Mrs. Whittle cautiously wiped the dust from her hard red cheeks.

"My! if it ain't hot," she observed. "You're so fleshy, Abby, I should think you'd feel it something terrible."

"Oh, I don't know," said Mrs. Daggett placidly. "Of course I'm fleshy, Ann; I ain't denying that; but so be you. You don't want to think about the heat so constant, Ann. Our thermometer fell down and got broke day before yesterday, and Henry says 'I'll bring you up another from the store this noon.' But he forgot all about it. I didn't say a word, and that afternoon I set out on the porch under the vines and felt real cool—not knowing it was so hot—when along comes Mrs. Fulsom, a-pantin' and fannin' herself. 'Good land, Abby!' says she; 'by the looks, a body'd think you didn't know the thermometer had risen to ninety-two since eleven o'clock this morning.' 'I didn't,' I says placid; 'our thermometer's broke.' 'Well, you'd better get another right off,' says she, wiping her face and groaning. 'It's an awful thing, weather like this, not to have a thermometer right where you can see it.' Henry brought a real nice one home from the store that very night; and I hung it out of sight behind the sitting room door; I told Henry I thought 'twould be safer there."

"That sounds exactly like you, Abby," commented Mrs. Whittle censoriously. "I should think Henry Daggett would be onto you, by now."

"Well, he ain't," said Mrs. Daggett, with mild triumph. "He thinks I'm real cute, an' like that. It does beat all, don't it? how simple menfolks are. I like 'em all the better for it, myself. If Henry'd been as smart an' penetrating as some folks, I don't know as we'd have made out so well together. Ain't it lucky for me he ain't?"

Ann Whittle sniffed suspiciously. She never felt quite sure of Abby Daggett: there was a lurking sparkle in her demure blue eyes and a suspicious dimple near the corner of her mouth which ruffled Mrs. Whittle's temper, already strained to the breaking point by the heat and dust of their midday journey.

"Well, I never should have thought of such a thing, as going to Ladies' Aid in all this heat, if you hadn't come after me, Abby," she said crossly. "I guess flannel petticoats for the heathen could have waited a spell."

"Mebbe they could, Ann," Mrs. Daggett said soothingly. "It's kind of hard to imagine a heathen wanting any sort of a petticoat this weather, and I guess they don't wear 'em before they're converted; but of course the missionaries try to teach 'em better. They go forth, so to say, with the Bible in one hand and a petticoat in the other."

"I should hope so!" said Mrs. Whittle, with vague fervor.

The sight of a toiling wagon supporting a huge barrel caused her to change the subject rather abruptly.

"That's Jacob Merrill's team," she said, craning her neck. "What on earth has he got in that hogs-head?"

"He's headed for Lydia Orr's spring, I shouldn't wonder," surmised Mrs. Daggett. "She told Henry to put up a notice in the post office that folks could get all the water they wanted from her spring. It's running, same as usual; but, most everybody else's has dried up."

"I think the minister ought to pray for rain regular from the pulpit on Sunday," Mrs. Whittle advanced. "I'm going to tell him so."

"She's going to do a lot better than that," said Mrs. Daggett.... "For the land sake, Dolly! I ain't urged you beyond your strength, and you know it; but if you don't g'long—"

A vigorous slap of the reins conveyed Mrs. Daggett's unuttered threat to the reluctant animal, with the result that both ladies were suddenly jerked backward by an unlooked for burst of speed.

"I think that horse is dangerous, Abby," remonstrated Mrs. Whittle, indignantly, as she settled her veil. "You ought to be more careful how you speak up to him."

"I'll risk him!" said Mrs. Daggett with spirit. "It don't help him none to stop walking altogether and stand stock still in the middle of the road, like he was a graven image. I'll take the whip to him, if he don't look out!"

Mrs. Whittle gathered her skirts about her, with an apprehensive glance at the dusty road.

"If you das' to touch that whip, Abby Daggett," said she, "I'll git right out o' this buggy and walk, so there!"

Mrs. Daggett's broad bosom shook with merriment.

"Fer pity sake, Ann, don't be scared," she exhorted her friend. "I ain't never touched Dolly with the whip; but he knows I mean what I say when I speak to him like that! ...I started in to tell you about the Red-Fox Spring, didn't I?"

Mrs. Whittle coughed dryly.

"I wish I had a drink of it right now," she said. "The idea of that Orr girl watering her flowers and grass, when everybody else in town is pretty near burnt up. Why, we ain't had water enough in our cistern to do the regular wash fer two weeks. I said to Joe and the Deacon today: 'You can wear them shirts another day, for I don't know where on earth you'll get clean ones.'"

"There ain't nothing selfish about Lydia Orr," proclaimed Mrs. Daggett joyfully. "What do you think she's going to do now?"

"How should I know?"

Mrs. Whittle's tone implied a jaded indifference to the doings of any one outside of her own immediate family circle.

"She's going to have the Red-Fox piped down to the village," said Mrs. Daggett. "She's had a man from Boston to look at it; and he says there's water enough up there in the mountains to supply two or three towns the size of Brookville. She's going to have a reservoir: and anybody that's a mind to can pipe it right into their kitchens."

Mrs. Whittle turned her veiled head to stare incredulously at her companion.

"Well, I declare!" she said; "that girl certainly does like to make a show of her money; don't she? If 'tain't one thing it's another. How did a girl like her come by all that money, I'd like to know?"

"I don't see as that's any of our particular affairs," objected Mrs. Daggett warmly. "Think of havin' nice cool spring water, just by turning a faucet. We're going to have it in our house. And Henry says mebbe he'll put in a tap and a drain-pipe upstairs. It'd save a lot o' steps."

"Huh! like enough you'll be talkin' about a regular nickel-plated bathroom like hers, next," suspicioned Mrs. Whittle. "The Deacon says he did his best to talk her out of it; but she stuck right to it. And one wa'n't enough, at that. She's got three of 'em in that house. That's worse'n Andrew Bolton."

"Do you mean worse, Ann Whittle, or do you mean better? A nice white bathtub is a means o' grace, I think!"

"I mean what I said, Abby; and you hadn't ought to talk like that. It's downright sinful. Means o' grace! a bathtub! Well, I never!"

The ladies of the Aid Society were already convened in Mrs. Dix's front parlor, a large square room, filled with the cool green light from a yard full of trees, whose deep-thrust roots defied the drought. Ellen Dix had just brought in a glass pitcher, its frosted sides proclaiming its cool contents, when the late comers arrived.

"Yes," Mrs. Dix was saying, "Miss Orr sent over a big piece of ice this morning and she squeezed out juice of I don't know how many lemons. Jim Dodge brought 'em here in the auto; and she told him to go around and gather up all the ladies that didn't have conveyances of their own."

"And that's how I came to be here," said Mrs. Mixter. "Our horse has gone lame."

"Well now, wa'n't that lovely?" crowed Mrs. Daggett, cooling her flushed face with slow sweeps of the big turkey-feather fan Mrs. Dix handed her. "Ain't she just the sweetest girl—always thinking of other folks! I never see anything like her."

A subtle expression of reserve crept over the faces of the attentive women. Mrs. Mixter tasted the contents of her glass critically.

"I don't know," she said dryly, as if the lemonade had failed to cool her parched throat, "that depends on how you look at it."

Mrs. Whittle gave vent to a cackle of rather discordant laughter.

"That's just what I was telling Abby on the way over," she said. "Once in a while you do run across a person that's bound to make a show of their money."

Mrs. Solomon Black, in a green and white sprigged muslin dress, her water-waves unusually crisp and conspicuous, bit off a length of thread with a meditative air.

"Well," said she, "that girl lived in my house, off an' on, for more than two months. I can't say as I think she's the kind that wants to show off."

Fifteen needles paused in their busy activities, and twice as many eyes were focused upon Mrs. Solomon Black. That lady sustained the combined attack with studied calm. She even smiled, as she jerked her thread smartly through a breadth of red flannel.

"I s'pose you knew a lot more about her in the beginning than we did," said Mrs. Dodge, in a slightly offended tone.

"You must have known something about her, Phoebe," put in Mrs. Fulsom. "I don't care what anybody says to the contrary, there's something queer in a young girl, like her, coming to a strange place, like Brookville, and doing all the things she's done. It ain't natural: and that's what I told the Judge when he was considering the new waterworks. There's a great deal of money to be made on waterworks, the Judge says."

The eyes were now focused upon Mrs. Fulsom.

"Well, I can tell you, she ain't looking to make money out of Brookville," said Abby Daggett, laying down her fan and taking an unfinished red flannel petticoat from the basket on the table. "Henry knows all about her plans, and he says it's the grandest idea! The water's going to be piped down from the mountain right to our doors—an' it'll be just as free as the Water of Life to anybody that'll take it."

"Yes; but who's going to pay for digging up the streets and putting 'em back?" piped up an anxious voice from a corner.

"We'd ought to, if she does the rest," said Mrs. Daggett; "but Henry says—"

"You can be mighty sure there's a come-back in it somewhere," was Mrs. Whittle's opinion. "The Deacon says he don't know whether to vote for it or not. We'll have rain before long; and these droughts don't come every summer."

Ellen Dix and Fanny Dodge were sitting outside on the porch. Both girls were sewing heart-shaped pieces of white cloth upon squares of turkey-red calico.

"Isn't it funny nobody seems to like her?" murmured Ellen, tossing her head. "I shouldn't be surprised if they wouldn't let her bring the water in, for all she says she'll pay for everything except putting it in the houses."

Fanny gazed at the white heart in the middle of the red square.

"It's awfully hard to sew these hearts on without puckering," she said.

"Fan," said Ellen cautiously, "does the minister go there much now?"

Fanny compressed her lips.

"I'm sure I don't know," she replied, her eyes and fingers busy with an unruly heart, which declined to adjust itself to requirements. "What are they going to do with this silly patchwork, anyway?"

"Make an autograph quilt for the minister's birthday; didn't you know?"

Fanny dropped her unfinished work.

"I never heard of anything so silly!" she said sharply.

"Everybody is to write their names in pencil on these hearts," pursued Ellen mischievously; "then they're to be done in tracing stitch in red cotton. In the middle of the quilt is to be a big white square, with a large red heart in it; that's supposed to be Wesley Elliot's. It's to have his monogram in stuffed letters, in the middle of it. Lois Daggett's doing that now. I think it's a lovely idea—so romantic, you know."

Fanny did not appear to be listening; her pretty white forehead wore a frowning look.

"Ellen," she said abruptly, "do you ever see anything of Jim nowadays?"

