"It's like this, Larry: I suppose life is a muddle for everyone and we all do have to learn as we go on—nothing can keep us from that, not even marriage, can it?"

No reply came to this.

"It's like light coming in spots, and then those spots can never be really dark again although all the rest may be. You think of those spots as bright and sure when all else is—is lost. That is the way it has been with me."

"Gee!" Larry shrugged his shoulders.

"Larry, you must try to understand!" Mary-Clare was growing desperate.

"Then, try to talk American."

"I am, Larry. My American. That's the trouble—there is more than one kind, you know. Larry, it was all wrong, my marrying you even for dear Dad's sake. If he had been well and we could have talked it over, he would have understood. I should have understood for him that last night. Even the letters should not have mattered, they must not matter now!"

This, at least, was comprehensible.

"Well, you did marry me, didn't you?" Larry flung out. "You're my wife, aren't you?" Correcting mistakes was not in Larry's plan of life.

"I—why, yes, I am, Larry, but a wife means more than one thing, doesn't it?" This came hopelessly.

"Not to me. What's your idea?" Larry was relieved at having the conversation run along lines that he could handle with some degree of common sense.

"Well, Larry, marriage means a good many things to me. It means being kind and making a good home—a real home, not just a place to come to. It means standing by each other, even if you can't have everything!"

Just for one moment Larry was inclined to end this shilly-shallying by brute determination. He was that type of man. What did not come within the zone of his own experience, did not exist for him except as obstacles to brush aside.

It was a damned bad time, he thought, for Mary-Clare to act up her book stuff. A man, home after a three months' absence, tired and worn out, could not be expected, at close upon midnight, to enjoy this outrageous nonsense that had been sprung upon him.

He must put an end to it at once. He discarded the cave method. Of course that impulse was purely primitive. It might simplify the whole situation but he discarded it. Mary-Clare's outbursts were like Noreen's "dressing up"—and bore about the same relation in Larry's mind.

"See here," he said suddenly, fixing his eyes on Mary-Clare—when Larry asserted himself he always glared—"just what in thunder do you mean?"

The simplicity of the question demanded a crude reply.

"I'm not going to have any more children." Out of the maze of complicated ideals and gropings this question and answer emerged, devastating everything in their path. They meant one, and only one, thing to Larry Rivers.

There were some things that could illume his dark stretches and level Mary-Clare's vague reachings to a common level. Both Larry and Mary-Clare were conscious now of being face to face with a grave human experience. They stood revealed, man and woman. The big significant things in life are startlingly simple.

The man attacked the grim spectre with conventional and brutal weapons; the woman backed away with a dogged look growing in her eyes.

"Oh! you aren't, eh?" Larry spoke slowly. "You've decided, have you?"

"I know what children mean to you, Larry; I know what you mean by—love—yes: I've decided!"

"You wedged your way into my father's good graces and crowded me out; you had enough decency, when you knew his wishes, to carry them out as long as you cared to, and now you're going to end the job in your own way, eh?

"Name the one particular way in which you're not going to break your vows," Larry asked, and sneered. "What's your nice little plan?" He got up and walked about. "I suppose you have cut and dried some little compromise."

"Oh! Larry, I wish you could be a little kind; a little understanding."

"Wish I could think as you think; that's what you mean. Well, by God, I'm a man and your husband and I'm going to stand on my rights. You can't make a silly ass of me as you did of my father. Fathers and husbands are a shade different. Come, now, out with your plan."

"I will not have any more children! I'll do everything I can, Larry; make the home a real home. Noreen and I will love you. We'll try to find some things we all want to do together; you and I can sort of plan for Noreen and there are all kinds of things to do around the Forest, Larry. Really, you and I ought to—ought to carry out your father's work. We could! There are other things in marriage, Larry, but just—the one." Breathlessly Mary-Clare came to a pause, but Larry's amused look drove her on. "I'm not the kind of a woman, Larry, that can live a lie!"

A tone of horror shook Mary-Clare's voice; she choked and Larry came closer, his lips were smiling.

"What in thunder!" he muttered. Then: "You plan to have us live on here in this house; you and I, a man and woman—and——!" Larry stopped short, then laughed. "A hell of a home that would be, all right!"

Mary-Clare gazed dully at him.

"Well, then," she whispered, and her lips grew deadly white, "I do not know what to do."

"Do? You'll forget it!" thundered Larry. "And pretty damned quick, too!"

But Mary-Clare did not answer. There was nothing more to say. She was thinking of the birth-night and death-night of her last child.

On and on the burning thoughts rushed in Mary-Clare's brain while she sat near Larry without seeing him. As surely as if death had taken him, he, the husband, the father of Noreen, had gone from her life. It did not seem now as if anything she had said, or done, had had anything to do with it. It was like an accident that had overtaken them, killing Larry and leaving her to readjust her life alone.

"Why don't you answer?" Larry laid a hand upon Mary-Clare's shoulder. "Getting sleepy? Come on, then, we'll have this out to-morrow." He looked toward the door behind which stood Noreen's cot and that other one beside it.

"I've fixed the room upstairs for you, Larry."

The simple statement had power to accomplish all that was left to be done. There was a finality about it, and the look on Mary-Clare's face, that convinced Larry he had come to the point of conquest or defeat.

"The devil you have!" was what he said to gain time.

For a moment he again contemplated force—the primitive male always hesitates to compromise where his codes are threatened. There was a dangerous gleam in his eyes; a ferocious curl of his lips—it would be such a simple matter and it would end for ever the nonsense that he could not tolerate.

Mary-Clare leaned back in her chair. She was so absolutely unafraid that she quelled Larry's brute instinct and aroused in him a dread of the unknown. What would Mary-Clare do in the last struggle? Larry was not prepared to take what he recognized as a desperate chance. The familiar and obvious were deep-rooted in his nature—if, in the end, he lost with this calm, cool woman whom he could not frighten, where could he turn for certain things to which his weakness—or was it his strength—clung?

A place to come to; someone peculiarly his own; his without effort to be worthy of. Larry resorted to new tactics with Mary-Clare at this critical moment. The smile faded from his sneering lips; he leaned forward and the manner that made him valuable to Maclin fell upon him like a disguise. So startling was the change, that Mary-Clare looked at him in surprise.

"Mary-Clare, you've got me guessing"—there was almost surrender in the tone—"a woman like you doesn't take the stand you have without reason. I know that. Naturally, I was upset, I spoke too quick. Tell me now in your own way. I'll try to understand."

Mary-Clare was taken off guard. Her desire and sore need rushed past caution and carried her to Larry.

She, too, leaned forward, and her lovely eyes were shining. "Oh! I hoped you would try, Larry," she said. "I know I'm trying and put things in a way that you resent, but I have a great, a true reason, if I could only make you see it."

"Now, you're talking sense, Mary-Clare," Larry spoke boyishly. "Just over-tired, I guess you were; seeing things in the dark. Men know the world better than women; that's why some things are as they are. I'm not going to press you, Mary-Clare, I'm going to try and help you. You are my wife, aren't you?"

"Yes, oh! yes, Larry."

"Well, I'm a man and you're a woman."

"Yes, that's so, Larry."

Step by step, ridiculous as it might seem, Mary-Clare meant, even now, to keep as close to Larry as she could. He misunderstood; he thought he was winning against her folly.

"Marriage was meant for one thing between man and woman!"

This came out triumphantly. Then Mary-Clare threw back her head and spiritually retreated to her vantage of safety.

"No, it wasn't," she said, taking to her own hard-won trail desperately. "No, it wasn't! I cannot accept that Larry—why, I have seen where such reasoning would lead. I saw the night our last baby came—and went. I'd grow old and broken—you'd hate me; there would be children—many of them, poor, sad little things—looking at me with dreadful eyes, accusing me. If marriage means only one thing—it means that to me and you, and no woman has the right to—to become like that."

"Wanting to defy the laws of God, eh?" Larry grew virtuous. "We all grow old, don't we? Men work for women; women do their share. Children are natural, ain't they? What's the institution of marriage for, anyway?" And now Larry's mouth was again hardening.

"Larry, oh! Larry, please don't make me laugh! If I should laugh there would never be any hope of our getting together."

For some reason this almost hysterical appeal roused the worst in Larry. The things Maclin had told him that day again took fire and spread where Maclin could never have dreamed of their spreading. The liquor was losing its sustaining effect—it was leaving Larry to flounder in his weak will, and he abandoned his futile tactics.

"Who's that man at the inn?" he asked.

The suddenness of the question, its irrelevancy, made Mary-Clare start. For a moment the words meant absolutely nothing to her and then because she was bared, nervously, to every attack, she flushed—recalling with absurd clearness Northrup's look and tone.

"I don't know," she said.

"That's a lie. How long has he been here, snooping around?"

"I haven't the slightest idea, Larry." This was not true, and Larry caught the quiver in the tones.

Again he got up and became the masterful male; the injured husband; the protector of his home. There were still tactics to be tested.

"See here, Mary-Clare, I've caught on. You never cared for me. You married me from what you called duty; your sense of decency held until your own comfort and pleasure got in between—then you were ready to fling me off like an old mit and term it by high-sounding names. Now comes along this stranger, from God knows where, looking about for the devil knows what—and taking what lies about in order to pass the time. I haven't lived in the world for nothing, Mary-Clare. Now lay this along with the other woman-thoughts you're so fond of. I'm going upstairs, for I'm tired and all-fired disgusted, but remember, what I can't hold, no other man is going to get, not even for a little time while he hangs about. Folks are going to see just what is going on, believe me! I'm going to leave all the doors and windows open. I'm going to give you your head, but I'll keep hold of the reins."

And then, because it was all so hideously wrong and twisted and comical, Mary-Clare laughed! She laughed noiselessly, until the tears dimmed her eyes. Larry watched her uneasily.

