: r"'U and the faniight above I the i'i;r tfl'-arnlnii was down here alone hating me for being so slow." "Are you Spang?" Dave asked. "I'm Spang. They hung that era me at college. You'll excuse us, sir, if we take off?" Jill said, "We have to drive the station-wagon. It has plenty of B gas in it, but Dooley says to remember re-member that the tires have to last all winter." Spang took her elbow with a proud, proprietary air. "Good night, sir. Glad to have seen you." "You look very decorative, you two," Dave approved. "The military mili-tary is at its best with something fluffy alongside." "More pleasing to the eye, no doubt," Spang amended, "but not quite so effective as an oxygen mask and parachute. I hope you know where this dance is. Remember Remem-ber I'm a country boy from down the Delta. I could get lost mighty easy in these hills." "Jill knows every hill," Dave told him. "I should! I've hunted chinquapins chinqua-pins on them and got chiggers on practically all of them." "Have fun, kids." Dave went through the hall to the foot of the stairs. There he intoned in a firm, carrying voice, "I could just sit here and talk to myself. Or I could go home. Oh, hello, Dooley. I thought maybe you'd gone to bed." Julia leaned over the banister. "At nine o'clock? I don't do that any more. I wake up at two a. m. and think too much. I'll be down in a minute." She came presently, trailing a flowered chintz housegown. Her hair was roughened, her eyes looked a little shadowed. "This Is my sixth change of costume for today," she sighed as she dropped into a chair. "When are you going to ease off this strenuous business? And what you need is a drink." "Not tonight, Dave. It stimulates me too much. I can't sleep. But fix one for yourself and you can make one for John I., too. He'll be in presently. No ice for him he hates having it bump against his mustache. As for this strenuous life, it won't be over soon, I fear. They put Foster's boy into One A today. I argued that he was essential, es-sential, that we had to raise food for our army, but old Mr. Corbett you know, how pig-headed he is and always stiff with the letter of the law asked me if I wanted to keep this farm for my children or let the Nazis have it." Dave went to the kitchen, came back presently with two tall glasses. "So you revised your decision about letting Jill run around with the army?" he said. "What can I do, Dave? She's a grown woman. I can't put her in a convent. She has to have fun. She's twenty-six years old. Sounds incredible, doesn't it? The span between two wars. Richard's last leave before he went over, and I was so young and so heart-torn and so terribly in love and so unhappy with it. I can't believe that that agonized, nineteen - year - old thing was I! Two babies, and no home, no husband, nothing till you came and found me, and John I. brought me back here. I don't want anything like that for Jill. ' I don't want that loneliness for her, sitting at home, watching the mail, waiting, wait-ing, freezing with dread every time a messenger comes down the street. And I don't want her to have what I've had for twenty-five years silence! si-lence! Not even to know, not to be certain whether it was quite right either to grieve or to be resigned. re-signed. But what can I do?" "Nothing," Dave agreed. "We can't live other people's lives for them. No matter how much we love them. I'd like to live your life differently, if I could." "But I like my life. What's wrong with it?" "It's empty. Oh, I know what you're going to say. You've crowded crowd-ed it full of work and responsibility. You've raised Ric and Jill, and taken tak-en care of John I. and a few hundred hun-dred pigs. You've made this farm a success, but what does it get you, Dooley you, personaDy?" "It gets me just that, Dave. Success. Suc-cess. What else is there what else beside accomplishment? Work that is of value, to me and to the world. What else is there?" Dave Has His Little Secret Dave could have said, "There's love, Dooley." But he knew he would not say it. Sometimes he was certain, wearily, that he would never say it. He had loved Dooley for so long but even now, after a span of 25 uncertain years he had never mentioned men-tioned it to her because he knew instinctively in-stinctively she would have drawn herself into a shell and their friendship, friend-ship, which had come to mean so much to both of them, would have become strained, possibly even ended. end-ed. He said, "Sometimes I think you're a wonderful woman, Dooley. And then there are times when I'm convinced that you're a sentimental sentimen-tal idiot. Twenty-five years and not a word, and still you won't give up." (TO BE CONTINUED) II "I could get lost mighty easy In these hills." breeches and olive-drab blouse of the Air Corps, with a silver bar on his shoulder, jumped to his feet. A dark young man, his hair cut short and disciplined with difficulty, with a good pair of honest blue eyes. "Hello," Dave said, "I thought you were Ric at first. I thought he must have got his shoulder-hardware mighty quick." "How do you do, sir?" The soldier sol-dier showed very white teeth in a quick smile. "I'm Spencer Gordon. I used to be a friend of Ric's before be-fore the war." When Old Friends Get Together "Before you got those?" Dave grinned and indicated the silver bars. "Now, no friendship with men in the ranks, eh? Old military protocol. pro-tocol. I'm Dave Patterson. Lived on the next place till the TVA drowned me out. So you're in the air, are you?" "Not now. They grounded me for a while to teach aerodynamics in T.S. that's technical school, sir. But I have my wings, and I hope to be back in the air before long." "I assume you're here to see Jill?" "Yes." Young Gordon flushed. "I met Jill at Ridley Field two weeks ago, but Ric and I were in college together. Seems like a century ago. We're going to some dance, I think." "Met Jill's mother yet?" "Yes, sir, she's upstairs helping Jill dress. I met the grandfather, too. He's out somewhere now tending tend-ing a sick pig." "A sick pig is a catastrophe on this place. The McFarlanes raise the finest hogs in Tennessee." "My people were farmers, too. Mississippi. Cotton mostly. But my father and mother died when I was very young." "What's Ric doing now?" Dave asked. "Is he going to try for the cadet corps?" "He washed out, I think some minor point or other. Now he's trying try-ing for officer's school, so I hear. I don't see him often. That's a big post down there, and you rarely hear much about a man unless he's in your own squadron." Young Gordon Gor-don stopped abruptly as heels clicked on the polished stairs. In 'the big mirror in the hall Dave could see the reflection of Jill coming com-ing down. She paused at the door, and Dave saw the young lieutenant's throat twitch and his eyes glow as he sprang to his feet. Jill was the prettiest thing alive, Dave decided but not beautiful as Julia was. Jill said. "Hello. Dave. I didn't hear you come In. I thought Spang |