"Oh! so you thought you'd pay me back, did you?" cried Ellen angrily. "I never said I cared a rap for Jim Dodge; but you told me a whole lot about Wesley Elliot: don't you remember that night we walked home from the fair, and you—"

Fanny suddenly put her hand over her friend's.

"Please don't talk so loud, Ellen; somebody will be sure to hear. I'd forgotten what you said—truly, I had. But Jim—"

"Well?" interrogated Ellen impatiently, arching her slender black brows.

"Let's walk down in the orchard," proposed Fanny. "Somebody else can work on these silly old hearts, if they want to. My needle sticks so I can't sew, anyway."

"I've got to help mother cut the cake, in a minute," objected Ellen.

But she stepped down on the parched grass and the two friends were soon strolling among the fallen fruit of a big sweet apple tree behind the house, their arms twined about each other's waists, their pretty heads bent close together.



Chapter XVI

"The reason I spoke to you about Jim just now," said Fanny, "was because he's been acting awfully queer lately. I thought perhaps you knew—I know he likes you better than any of the other girls. He says you have some sense, and the others haven't."

"I guess that must have been before Lydia Orr came to Brookville," said Ellen, in a hard, sweet voice.

"Yes; it was," admitted Fanny reluctantly. "Everything seems to be different since then."

"What has Jim been doing that's any queerer than usual?" inquired Ellen, with some asperity.

Fanny hesitated.

"You won't tell?"

"Of course not, if it's a secret."

"Cross your heart an' hope t' die?" quoted Fanny from their childhood days.

Ellen giggled.

"Cross m' heart an' hope t' die," she repeated.

"Well, Jim's been off on some sort of a trip," said Fanny.

"I don't see anything so very queer about that."

"Wait till I tell you— You must be sure and not breathe a word, even to your mother; you won't, will you?"

"Fan, you make me mad! Didn't I just say I wouldn't?"

"Well, then; he went with her in the auto; they started about five o'clock in the morning, and Jim didn't get home till after twelve that night."

Ellen laughed, with studied indifference.

"Pity they couldn't have asked us to go along," she said. "I'm sure the car's plenty big enough."

"I don't think it was just for fun," said Fanny.

"You don't? What for, then?"

"I asked Jim, and he wouldn't tell me."

"When did you ask him?"

"The morning they went. I came down about half past four: mother doesn't get up as early as that, we haven't much milk to look after now; but I wake up awfully early sometimes, and I'd rather be doing something than lying there wide awake."

Ellen squeezed Fanny's arm sympathetically. She herself had lost no moments of healthy sleep over Jim Dodge's fancied defection; but she enjoyed imagining herself to be involved in a passionate romance.

"Isn't it awful to lie awake and think—and think, and not be able to do a single thing!" she said, with a tragic gesture.

Fanny bent down to look into Ellen's pretty face.

"Why, Ellen," she said, "is it as bad as that? I didn't suppose you really cared."

She clasped Ellen's slender waist closer and kissed her fervently.

Ellen coaxed two shining tears into sparkling prominence on her long lashes.

"Oh, don't mind me, Fan," she murmured; "but I can sympathize with you, dear. I know exactly how you feel—and to think it's the same girl!"

Ellen giggled light-heartedly:

"Anyway, she can't marry both of them," she finished.

Fanny was looking away through the boles of the gnarled old trees, her face grave and preoccupied.

"Perhaps I oughtn't to have told you," she said.

"Why, you haven't told me anything, yet," protested Ellen. "You're the funniest girl, Fan! I don't believe you know how to—really confide in anybody. If you'd tell me more how you feel about him, you wouldn't care half so much."

Fanny winced perceptibly. She could not bear to speak of the secret—which indeed appeared to be no secret—she strove daily to bury under a mountain of hard work, but which seemed possessed of mysterious powers of resurrection in the dark hours between sunset and sunrise.

"But there's nothing to—to talk about, Ellen," she said; and in spite of herself her voice sounded cold, almost menacing.

"Oh, very well, if you feel that way," retorted Ellen. "But I can tell you one thing—or, I might tell you something; but I guess I won't."

"Please, Ellen,—if it's about—"

"Well, it is."

Fanny's eyes pleaded hungrily with the naughty Ellen.

"You haven't finished your account of that interesting pleasure excursion of Jim's and Miss Orr's," said Ellen. "Isn't it lovely Jim can drive her car? Is he going to be her regular chauffeur? And do you get an occasional joy-ride?"

"Of course not," Fanny said indignantly. "Oh, Ellen, how can you go on like that! I'm sure you don't care a bit about Jim or me, either."

"I do!" declared Ellen. "I love you with all my heart, Fan; but I don't know about Jim. I—I might have—you know; but if he's crazy over that Orr girl, what's the use? There are other men, just as good-looking as Jim Dodge and not half so sarcastic and disagreeable."

"Jim can be disagreeable, if he wants to," conceded Jim's sister. "When I asked him where he was going with the car so early in the morning—you know he's been bringing the car home nights so as to clean it and fix the engine, till she can get somebody—I was surprised to find him putting in oil and tightening up screws and things, when it was scarcely daylight; and I said so. He wouldn't tell me a thing. 'You just 'tend to your own knitting, Fan,' was all he said; 'perhaps you'll know some day; and then again, perhaps you won't.'"

"And didn't you find out?" cried Ellen, her dark eyes alight with curiosity. "If that doesn't sound exactly like Jim Dodge! But you said you heard him when he came in that night; didn't he tell you anything then?—You don't think they ran off to get married? Oh, Fan!"

"Of course not, you goose! Do you suppose he'd have come back home alone, if it had been anything like that?"

Ellen heaved a sigh of exaggerated relief.

"'Be still, my heart'!" she murmured.

"No; they went to get somebody from somewhere," pursued Fanny.

"To get somebody from somewhere," repeated Ellen impatiently. "How thrilling! Who do you suppose it was?"

Fanny shook her head:

"I haven't the slightest idea."

"How perfectly funny! ...Is the somebody there, now?"

"I don't know. Jim won't tell me a thing that goes on there. He says if there's anything on top of the earth he absolutely despises it's a gossiping man. He says a gossiping woman is a creation of God—must be, there's so many of 'em; but a gossiping man—he can't find any word in the dictionary mean enough for that sort of a low-down skunk."

Ellen burst into hysterical laughter.

"What an idea!" she gasped. "Oh, but he's almost too sweet to live, Fan. Somebody ought to take him down a peg or two. Fan, if he proposes to that girl, I hope she won't have him. 'Twould serve him right!"

"Perhaps she won't marry anybody around here," mused Fanny. "Did you ever notice she wears a thin gold chain around her neck, Ellen?"

Ellen nodded.

"Perhaps there's a picture of somebody on it."

"I shouldn't wonder."

Ellen impatiently kicked a big apple out of her way, to the manifest discomfiture of two or three drunken wasps who were battening on the sweet juices.

"I've got to go back to the house," she said. "Mother'll be looking for me."

"But, Ellen—"

"Well?"

"You said you knew something—"

Ellen yawned.

"Did I?"

"You know you did, Ellen! Please—"

"'Twasn't much."

"What was it?"

"Oh, nothing, only I met the minister coming out of Lydia Orr's house one day awhile ago, and he was walking along as if he'd been sent for— Never even saw me. I had a good mind to speak to him, anyway; but before I could think of anything cute to say he'd gone by—two-forty on a plank road!"

Fanny was silent. She was wishing she had not asked Ellen to tell. Then instantly her mind began to examine this new aspect of her problem.

"He didn't look so awfully pleased and happy," Ellen went on, "his head was down—so, and he was just scorching up the road. Perhaps they'd been having a scrap."

"Oh, no!" burst from Fanny's lips. "It wasn't that."

"Why, what do you know about Wesley Elliot and Lydia Orr?" inquired Ellen vindictively. "You're a whole lot like Jim—as close-mouthed as a molasses jug, when you don't happen to feel like talking.... It isn't fair," she went on crossly. "I tell you everything—every single thing; and you just take it all in without winking an eyelash. It isn't fair!"

"Oh, Ellen, please don't—I can't bear it from you!"

Fanny's proud head drooped to her friend's shoulder, a stifled sob escaped her.

"There now, Fan; I didn't mean a word of it! I'm sorry I told you about him—only I thought he looked so kind of cut up over something that maybe— Honest, Fan, I don't believe he likes her."

"You don't know," murmured Fanny, wiping her wet eyes. "I didn't tell you she came to see me."

"She did!"

"Yes; it was after we had all been there, and mother was going on so about the furniture. It all seemed so mean and sordid to me, as if we were trying to—well, you know."

Ellen nodded:

"Of course I do. That's why you wouldn't let her have your furniture. I gloried in your spunk, Fan."

"But I did let her have it, Ellen."

"You did? Well!"

"I'll tell you how it happened. Mother'd gone down to the village, and Jim was off somewhere—he's never in the house day-times any more; I'd been working on the new curtains all day, and I was just putting them up in the parlor, when she came.... Ellen, sometimes I think perhaps we don't understand that girl. She was just as sweet— If it wasn't for— If I hadn't hardened my heart against her almost the first thing, you know, I don't believe I could help loving her."

"Fanny!" cried Ellen protestingly. "She certainly is a soft-soap artist. My mother says she is so refined; and Mrs. Daggett is always chanting her praises."

"Think of all she's done for the village," urged Fanny. "I want to be just, even if—"

"Well, I don't!" cried Ellen. "I just enjoy being real spiteful sometimes—especially when another girl gobbles all the men in sight; and I know I'm prettier than she is. It's just because she's new and—and stylish and rich. What made you give in about your furniture, Fan?"

"Because I—"

Fanny stopped short, puckering her forehead.

"I don't know whether I can explain it, Ellen; but I notice it every time I am with her. There's something—"

"Good gracious, Fan! She must have hypnotized you."

"Be quiet, Ellen, I'm trying to think just how it happened. She didn't say so very much—just sat down and watched me, while I sewed rings on the curtains. But the first thing I knew, I piped up and said: 'Do you really want that old furniture of mine so much?' And she said— Well, no matter what she said; it was more the way she looked. I guess I'd have given her the eyes out of my head, or any old thing."

"That's just what I told you," interrupted Ellen. "There are people like that. Don't you remember that horrid old what's-his-name in 'Trilby'?"

"Don't be silly, Ellen," said Fanny rebukingly. "Well, I took her up to my room and showed her my bed and bureau and washstand. There were some chairs, too; mother got them all for my room at that old auction we've heard so much about; I was just a baby then. I told her about it. She sat down in my rocking-chair by the window and just looked at the things, without saying a word, at first. After a while, she said: 'Your mother used to come in and tuck the blankets around you nice and warm in the night; didn't she?'"