"Oh, Larry," she managed her voice at last, "I never knew that anything so dreadfully wrong could be made of nothing. You've created a terrible something, and I wonder if you know it?"

"That's enough!" Larry strode toward the stairway. "Your husband's no fool, my girl, and the cheap, little, old tricks are plain enough to him."

Mary-Clare watched her husband pass from view; heard him tramp heavily in the room above. She sat by the dead fire and thought of him as she first knew him—knew him? Then her eyes widened. She had never known him; she had taken him as she had taken all that her doctor had left to her, and she had failed; failed because she had not thought her woman's thought until it was too late.

After all her high aims and earnest endeavour to meet this critical moment in her life Mary-Clare acknowledged, as she sat by the ash-strewn hearth, that it had degenerated into a cheap and almost comic farce. To her narrow vision her problem seemed never to have been confronted before; her world of the Forest would have no sympathy for it, or her; Larry had reduced it to the ugliest aspect, and by so doing had turned her thoughts where they might never have turned and upon the stranger who might always have remained a stranger.

Alone in the deadly quiet room, the girl of Mary-Clare passed from sight and the woman was supreme; a little hard, in order to combat the future: quickened to a futile sense of injustice, but young enough, even at that moment, to demand of life something vital; something better than the cruel thing that might evolve unless she bore herself courageously.

Unconsciously she was planning her course. She would go her way with her old smile, her old outward bearing. A promise was a promise—she would never forget that, and as far as she could pay with that which was hers to give, she would pay, but outside of that she would not let life cheat her.

Bending toward the dead fire on the hearth, Mary-Clare made her silent covenant.



CHAPTER V

The storm had kept Northrup indoors for many hours each day, but he had put those hours to good use.

He outlined his plot; read and worked. He felt that he was becoming part of the quiet life of the inn and the Forest, but more and more he was becoming an object of intense but unspoken interest.

"He's writing a book!" Aunt Polly confided to Peter. "But he doesn't want anything said about it."

"He needn't get scared. I like him too well to let on and I reckon one thing's as good as another to tell us. I lay my last dollar, Polly, on this: he's after Maclin; not with him. I'm thinking the Forest will get a shake-up some day and I'm willing to bide my time. Writing a book! Him, a full-blooded young feller, writing a book. Gosh! Why don't he take to knitting?"

Northrup also sent a letter to Manly. He realized that he might set his conscience at rest by keeping his end of the line open, but he wanted to have one steady hand, at least, at the other end.

"Until further notice," he wrote to Manly, "I'm here, and let it go at that. Should there be any need, even the slightest, get in touch with me. As for the rest, I've found myself, Manly. I'm getting acquainted, and working like the devil."

Manly read the letter, grinned, and put it in a box marked "Confidential, but unimportant."

Then he leaned back in his chair, and before he relegated Northrup to "unimportant," gave him two or three thoughts.

"The writing bug has got him, root and branch. He's burrowed in his hole and wants the earth to tumble in over him. Talk about letting sleeping dogs lie. Lord! they're nothing to the animals of Northrup's type. And some darn fools"—Manly was thinking of Kathryn—"go nosing around and yapping at the creatures' heels and feel hurt when they turn and snap."

And Northrup, in his quiet room at the inn, slept at night like a tired boy and dreamed. Now when Northrup began to dream, he was always on the lookout. A few skirmishing, nonsensical dreams marked a state of mind peculiarly associated with his best working mood. They caught and held his attention; they were like signals of the real thing. The Real Thing was a certain dream that, in every detail, was familiar to Northrup and exact in its repetition.

Northrup had not been long at the inn when the significant dream came.

He was back in a big sunny room that he knew as well as his own in his mother's house. There he stood, like a glad, returned traveller, counting the pieces of furniture; deeply grateful that they were in their places and carefully preserved.

The minutest articles were noted. A vase of flowers; the curtains swaying in the breeze; an elusive odour that often haunted Northrup's waking hours. The room was now as it always had been. That being assured, Northrup, still in deep sleep, turned to the corridor and expectantly viewed the closed doors. But right here a new note was interjected. Previously, the corridor and doors were things he had gazed upon, feeling as a stranger might; but now they were like the room; quite his own. He had trod the passage; had looked into the empty rooms—they were empty but had held a suggestion of things about to occur.

And then waking suddenly, Northrup understood—he had come to the place of his dream. The Inn was the old setting. In a clairvoyant state, he had been in this place before!

He went to the door of his room and glanced down the passage. All was quiet. The dream made an immediate impression on Northrup. Not only did it arouse his power of creation, strengthen and illumine it; but it evolved a sense of hurry that inspired him without worrying him. It was like the frenzy that seizes an artist when he wants to get a bit of beauty on canvas in a certain light that may change in the next minute. He felt that what he was about to do must be done rapidly and he knew that he would have strength to meet the demand.

He was quickened to every slight thing that came his way: faces, voices, colour. He realized the unrest that his very innocent presence inspired. He wondered about it. What lay seething under the thick crust of King's Forest that was bubbling to the surface? Was his coming the one thing needed to—to——

And then he thought of that figure of speech that Manly had used. The black lava flowing; oozing, silently. The whole world, in the big and in the little, was being awakened and aroused—it was that, not his presence, that confused the Forest.

The habits of the house amused and moved him sympathetically. Little Aunt Polly, it appeared, was Judge and Final Court of Justice to the people. Through her he felt he must look for guidance and understanding.

There were always two hours in the afternoons set aside for "hearings." Perched on the edge of the couch, pillows to right and left, eyeglasses aslant and knitting in hand, Aunt Polly was at the disposal of her neighbours. They could make appointments for private interviews or air their grievances before others, as the spirit urged them. Awful verdicts, clean-cut and simple, were arrived at; advice, grim and far-reaching, was generously given, but woe to the liar or sniveller.

A curious sort of understanding grew up between Northrup and the little woman concerning these conclaves. Polly sensed his interest in all that went on and partly comprehended the real reason for it. She had been strangely impressed by the knowledge that her guest was a writer-man and therefore conscientious about the mental food she set before him. She did not share Peter's doubts. Some things she felt were not for Northrup and that fast-flying pen of his! But there were other glimpses behind the shields of King's Forest that did not matter. To these Northrup was welcome.

When the hour came for court to sit, it became Northrup's habit to seek the front porch for exercise and fresh air. Sometimes the window nearest to Aunt Polly's sofa would be left open! Sometimes it was closed.

In the latter emergency Northrup sought his exercise and fresh air at a distance.

One day Maclin called. Northrup had not seen him before and was interested. Indirectly he was concerned with the story in hand for he was the mysterious friend of Larry Rivers and the puller of many strings in King's Forest; strings that were manipulated in ways that aroused suspicion and would be great stuff in a book.

Northrup had seen Maclin from his room window and, when all was safe, quietly took to the back stairs and silently reached the piazza.

The window by Aunt Polly's couch was open a little higher than usual and the words that greeted Northrup were:

"I call it muggy, Mr. Maclin. That's what I call it, and if the draught hits the nape of your neck, set the other side of the hearth where there ain't no draught."

This, apparently, the caller proceeded to do. Outside Northrup took a chair and refrained from smoking. He wanted his presence to be unsuspected by the caller. He was confident that Aunt Polly knew of his proximity, and he felt sure that Maclin had come to find out more about him.

From the first Northrup was aware of a subtle meaning for the call and he wondered if the woman, clicking her needles, fully comprehended it! The man, Maclin, he soon gathered, was no ordinary personage. He had a kind of superficial polish and culture that were evident in the tones of his voice. After having accounted for his presence by stating that he was looking about a bit and felt like being friendly, Maclin was rounded up by Aunt Polly asking what he was looking about at?

Maclin laughed.

"To tell the truth," he said, as if taking Aunt Polly into his intimate confidence, "I was looking at the Point. A darned dirty bit of ground with all those squatters on it."

"We haven't ever called 'em that, Mr. Maclin. They're folks with nowhere else to live." Aunt Polly clicked her needles.

"They're a dirty, lazy lot. I can't get 'em to work over at the mines, do what I will."

"As to that, Mr. Maclin, folks as are mostly drunk on bad whiskey can't be expected to do good work, can they? Then again, if they are sober, I dare say they are too keen about those inventions of yours that must be so secret. Foreigners, for that purpose, I reckon are easier to manage."

Maclin shifted his position and put the nape of his neck nearer the window again and Northrup lost any doubt he had about Aunt Polly's understanding of the situation.

Maclin laughed. It was a trick of his to laugh while he got control of himself.

"You're a real idealist, Miss Heathcote; most ladies are, some men are, too, until they have to handle the ugly facts of life."

Peter was meant by "some men," Northrup suspected.

"Now, speaking of the whiskey, Miss Heathcote, it's as good over at my place as the men can afford, and better, too. I don't make anything at the Cosey Bar, I can assure you, but I know that men have to have their drink, and I think it's better to keep it under control."

"That's real human of you, Mr. Maclin, but I wish to goodness you'd keep the men under control after they've had their drink. They certainly do make a mess of the peace and happiness of others while they're indulging in their rights."

A silence, then Maclin started again. "Truth is, Miss Heathcote, the men 'round here are shucks, and I'm keeping my eye open for the real interest of King's Forest, not the sentimental interest. Now, that Point—we ought to clean that up, build decent, comfortable cottages there and a wharf; keep the men as have ambition and can pay rents, and get others in, foreigners if you like, who know their business and can set a good example. We're all running to seed down here, Miss Heathcote, and that's a fact. I don't mind telling you, you're a woman of a thousand and can see what's what, I am inventing some pretty clever things down at my place and it wouldn't be safe to let on until they're perfected, and I do want good workers, not loafers or snoopers, and I do want that Point. It's nearer to the mines than any other spot on the Lake. I want to build a good road to it; the squatters could be utilized on that—the Pointers, I mean. You and your brother ought to be keen enough to work with me, not against me. Sentiment oughtn't to go too far where a lot of lazy beggars are concerned."

