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wouldn't say hard, Uncle Paddy, but everything changed after Mother and Da died."
    "Poor little Dee, such a wee thing to be losing so much."
    "I thought my world had ended when they died," she whispered, hardly aware she was speaking aloud. "I'm thinking I died myself for a time, so angry and frightened I was, then numb, feeling nothing. But I began remembering how they were together. No two people could have loved each other more. Such a fine, full loving they had, even a child could see it."
    So engrossed were the man and woman in the words being spoken that neither heard the sound of feet climbing the stairs. Travis halted in his action of knocking, dropping his hand as he watched the poignant picture, and Adelia's words drifted through the screen.
    "The only thing I could give them was the farm, and it was all I had left of them. Poor Aunt Let-tie, she worked so hard, and I was a constant cross for her to bear." She laughed as memory flickered through her mind. "She never could understand why I had to ride so fast. 'Sure and it's your neck you'll be breaking,' she used to call after me, shaking her fist. 'Who'll be helping with the plowing if you bash in your head on the road?' Then when I'd have one of my rages and go off shouting and cursing-and it's often, I'm afraid I did just that-she'd cross herself and start praying for my doomed soul.
    "Takers, but we worked." With a long breath she shut her eyes. "But it was too much for one woman and a half-grown girl, and not enough money to hire help, and none to be made without it. Do you know how it is, Uncle Paddy, when you see the thing you need, but the closer you get the further away it is? Always moving away from you, always just out of your reach. Sometimes, when I look back, I can't tell one day from the rest. Then Aunt Lettie had that stroke, and how she hated to be lying there helpless day after day."
    "Why did you never let me know how things were?" Paddy questioned, looking down at her dark head. "I could have helped you-sent you money, or come back myself."
    She raised her head and smiled at him. "Aye, that's just what you would have done, and to what good? Throwing your money away, taking yourself from the life you'd chosen- I'd not have had that for a minute, and neither would Aunt Lettie, or Mother and Da. The farm's gone, just as they are, and so is Ireland. Now I have you, I'm not needing another thing."
    Looking into his eyes, seeing the concern and regret written there, she wished suddenly she had kept her own counsel. "How is it, Padrick Cunnane, that a fine, handsome man like yourself never took a wife?" Her grin turned impish, and devils danced in her eyes. "There must have been dozens of ladies willing. Have you never found a woman to love?"
    He touched her cheek, giving her a wistful smile. "Aye, lass, that I did, but she chose your father."
    Deep green eyes filled with surprise that melted into sympathy. "Oh, Uncle Paddy!" She flung her arms around him, and Travis turned from the door and walked silently down the stairs.
    The next morning the air seemed to sigh with spring, whispering promises of flowers and cool, leafy trees. To Adelia it brought memories of other springs.
    Spring was the time the earth asked to be replenished and grew pregnant with new life. Her world had always revolved around the earth, its gifts and hardships, its demands and promises.
    From the balcony of Paddy's house she surveyed the land that was Travis's. It seemed to stretch on and on with the easy, gentle roll of a calm sea. Green and brown waves were dotted, not with boats, but with finely sculptured Thoroughbreds. It ran through her mind that she had no conception of what lay over the last hill. This land was still a stranger. From the moment of her arrival in America she had seen little else but what belonged to Travis Grant.
    Over the pure, sweet air floated an occasional whinny or the quick call of a bird. But for this, there was silence. There was no strident call of