"'Why, I suppose she did,' I told her. 'Mother's room is right next to mine.' ... Ellen, there was a look in her eyes—I can't tell you about it—you wouldn't understand. And, anyway, I didn't care a bit about the furniture. 'You can have it,' I said. 'I don't want it, and I don't see why you do; it isn't pretty any more.' I thought she was going to cry, for a minute. Then such a soft gladness came over her face. She came up to me and took both my hands in hers; but all she said was 'Thank you.'"

"And did she pay you a whole lot for it?" inquired Ellen sordidly.

"I didn't think anything about that part of it," said Fanny. "Jim carried it all over the next day, with a lot of old stuff mother had. Jim says she's had a man from Grenoble working in the barn for weeks and weeks, putting everything in order. My old set was painted over, with all the little garlands and blue ribbons, like new."

"But how much—" persisted Ellen. "She must have paid you a lot for it."

"I didn't ask mother," said Fanny. "I didn't want to know. I've got a new set; it's real pretty. You must come over and see my room, now it's all finished."

What Fanny did not tell Ellen was that after Lydia's departure she had unexpectedly come upon the photograph of the picnic group under a book on her table. The faded picture with its penciled words had meant much to Fanny. She had not forgotten, she told herself, she could never forget, that day in June, before the unlooked-for arrival of the strange girl, whose coming had changed everything. Once more she lived over in imagination that perfect day, with its white clouds floating high in the blue, and the breath of clover on the wind. She and Wesley Elliot had gone quietly away into the woods after the boisterous merriment of the picnic luncheon.

"It's safe enough, as long as we follow the stream," Fanny had assured him, piloting the way over fallen logs and through dense thickets of pine and laurel, further and further away from the sounds of shrill laughter and the smoky smell of the camp fire, where the girls were still busy toasting marshmallows on long sticks for the youths who hovered in the rear.

The minister had expressed a keen desire to hear the rare notes of the hermit thrush; and this romantic quest led them deep into the forest. The girl paused at last on the brink of a pool, where they could see the shadowy forms of brook trout gliding through the clear, cold water.

"If we are quiet and listen," she told him, "I think we shall hear the hermit."

On a carpet of moss, thicker and softer than a deep-piled rug, they sat down. Not a sound broke the stillness but the gurgle of water and the soft soughing of the wind through great tree tops. The minister bared his head, as if aware of the holy spirit of solitude in the place. Neither spoke nor stirred; but the girl's heart beat loud—so loud she feared he might hear, and drew her little cape closer above her breast. Then all at once, ringing down the somber aisles of the forest came the song of the solitary bird, exquisite, lonely, filled with an indescribable, yearning sweetness. The man's eloquent eyes met her own in a long look.

"Wonderful!" he murmured.

His hand sought and closed upon hers for an instant. Then without further speech they returned to the picnickers. Someone—she thought it was Joyce Fulsom—snapped the joyous group at the moment of the departure. It had been a week later, that he had written the words "Lest we forget"—with a look and smile which set the girl's pulses fluttering. But that was in June. Now it was September. Fanny, crouched by the window where Lydia Orr had been that afternoon, stared coldly at the picture. It was downright silly to have carried it about with her. She had lost it somewhere—pulling out her handkerchief, perhaps. Had Lydia Orr found and brought it back? She ardently wished she knew; but in the meanwhile—

She tore the picture deliberately across, thereby accomplishing unhindered what Wesley Elliot had attempted several days before; then she burned the fragments in the quick spurt of a lighted match.... Lest we forget, indeed!



Chapter XVII

The day after the sewing society Ellen Dix went up to her room, after hurriedly washing the dinner dishes. It was still hot, but a vague haze had crept across the brazen sky since morning. Ellen's room looked out into cool green depths of trees, so that on a cloudy day it was almost too dark to examine the contents of the closet opposite its two east windows.

It was a pretty room, freshly papered and painted, as were many rooms in Brookville since the sale of the old Bolton properties. Nearly every one had scrimped and saved and gone without so long that the sudden influx of money into empty pockets had acted like wine in a hungry stomach. Henry Daggett had thrice replenished his stock of wall papers; window shades and curtaining by the yard had been in constant demand for weeks; bright colored chintzes and gay flowered cretonnes were apparently a prime necessity in many households. As for paper hangers and painters, few awaited their unhurried movements. It was easy for anybody with energy and common sense to wield a paintbrush; and old paper could be scraped off and fresh strips applied by a simple application of flour paste and the fundamental laws of physics. One improvement clamors loudly for another, and money was still coming in from the most unexpected sources, so new furniture was bought to take the place of unprized chairs and tables long ago salvaged from the Bolton wreck. And since Mrs. Deacon Whittle's dream parlor, with its marble-tops and plush-upholstered furniture, had become a solid reality, other parlors burgeoned forth in multi-colored magnificence. Scraggy old shrubs were trimmed; grass was cut in unkempt dooryards; flowers were planted—and all because of the lavish display of such improvements at Bolton House, as "that queer Orr girl" persisted in calling it; thereby flying in the face of public opinion and local prejudice in a way which soured the milk of human kindness before the cream of gratitude could rise.

Everybody agreed that there was something mysterious, if not entirely unnatural in the conduct of the young woman. Nobody likes unsolved riddles for long. The moment or century of suspense may prove interesting—even exciting; but human intelligence resents the Sphynx.

Ellen Dix was intensely human. She was, moreover, jealous—or supposed she was, which often amounts to the same thing. And because of this she was looking over the dresses, hanging on pegs along her closet wall, with a demurely puckered brow. The pink muslin was becoming, but old-fashioned; the pale yellow trimmed with black velvet might get soiled with the dust, and she wasn't sure it would wash. She finally selected a white dress of a new and becoming style, attired in which she presently stood before her mirror adjusting a plain Panama hat, trimmed simply with a black ribbon. Not for nothing had Ellen used her handsome dark eyes. She set the hat over her black hair at exactly the right angle, skewering it securely in place with two silver pins, also severely simple in their style and quite unlike the glittering rhinestone variety offered for sale in Henry Daggett's general store.

"I'm going out for a while, mother," she said, as she passed the room where Mrs. Dix was placidly sewing carpet rags out of materials prodigiously increased of late, since both women had been able to afford several new dresses.

"Going to Fanny's?" inquired Mrs. Dix.... "Seems to me you're starting out pretty early, dear, in all this heat. If you'll wait till sundown, I'll go with you. I haven't seen their parlor since they got the new curtains up."

"I'm not going to Fanny's, right off," said Ellen evasively. "Maybe I'll stop on the way back, though. 'Tisn't very hot; it's clouded up some."

"Better taken an umbrella," her mother sent after her. "We might get a thunder storm along towards four o'clock. My shoulder's been paining me all the morning."

But Ellen had already passed out of hearing, her fresh skirts held well away from the dusty wayside weeds.

She was going, with intentions undefined, to see Lydia Orr. Perhaps (she was thinking) she might see Jim Dodge. Anyway, she wanted to go to Bolton House. She would find out for herself wherein lay the curious fascination of which Fanny had spoken. She was surprised at Fanny for so easily giving in about the furniture. Secretly, she considered herself to be possibly a bit shrewder than Fanny. In reality she was not as easily influenced, and slower at forming conclusions. She possessed a mind of more scope.

Ellen walked along, setting her pointed feet down very carefully so as not to raise the dust and soil her nice skirts. She was a dainty creature. When she reached the hedge which marked the beginning of the Bolton estate, she started, not violently, that was not her way, but anybody is more startled at the sudden glimpse of a figure at complete rest, almost rigidity, than of a figure in motion. Had the old man whom Ellen saw been walking along toward her, she would not have started at all. She might have glanced at him with passing curiosity, since he was a stranger in Brookville, then that would have been the end of it. But this old man, standing as firmly fixed as a statue against the hedge, startled the girl. He was rather a handsome old man, but there was something peculiar about him. For one thing he was better dressed than old men in Brookville generally were. He wore a light Palm Beach cloth suit, possibly too young for him, also a Panama hat. He did not look altogether tidy. He did not wear his up-to-date clothes very well. He had a rumpled appearance. He was very pale almost with the paleness of wax. He did not stand strongly, but rested his weight first on one foot, then on the other. Ellen recovered her composure, but as she was passing, he spoke suddenly. His tone was eager and pitiful. "Why Ann Eliza Dix," he said. "How do you do? You are not going to pass without speaking to me?"

"My name is Dix, but not Ann Eliza," said Ellen politely; "my name is Ellen."

"You are Cephas Dix's sister, Ann Eliza," insisted the old man. His eyes looked suddenly tearful. "I know I am right," he said. "You are Ann Eliza Dix."

The girl felt a sudden pity. Her Aunt Ann Eliza Dix had been lying in her grave for ten years, but she could not contradict the poor man. "Of course," she said. "How do you do?"

The old man's face lit up. "I knew I was right," he said. "I forget, you see, sometimes, but this time I was sure. How are you, Ann Eliza?"

"Very well, thank you."

"How is Cephas?"

"He is well, too."

"And your father?"

Ellen shivered a little. It was rather bewildering. This strange old man must mean her grandfather, who had died before her Aunt Ann Eliza. She replied faintly that he was well, and hoped, with a qualm of ghastly mirth, that she was speaking the truth. Ellen's grandfather had not been exactly a godly man, and the family seldom mentioned him.

"He means well, Ann Eliza, if sometimes you don't exactly like the way he does," said the living old man, excusing the dead one for the faults of his life.

"I know he does," said Ellen. The desire to laugh grew upon her.

She was relieved when the stranger changed the subject. She felt that she would become hysterical if this forcible resurrection of her dead relatives continued.

"Do you like an automobile?" asked the old man.

"I don't know, I never had one."

The stranger looked at her confidingly. "My daughter has one," he said, "and I know she bought it for me, and she has me taken out in it, but I am afraid. It goes too fast. I can't get over being afraid. But you won't tell her, will you, Ann Eliza?"

"Of course I won't."

Ellen continued to gaze at him, but she did not speak.

"Let me see, what is your name, my dear?" the man went on. He was leaning on his stick, and Ellen noticed that he trembled slightly, as though with weakness. He breathed hard. The veinous hands folded on top of the stick were almost as white as his ears.

"My name is Ellen Dix," she said.

"Dix—Dix?" repeated the man. "Why, I know that name, certainly, of course! You must be the daughter of Cephas Dix. Odd name, Cephas, eh?"

Ellen nodded, her eyes still busy with the details of the stranger's appearance. She was sure she had never seen him before, yet he knew her father's name.

"My father has been dead a long time," she said; "ever since I was a little girl."