The clicking of the needles was the only sound after Maclin's long speech; he was waiting and breathing quicker. Northrup could hear the deep breathing.

"How do you feel about it, Miss Heathcote?"

"Oh! I don't let my feelings get the better of me till I know what's stirring them."

Northrup stifled a laugh, but Maclin, feeling secure, laughed loudly.

"It's like asking me, Mr. Maclin, to get stirred up and set going by a pig in a poke." Aunt Polly's voice was thin and sharp. "I always see the pig before I get excited, maybe it would be best kept in the poke. Now, Peter and me have a real feeling about the Point—it belonged, as far as we know, to old Doctor Rivers, and all that he had he left to Mary-Clare and we feel sort of responsible to him and her. We would all shield anything that belonged to the old doctor."

"Is her title clear to that land?" Maclin did not laugh now, Northrup noted that.

"Land! Mr. Maclin, anything as high-sounding as a title tacked on to the Point is real ridiculous! But if the title ain't clear, I guess brother Peter can make it so. Peter being magistrate comes in handy."

"Miss Heathcote"—from his tones Northrup judged that Maclin was coming into the open—"Miss Heathcote, the title of the Point isn't a clear one. I've made it my business to find out. Now I'm going to prove my friendliness—I'm not going to push what I know, I'll take all the risks myself. I'll give Mrs. Rivers a fair price for that land and everything will be peaceful and happy if you will use your influence with her and the squatters. Will you?"

Aunt Polly slipped from the sofa. Northrup heard her, and imagined the look on her face.

"No, Mr. Maclin, I won't! When the occasion rises up, I'll advise Mary-Clare against pigs in pokes and I'll advise the squatters to squat on!"

Northrup again had difficulty in smothering his laugh, but Maclin's next move surprised and sobered him.

"Isn't that place under the stairs, Miss Heathcote, where the bar of the old inn used to be?"

"Yes, sir, yes!" It was an ominous sign when Aunt Polly addressed any one as "sir." "But that was before our time. Peter and I cleaned the place out as best we could, but there are times now, even, while I sit here alone in the dark, when I seem to see shadows of poor wives and mothers and children stealing in that door a-looking for their men. Don't that thought ever haunt you, Mr. Maclin, over at the Cosey Bar?"

They were sparring, these two.

"No, it never does. I take things as they are, Miss Heathcote, and let them go at that. Now, if I were to run this place, do you know, I'd do it right and proper and have a what's what and make money."

"But you're not running this inn, sir."

"Certainly I'm not now, that's plain enough, or I'd make King's Forest sit up and take notice. Well, well, Miss Heathcote, just talk over with your brother what I've said to you. A man looks at some things different from a woman. Good-bye, ma'am, good-bye. Looks as if it were clearing."

As Maclin came upon the piazza he stopped short at the sight of Northrup by the open window. He wasn't often betrayed into showing surprise, but he was now. He had come hoping to get a glimpse of the stranger; had come to get in an early warning of his power, but he wanted to control conditions.

"Good afternoon," he muttered. "Looks more like clearing, doesn't it? Stranger in these parts? I've heard of you; haven't had the pleasure of meeting you."

Northrup regarded Maclin coolly as one man does another when there is no apparent reason why he should not.

"The clouds do seem lifting. No, I'm not what you might call a stranger in King's Forest. Some lake, isn't it, and good woodland?"

"One of the family, eh? Happy to meet you." Maclin offered a broad, heavy hand. Northrup took it and smiled cordially without speaking. "Staying on some time?"

"I haven't decided exactly."

"Come over to the mines and look around. Nothing there as yet but a dump heap, so to speak, but I'm working out a big proposition and while I have to go slow and keep somewhat under cover for a time—I don't mind showing what can be shown."

"Thanks," Northrup nodded, "I'll get over if I find time. I'm here on business myself and am rather busy in a slow, lazy fashion, but I'll not forget."

Maclin put on his hat and turned away. Northrup got an unpleasant impression of the man's head in the back. It was flat and his neck met it in flabby folds that wrinkled under certain emotions as other men's foreheads did. The expressive neck was wrinkling now.

Giving Aunt Polly time to recover her poise, Northrup went inside. He found the small woman hovering about the room, patting the furniture, dusting it here and there with her apron. Her glasses were quite misty.

"I hope you kept your ears open," she exclaimed when she turned to Northrup.

"I did, Aunt Polly! Come, sit down and let's talk it over."

Polly obeyed at once and let restraint drop.

"That man has a real terrible effect on me, son. He's like acid sorter creeping in. I don't suppose he could do what he hints—but his hints just naturally make me anxious."

"He cannot get a hold on you, Aunt Polly. Surely your brother is more than a match for any one like Maclin."

"When it comes to that, son, Peter can fight his own in the open, but he ain't any hand to sense danger in the dark till it's too late. Peter never can believe a fellow man is doing him a bad turn till he's bowled over. But then," she ran on plaintively, "it ain't just us—Peter, Mary-Clare, and me—it's them folks down on the Point," the old face quivered touchingly. "The old doctor used to say it was God's acre for the living; the old doctor would have his joke. The Point always was a mean piece of land for any regular use, but it reaches out a bit into the lake and the fishing's good round it, and you can fasten boats to it and it's a real safe place for old folks and children. There's always drifting creatures wherever you may be, son, and King's Forest has 'em, but the old doctor held as they ought to have some place to move in, if we let 'em be born. So he set aside the Point and never took anything from them, though he gave them a lot, what with doctoring and funerals. Dear, dear! there are real comical happenings at the Point. I often sit and shake over them. Real human nature down there! Mary-Clare goes down and reads the Bible to the Pointers—they just about adore her, and she wouldn't sell them out, not for bread and butter for her very own! It's the title as worries Peter and me, son. We've always known it was tricky, but, lands! we never thought it would come to arguing about and I put it to you: What does this Maclin man want of that Point?"

Northrup looked interested.

"I'm going to find out," he said presently, feeling strangely as if he had become part and parcel of the matter. "I'm going to find out and you mustn't worry any more, Aunt Polly. We'll try Maclin at his own game and go him one better. He cannot account for me, I'm making him uneasy. Now you help the thing along by just squatting—that's a good phrase of yours; one can accomplish much by just squatting on his holdings."

And now that tricky imagination of Northrup's pictured Mary-Clare in the thick of it and carrying out the old doctor's whims; taking to the desolate bit of ground the sweetness and brightness of her loveliness. It was disconcerting, but at the same time gratifying, that pervasive quality of Mary-Clare. She was already as deep in the plot of Northrup's work as she was in the Forest. Whenever Northrup saw her, and he did often, on the road he was amused at the feeling he had of knowing her. So might it be had he come across an old acquaintance who did not recognize him. It was a feeling wrought with excitement and danger; he might some day startle her by taking advantage of it.

The weather, after the storm, took an unexpected turn. Instead of bringing frost it brought days almost as warm as late summer. The colour glistened; the leaves clung to the branches, but the nights were cool. The lake lay like an opal, flashing gorgeously in the sun, or like a moonstone, when the sun sank behind the hills.

One afternoon Northrup went to the deserted chapel on the island. He walked around the building which was covered with a crimson vine; he looked up at the belfry, in which hung the bell so responsive to unseen hands.

The place was like a haunted spot, but beautiful beyond words. Northrup tried the door—it swung in; it shared the peculiarities of all the other doors of the Forest.

Inside, the light came ruddily through the scarlet creeper that covered the windows—no stained glass could have been more exquisite; the benches were dusty and uncushioned, the pulpit dark and reproving in its aloofness. By the most westerly window there was a space where, apparently, an organ had once stood. There was a table near by and a chair.

An idea gripped Northrup—he would come to the chapel and write. There was a stove by the door. He could utilize that should necessity arise.

He sat down and considered. Presently he was lost in the working out of his growing plot; already he was well on his way. Over night, as it were, his theme had become clear and connected. He meant to become part of his book, rather than its creator; he would be governed by events; not seek to govern them. In short, as far as in him lay, he would live, the next few weeks, as a man does who has lost his identity and moves among his fellows, intent on the present, but with the background a blank.

Northrup felt that if, at the end of his self-ordained exile, he had regained his health, outlined a book, and ascertained what was the cause of the suspicious unrest of the Forest, he would have accomplished more than he had set out to do and would be in a position where he could decide definitely upon his course regarding the war, about which few, apparently, felt as he did.

It was his spiritual and physical struggle, as he contemplated the matter now, that was his undoing. He was trying to drive the horror from his consciousness, as a thing apart from him and his. He was overwhelmed by the possessiveness of the awful thing. It caught and held him, threatened everything he held sacred. Well, this should be the test! He would abide by the outcome of his stay in the Forest.

At that moment Maclin, oddly enough, came into Northrup's thoughts and the fat, ingratiating man became part, not of the plot of the book, but the grim struggle across the sea.

"Good God!" Northrup spoke aloud; "could it be possible?" All along he had been able to ignore the suggestions of disloyalty and treachery that many of his friends held, but a glaring possibility of Maclin playing a hideous role alarmed him; made every fibre of his being stiffen. The man was undoubtedly German, though his name was not. What was he up to?

There are moments in life when human beings are aware of being but puppets in a big game; they may tug at the strings that control them; may perform within certain limits, but must resign themselves to the fact that the strings are unbreakable. Such a feeling possessed Northrup now. He laughed. He was not inclined to struggle—he bowed to the inevitable with a keen desire for cooeperation.

At this point something caused Northrup to look around.

Upon a bench near by, hunched like a gargoyle, with her vague face nested in the palms of her thin hands, sat the girl he had noted in the yellow house the day of his arrival. One glance at her and she seemed to bring the scene back. The sunny room, the children, the dogs, and the girl on the table, who had soon become so familiar to him.

