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 IGHT years mark vital changes in the individuals who make up the population of a community, but leave little effect upon the community itself. It was so with Rainbow. Arrivals, departures, graying hairs and maturities modified the entity which was Rainbow very little indeed. Eight years! Eight years had passed since the town, being what it was, had driven out Angus Burke, and, continuing to be what it was, Angus was all but forgotten save by the few whose lives were linked by chains of affection with his own.

Dave Wilkins was older, yet it was difficult for those who saw him daily to trace the imprint of the years upon his lean, often melancholy, ironic face. Craig Browning was older, more responsible, had, indeed, become the head of a family, and Mary Trueman, as was inevitable from the first, was his wife. Jethro Canfield was gone, and that severe, family-worshiping, splendid woman who had shared his years lay beside him in that acre of God which knows