The man appeared singularly disquieted by this intelligence. "I hadn't heard that," he said. "Dead—a long time? Well!"

He scowled, flourishing his stick as if to pass on; then settled to his former posture, his pale hands folded on its handsome gold top.

"Cephas Dix wasn't an old man," he muttered, as if talking to himself. "Not old. He should be hale and hearty, living in this good country air. Wonderful air this, my dear."

And he drew a deep breath, his wandering gaze returning swiftly to the girl's face.

"I was just walking out," he said, nodding briskly. "Great treat to be able to walk out. I shall walk out whenever I like. Don't care for automobiles—get you over the road too fast. No, no; I won't go out in the automobile, unless I feel like it! No, I won't; and there's an end of it!"

He brought his stick down heavily in the dust, as if emphasizing this statement.

"Guess your father left you pretty well off, eh, my dear?" he went on presently. "Glad to see you looking so fresh and neat. Always like to see a pretty girl well dressed."

The man's eyes, extraordinarily bright and keen, roved nimbly over her face and figure.

"No, he did not," replied Ellen. "My father used to be rich," she went on. "I've heard mother tell about it hundreds of times. We had horses and a carriage and plenty of money; but when the bank went to pieces my father lost everything. Then he died."

The man was peering at her from under his shaggy gray brows.

"But not because the bank failed? Surely not because he lost his money? That sort of thing doesn't kill a man, my dear. No, no!"

"It did," declared Ellen firmly.

The man at once seemed to grow smaller; to huddle together in his clothes. He muttered something unintelligible, then turned squarely about, so that Ellen could see only his hunched back and the glistening white hair cut close behind his waxen ears.

The girl walked thoughtfully on, but when she paused to look back she saw that he had resumed his slow walk in the opposite direction, his stick describing odd flourishes in the air, as before.

When she reached Bolton House she was ushered into a beautiful parlor by a prim maid in a frilled cap and apron. The maid presented to her attention a small silver tray, and Ellen, blushing uncomfortably because she had no card, asked for Miss Orr.

Soon the frilled maid reappeared. "I'm sorry, Miss," she said, "I thought Miss Lydia was at home, but I can't find her anywheres about."

She eyed Ellen's trim figure doubtfully. "If there was any message—"

"No," said Ellen. "I only came to call."

"I'm real sorry, Miss," repeated the maid. "Miss Lydia'll be sorry, too. Who shall I say, please?"

"Miss Dix," replied Ellen. She walked past the maid, who held the door wide for her exit. Then she paused. A surprising sight met her eyes. Lydia Orr, hatless, flushed as if by rapid flight, was just reaching the steps, convoying the strange old man Ellen had met on the road a short time before.

The maid at her back gave a little cry. Ellen stood staring. So this was the person Jim Dodge had gone to fetch from somewhere!

"But it isn't too warm for me to be walking out to take the air," she heard, in the heavy mumble of the man's voice. "I don't like being watched, Lydia; and I won't stand it, either. I might as well be—"

Lydia interrupted him with a sharp exclamation. She had caught sight of Ellen Dix standing under the deep portico, the scared face of the maid looking over her shoulder.

Ellen's face crimsoned slowly. All at once she felt unaccountably sorry and ashamed. She wished she had not come. She felt that she wanted nothing so much as to hurry swiftly away.

But Lydia Orr, still holding the strange old man by the arm, was already coming up the steps.

"I'll not go in the automobile, child," he repeated, with an obstinate flourish of his stick. "I don't like to ride so fast. I want to see things. I want—"

He stopped short, his mouth gaping, his eyes staring at Ellen.

"That girl!" he almost shouted. "She told me—I don't want her here.... Go away, girl, you make my head hurt!"

Lydia flashed a beseeching look at Ellen, as she led the old man past.

"Please come in," she said; "I shall be at liberty in just a moment.... Come, father!"

Ellen hesitated.

"Perhaps I'd better not, today," she murmured, and slowly descended the steps.

The discreet maid closed the door behind her.



Chapter XVIII

Ellen did not at once return home. She walked on reflecting. So the old man was Lydia Orr's father! And she was the first to know it!

The girl had never spoken of her father, Ellen was sure. Had she done so, Mrs. Solomon Black would certainly have told Mrs. Whittle, and Mrs. Whittle would have informed Mrs. Daggett, and thence, by way of Mrs. Dodge and Fanny, the news would long ago have reached Ellen and her mother.

Before she had covered a quarter of a mile of the dusty road, Ellen heard the muffled roar of an over-taking motor car. She glanced up, startled and half choked with the enveloping cloud of dust. Jim Dodge was driving the car. He slowed down and stopped.

"Hello, Ellen. Going down to the village? Get in and I'll take you along," he called out.

"All right," said Ellen, jumping in.

"I haven't seen you for an age, Jim," said Ellen after awhile.

The young man laughed. "Does it seem that long to you, Ellen?"

"No, why should it?" she returned.

"I say, Ellen," said Jim, "I saw you when you came out of Bolton House just now."

"Did you?"

"Yes." He looked sharply at Ellen, who smiled evasively.

"I was going to call," she said with an innocent air, "but Miss Orr had—a visitor."

"Look here, Ellen; don't let's beat about the bush. Nobody knows he's there, yet, except myself and—you. You met him on the road; didn't you?"

"Yes," said Ellen, "I met him on the road."

"Did he talk to you?"

"He asked me what my name was. He's crazy, isn't he, Jim?"

The young man frowned thoughtfully at his steering wheel.

"Not exactly," he said, after a pause. "He's been sick a long time and his mind is—well, I think it has been somewhat affected. Did he— He didn't talk to you about himself, did he?"

"What do you want to know for?"

"Oh, he appeared rather excited, and—"

"Yes; I noticed that." She laughed mischievously.

Jim frowned. "Come, Ellen, quit this nonsense! What did he say to you?"

"If you mean Mr. Orr—"

He turned his eyes from the road to stare at her for an instant.

"Did he tell you his name was Orr?" he asked sharply.

It was Ellen's turn to stare.

"Why, if he is Miss Orr's father—" she began.

"Oh, of course," said Jim hurriedly. "I was just wondering if he had introduced himself."

Ellen was silent. She was convinced that there was some mystery about the pale old man.

"He said a lot of awfully queer things to me," she admitted, after a pause during which Jim turned the car into a side road.... "I thought you were going to the village."

"This will take us to the village—give you a longer ride, Ellen. I'll take you home afterwards."

"After what?"

"Why, after we've got the mail—or whatever you want."

"Don't you think Miss Orr and that queer old Mr. —— If his name isn't Orr, Jim, what is it?" She shot a quick glance at him.

"Good Lord!" muttered Jim profanely.

He drew the car up at the side of the road and stopped it.

"What are you going to do?" inquired Ellen, in some alarm. "Won't it go?"

"When I get ready," said Jim.

He turned and faced her squarely:

"We'll have this out, before we go a foot further! I won't have the whole town talking," he said savagely.

Ellen said nothing. She was rather angry.

"The devil!" cried Jim Dodge. "What's the matter with you, Ellen?"

"With me?" she repeated.

"Yes. Why can't you talk?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "I want to go home," she said.

He seized her roughly by the wrist. "Ellen," he said, "I believe you know more than you are willing to tell." He stared down into her eyes. "What did he say to you, anyway?"

"Who?"

"You know well enough. The old man. Lord, what a mess!"

"Please let me go, Jim," said Ellen. "Now look here, I know absolutely nothing except what I have told you, and I want to go home."

"Ellen!"

"Well?"

"Can you keep a secret?"

"Of course I can, Jim!" She met his dark gaze squarely.

"Well, rather than have you spreading a piece of damnable gossip over the village— Of course you would have told everybody."

"You mean about meeting the old man? But won't everybody know? If he goes out and talks to people as he did to me?"

"You haven't told me what he said."

Ellen raised her brows with a mischievous air.

"I didn't care to spread any—what sort of gossip did you say, Jim?"

"Confound it! I didn't mean that."

"Of course I could see he was some one who used to live here," she went on. "He knew father."

Jim had thrust his hands deep into his trousers' pockets. He uttered an impatient ejaculation.

"And he said he should go out whenever he felt like it. He doesn't like the automobile."

"Oh, it's an impossible proposition. I see that plainly enough!" Jim said, as if to himself. "But it seems a pity—"

He appeared to plunge into profound meditation.

"I say, Ellen, you like her; don't you? ...Don't see how you can help it. She's a wonder!"

"Who? Miss Orr?"

"Of course! Say, Ellen, if you knew what that girl has gone through, without a murmur; and now I'm afraid— By George! we ought to spare her."

"We?"

"Yes; you and I. You can do a lot to help, Ellen, if you will. That old man you saw is sick, hardly sane. And no wonder."

He stopped short and stared fixedly at his companion.

"Did you guess who he was?" he asked abruptly.

Ellen reflected. "I can guess—if you'll give me time."

Jim made an impatient gesture. "That's just what I thought," he growled. "There'll be the devil to pay generally."

"Jim," said Ellen earnestly, "if we are to help her, you must tell me all about that old man."

"She wanted to tell everybody," he recollected gloomily. "And why not you? Imagine an innocent child set apart from the world by another's crime, Ellen. See, if you can, that child growing up, with but one thought, one ideal—the welfare of that other person. Picture to yourself what it would be like to live solely to make a great wrong right, and to save the wrongdoer. Literally, Ellen, she has borne that man's grief and carried his sorrow, as truly as any vaunted Saviour of the world. Can you see it?"

"Do you mean—? Is that why she calls it Bolton House? Of course! And that dreadful old man is— But, Jim, everybody will find it out."

"You're right," he acknowledged. "But they mustn't find it out just yet. We must put it off till the man can shake that hang-dog air of his. Why, he can't even walk decently. Prison is written all over him. Thank God, she doesn't seem to see it!"

"I'm so glad you told me, Jim," said Ellen gently.

"You won't say a word about this, will you, Ellen?" he asked anxiously. "I can depend on you?"

"Give me a little credit for decency and common sense," replied Ellen.

Jim bent over the wheel and kissed her.



Chapter XIX

Rain was falling in torrents, slanting past the windows of the old parsonage in long gray lines, gurgling up between loosened panes, and drip-dropping resoundingly in the rusty pan the minister had set under a broken spot in the ceiling. Upstairs a loosened shutter banged intermittently under the impact of the wind, which howled past, to lose itself with great commotion in the tops of the tall evergreens in the churchyard. It was the sort of day when untoward events, near and far, stand out with unpleasant prominence against the background of one's everyday life. A day in which a man is led, whether he will or not, to take stock of himself and to balance with some care the credit and debit sides of his ledger.