"Good Lord!" he ejaculated. "And who are you?"

"Jan-an."

Another name become a person! Northrup smiled. They were all materializing; the names, the stories.

"I see. Well?"

There was a pause. The girl was studying him slowly, almost painfully, but she did not speak.

"Where do you live, Jan-an?"

This made talk and filled an uncomfortable pause.

"One place and another. I was left."

"Left?"

"Yep. Left on the town. Folks take me in turn-about. I just jog along. I'm staying over to the Point now. Next I'm going to Aunt Polly. I chooses, I do. I likes to jog along."

The girl was inclined to be friendly and she was amusing.

"Did you hear the bell ring the night you came—the ha'nt bell?" she asked.

"I certainly did."

"'Twas a warning, and then here you are! Generally warnings mean bad things, but Aunt Polly says you're right enough and generally they ain't when they're young."

"Who are not, Jan-an?"

"Men. When they get old, like Uncle Peter, they meller or——"

"Or what?"

"Naturally drop off."

Northrup laughed. The sound disturbed the girl and she scowled.

"It's terrible to have folks think you're a fool to be laughed at," she muttered. "I can't get things over."

"What do you want to get over, Jan-an?"

Northrup was becoming interested. If straws show the wind's quarter, then a bit of driftwood may be depended upon to indicate the course of a stream. Northrup was again both amused and surprised to find how his very ordinary presence in King's Forest was, apparently, affecting the natives. Jan-an took on new proportions as she was regarded in the light of a straw or a bit of driftwood.

"Yer feelin's," the girl answered simply. "When you don' understand like most do, yer feelin's count, they do!"

"They certainly do, Jan-an."

The girl considered this and struggled, evidently, to adjust her companion to suit her needs, but at last she shook her head.

"I ain't going to take no chances with yer!" she muttered at length. "'Tain't natural. Aunt Polly and Uncle Peter ain't risking so much as—her——"

"You mean——" Northrup felt guilty. He knew whom the girl meant—he felt as if he were taking advantage; eavesdropping or reading someone else's letter.

Jan-an sunk her face deeper into the cup of her hands—this pressed her features up and made her look laughably ugly. She was not taking much heed of the man near by; she was seeking to collect all the shreds of evidence she had gathered from listening, in her rapt, tense way, and making some definite case for, or against, the stranger who, Aunt Polly had assured her, was "good and proper."

"Now, everything was running on same as common," Jan-an muttered—"same as common. Then that old ha'nt bell took to ringing, like all possessed. I just naturally thought 'bout you dropping out of a clear sky and asking us the way to the inn when it was plain as the nose on yer face how yer should go. What do you suppose folks paint sign-boards for, eh?" The twisted ideas sprang into a question.

"That's one on me, Jan-an!" Northrup laughed. "I was afraid I'd be found out."

"Can't yer read?" Jan-an could not utterly distrust this person who was puzzling her.

"Yes, I can read and write, Jan-an."

"Then what in tarnation made yer plump in that way?"

"The Lord knows, Jan-an!" Almost the tone was reverent.

"Then he came ructioning in—Larry, I mean. An' everything is different from what it was. Just like a bubbling pot"—poor Jan-an grew picturesque—"with the top wobbling. I wish"—she turned pleading eyes on Northrup—"I wish ter God you'd clear out."

For a moment Northrup felt again the weakening desire to follow this advice, but, as he thought on, his chin set in a fixed way that meant that he was not going to move on, but stay where he was. He meant, also, to get what he could from this strange creature who had sought him out. He convinced himself that it was legitimate, and since he meant to get at the bottom of what was going on, he must use what came to hand.

"So Larry has come back?" he asked indifferently. Then: "I've caught sight of him from a distance. Good-looking fellow, this Larry of yours, Jan-an."

"He ain't mine. If he was——" Jan-an looked mutinous and Northrup laughed.

"See here, you!" The girl was irritated by the laugh. "Larry, he thinks that Mary-Clare has set eyes on yer before yer came that day. Larry is making ructions, and folks are talking."

"Well, that's ridiculous." Northrup found his heart beating a bit quicker.

"I know it is, but Maclin can make Larry think anything. Honest to God, yer ain't siding 'long of Maclin?"

"Honest to God, Jan-an, I'm not."

"Then why did yer stumble in on us that way?"

"I don't know, Jan-an. That's honest to God, too!"

"Then if nothing is mattering ter yer, and one place is as good as another, why don't you go along?"

Northrup gave this due consideration. He was preparing to answer something in his own mind. The dull-faced girl was having a peculiar effect upon him. He was getting excited.

"Well, Jan-an," he said at last, "it's this way. Things are mattering. Mattering like thunder! And one place isn't as good as another; this place is the only place on the map just now—catch on?"

Jan-an was making strenuous efforts to "catch on"; her face appeared like a rubber mask that unseen fingers were pinching into comical expressions.

Northrup began to wonder just how mentally lacking the girl was.

"But tuck this away in your noddle, Jan-an. Your Uncle Peter and Aunt Polly have the right understanding. They trust me, and you will some day. I'm going to stay right here—pass that along to anyone who asks you, Jan-an. I'm going to stay here and see this thing out!"

"What thing?"

The elusive something that was puzzling the girl, the sense of something wrong that her blinded but sensitive nature suffered from, loomed close. This man might make it plain.

"What thing?" she asked huskily. Then Northrup laughed that disturbing laugh of his.

"I don't know, Jan-an. 'Pon my soul, girl, I'd give a good deal to know, but I don't. I'm like you, just feeling things."

Jan-an rose stiffly as if she were strung on wires. Her joints cracked as they fell into place, but once the long body stood upright, Northrup noticed that it was not without a certain rough grace and it looked strong and capable of great endurance.

"I've been following you since the first day when you landed," Jan-an spoke calmly. There was no warning or distrust in the voice, merely a statement of fact. "And I'm going to keep on following and watching, so long as you stay."

"Good! I'll never be really lonely then, and you'll sooner get to trusting me."

"I ain't much for trusting till I knows."

The girl turned and strode away. "Well, if you ever need me, try me out, Jan-an. Good-bye."

Northrup felt ill at ease after Jan-an passed from sight.

"Of all the messes!" he thought. "It makes me superstitious. What's the matter with this Forest?"

And then Maclin again came into focus. Around Maclin, apparently, the public thought revolved.

"They don't trust Maclin." Northrup began to reduce things to normal. "He's got them guessing with his damned inventions and secrecy. Then every outsider means a possible accomplice of Maclin. They hate the foreigners he brings here. They have got their eyes on me. All right, Maclin, my ready-to-wear villain, here's to you! And before we're through with each other some interesting things will occur, or I'll miss my guess."

In much the same mood of excitement, Northrup had entered upon the adventure of writing his former book, with this difference: He had gone to the East Side of his home city with all his anchors cast in a familiar harbour; he was on the open sea now. There had been his mother and Kathryn before; the reliefs of home comforts, "fumigations" Kathryn termed them; now he was part of his environment, determined to cast no backward look until his appointed task was finished in failure or—success.

The chapel and the day had soothed and comforted him: he was ready to abandon the hold on every string. This space of time, of unfettered thought and work, was like existence in a preparation camp. This became a fixed idea presently—he was being prepared for service; fitted for his place in a new Scheme. That was the only safe way to regard life, at the best. Here, there, it mattered not, but the preparation counted.



CHAPTER VI

When Mary-Clare awoke the next morning she heard Larry still moving about overhead as if he had been doing it all night. He was opening drawers; going to and fro between closet and bed; pausing, rustling papers, and giving the impression, generally, that he was bent upon a definite plan.

Noreen was sleeping deeply, one little arm stretched over her pillow and toward her mother as if feeling for the dear presence. Somehow the picture comforted Mary-Clare. She was strangely at peace. After her bungling—and she knew she had bungled with Larry—she had secured safety for Noreen and herself. It was right: the other way would have bent and cowed her and ended as so many women's lives ended. Larry never could understand, but God could! Mary-Clare had a simple faith and it helped her now.

While she lay thinking and looking at Noreen she became conscious of Larry tiptoeing downstairs. She started up hoping to begin the new era as right as might be. She wanted to get breakfast and start whatever might follow as sanely as possible.

But Larry had gone so swiftly, once he reached the lower floor, that only by running after him in her light apparel could she attract his attention. He was out of the house and on the road toward the mines!

Then Mary-Clare, seized by one of those presentiments that often light a dark moment, closed the door, shivering slightly, and went upstairs.

The carefully prepared bedchamber was in great disorder. The bedclothes were pulled from the bed and lay in a heap near by; towels, the soiled linen that Larry had discarded for the fresh, that had been placed in the bureau drawers, was rolled in a bundle and flung on the hearth.

This aspect of the room did not surprise Mary-Clare. Larry generally dropped what he was for the moment through with, but there was more here than heedless carelessness. Drawers were pulled out and empty. The closet was open and empty. There was a finality about the scene that could not be misunderstood. Larry was gone in a definite and sweeping manner.

Dazed and perplexed, Mary-Clare went to the closet and suddenly was made aware, by the sight of an empty box upon the floor, that in her preparation of the room she had left that box, containing the old letters of her doctor, on a shelf and that now they had been taken away!

What this loss signified could hardly be estimated at first. So long had those letters been guide-posts and reinforcements, so long had they comforted and soothed her like a touch or look of her old friend, that now she raised the empty box with a sharp sense of pain. So might she gaze at Noreen's empty crib had the child been taken from her.

