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THEN I'LL COME BACK TO YOU

by

LARRY EVANS

Author of
Once to Every Man

Illustrated by Will Stevens







[Frontispiece: "I Ain't Never Seen Nothin'," He Stated Patiently.  "I
Ain't Never Seen More'n Three Houses in a Clearin' Before.  I Ain't
Never Been Outen the Timber--Till To-Day.  But I Aim to See More
Now--Before I Get Done."]




New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
Copyright, 1915, by
The H. K. Fly Company.
Copyright, 1915, by
The Metropolitan Magazine Company.




To the Memory of

My Mother




CONTENTS.


Chapter

     I. I DON'T MIND IF I DO!
    II. THE LOGICAL CUSTODIAN
   III. THREE QUARTERS AND SIX EIGHTHS
    IV. I'LL TELL HER YOU'RE A BAPTIST
     V. THEN I'LL COME BACK TO YOU
    VI. MY MAN O'MARA
   VII. HARRIGAN, THAT'S ME!
  VIII. GREETINGS, SIR GALLAHAD!
    IX. A MATTER OF ORNITHOLOGY
     X. NOT A CHANCE IN THE WORLD
    XI. I NEVER DID LIKE TO BE BEATEN
   XII. THAT WOODS-RAT
  XIII. THIS LITERARY THING
   XIV. A GIRL LIKE HER
    XV. LAW AND LUMBER
   XVI. ACCIDENTS WILL HAPPEN
  XVII. HONEY!
 XVIII. I'M TELLING YOU GOOD-BYE
   XIX. SOME LETTERS AND A REPLY
    XX. BLUE FLANNEL AND CORDUROY
   XXI. SETTING THE STAGE
  XXII. IT HAPPENS IN BOOKS
 XXIII. TO-MORROW--
  XXIV. --AND TO-MORROW, AND TO-MORROW
   XXV. IN REAL LIFE TOO




ILLUSTRATIONS


"I Ain't Never Seen Nothin'," He Stated Patiently.  "I Ain't Never Seen
More'n Three Houses in a Clearin' Before.  I Ain't Never Been Outen the
Timber--Till To-Day.  But I Aim to See More Now--Before I Get
Done."...... _Frontispiece_

"I've Always Had to Wait a Long Time for Everything I've Wanted," the
Boy Answered, "But I Always Get It, Just the Same, if I Only Want it
Hard Enough."

"Blessings, My Children," He Called to the Two in the Shadow.  "My
Felicitations! and E'en though I know Not Your Identity, Still I May
Sense Your Fond Confusion."

"Oh, I Can't Tell You How Glad I Am to See You So--So Well!"




THEN I'LL COME BACK TO YOU


CHAPTER I

I DON'T MIND IF I DO!

That year no rain had fallen for a score of days in the hill country.
The valley road that wound upward and still upward from the town of
Morrison ran a ribbon of puffy yellow dust between sun-baked,
brown-sodded dunes; ran north and north, a tortuous series of loops on
loops, to lose itself at last in the cooler promise of the first
bulwark of the mountains.  They looked cooler, the distant wooded
hills; for all the shimmering heat waves that danced and eddied in the
gaps and glanced, shaft-like, from the brittle needles of the pines
which sentineled the ridges, they hinted at depths to which the sun's
rays could not penetrate; they hinted at chasms padded with moss,
shadowed and dim beneath chapel arches of spruce and hemlock, even
chilly with the spray of spring-fed brooks that brawled in miniature
rocky canyons.  And they made the gasping heat of the valley a little
more unendurable by very contrast.

Since early afternoon Caleb Hunter had been sitting almost immobile in
the shade of the trellis which flanked the deep verandas of his huge
white, thick-pillared house on the hill above the river.  It was
reminiscent of another locality--the old Hunter place on the valley
road.  When Caleb Hunter's father had come north, back when his loyalty
to a flag and his pity for a gaunt and lonely figure in the White House
had been stronger than bonds of blood, he had left its counterpart down
on the Tennessee.  Afterward, with one empty sleeve