Wesley Elliot had been working diligently on his sermon since nine o'clock that morning, at which hour he had deserted Mrs. Solomon Black's comfortable tight roof, to walk under the inadequate shelter of a leaking umbrella to the parsonage.

Three closely written pages in the minister's neat firm handwriting attested his uninterrupted diligence. At the top of the fourth page he set a careful numeral, under it wrote "Thirdly," then paused, laid down his pen, yawned wearily and gazed out at the dripping shrubbery. The rain had come too late to help the farmers, he was thinking. It was always that way: too much sunshine and dry weather; then too much rain—floods of it, deluges of it.

He got up from his chair, stretched his cramped limbs and began marching up and down the floor. He had fully intended to get away from Brookville before another winter set in. But there were reasons why he felt in no hurry to leave the place. He compelled himself to consider them.

Was he in love with Lydia Orr? Honestly, he didn't know. He had half thought he was, for a whole month, during which Lydia had faced him across Mrs. Solomon Black's table three times a day.

As he walked up and down, he viewed the situation. Lydia had declared, not once but often, that she wanted friends. Women always talked that way, and meant otherwise. But did she? The minister shook his head dubiously. He thought of Lydia Orr, of her beauty, of her elusive sweetness. He was ashamed to think of her money, but he owned to himself that he did.

Then he left his study and rambled about the chill rooms of the lower floor. From the windows of the parlor, where he paused to stare out, he could look for some distance up the street. He noticed dully the double row of maples from which yellowed leaves were already beginning to fall and the ugly fronts of houses, behind their shabby picket fences. A wagon was creaking slowly through a shallow sea of mud which had been dust the day before: beyond the hunched figure of the teamster not a human being was in sight. Somewhere, a dog barked fitfully and was answered by other dogs far away; and always the shutter banged at uncertain intervals upstairs. This nuisance, at least, could be abated. He presently located the shutter and closed it; then, because its fastening had rusted quite away, sought for a bit of twine in his pocket and was about to tie it fast when the wind wrenched it again from his hold. As he thrust a black-coated arm from the window to secure the unruly disturber of the peace he saw a man fumbling with the fastening of the parsonage gate. Before he could reach the foot of the stairs the long unused doorbell jangled noisily.

He did not recognize the figure which confronted him on the stoop, when at last he succeeded in undoing the door. The man wore a raincoat turned up about his chin and the soft brim of a felt hat dripped water upon its close-buttoned front.

"Good-morning, good-morning, sir!" said the stranger, as if his words had awaited the opening of the door with scant patience. "You are the—er—local clergyman, I suppose?"

At uncertain periods Wesley Elliot had been visited by a migratory colporteur, and less frequently by impecunious persons representing themselves to be fellow warriors on the walls of Zion, temporarily out of ammunition. In the brief interval during which he convoyed the stranger from the chilly obscurity of the hall to the dubious comfort of his study, he endeavored to place his visitor in one of these two classes, but without success.

"Didn't stop for an umbrella," explained the man, rubbing his hands before the stove, in which the minister was striving to kindle a livelier blaze.

Divested of his dripping coat and hat he appeared somewhat stooped and feeble; he coughed slightly, as he gazed about the room.

"What's the matter here?" he inquired abruptly; "don't they pay you your salary?"

The minister explained in brief his slight occupancy of the parsonage; whereat the stranger shook his head:

"That's wrong—all wrong," he pronounced: "A parson should be married and have children—plenty of them. Last time I was here, couldn't hear myself speak there was such a racket of children in the hall. Mother sick upstairs, and the kids sliding down the banisters like mad. I left the parson a check; poor devil!"

He appeared to fall into a fit of musing, his eyes on the floor.

"I see you're wondering who I am, young man," he said presently. "Well, we're coming to that, presently. I want some advice; so I shall merely put the case baldly.... I wanted advice, before; but the parson of that day couldn't give me the right sort. Good Lord! I can see him yet: short man, rather stout and baldish. Meant well, but his religion wasn't worth a bean to me that day.... Religion is all very well to talk about on a Sunday; broadcloth coat, white tie and that sort of thing; good for funerals, too, when a man's dead and can't answer back. Sometimes I've amused myself wondering what a dead man would say to a parson, if he could sit up in his coffin and talk five minutes of what's happened to him since they called him dead. Interesting to think of—eh? ...Had lots of time to think.... Thought of most everything that ever happened; and more that didn't."

"You are a stranger in Brookville, sir?" observed Wesley Elliot, politely.

He had already decided that the man was neither a colporteur nor a clerical mendicant; his clothes were too good, for one thing.

The man laughed, a short, unpleasant sound which ended in a fit of coughing.

"A stranger in Brookville?" he echoed. "Well; not precisely.... But never mind that, young man. Now, you're a clergyman, and on that account supposed to have more than ordinary good judgment: what would you advise a man to do, who had—er—been out of active life for a number of years. In a hospital, we'll say, incapacitated, very much so. When he comes out, he finds himself quite pleasantly situated, in a way; good home, and all that sort of thing; but not allowed to—to use his judgment in any way. Watched—yes, watched, by a person who ought to know better. It's intolerable—intolerable! Why, you'll not believe me when I tell you I'm obliged to sneak out of my own house on the sly—on the sly, you understand, for the purpose of taking needful exercise."

He stopped short and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, the fineness of which the minister noted mechanically—with other details which had before escaped him; such as the extreme, yellowish pallor of the man's face and hands and the extraordinary swiftness and brightness of his eyes. He was conscious of growing uneasiness as he said:

"That sounds very unpleasant, sir; but as I am not in possession of the facts—"

"But I just told you," interrupted the stranger. "Didn't I say—"

"You didn't make clear to me what the motives of this person who tries to control your movements are. You didn't tell me—"

The man moved his hand before his face, like one trying to brush away imaginary flies.

"I suppose she has her motives," he said fretfully. "And very likely they're good. I'll not deny that. But I can't make her see that this constant espionage—this everlasting watchfulness is not to be borne. I want freedom, and by God I'll have it!"

He sprang from his chair and began pacing the room.

Wesley Elliot stared at his visitor without speaking. He perceived that the man dragged his feet, as if from excessive fatigue or weakness.

"I had no thought of such a thing," the stranger went on. "I'd planned, as a man will who looks forward to release from—from a hospital, how I'd go about and see my old neighbors. I wanted to have them in for dinners and luncheons—people I haven't seen for years. She knows them. She can't excuse herself on that ground. She knows you."

He stopped short and eyed the minister, a slow grin spreading over his face.

"The last time you were at my house I had a good mind to walk in and make your acquaintance, then and there. I heard you talking to her. You admire my daughter: that's easy to see; and she's not such a bad match, everything considered."

"Who are you?" demanded the young man sharply.

"I am a man who's been dead and buried these eighteen years," replied the other. "But I'm alive still—very much alive; and they'll find it out."

An ugly scowl distorted the man's pale face. For an instant he stared past Wesley Elliot, his eyes resting on an irregular splotch of damp on the wall. Then he shook himself.

"I'm alive," he repeated slowly. "And I'm free!"

"Who are you?" asked the minister for the second time.

For all his superior height and the sinewy strength of his young shoulders he began to be afraid of the man who had come to him out of the storm. There was something strangely disconcerting, even sinister, in the ceaseless movements of his pale hands and the sudden lightning dart of his eyes, as they shifted from the defaced wall to his own perturbed face.

By way of reply the man burst into a disagreeable cackle of laughter:

"Stopped in at the old bank building on my way," he said. "Got it all fixed up for a reading room and library. Quite a nice idea for the villagers. I'd planned something of the sort, myself. Approve of that sort of thing for a rural population. Who—was the benefactor in this case—eh? Take it for granted the villagers didn't do it for themselves. The women in charge there referred me to you for information.... Don't be in haste, young man. I'll answer your question in good time. Who gave the library, fixed up the building and all that? Must have cost something."

The minister sat down with an assumption of ease he did not feel, facing the stranger who had already possessed himself of the one comfortable chair in the room.

"The library," he said, "was given to the village by a Miss Orr, a young woman who has recently settled in Brookville. She has done a good deal for the place, in various ways."

"What ways?" asked the stranger, with an air of interest.

Wesley Elliot enumerated briefly the number of benefits: the purchase and rebuilding of the old Bolton house, the construction of the waterworks, at present under way, the library and reading room, with the town hall above. "There are," he stated, "other things which might be mentioned; such as the improvement of the village green, repairs on the church, the beginning of a fund for lighting the streets, as well as innumerable smaller benefactions, involving individuals in and around Brookville."

The man listened alertly. When the minister paused, he said:

"The young woman you speak of appears to have a deep pocket."

The minister did not deny this. And the man spoke again, after a period of frowning silence:

"What was her idea?— Orr, you said her name was?—in doing all this for Brookville? Rather remarkable—eh?"

His tone, like his words, was mild and commonplace; but his face wore an ugly sneering look, which enraged the minister.

"Miss Orr's motive for thus benefiting a wretched community, well-nigh ruined years ago by the villainy of one man, should be held sacred from criticism," he said, with heat.

"Well, let me tell you the girl had a motive—or thought she had," said the stranger unpleasantly. "But she had no right to spend her money that way. You spoke just now of the village as being ruined years ago by the villainy of one man. That's a lie! The village ruined the man.... Never looked at it that way; did you? Andrew Bolton had the interests of this place more deeply at heart than any other human being ever did. He was the one public-spirited man in the place.... Do you know who built your church, young man? I see you don't. Well, Andrew Bolton built it, with mighty little help from your whining, hypocritical church members. Every Tom, Dick and Harry, for miles about; every old maid with a book to sell; every cause—as they call the thousand and one pious schemes to line their own pockets—every damned one of 'em came to Andrew Bolton for money, and he gave it to them. He was no hoarding skinflint; not he. Better for him if he had been. When luck went against him, as it did at last, these precious villagers turned on him like a pack of wolves. They killed his wife; stripped his one child of everything—even to the bed she slept in; and the man himself they buried alive under a mountain of stone and iron, where he rotted for eighteen years!"

The stranger's eyes were glaring with maniacal fury; he shook a tremulous yellow finger in the other's face.

"Talk about ruin!" he shouted. "Talk about one man's villainy! This damnable village deserves to be razed off the face of the earth! ... But I meant to forgive them. I was willing to call the score even."

A nameless fear had gripped the younger man by the throat.

"Are you—?" he began; but could not speak the words.

"My name," said the stranger, with astonishing composure, in view of his late fury, "is Andrew Bolton; and the girl you have been praising and—courting—is my daughter. Now you see what a sentimental fool a woman can be. Well; I'll have it out with her. I'll live here in Brookville on equal terms with my neighbors. If there was ever a debt between us, it's been paid to the uttermost farthing. I've paid it in flesh and blood and manhood. Is there any money—any property you can name worth eighteen years of a man's life? And such years— God! such years!"