Then, intuitively, Mary-Clare tried to be just, she thought that Larry must have taken the letters because of old and now severed connections They were his letters, but——

Here Mary-Clare, also because she was just, considered the other possible cause. Larry might use the letters against her in the days to come. Show them to others to prove her falseness and ingratitude. This possibility, however, was only transitory. What she had done was inevitable, Mary-Clare knew that, and it seemed to her right—oh! so right. There was only one real fact to face. Larry was gone; the letters were gone.

Mary-Clare began to tremble. The cold room, all that had so deeply moved her was shaking her nerves. Then she thought that in his hurry Larry might have overturned the box—the letters might be on the shelf still. Quickly she went into the closet and felt carefully every corner. The letters were not there.

Then with white face and chattering teeth she turned and faced Jan-an. The girl had come noiselessly to the house and found her way to the room where she had heard sounds—she had seen Larry fleeing on the lake road as she came over the fields from the Point.

"What's up?" she asked in her dull, even tones, while in her vacant eyes the groping, tender look grew.

"Oh! Jan-an," Mary-Clare was off her guard, "the letters; my dear old doctor's letters—they are gone; gone." Her feeling seemed out of all proportion to the loss.

"Who took 'em?" And then Jan-an did one of those quick, intelligent things that sometimes shamed sharper wits—she went to the hearth. "There ain't been no fire," she muttered. "He ain't burned 'em. What did he take them for?"

This question steadied Mary-Clare. "I'm not sure, Jan-an, that any one has taken the letters. You know how careless I am. I may have put them somewhere else."

"If yer have there's no need fussing. I'll find 'em. I kin find anything if yer give me time. I have ter get on the scent."

Mary-Clare gave a nervous laugh.

"Just old letters," she murmured, "but they meant, oh! they meant so much. Come," she said suddenly, "come, I must dress and get breakfast."

"I've et." Jan-an was gathering the bedclothes from the floor. She selected the coverlid and brought it to Mary-Clare. "There, now," she whispered, wrapping it about her, "you come along and get into bed downstairs till I make breakfast. You need looking after more than Noreen. God! what messes some folks can make by just living!"

Things were reduced to the commonplace in an hour.

The warmth of her bed, the sight of Noreen, the sound of Jan-an moving about, all contributed to the state of mind that made her panic almost laughable to Mary-Clare.

Things had happened too suddenly for her; events had become congested in an environment that was antagonistic to change. A change had undoubtedly come but it must be met bravely and faithfully.

The sun was flooding the big living-room when Mary-Clare, Noreen, and Jan-an sat down to the meal Jan-an had prepared. There was a feeling of safety prevailing at last. And then Jan-an, her elbows on the table, her face resting in her cupped hands, remarked slowly as if repeating a lesson:

"He's dead, Philander Sniff. Went terrible sudden after taking all this time. I clean forgot—letters and doings. I can't think of more than one thing at a time."

Mary-Clare set her cup down sharply while Noreen with one of those whimsical turns of hers drawled in a sing-song:

"Old Philander Sniff, he died just like a whiff——"

"Noreen!" Mary-Clare stared at the child while Jan-an chuckled in a rough, loose way as if her laugh were small stones rattling in her throat.

"Well, Motherly, Philander was a cruel old man. Just being dead don't make him anything different but—dead."

"Noreen, you must keep quiet. Jan-an, tell me about it."

Mary-Clare's voice commanded the situation. Jan-an's stony gurgle ceased and she began relating what she had come to tell.

"I took his supper over to him, same as usual, and set it down on the back steps, and when he opened the door I said, like I allas done, 'Peneluna says good-night,' and he took in the food and slammed the door, same as usual."

"Old Philander Sniff——" began Noreen's chant as she slipped from her chair intent upon a doll by the hearthside.

Mary-Clare took no notice of her but nodded to Jan-an.

"And then," the girl went on, "I went in to Peneluna and told her and then we et and went to bed. Long about midnight, I guess, there was a yell!" Jan-an lost her breath and paused, then rushed along: "He'd raised his winder and after all the keeping still, he called for Peneluna to come."

Mary-Clare visualized the dramatic scene that poor Jan-an was mumbling monotonously.

"And she went! I just lay there scared stiff hearing things an' seeing 'em! Come morning, in walked Peneluna looking still and high and she didn't say nothing till she'd gone and fetched those togs of hers, black 'uns, you know, that Aunt Polly gave her long back. She put 'em on, bonnet and veil an' everything. Then she took an old red rose out of a box and pinned it on the front of her bonnet—God! but she did look skeery—and then said to me awful careful, 'Trot on to Mary-Clare, tell her to fotch the marriage service and the funeral one, both!' Jes' like that she said it. Both!"

"This is very strange," Mary-Clare said slowly and got up. "I'm going to the Point, Jan-an, and you will take Noreen to the inn, like a good girl. I'll call for her in the afternoon."

"Take both!" Jan-an was nodding her willingness to obey. And Mary-Clare took her prayer-book with her.

Mary-Clare had the quiet Forest to herself apparently, for on the way to the Point she met no one. On ahead she traced, she believed, Larry's footprints, but when she turned on the trail to the Point, they were not there.

All along her way Mary-Clare went over in her thought the story of Philander Sniff and Peneluna. It was the romance and mystery of the sordid Point.

Years before, when Mary-Clare was a little child, Philander had drifted, from no one knew where, to the mines and the Point. He lived in one of the ramshackle huts; gave promise of paying for it, did, in fact, pay a few dollars to old Doctor Rivers, and then became a squatter. He was injured at the mines and could do no more work and at that juncture Peneluna had arrived upon the scene from the same unknown quarter apparently whence Philander had hailed. She took the empty cottage next Philander's and paid for it by service in Doctor Rivers's home. She was clean, thrifty, and strangely silent. When Philander first beheld her he was shaken, for a moment, out of his glum silence. "God Almighty!" he confided to Twombly who had worked in the mines with him and had looked after him in his illness; "yer can't shake some women even when it's for their good."

That was all. Through the following years the two shacks became the only clean and orderly ones on the Point. When Philander hobbled from his quarters, Peneluna went in and scrubbed and scoured. After a time she cooked for the old man and left the food on his back steps. He took it in, ate it, and had the grace to wash the dishes before setting them back.

"Some mightn't," poor Peneluna had said to Aunt Polly in defence of Sniff.

As far as any one knew the crabbed old man never spoke to his devoted neighbour, but she had never complained.

"I wonder what happened before they came here?" After all the years of taking the strange condition for granted, it sprang into quickened life. Mary-Clare was soon to know and it had a bearing upon her own highly sensitive state.

She made her way to the far end of the Point, passing wide-eyed children at play and curious women in doorways.

"Philander's dead!" The words were like an accompaniment, passing from lip to lip. "An' she won't let a soul in." This was added.

"She will presently," Mary-Clare reassured them. "She'll need you all, later."

There was a little plot of grass between Peneluna's shack and Philander's and a few scraggy autumn flowers edged a well-worn path from one back door to the other!

At Philander's front door Mary-Clare knocked and Peneluna responded at once. She was dressed as Jan-an had described, and for a moment Mary-Clare had difficulty in stifling her inclination to laugh.

The gaunt old woman was in the rusty black she had kept in readiness for years; she wore gloves and bonnet; the long crepe veil and the absurd red rose wobbled dejectedly as Peneluna moved about.

"Come in, child, and shut the world out." Then, leading the way to an inner room, "Have yer got both services?"

"Yes, Peneluna." Then Mary-Clare started back.

She was in the presence of the dead. He lay rigid and carefully prepared for burial on the narrow bed. He looked decent, at peace, and with that unearthly dignity that death often offers as its first gift.

Peneluna drew two chairs close to the bed; waved Mary-Clare majestically to one and took the other herself. She was going to lay her secrets before the one she had chosen—after that the shut-out world might have its turn.

"I've sent word over to the Post Office," Peneluna began, "and they're going to get folks, the doctor and minister and the rest. Before they get here—" Peneluna paused—"before they get here I want that you should act for the old doctor."

This was the one thing needed to rouse Mary-Clare.

"I'll do my best, Peneluna," she whispered, and clutched the prayer-book.

"The ole doctor, he knew 'bout Philander and me. He said"—Peneluna caught her breath—"he said once as how it was women like me that kept men believing. He said I had a right to hold my tongue—he held his'n."

Mary-Clare nodded. Not even she could ever estimate the secret load of confessions her beloved foster-father bore and covered with his rare smile.

"Mary-Clare, I want yer should read the marriage service over me and him!" Peneluna gravely nodded to her silent dead. "I got this to say: If Philander ain't too far on his journey, I guess he'll look back and understand and then he can go on more cheerful-like and easy. Last night he hadn't more than time to say a few things, but they cleared everything, and if I'm his wife, he can trust me—a wife wouldn't harm a dead husband when she might the man who jilted her." The words came through a hard, dry sob. Mary-Clare felt her eyes fill with hot tears. She looked out through the one open window and felt the warm autumn breeze against her cheek; a bit of sunlight slanted across the room and lay brightly on the quiet man upon the bed. "Read on, Mary-Clare, and then I can speak out."

Opening the book with stiff, cold fingers, Mary-Clare read softly, brokenly, the solemn words.

At the close Peneluna stood up.

"Him and me, Mary-Clare," she said, "'fore God and you is husband and wife." Then she removed the red rose from her bonnet, laid it upon the folded wrinkled hands of the dead man and drew the sheet over him.

Just then, outside the window, a bird flew past, peeped in, fluttered away, singing.

"Seems like it might be the soul of Philander," Peneluna said—she was crying as the old do, hardly realizing that they are crying. Her tears fell unheeded and Mary-Clare was crying with her, but conscious of every hurting tear.

"In honour bound, though it breaks the heart of me, I'm going to speak, Mary-Clare, then his poor soul can rest in peace.

"The Methodist parson, what comes teetering 'round just so often, always thought Philander was hell-bound, Mary-Clare; well, since there ain't anyone but that parson as knows so much about hell, to send for, I've sent for him and there's no knowing what he won't feel called upon to say with Philander lying helpless for a text. So now, after I tell you what must be told, I want that you should read the burial service over Philander and then that parson can do his worst—my ears will be deaf to him and Philander can't hear."

There was a heavy pause while Mary-Clare waited.

"Hell don't scare me nohow," Peneluna went on; "seems like the most interesting folks is headed for it and I'll take good company every time to what some church folks hands out. And, too, hell can't be half bad if you have them you love with you. So the parson can do his worst. Philander and me won't mind now.

"Back of the time we came here"—Peneluna was picking her words as a child does its blocks, carefully in order to form the right word—"me and Philander was promised."

Drifting about in Mary-Clare's thought a scrap of old scandal stirred, but it had little to feed on and passed.

"Then a woman got mixed up 'twixt him and me. In her young days she'd been French and you know yer can't get away from what's born in the blood, and the Frenchiness was terrible onsettling. Philander was side-twisted. Yer see, Mary-Clare, when a man ain't had nothing but work and working folks in his life, a creature that laughs and dances and sings gets like whiskey in the head, and Philander didn't rightfully know what he was about."

Peneluna drew the end of her crepe veil up and wiped her eyes.

"They went off together, him and the furriner. Least, the furriner took him off, and the next thing I heard she'd taken to her heels and Philander drifted here to the mines. I knew he needed me more than ever—he was a dreadful creature about doing for himself, not eating at Christian hours, just waiting till he keeled over from emptiness, so I came logging along after him and—stayed. He was considerable upset when he saw me and he never got to, what you might say, speaking to me, but he was near and he ate the food I left on his steps and he washed the plates and cups and that meant a lot to Philander. If I'd been his proper wife he wouldn't have washed 'em. Men don't when they get used to a woman.

"And then"—here Peneluna caught her breath—"then last night he called from his winder and I came. He said, holding my hand like it was the last thing left for him to hold: 'I didn't think I had a right to you, Pen'—he used to call me Pen—'after what I did. And I've just paid for my evil-doing up to the end, not taking comfort and forgiveness—just paying!' I never let on, Mary-Clare, how I'd paid, too. Men folks are blind-spotted, we've got to take 'em as they are. Philander thought he had worked out his soul's salvation while he was starving me, soul and body, but I never let on and he died smiling and saying, 'The food was terrible staying, Pen, terrible staying.'"

Mary-Clare could see mistily the long, rigid figure on the bed, her eyes ached with unshed tears; her heart throbbed like a heavy pain. Here was something she had never understood; a thing so real and strong that no earthly touch could kill it. What was it?

But Peneluna was talking on, her poor old face twitching.

"And now, Mary-Clare, him and me is man and wife before God and you. You are terrible understanding, child. With all the fol-de-rol the old doctor laid on yer, he laid his own spirit of knowing things on yer, too. Suffering learns folks the understanding power. I reckon the old doctor had had his share 'fore he came to the Forest—but how you got to knowing things, child, and being tender and patient, 'stead of hot and full of hate, I don't know! Now read, soft and low, so only us three can hear—the last service."

Solemnly, with sweet intonations, Mary-Clare read on and on. Again the bird came to the window ledge, looked in, and then flew off singing jubilantly. Peneluna smiled a fleeting wintry smile and closed her eyes; she seemed to be following the bird—or was it old Philander's soul?

When the service came to an end, Peneluna arose and with grave dignity walked from the room, Mary-Clare following.

"Now the Pointers can have their way 'cording to rule, Mary-Clare," she whispered, "but you and me understand, child. And listen to this, I ain't much of a muchness, but come thick or thin, Mary-Clare, I'll do my first and last for you 'cause of the secret lying 'twixt us."

Then Mary-Clare asked the question that was hurting her with its weight.

"Peneluna, was it love, the thing that made you glad, through it all, just to wait?"

"I don't rightly know, Mary-Clare. It was something too big for me to call by name, but I just couldn't act different and kill it, not even when her as once was French made me feel I oughter. I wouldn't darst harm that feeling I had, child."

"And it paid?"

"I don't know. I only know I was glad, when he called last night, that I was waiting."

Then Mary-Clare raised her face and kissed the old, troubled, fumbling lips. The thing, too big for the woman, was too big for the girl; but she knew, whatever it was, it must not be hurt.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked.

"God knows, Mary-Clare. The old doctor gave this place to Philander, and he gave me mine, next door. I think, till I get my leadings, I'll hold to this and see what the Lord wants me to do with my old shack. I allas find someone waiting to share. Maybe Jan-an will grow to fit in there in time. When she gets old and helpless she'll need some place to crawl to and call her own. I don't know, but I'm a powerful waiter and I'll keep an eye and ear open."

On the walk home Mary-Clare grew deeply thoughtful. The recent scene took on enormous significance. Detached from the pitiful setting, disassociated from the two forlorn creatures who were the actors in the tragic story, there rose, like a bright and living flame, a something that the girl's imagination caught and held.

That something was quite apart from laws and codes; it came; could not be commanded. It was something that marriage could not give, nor death kill. Something that could exist on the Point. Something that couldn't be got out of one's heart, once it had entered in. What was it? It wasn't duty or just living on. It was something too big to name. Why was the wonder of it crowding all else out—after the long years?

Mary-Clare left the Point behind her. She entered the sweet autumn-tinted woods beyond which lay her home. She hoped—oh! yearningly she hoped—that Larry would not be there, not just yet. She would go for Noreen; she would stay awhile with Aunt Polly and tell her about what had just occurred—the service, but not the secret thing.

Suddenly she stood still and her face shone in the dim woods. Just ahead and around a curve, she heard Noreen's voice. But was it Noreen's?

Often, in her wondering moments, Mary-Clare had pictured her little girl as she longed for her to be—a glad, unthinking creature, such as Mary-Clare herself had once been, a singing, laughing child. And now, just out of sight, Noreen was singing.

There was a rich gurgle in the flute-like voice; it came floating along.

"Oh! tell it again, please! I want to learn it for Motherly. It is awfully funny—and make the funny face that goes with it—the crinkly-up face."

"All right. Here goes!

"Up the airy mountain, Down the rustly glen—

that's the way, Noreen, scuffle your feet in the leaves—

"We daren't go a-hunting For fear of little men. Wee folk, good folk Trooping all together, Green jacket, red cap, And white owl's feather—

Here, you, Noreen, play fair; scuffle and keep step, you little beggar!"

"But I may step on the wee men, the good men," again the rich chuckle.

"No, you won't if you scuffle and then step high; they'll slip between your feet."

Then came the tramp, tramp of the oncoming pair. Big feet, little feet. Long strides and short hops.

So they came in view around the turn of the rough road—Northrup with Noreen holding his hand and trying to keep step to the swinging words of the old song.

And Northrup saw Mary-Clare, saw her with a slanting sunbeam on her radiant face. The romance of Hunter's Point was in her soul, and the wonder of her child's happiness. She stood and smiled that strange, unforgettable smile of hers; the smile that had its birth in unshed tears.

Northrup hurried toward her, taking in, as he came, her loveliness that could not be detracted from by her mud-stained and rough clothing. The feeling of knowing her was in his mind; she seemed vividly familiar.

"Your little daughter got homesick, or mother-sick, Mrs. Rivers"—Northrup took off his hat—"Aunt Polly gave me the privilege of bringing her to you. We became friends from the moment we met. We've been making great strides all day."

"Thank you, Mr.——"

"Northrup."

"Thank you, Mr. Northrup. You have made Noreen very happy—and she does not make friends easily."

"But, Motherly," Noreen was flushed and eager. "He isn't a friend. Jan-an told me all about him. He's something the wild-wind brought. You are, aren't you, Mr. Sir?"

Northrup laughed.

"Well, something like that," he admitted. "May I walk along with you, Mrs. Rivers? Unless I go around the lake, I must turn back."

And so they walked on, Noreen darting here and there quite unlike her staid little self, and they talked of many things—neither could have told after just what they talked about. The conversation was like a stream carrying them along to a definite point ordained for them to reach, somewhere, some time, on beyond.

"How on earth could she manage to be what she is?" pondered Northrup. "She's read and thought to some purpose."

"What does he mean by being here?" pondered Mary-Clare. "This isn't just a happening."

But they chatted pleasantly while they pondered.

When they came near to the yellow house, Noreen, who was ahead, came running back. All the joyousness had fled from her face. She looked heavy-eyed and dull.

"She's tired," murmured Mary-Clare, but she knew that that was not what ailed Noreen.

And then she looked toward her house. Larry stood in the doorway, smoking and smiling.

"Will you come and meet my husband?" she asked of Northrup.

"I'll put off the pleasure, if you'll excuse me, Mrs. Rivers. I have learned that one cannot tamper with Aunt Polly's raised biscuits. It's late, but may I call to-morrow?" Northrup stood bareheaded while he spoke.

Mary-Clare nodded. She was mutely thankful when he strode on ahead and toward the lake.

It was while they were eating their evening meal that Larry remarked casually:

"So that's the Northrup fellow, is it?" Mary-Clare flushed and had a sensation of being lassoed by an invisible hand.

"Yes. He is staying at the inn—I sent Noreen there this morning while I went over to the Point; he was bringing her home."

"He seemed to know that you weren't home."

"Children come in handy," Larry smiled pleasantly. "More potato, Mary-Clare?"

"No." Then, almost defiantly: "Larry, Mr. Northrup asked his way to the inn the day he was travelling through. I have never spoken to him since, until to-day. When he found the house empty this afternoon, he naturally——"

"Why the explanation?" Larry looked blank and again Mary-Clare flushed.

"I felt one was needed."

"I can't see why. By the way, Mary-Clare, those squatters at the Point are going to get a rough deal. Either they're going to pay regular, or be kicked out. I tell you when Tim Maclin sets his jaw, there is going to be something doing."