Wesley Elliot stared. At last he understood the girl, and as he thought of her shrinking aloofness standing guard over her eager longing for friends—for affection, something hot and wet blurred his eyes. He was scarcely conscious that the man, who had taken to himself the name with which he had become hatefully familiar during his years in Brookville, was still speaking, till a startling sentence or two aroused him.

"There's no reason under heaven why you should not marry her, if you like. Convict's daughter? Bah! I snap my fingers in their faces. My girl shall be happy yet. I swear it! But we'll stop all this sickly sentimentality about the money. We'll—"

The minister held up a warning hand.

An immense yearning pity for Lydia had taken possession of him; but for the man who had thus risen from a dishonorable grave to blight her girlhood he felt not a whit.

"You'd better keep quiet," he said sternly. "You'd far better go away and leave her to live her life alone."

"You'd like that; wouldn't you?" said Bolton dryly.

He leaned forward and stared the young man in the eyes.

"But she wouldn't have it that way. Do you know that girl of mine wouldn't hear of it. She expects to make it up to me.... Imagine making up eighteen years of hell with a few pet names, a soft bed and—"

"Stop!" cried Wesley Elliot, with a gesture of loathing. "I can't listen to you."

"But you'll marry her—eh?"

Bolton's voice again dropped into a whining monotone. He even smiled deprecatingly.

"You'll excuse my ranting a bit, sir. It's natural after what I've gone through. You've never been in a prison, maybe. And you don't know what it's like to shake the bars of a cell at midnight and howl out of sheer madness to be off and away—somewhere, anywhere!"

He leaned forward and touched the minister on the knee.

"And that brings me back to my idea in coming to see you. I'm a level-headed man, still—quite cool and collected, as you see—and I've been thinking the situation over."

He drew his brows together and stared hard at the minister.

"I've a proposition to make to you—as man to man. Can't talk reason to a woman; there's no reason in a woman's make-up—just sentiment and affection and imagination: an impossible combination, when there are hard realities to face.... I see you don't agree with me; but never mind that; just hear what I have to say."

But he appeared in no haste to go on, for all the eagerness of his eyes and those pallid, restless hands. The minister got quickly to his feet. The situation was momentarily becoming intolerable; he must have time to think it over, he told himself, and determine his own relations to this new and unwelcome parishioner.

"I'm very sorry, sir," he began; "but—"

"None of that," growled Bolton. "Sit down, young man, and listen to what I have to say to you. We may not have another chance like this."

His assumption of a common interest between them was most distasteful; but for all that the minister resumed his chair.

"Now, as I've told you, my daughter appears unwilling to allow me out of her sight. She tries to cover her watchfulness under a pretense of solicitude for my health. I'm not well, of course; was knocked down and beaten about the head by one of those devils in the prison— Can't call them men: no decent man would choose to earn his living that way. But cosseting and coddling in a warm house will never restore me. I want freedom—nothing less. I must be out and away when the mood seizes me night or day. Her affection stifles me at times.... You can't understand that, of course; you think I'm ungrateful, no doubt; and that I ought—"

"You appear to me, a monster of selfishness," Wesley Elliot broke in. "You ought to stop thinking of yourself and think of her."

Bolton's face drew itself into the mirthless wrinkles which passed for a smile.

"I'm coming to that," he said with some eagerness. "I do think of her; and that's why— Can't you see, man, that eighteen years of prison don't grow the domestic virtues? A monster of selfishness? You're dead right. I'm all of that; and I'm too old to change. I can't play the part of a doting father. I thought I could, before I got out; but I can't. Twice I've been tempted to knock her down, when she stood between me and the door.... Keep cool; I didn't do it! But I'm afraid of myself, I tell you. I've got to have my liberty. She can have hers.... Now here's my proposition: Lydia's got money. I don't know how much. My brother-in-law was a close man. Never even knew he was rich. But she's got it—all but what she's spent here trying to square accounts, as she thought. Do they thank her for it? Not much. I know them! But see here, you marry Lydia, whenever you like; then give me ten thousand dollars, and I'll clear out. I'm not a desirable father-in-law; I know that, as well as you do. But I'll guarantee to disappear, once my girl is settled. Is it a bargain?"

Elliot shook his head.

"Your daughter doesn't love me," he said.

Bolton flung up his hand in an impatient gesture of dissent.

"I stood in the way," he said. "She was thinking of me, don't you see? But if I get out— Oh, I promise you I'll make myself scarce, once this matter is settled."

"What you propose is impossible, on the face of it," the minister said slowly. "I am sorry—"

"Impossible! Why impossible?" shouted Bolton, in a sudden fury. "You've been courting my daughter—don't try to crawl out of it, now you know what I am. I'll not stand in the way, I tell you. Why, the devil—"

He stopped short, his restless eyes roving over the young man's face and figure:

"Oh, I see!" he sneered. "I begin to understand: 'the sanctity of the cloth'—'my sacred calling'— Yes, yes! And perhaps my price seems a bit high: ten thousand dollars—"

Elliot sprang from his chair and stood over the cringing figure of the ex-convict.

"I could strike you," he said in a smothered voice; "but you are an old man and—not responsible. You don't understand what you've said, perhaps; and I'll not try to make you see it as I do."

"I supposed you were fond of my girl," mumbled Bolton. "I heard you tell her—"

But the look in the younger man's eyes stopped him. His hand sought his heart in an uncertain gesture.

"Have you any brandy?" he asked feebly. "I—I'm not well.... No matter; I'll go over to the tavern. I'll have them take me home. Tired, after all this; don't feel like walking."



Chapter XX

The minister from the doorstep of the parsonage watched the stooped figure as it shambled down the street. The rain was still falling in torrents. The thought crossed his mind that the old man might not be able to compass the two miles or more of country road. Then he got into his raincoat and followed.

"My umbrella isn't of the best," he said, as he overtook the toiling figure; "but I should have offered it."

Andrew Bolton muttered something unintelligible, as he glanced up at the poor shelter the young man held over him. As he did not offer to avail himself of it the minister continued to walk at his side, accommodating his long free stride to the curious shuffling gait of the man who had spent eighteen years in prison. And so they passed the windowed fronts of the village houses, peering out from the dripping autumnal foliage like so many watchful eyes, till the hoarse signal of a motor car halted them, as they were about to cross the street in front of the Brookville House.

From the open door of the car Lydia Orr's pale face looked out.

"Oh, father," she said. "I've been looking for you everywhere!"

She did not appear to see the minister.

Bolton stepped into the car with a grunt.

"Glad to see the old black Maria, for once," he chuckled. "Don't you recognize the parson, my dear? Nice fellow—the parson; been having quite a visit with him at the manse. Old stamping-ground of mine, you know. Always friendly with the parson."

Wesley Elliot had swept the hat from his head. Lydia's eyes, blue and wide like those of a frightened child, met his with an anguished question.

He bowed gravely.

"I should have brought him home quite safe," he told her. "I intended ordering a carriage."

The girl's lips shaped formal words of gratitude. Then the obedient humming of the motor deepened to a roar and the car glided swiftly away.

On the opposite corner, her bunched skirts held high, stood Miss Lois Daggett.

"Please wait a minute, Mr. Elliot," she called. "I'll walk right along under your umbrella, if you don't mind."

Wesley Elliot bowed and crossed the street. "Certainly," he said.

"I don't know why I didn't bring my own umbrella this morning," said Miss Daggett with a keen glance at Elliot. "That old man stopped in the library awhile ago, and he rather frightened me. He looked very odd and talked so queer. Did he come to the parsonage?"

"Yes," said Wesley Elliot. "He came to the parsonage?"

"Did he tell you who he was?"

He had expected this question. But how should he answer it?

"He told me he had been ill for a long time," said the minister evasively.

"Ill!" repeated Miss Daggett shrilly. Then she said one word: "Insane."

"People who are insane are not likely to mention it," said Elliot.

"Then he is insane," said Miss Daggett with conviction.

Wesley looked at her meditatively. Would the truth, the whole truth, openly proclaimed, be advisable at this juncture, he wondered. Lydia could not hope to keep her secret long. And there was danger in her attempt. He shuddered as he remembered the man's terrible words, "Twice I have been tempted to knock her down when she stood between me and the door." Would it not be better to abandon this pretense sooner, rather than later? If the village knew the truth, would not the people show at least a semblance of kindness to the man who had expiated so bitterly the wrong he had done them?

"If the man is insane," Miss Daggett said, "it doesn't seem right to me to have him at large."

"I wish I knew what to do," said Elliot.

"I think you ought to tell what you know if the man is insane."

"Well, I will tell," said Elliot, almost fiercely. "That man is Andrew Bolton. He has come home after eighteen years of imprisonment, which have left him terribly weak in mind and body. Don't you think people will forgive him now?"

A swift vindictiveness flashed into the woman's face. "I don't know," said she.

"Why in the world don't you know, Miss Daggett?"

Then the true reason for the woman's rancor was disclosed. It was a reason as old as the human race, a suspicion as old as the human race, which she voiced. "I have said from the first," she declared, "that nobody would come here, as that girl did, and do so much unless she had a motive."

Elliot stared at her. "Then you hate that poor child for trying to make up for the wrong her father did; and that, and not his wrongdoing, influences you?"

Miss Daggett stared at him. Her face slowly reddened. "I wouldn't put it that way," she said.

"What way would you put it?" demanded Elliot mercilessly. He was so furious that he forgot to hold the umbrella over Miss Daggett, and the rain drove in her hard, unhappy face. She did not seem to notice. She had led a poisoned life, in a narrow rut of existence, and toxic emotions had become as her native atmosphere of mind. Now she seemed to be about to breathe in a better air of humanity, and she choked under it.

"If—" she stammered, "that was—her reason, but—I always felt—that nobody ever did such things without—as they used to say—an ax to grind."

"This seems to me a holy sort of ax," said Elliot grimly, "and one for which a Christian woman should certainly not fling stones."

They had reached the Daggett house. The woman stopped short. "You needn't think I'm going around talking, any more than you would," she said, and her voice snapped like a whip. She went up the steps, and Elliot went home, not knowing whether he had accomplished good or mischief.



Chapter XXI

Much to Mrs. Solomon Black's astonishment, Wesley Elliot ate no dinner that day. It was his habit to come in from a morning's work with a healthy young appetite keen-set for her beef and vegetables. He passed directly up to his room, although she called to him that dinner was ready. Finally she went upstairs and knocked smartly on his door.