This was unfortunate, but Larry was ill at ease.

"Maclin doesn't own the Point, Larry."

"You better listen to Maclin and not Peter Heathcote." Larry retraced his steps. His doubt of Northrup had led him astray.

Mary-Clare gave him a startled look.

"Maclin's a brute," she said quietly. "I prefer to listen to my friends."

"Maclin's our friend. Yours and mine. You'll learn that some day."

"I doubt it, Larry, but he's your employer and I do not forget that."

"I wouldn't. And you're going to change your mind some fine day, my girl, about a lot of things."

"Perhaps."

"I'm sleeping outside, Mary-Clare." Larry rose lazily. "I just dropped in to—to call." He laughed unpleasantly.

"I'm sorry, Larry, that you feel as you do."

"Like hell you are!" The words were barely audible. "I'm going to give you a free hand, Mary-Clare, but I'm going to let folks see your game. That's square enough."

"All right, Larry." Mary-Clare's eyes flickered. Then: "Why did you take those letters?"

Larry looked blankly at her.

"I haven't taken any letters. What you hoaxing up?" He waited a moment but when Mary-Clare made no reply he stalked from the house angrily and into the night.



CHAPTER VII

Maclin rarely discussed Larry's private affairs with him, but he controlled them, nevertheless, indirectly. His hold on Larry was subtle and far-reaching. It had its beginning in the old college days when the older man discovered that the younger could be manipulated, by flattery and cheap tricks, into abject servitude. Larry was not as keen-witted as Maclin, but he had a superficial cleverness; a lack of moral fibre and a certain talent that, properly controlled, offered no end of possibility.

So Maclin affixed himself to young Rivers in the days before the doctor's death; he and Larry had often drifted apart but came together again like steel responding to the same magnet. While apparently intimate with Rivers, Maclin never permitted him to pass a given line, and this restriction often chafed Larry's pride and egotism; still, he dared not rebel, for there were things in his past that had best be forgotten, or at least not referred to.

When Maclin had discovered the old, deserted mines and bought them, apparently Larry was included in the sale. Maclin sought to be friendly with Mary-Clare when he first came to King's Forest; but failing in that direction, he shrugged his shoulders and made light of the matter. He never pushed his advantage nor forgave a slight.

"Never force a woman," he confided to Larry at that juncture, "that is, if she is independent."

"What you mean, independent?" Larry knew what he meant very well; knew the full significance of it. He fretted at it every time his desires clashed with Mary-Clare's. If he, not she, owned the yellow house; if she were obliged to take what he chose to give her, how different their lives might have been!

Larry was thinking of all this as he made his way to the mines after denying that he had taken the letters. Those letters lay snugly hid under his shirt—he had a use for them. He could feel them as he walked along; they seemed to be feeding a fire that was slowly igniting.

Larry was going now to Maclin with all barriers removed. His suspicious mind had accepted the coarsest interpretation of Mary-Clare's declaration of independence. Maclin's hints were, to him, established facts. There could be but one possible explanation for her act after long, dull years of acceptance.

"Well," Larry puffed and panted, "there is always a way to get the upper hand of a woman and, I reckon, Maclin, when he's free to speak out, can catch a fool woman and a sneaking man, who is on no fair business, unless I miss my guess." Larry grunted the words out and stumbled along. "First and last," he went on, "there's just two ways to deal with women. Break 'em or let them break themselves."

Larry's idea now was to let Mary-Clare break herself with the Forest as audience. He wasn't going to do anything. No, not he! Living outside his home would set tongues wagging. All right, let Mary-Clare stop their wagging.

There was always, with Larry, this feeling of hot impotence when he retreated from Mary-Clare. For so vital and high-strung a woman, Mary-Clare could at critical moments be absolutely negative, to all appearances. Where another might show weakness or violence, she seemed to close all the windows and doors of her being, leaving her attacker in the outer darkness with nothing to strike at; no ear to assail. It was maddening to one of Larry's type.

So had Mary-Clare just now done. After asking him about the letters, she had withdrawn, but in the isolation where Larry was left he could almost hear the terrific truths he guiltily knew he deserved, hurled at him, but which his wife did not utter. Well, two could play at her game.

And in this mood he reached Maclin; accepted a cigar and stretched his feet toward the fire in his owner's office.

Maclin was in a humanly soothing mood. He fairly crooned over Larry and could tell to a nicety the workings of his mind.

He puffed and puffed at his enormous cigar; he was almost hidden from sight in the smoke but his words oozed forth as if they were cutting through a soft, thick substance.

"Now, Larry," he said; "don't make a mistake. Some women don't have weak spots, they have knots—weak ends tied together, so to speak. The cold, calculating breed—and your wife, no offence intended, is mighty chilly—can't be broken, as you intimate, but they can be untied and"—Maclin was pleased with his picturesque figures of speech—"left dangling."

This was amusing. Both men guffawed.

"Do you know, Rivers"—Maclin suddenly relapsed into seriousness—"it was a darned funny thing that a girl like your wife should fall into your open mouth, marry you off-hand, as one might say. Mighty funny, when you come to think of it, that your old man should let her—knowing all he knew and seeming to set such a store by the girl."

Larry winced and felt the lash on his back. So long had that lash hung unused that the stroke now made him cringe.

"No use harking back to that, Maclin," he said: "some things ain't common property, you know, even between you and me. We agreed to that."

"Yes?" the word came softly. Was it apologetic or threatening?

There was a pause. Then Maclin unbent.

"Larry," he began, tossing his cigar aside, "you haven't ever given me full credit, my boy, for what I've tried to do for you. See here, old man, I have got you out of more than one fix, haven't I?"

Larry looked back—the way was not a pleasant one.

"Yes," he admitted, "yes, you have, Maclin."

"I know you often get fussed, Rivers, about what you term my using you in business, but I swear to you that in the end you'll think different about that. I've got to work under cover myself to a certain extent. I'm not my own master. But this I can say—I'm willing to be a part of a big thing. When the public is taken into our confidence, we'll all feel repaid. Can you—do you catch on, Larry?"

"It's like catching on to something in the dark," Larry muttered.

"Well, that's something," Maclin said cheerfully. "Something to hold to in the dark isn't to be sneered at."

"Depends upon what it is!" Apparently Larry was in a difficult mood. Maclin tried a new course.

"It's one thing having a friend in the dark, old man, and another having an enemy. I suppose that's what you mean. Well, have I been much of an enemy to you?"

"I just told you what I think about that." Larry misinterpreted Maclin's manner and took advantage.

"Larry, I'm going to give you something to chew on because I am your friend and because I want you to trust me, even in the dark. The fellow Northrup——"

Larry started as if an electric spark had touched him. Maclin appeared not to notice.

"—is on our tracks, but he mustn't suspect that we have sensed it." The words were ill-chosen. Having any one on his tracks was a significant phrase that left an ugly fear in Larry's mind.

"What tracks?" he asked suspiciously.

"Our inventions." Maclin showed no nervous dread. "These inventions, big as they are, old man, are devilish simple. That's why we have to lie low. Any really keen chap with the right slant could steal them from under our noses. That's why I like to get foreigners in here—these Dutchies don't smell around. Give them work to do, and they do it and ask no questions; the others snoop. Now this Northrup is here for a purpose."

"You know that for a fact, Maclin?"

"Sure, I know it." Maclin was a man who believed in holding all the cards and discarding at his leisure; he always played a slow game. "I know his kind, but I'm going to let him hang himself. Now see here, Rivers, you better take me into your confidence—I may be able to fix you up. What's wrong between you and your wife?"

This plunge sent Larry to the wall. When a slow man does make a drive, he does deadly work.

"Well, then"—Larry looked sullen—"I've left the house and mean to stay out until Mary-Clare comes to her senses!"

"All right, old man. I rather smelled this out. I only wanted to make sure. It's this Northrup, eh? Now, Rivers, I could send you off on a trip but it would be the same old story. I hate to kick you when you're down, but I will say this, your wife doesn't look like one mourning without hope when you're away, and with this Northrup chap on the spot, needing entertainment while he works his game, I'm thinking you better stay right where you are! You can, maybe, untie the knot, old chap. Give her and this Northrup all the chance they want, and if you leave 'em alone, I guess the Forest will smoke 'em out."

Maclin came nearer to being jubilant than Rivers had ever seen him. The sight was heartening, but still something in Larry tempered his enthusiasm. He had been able, in the past, to exclude Mary-Clare from the inner sanctuary of Maclin's private ideals, and he hated now to betray her into his clutches. Maclin was devilishly keen under that slow, sluggish manner of his and he hastened, now, to say:

"Don't get a wrong slant on me, old man. I'm only aiming for the good of us all, not the undoing. I want to show this fellow Northrup up to your wife as well as to others. Then she'll know her friends from her foes. Naturally a woman feels flattered by attentions from a man like this stranger, but if she sees how he's taken the Heathcotes in and how he's used her while he was boring underground, she'll flare up and know the meaning of real friends. Some women have to be shown!"

By this time Larry suspected that much had gone on during his absence that Maclin had not confided to him. He was thoroughly aroused.

"Now see here, Rivers!" Maclin drew his chair closer and laid his hand on Larry's arm—he gloated over the trouble in the eyes holding his with dumb questioning. "It's coming out all right. We're in early and we've got the best seats—only keep them guessing; guessing! Larry, your wife goes—down to the Point a lot—goes missionarying, you know. Well, this Northrup is tramping around in the woods skirting the Point."

Just here Larry started and looked as if something definite had come to him. Had he not seen Northrup that very day in the woods?

"Now there's an empty shack on the Point, Rivers—some old squatter has died. I want you to get that shack somehow or another. It ought to be easy, since they say your wife owns the place; it's your business to get it and then watch out and keep your mouth shut. You've got to live somewhere while you can't live decent at home. 'Tisn't likely your wife, having slammed the door of her home on you, will oust you from that hovel on the Point—your being there will work both ways—she won't dare to take a step."

Larry drew a sigh, a heavy one, and began to understand. He saw more than Maclin could see.

"She hasn't turned me out," he muttered. "I came out."

"Let her explain that, Rivers. See? She can't do it while she's gallivanting with this here Northrup."

Larry saw the possibilities from Maclin's standpoint, but he saw Mary-Clare's smile and that uplifted head. He was overwhelmed again by the sense of impotence.

"Give a woman a free rein, Rivers, she'll shy, sooner or later." Maclin was gaining assurance as he saw Larry's discomfort. "That's what keeps women from getting on—they shy! When all's said, a tight rein is a woman's best good, but some women have to learn that."

Something in Larry burned hot and resentful, but whether it was because of Maclin or Mary-Clare he could not tell, so he kept still.

"Let's turn in, anyway, for to-night, old boy." Maclin's voice sounded paternal. "To-morrow is to-morrow and you'll feel able to tackle the job after a night's sleep."

So they turned in and it was the afternoon of the next day when Larry took his walk to the Point.

Just as he started forth Maclin gave him two or three suggestions.

"I'd offer to hire the shanty," he said. "That will put you in a safe position, no matter how they look at it. An old woman by the name of Peneluna thinks she owns it. There's an old codger down there, too, Twombley they call him—he's smart as the devil, but you can't tell which way he may leap. Try him out. Get him to take sides with you if you can."

"I remember Twombley," Larry said. "Dad used to get a lot of fun out of him in the old days. I haven't been on the Point since I was a boy."

"It's a good thing you never troubled the Point, Rivers. They'll be more stirred by you now."

"Maybe they'll kick me out."

"Never fear!" Maclin reassured him. "Not if you show good money and play up to your old dad. He had everyone eating out of his hand, all right."

So Larry, none too sure of himself, but more cheerful than he had been, set forth.

Now there is one thing about the poor, wherever you find them—they live out of doors when the weather permits. Given sunshine and soft air, they promptly turn their backs on the sordid dens they call home and take to the open. The day that Larry went to the Point was warm and lovely, and all the Pointers, or nearly all of them, were in evidence.

Jan-an was sweeping the steps of Peneluna's doorway, sweeping them viciously, sending the dust flying. She was working off her state of mind produced by the recent funeral of old Philander. She was spiritually inarticulate, but her gropings were expressed in service to them she loved and in violence to them she hated. As she swept she was cleaning for Peneluna, and at the same time, sweeping to the winds of heaven the memory of the dreadful minister who had said such fearsome things about the dead who couldn't talk back. The man had made Mary-Clare cry as she sat holding Peneluna's hard, cold hand. Jan-an knew how hard and cold it was, for she had held the other in decent sympathy.

Among the tin cans and ash heaps the children of the Point were playing. One inspired girl had decked a mound of wreckage and garbage with some glittering goldenrod and was calling her mates to come and see the "heaven" she had made.

Larry laughed at this and muttered: "Made it in hell, eh, kid?"

The child scowled at him.

Twombley was sitting in his doorway watching what was going on. He was a gaunt, sharp-eyed, sharp-nosed, and sharp-tongued man. He was the laziest man on the Point, but with all the earmarks of the cleverest.

"Well, Twombley, how are you?"

Twombley spat and took Larry out of the pigeonhole of his memory—labelled and priced; Twombley had not thought of him in years, as a definite individual. He was Mary-Clare's husband; a drifter; a tool of Maclin. As such he was negligible.

"Feeling same as I look," he said at last. He was ready to appraise the man before him.

"Bad nut," was what he thought, but diluted his sentiments because of the relationship to the old doctor and Mary-Clare. Twombley, like everyone else, had a shrine in his memory—rather a musty, shabby one, to be sure, but it held its own sacredly. Doctor Rivers and all that belonged to him were safely niched there—even this son, the husband of Mary-Clare about whom the Forest held its tongue because he was the son of the old doctor.

"Old Sniff's popped, I hear." Larry, now that he chose to be friendly, endeavoured to fit his language to his hearer's level. "Have a cigar, Twombley?"

"I'll keep to my pipe." The old man's face was expressionless. "If you don't get a taste for what you can't afford you don't ruin it for what you can. Yes, looks as if Sniff was dead. They've buried him, at any rate."

"Who's got his place?"

"Peneluna Sniff."

"Was he married?" Floating in Rivers's mind was an old story, but it floated too fast for him to catch it.

"She went through the marriage service. That fixes it, don't it?" Twombley puffed loudly.

"I suppose it does, but I kind of recall that there was a quarrel between them."

"Ain't that a proof that they was married?" Twombley's eyes twinkled through the slits of lids—he always squinted his eyes close when he wanted to go slow. Larry laughed.

"Didn't Peneluna Sniff, or whatever her name is, live in a house by herself?" he asked. He was puzzled.

"She sure did. Your old man was a powerful understander of human nater. A few feet 'twixt married folks, he uster say, often saves the day."

"Well, who's got her house?"

"She's got it."

"Empty?"

"I guess the same truck's in it that always was. I ain't seen any moving out."

"Is Mrs. Sniff at home?"

"How do you suppose I know, young man? These ain't calling hours on the Point."

"Well, they're business hours, all right, Twombley. See here, my friend, I'm going to hire that house of Mrs. Sniff if I can."

Twombley's slits came close together.

"Yes?" was all he vouchsafed.

"Yes. And I wish you'd pass the word along, my friend."

"I don't pass nothing!" Twombley interrupted. "I take all I kin git. I make use of what I can. The rest, I chuck."

"Well, have it your own way, but I'm your friend, Twombley, and the friend of your neighbours. I cannot say more now—but you'll all believe it some day."

"Maclin standing back of yer, young feller?"

"Yes. And that's where you've made another bad guess, Twombley. Maclin's your friend, only he isn't free to speak out just now."

"Gosh! we ain't eager for him to speak. The stiller he is the better we like it."

"He knows that. He's given up—he is going to see what I can make you feel—I'm one of you, you know that, Twombley."

"Never would have guessed it, son!" Twombley leered.

"Well, my wife's always been your friend—what's the difference? I've been on my job; she's been on hers—it's all the same, only now I'm going to prove it!"

"Gosh! you'll be a shock to Maclin all right."

"No, I won't, Twombley. You're wrong about him. He's meant right, but not being one of us he's bungled, he knows it now. He's listened to me at last."

Larry could be a most important-appearing person when there was no one to prick his little bubble. Twombley eyed his visitor calmly.

"Funny thing, life is," he ruminated, seeming to forget Larry's presence. "Yer get to thinking you're running down hill on a greased plank, and sudden—a nail catches yer breeches and yer stop in time to see where yer was going!"

"What then, Twombley?"

"Oh! nothing. Only as long as yer breeches hold and the nail don't come out, yer keep on looking!"

Again Twombley spat. Then, seeing his guest rising, he asked with great dignity:

"Going, young sir?"

"Yes, over to Mrs. Sniff's. And if we are neighbours, Twombley, let us be friends. My father had a liking for you, I remember."

"I'm not forgetting that, young sir."

When Larry reached Mrs. Sniff's, Jan-an was still riotously sweeping the memories of the funeral away. She turned and looked at Larry. Then, leaning on her broom, she continued to stare.

"Well, what in all possessed got yer down here?" asked the girl, her face stiffening.

"Where's Mrs. Sniff?" Larry asked. He always resented Jan-an, on general principles. She got in his way too often. When she was out of sight he never thought of her, but her vacant stare and monotonous drawl were offensive to him.

He had once suggested that she be confined somewhere. "You never can tell about her kind," he had said; he had a superstitious fear of her.

"What, shut the poor child from her freedom?" Aunt Polly had asked him, "just because we cannot tell? Lordy! Larry Rivers, there wouldn't be many people running around loose if we applied that rule to them."

There were some turns that conversation took that sent Larry into sudden silences—this had been one. He had never referred to Jan-an's treatment after that, but he always resented her.

Jan-an continued to stare at him.

"There ain't no Mrs. Sniff" she said finally. "What's ailin' folks around here?"

"Well, where's Miss Peneluna?" Larry ventured, thinking back to the old title of his boyhood days.

"Setting!" Jan-an returned to her sweeping and Larry stepped aside.

"I want to see her," he said angrily. "Get out of the way."

"She ain't no great sight, and I'm cleaning up!" Jan-an scowled and her energy suggested that Larry might soon be included among the things she was getting rid of.

"See here"—Larry's eyes darkened—"if you don't stand aside——"

But at this juncture Peneluna loomed in the doorway. She regarded Larry with a tightening of the mouth muscles. Inwardly she thought of him as a bad son of a good father, but intuitions were not proofs and because Doctor Rivers had been good, and Mary-Clare was always to be considered, the old woman kept her feelings to herself.

She was still in her rusty black, the rakish bonnet set awry on her head.

"Come in!" she said quietly. "And you, Jan-an, you trundle over to my old place and clean up."

Larry went inside and sat down in the chair nearest the door. The neatness and order of the room struck even his indifferent eyes, so unexpected was it on the Point.

"Well?" Peneluna looked at her visitor coolly. Larry did not speak at once—he was going to get the house next door; he must have it and he did not want to make any mistakes with the grim, silent woman near him. He was not considering the truth, but he was selecting the best lies that occurred to him; the ones most likely to appeal to his future landlady.

"Miss Peneluna," he began finally, but the stiff lips interrupted him:

"Mrs. Sniff."

"Good Lord! Mrs. Sniff, then. You see, I didn't know you were married."

"Didn't you? You might not know everything that goes on. You don't trouble us much. Your goings and comings leave us strangers."