"Dinner's ready, Mr. Elliot," she called out.

"I don't want any today, thank you, Mrs. Black," was his reply.

"You ain't sick?"

"Oh, no, only not hungry."

Mrs. Black was alarmed when, later in the afternoon, she heard the front door slam, and beheld from a front window Elliot striding down the street. The rain had ceased falling, and there were ragged holes in the low-hanging clouds which revealed glimpses of dazzling blue.

"I do hope he ain't coming down with a fever or something," Mrs. Black said aloud. Then she saw Mrs. Deacon Whittle, Lois Daggett, Mrs. Fulsom, and the wife of the postmaster approaching her house in the opposite direction. All appeared flushed and agitated, and Mrs. Black hastened to open her door, as she saw them hurrying up her wet gravel path.

"Is the minister home?" demanded Lois Daggett breathlessly. "I want he should come right down here and tell you what he told me this noon. Abby Daggett seems to think I made it up out of whole cloth. Don't deny it, Abby. You know very well you said.... I s'pose of course he's told you, Mrs. Black."

"Mr. Elliot has gone out," said Mrs. Black rather coldly.

"Where's he gone?" demanded Lois.

Mrs. Black was being devoured with curiosity; still she felt vaguely repelled.

"Ladies," she said, her air of reserve deepening. "I don't know what you are talking about, but Mr. Elliot didn't eat any dinner, and he is either sick or troubled in his mind."

"There! Now you c'n all see from that!" triumphed Lois Daggett.

Mrs. Deacon Whittle and Mrs. Judge Fulsom gazed incredulously at Mrs. Solomon Black, then at one another.

Abby Daggett, the soft round of her beautiful, kind face flushed and tremulous, murmured: "Poor man—poor man!"

Mrs. Solomon Black with a masterly gesture headed the women toward her parlor, where a fire was burning in a splendidly nickeled stove full five feet high.

"Now," said she; "we'll talk this over, whatever it is."



Chapter XXII

A mile from town, where the angry wind could be seen at work tearing the purple rainclouds into rags and tatters, through which the hidden sun shot long rays of pale splendor, Wesley Elliot was walking rapidly, his head bent, his eyes fixed and absent.

He had just emerged from one of those crucial experiences of life, which, more than the turning of the earth upon its axis, serve to age a human being. For perhaps the first time in the brief span of his remembrance, he had scrutinized himself in the pitiless light of an intelligence higher than his own everyday consciousness; and the sight of that meaner self, striving to run to cover, had not been pleasant. Just why his late interview with Andrew Bolton should have precipitated this event, he could not possibly have explained to any one—and least of all to himself. He had begun, logically enough, with an illuminating review of the motives which led him into the ministry; they were a sorry lot, on the whole; but his subsequent ambitions appeared even worse. For the first time, he perceived his own consummate selfishness set over against the shining renunciations of his mother. Then, step by step, he followed his career in Brookville: his smug satisfaction in his own good looks; his shallow pride and vanity over the vapid insincerities he had perpetrated Sunday after Sunday in the shabby pulpit of the Brookville church; his Pharisaical relations with his people; his utter misunderstanding of their needs. All this proved poignant enough to force the big drops to his forehead.... There were other aspects of himself at which he scarcely dared look in his utter abasement of spirit; those dark hieroglyphics of the beast-self which appear on the whitest soul. He had supposed himself pure and saintly because, forsooth, he had concealed the arena of these primal passions beneath the surface of this outward life, chaining them there like leashed tigers in the dark.... Two faces of women appeared to be looking on, while he strove to unravel the snarl of his self-knowledge. Lydia's unworldly face, wearing a faint nimbus of unimagined self-immolation, and Fanny's—full of love and solicitude, the face which he had almost determined to forget.

He was going to Lydia. Every newly awakened instinct of his manhood bade him go.

She came to him at once, and without pretense of concealment began to speak of her father. She trembled a little as she asked:

"He told you who he was?"

Without waiting for his answer she gravely corrected herself.

"I should have said, who we are."

She smiled a faint apology:

"I have always been called Lydia Orr; it was my mother's name. I was adopted into my uncle's family, after father—went to prison."

Her blue eyes met his pitying gaze without evasion.

"I am glad you know," she said. "I think I shall be glad—to have every one know. I meant to tell them all, at first. But when I found—"

"I know," he said in a low voice.

Then because as yet he had said nothing to comfort her, or himself; and because every word that came bubbling to the surface appeared banal and inadequate, he continued silent, gazing at her and marveling at her perfect serenity—her absolute poise.

"It will be a relief," she sighed, "When every one knows. He dislikes to be watched. I have been afraid—I could not bear to have him know how they hate him."

"Perhaps," he forced himself to say, "they will not hate him, when they know how you— Lydia, you are wonderful!"

She looked up startled and put out her hand as if to prevent him from speaking further.

But the words came in a torrent now:

"How you must despise me! I despise myself. I am not worthy, Lydia; but if you can care—"

"Stop!" she said softly, as if she would lay the compelling finger of silence upon his lips. "I told you I was not like other women. Can't you see—?"

"You must marry me," he urged, in a veritable passion of self-giving. "I want to help you! You will let me, Lydia?"

She shook her head.

"You could not help me; I am better alone."

She looked at him, the glimmer of a smile dawning in her eyes.

"You do not love me," she said; "nor I you. You are my friend. You will remain my friend, I hope?"

She arose and held out her hand. He took it without a word. And so they stood for a moment; each knowing without need of speech what the other was thinking; the man sorry and ashamed because he could not deny the truth of her words; and she compassionately willing to draw the veil of a soothing silence over his hurts.

"I ought to tell you—" he began.

But she shook her head:

"No need to tell me anything."

"You mean," he said bitterly, "that you saw through my shallow pretenses all the while. I know now how you must have despised me."

"Is it nothing that you have asked me—a convict's daughter—to be your wife?" she asked. "Do you think I don't know that some men would have thanked heaven for their escape and never spoken to me again? I can't tell you how it has helped to hearten me for what must come. I shall not soon forget that you offered me your self—your career; it would have cost you that. I want you to know how much I—appreciate what you have done, in offering me the shelter of an honest name."

He would have uttered some unavailing words of protest, but she checked him.

"We shall both be glad of this, some day," she predicted gravely.... "There is one thing you can do for me," she added: "Tell them. It will be best for both of us, now."

It was already done, he said, explaining his motives in short, disjointed sentences.

Then with a feeling of relief which he strove to put down, but which nevertheless persisted in making itself felt in a curious lightening of his spirits, he was again walking rapidly and without thought of his destination. Somber bars of crimson and purple crossed the west, and behind them, flaming up toward the zenith in a passionate splendor of light, streamed long, golden rays from out the heart of that glory upon which no human eye may look. The angry wind had fallen to quiet, and higher up, floating in a sea of purest violet, those despised and flouted rags of clouds were seen, magically changed to rose and silver.



Chapter XXIII

Fanny Dodge sat by the pleasant west window of the kitchen, engaged in reading those aimless shreds of local information which usually make up the outside pages of the weekly newspaper. She could not possibly feel the slightest interest in the fact that Mr. and Mrs. James M. Snider of West Schofield were entertaining a daughter, whose net weight was reported to be nine and three quarters pounds; or that Miss Elizabeth Wardwell of Eltingville had just issued beautifully engraved invitations to her wedding, which was to take place on the seventeenth day of October—yet she went on reading. Everybody read the paper. Sometimes they talked about what they read. Anyway, her work was over for the day—all except tea, which was negligible; so she went on, somewhat drearily suppressing a yawn, to a description of the new water-works, which were being speedily brought to completion in "our neighboring enterprising town of Brookville."

Fanny already knew all there was to tell concerning the concrete reservoir on the mountain, the big conduit leading to the village and the smaller pipes laid wherever there were householders desiring water. These were surprisingly few, considering the fact that there would be no annual charge for the water, beyond the insignificant sum required for its up-keep. People said their wells were good enough for them; and that spring water wasn't as good as cistern water, when it came to washing. Some were of the opinion that Lydia Orr was in a fool's hurry to get rid of her money; others that she couldn't stand it to be out of the limelight; and still other sagacious individuals felt confident there was something in it for "that girl." Fanny had heard these various views of Miss Orr's conduct. She was still striving with indifferent success to rise above her jealousy, and to this end she never failed to champion Lydia's cause against all comers. Curiously enough, this course had finally brought her tranquillity of a sort and an utter unprotesting acquiescence.

Mrs. Whittle had been overheard saying to Mrs. Fulsom that she guessed, after all, Fanny Dodge didn't care so much about the minister.

Fanny, deep once more in the absorbing consideration of the question which had once been too poignant to consider calmly, and the answer to which she was never to know, permitted the paper to slide off her knee to the floor: Why had Wesley Elliot so suddenly deserted her? Surely, he could not have fallen in love with another woman; she was sure he had been in love with her. However, to kiss and forget might be one of the inscrutable ways of men. She was really afraid it was. But Wesley Elliot had never kissed her; had never even held her hand for more than a minute at a time. But those minutes loomed large in retrospect.

The clock struck five and Fanny, roused from her reverie by the sudden sound, glanced out of the window. At the gate she saw Elliot. He stood there, gazing at the house as if uncertain whether to enter or not. Fanny put up a tremulous hand to her hair, which was pinned fast in its accustomed crisp coils; then she glanced down at her blue gown.... Yes; he was coming in! The bell hanging over the passage door jangled shrilly. Fanny stood stock-still in the middle of the floor, staring at it. There was no fire in the parlor. She would be forced to bring him out to the kitchen. She thought of the wide, luxuriously furnished rooms of Bolton house and unconsciously her face hardened. She might pretend she did not hear the bell. She might allow him to go away, thinking none of the family were at home. She pictured him, standing there on the doorstep facing the closed door; and a perverse spirit held her silent, while the clock ticked resoundingly. Then all at once with a smothered cry she hurried through the hall, letting the door fall to behind her with a loud slam.

He was waiting patiently on the doorstep, as she had pictured him; and before a single word had passed between them she knew that the stone had been rolled away. His eyes met hers, not indeed with the old look, but with another, incomprehensible, yet wonderfully soul-satisfying.

"I wanted to tell you about it, before it came to you from the outside," he said, when they had settled themselves in the warm, silent kitchen.

His words startled Fanny. Was he going to tell her of his approaching marriage to Lydia? Her color faded, and a look of almost piteous resignation drooped the corners of her mouth. She strove to collect her scattered wits, to frame words of congratulation with which to meet the dreaded avowal.

He appeared in no hurry to begin; but bent forward, his eyes upon her changing face.

"Perhaps you know, already," he reflected. "She may have told your brother."

"Are you speaking of Miss Orr?"

Her voice sounded strange in her own ears.

"Yes," he said slowly. "But I suppose one should give her her rightful name, from now on."

"I—I hadn't heard," said Fanny, feeling her hard-won courage slipping from her. "Jim didn't tell me. But of course I am not—surprised."

He evidently experienced something of the emotion she had just denied.

"No one seemed to have guessed it," he said. "But now everything is plain. Poor girl!"

He fell into a fit of musing, which he finally broke to say:

"I thought you would go to see her. She sorely needs friends."

"She has—you," said Fanny in a smothered voice.

For the life of her she could not withhold that one lightning flash out of her enveloping cloud.

He disclaimed her words with a swift gesture.

"I'm not worthy to claim her friendship, nor yours," he said humbly; "but I hope you—sometime you may be able to forgive me, Fanny."

"I don't think I understand what you have come to tell me," she said with difficulty.

"The village is ringing with the news. She wanted every one to know; her father has come home."

"Her father!"

"Ah, you didn't guess, after all. I think we were all blind. Andrew Bolton has come back to Brookville, a miserable, broken man."

"But you said—her father. Do you mean that Lydia Orr—"

"It wasn't a deliberate deception on her part," he interrupted quickly. "She has always been known as Lydia Orr. It was her mother's name."

Fanny despised herself for the unreasoning tumult of joy which surged up within her. He could not possibly marry Andrew Bolton's daughter!

He was watching her closely.

"I thought perhaps, if she consented, I would marry Lydia Orr," he forced himself to tell her. "I want you to know this from me, now. I decided that her money and her position would help me.... I admired her; I even thought at one time I—loved her. I tried to love her.... I am not quite so base as to marry without love.... But she knew. She tried to save me.... Then her father—that wretched, ruined man came to me. He told me everything.... Fanny, that girl is a saint!"

His eyes were inscrutable under their somber brows. The girl sitting stiffly erect, every particle of color drained from her young face, watched him with something like terror. Why was he telling her this?—Why? Why?

His next words answered her:

"I can conceive of no worse punishment than having you think ill of me." ... And after a pause: "I deserve everything you may be telling yourself."

But coherent thought had become impossible for Fanny.

"Why don't you marry her?" she asked clearly.

"Oh, I asked her. I knew I had been a cad to both of you. I asked her all right."

Fanny's fingers, locked rigidly in her lap, did not quiver. Her blue eyes were wide and strange, but she tried to smile.

His voice, harsh and hesitating, went on: "She refused me, of course. She had known all along what I was. She said she did not love me; that I did not love her—which was God's truth. I wanted to atone. You see that, don't you?"

He looked at Fanny and started.

"My God, Fanny!" he cried. "I have made you suffer too!"

"Never mind me."

"Fanny, can you love me and be my wife after all this?"

"I am a woman," said Fanny. Her eyes blazed angrily at him. Then she laughed and put up her mouth to be kissed.

"Men will make fools of women till the Day of Judgment," said she, and laughed again.



Chapter XXIV

When the afternoon mail came in that day, Mr. Henry Daggett retired behind his official barrier according to his wont, leaving the store in charge of Joe Whittle, the Deacon's son. It had been diligently pointed out to Joe by his thrifty parents that all rich men began life by sweeping out stores and other menial tasks, and for some time Joe had been working for Mr. Daggett with doubtful alacrity.

Joe liked the store. There was a large stock of candy, dried fruit, crackers and pickles; Joe was a hungry boy, and Mr. Daggett had told him he could eat what he wished. He was an easy-going man with no children of his own, and he took great delight in pampering the Deacon's son. "I told him he could eat candy and things, and he looked tickled to death," he told his wife.

"He'll get his stomach upset," objected Mrs. Daggett.

"He can't eat the whole stock," said Daggett, "and upsetting a boy's stomach is not much of an upset anyway. It don't take long to right it."

Once in a while Daggett would suggest to Joe that if he were in his place he wouldn't eat too much of that green candy. He supposed it was pure; he didn't mean to sell any but pure candy if he knew it, but it might be just as well for him to go slow. Generally he took a paternal delight in watching the growing boy eat his stock in trade.

That afternoon Joe was working on a species of hard sweet which distended his cheeks, and nearly deprived him temporarily of the power of speech, while the people seeking their mail came in. There was never much custom while mail-sorting was going on, and Joe sucked blissfully.

Then Jim Dodge entered and spoke to him. "Hullo, Joe," he said.

Joe nodded, speechless.

Jim seated himself on a stool, and lit his pipe.

Joe eyed him. Jim was a sort of hero to him on account of his hunting fame. As soon as he could control his tongue, he addressed him:

"Heard the news?" said he, trying to speak like a man.

"What news?"

"Old Andrew Bolton's got out of prison and come back. He's crazy, too."

"How did you get hold of such nonsense?"

"Heard the women talking."

Jim pondered a moment. Then he said "Damn," and Joe admired him as never before. When Jim had gone out, directly, Joe shook his fist at a sugar barrel, and said "Damn," in a whisper.

Jim in the meantime was hurrying along the road to the Bolton house. He made up his mind that he must see Lydia. He must know if she had authorized the revelation that had evidently been made, and if so, through whom. He suspected the minister, and was hot with jealousy. His own friendship with Lydia seemed to have suffered a blight after that one confidential talk of theirs, in which she had afforded him a glimpse of her sorrowful past. She had not alluded to the subject a second time; and, somehow, he had not been able to get behind the defenses of her smiling cheerfulness. Always she was with her father, it seemed; and the old man, garrulous enough when alone, was invariably silent and moody in his daughter's company. One might almost have said he hated her, from the sneering impatient looks he cast at her from time to time. As for Lydia, she was all love and brooding tenderness for the man who had suffered so long and terribly.

"He'll be better after a while," she constantly excused him. "He needs peace and quiet and home to restore him to himself."

"You want to look out for him," Jim had ventured to warn the girl, when the two were alone together for a moment.

"Do you mean father?" Lydia asked. "What else should I do? It is all I live for—just to look out for father."

Had she been a martyr bound to the stake, the faggots piled about her slim body, her face might have worn just that expression of high resignation and contempt for danger and suffering.

The young man walked slowly on. He wanted time to think. Besides—he glanced down with a quick frown of annoyance at his mud-splashed clothing—he certainly cut a queer figure for a call.

Some one was standing on the doorstep talking to Fanny, as he approached his own home. Another instant and he had recognized Wesley Elliot. He stopped behind a clump of low-growing trees, and watched. Fanny, framed in the dark doorway, glowed like a rose. Jim saw her bend forward, smiling; saw the minister take both her hands in his and kiss them; saw Fanny glance quickly up and down the empty road, as if apprehensive of a chance passerby. Then the minister, his handsome head bared to the cold wind, waved her farewell and started at a brisk pace down the road.

Jim waited till the door had closed lingeringly on the girl; then he stepped forth from his concealment and waited.

Abreast of him Elliot stopped; aware, it would seem, of the menace in the other man's eyes.

"You wished to speak with me?" he began.

"Speak with you—no! I want to kick you."

The minister eyed him indignantly. "What do you mean?"

"You sneaking hypocrite! do you think I don't know what has happened? You threw Fanny down, when Lydia Orr came to town; you thought my sister wasn't good enough—nor rich enough for a handsome, eloquent clergyman like you. But when you learned her father was a convict—"

"Stop!" cried Elliot. "You don't understand!"

"I don't? Well, I guess I come pretty near it. And not content with telling Lydia's pitiful secret to all the busybodies in town, you come to Fanny with your smug explanations. My God! I could kill you!"

The minister's face had hardened during this speech.

"See here," he said. "You are going too far."

"Do you deny that you've made love to both my sister and Miss Orr?" demanded Jim.

Physically the minister was no coward. He measured the slight, wiry figure of his wrathful opponent with a coolly appraising eye.

"My relations with Miss Orr are none of your business," he reminded Jim. "As for your sister—"

"Damn you!" cried Jim.

The minister shrugged his shoulders.

"If you'll listen to reason," he suggested pacifically.

"I saw you kiss my sister's hand! I tell you I'll not have you hanging around the place, after what's gone. You may as well understand it."

Wesley Elliot reflected briefly.

"There's one thing you ought to know," he said, controlling his desire to knock Fanny's brother into the bushes.

A scornful gesture bade him to proceed.

"Andrew Bolton came to see me in the parsonage this morning. He is a ruined man, in every sense of the word. He will never be otherwise."

Jim Dodge thrust both hands deep in his trousers' pockets, his eyes fixed and frowning.

"Well," he murmured; "what of that?"

"That being the case, all we can do is to make the best of things—for her.... She requested me to make the facts known in the village. They would have found out everything from the man himself. He is—perhaps you are aware that Bolton bitterly resents his daughter's interference. She would have been glad to spare him the pain of publicity."

The minister's tone was calm, even judicial; and Jim Dodge suddenly experienced a certain flat humiliation of spirit.

"I didn't know she asked you to tell," he muttered, kicking a pebble out of the way. "That puts a different face on it."

He eyed the minister steadily.

"I'll be hanged if I can make you out, Elliot," he said at last. "You can't blame me for thinking— Why did you come here this afternoon, anyway?"

A sudden belated glimmer of comprehension dawned upon the minister.

"Are you in love with Miss Orr?" he parried.

"None of your damned business!"

"I was hoping you were," the minister said quietly. "She needs a friend—one who will stand close, just now."

"Do you mean—?"

"I am going to marry Fanny."

"The devil you are!"

The minister smiled and held out his hand.

"We may as well be friends, Jim," he said coolly, "seeing we're to be brothers."

The young man turned on his heel.

"I'll have to think that proposition over," he growled. "It's a bit too sudden—for me."

Without another glance in the direction of the minister he marched toward the house. Fanny was laying the table, a radiant color in her face. A single glance told her brother that she was happy. He threw himself into a chair by the window.

"Where's mother?" he asked presently, pretending to ignore the excited flutter of the girl's hands as she set a plate of bread on the table.

"She hasn't come back from the village yet," warbled Fanny. She couldn't keep the joy in her soul from singing.

"Guess I'll eat my supper and get out. I don't want to hear a word of gossip."

Fanny glanced up, faltered, then ran around the table and threw her arms about Jim's neck.

"Oh, Jim!" she breathed, "you've seen him!"

"Worse luck!" grumbled Jim.

He held his sister off at arm's length and gazed at her fixedly.

"What you see in that chap," he murmured. "Well—"

"Oh, Jim, he's wonderful!" cried Fanny, half laughing, half crying, and altogether lovely.