Larry did not reply. He was manufacturing tears, and presently, to Peneluna's amazement, they glistened on his cheeks.

"I wonder"—Larry's voice trembled—"I wonder if I can speak openly to you, Mrs.—Mrs. Sniff? You were in my father's house; he trusted you. I do not seem to have any one but you at this crisis."

Peneluna sneezed. She had a terrible habit of sneezing at will—it was positively shocking.

"I guess there ain't any reason for you not speaking out your ideas to me," she said cautiously. "I ain't much of a fount of wisdom, but I ain't a babbling brook, neither."

She was thinking that it would be safer to handle Rivers than to let others use him, and she knew something of the trouble at the yellow house. Jan-an had regaled her with some rare tidbits.

"Peneluna, Mary-Clare and I have had some words; I've left home."

There was no answer to this. Larry moistened his lips and went on:

"Perhaps Mary-Clare has told you?"

"No, she ain't blabbed none."

This was disconcerting.

"She wouldn't, and I am not going to, either. It's just a misunderstanding, Mrs. Sniff. I could go away and let it rest there, but I fear I've been away too much and things have got snarled. Mary-Clare doesn't rightly see things."

"Yes she does, Larry Rivers! She's terrible seeing." Peneluna's eyes flashed.

"All right then, Mrs. Sniff. I want her to see! I want her to see me here, looking after her interests. I cannot explain; you'll all know soon enough. Danger's threatening and I'm going to be on the spot! You've all got a wrong line on Maclin, so he's side-stepped and listened to me at last; I'm going to show up this man Northrup who is hanging round. I want to hire your house, Mrs. Sniff, and live on here until——"

Peneluna sneezed lustily; it made Larry wince.

"Until Mary-Clare turns you out?" she asked harshly. "And gets talked about for doing it—or lets you stay on reflecting upon her what can't tell her side? Larry Rivers, you always was a thorn in your good father's side and I reckon you've been one in Mary-Clare's."

Larry winced again and recalled sharply the old vacations and this woman's silent attitude toward him. It all came back clearly. He could always cajole Aunt Polly Heathcote, but Peneluna had explained her attitude toward him in the past by briefly stating that she "internally and eternally hated boys."

"You're hard on me, Mrs. Sniff. You'll be sorry some day."

"Then I'll be sorry!" Peneluna sneezed.

Presently her mood, however, changed. She regarded Larry with new interest.

"How much will you give me for my place?" Peneluna leaned forward suddenly and quite took Larry off his guard. He had succeeded so unexpectedly that it had the effect of shock.

"Five dollars a month, Mrs. Sniff."

"I'm wanting ten."

This was a staggering demand.

"How bad does he want it?" Peneluna was thinking.

"How far had I best give in?" Larry estimated.

"Make it seven," he ventured.

"Seven and then three dollars a week more if I cook and serve for you."

Larry had overlooked this very important item.

"All right!" he agreed. "When can I come?"

"Right off." Peneluna felt that she must get him under her eye as soon as possible. She moved to the door.

"You'll make it straight with Mary-Clare?"

Larry was following the rigid form out into the gathering dark—a storm was rising; the bell on the distant island was ringing gleefully like a wicked little imp set free.

"I'll tell her that you're here and that she best let you stay on, if that's what you mean." Peneluna led the way over the well-worn path she had often trod before. "And, Larry Rivers, I don't rightly know as I'm doing fair and square, but look at it as you will, it's better me than another if anything is wrong. I served yer good father and I set a store by yer wife and child—and I want to hang hold of you all. I've let you have yer way down here, but I don't want any ructions and I ain't going to have Maclin's crowd hinting and defiling anybody."

"I'll never forget this, Mrs. Sniff." In the gathering gloom, behind Peneluna's striding form, Larry's voice almost broke again and undoubtedly the tears were on his cheeks. "Some day, when you know all, you'll understand."

"I'm a good setter and waiter, Larry Rivers, and as to understanding, that is as it may be. I can only see just so far! I can't turn my back on the old doctor's son nor Mary-Clare's husband but I don't want any tricks. You better not forget that! There's a bed in yonder." The two had entered the house next door. Jan-an had done good work. The place was in order and a fire burned in the stove. "I'll fetch food later." With this Peneluna, followed by Jan-an, a trifle more vague than usual, left the house.

The rain was already falling and the wind rising—it was the haunted wind; the bell sounded in the distance sharply. Jan-an paused in the gathering darkness and spoke tremblingly:

"What's a-going on?" she asked. Peneluna turned and laid her hand on the girl's shoulder; her face softened—but Jan-an could not see that.

"Child"—the old voice fell to a whisper—"I ain't going to expect too much of yer—God Almighty made yer out of a skimpy pattern, I know, but what He did give yer can be helped along by using it for them yer love. Child, watch there!"

A long crooked forefinger pointed to the shack, the windows of which were already darkened—for Larry had drawn the shades!

"Watch early and late there! Keep your mouth shut, except to me. Jan-an, I can trust yer?"

The girl was growing nervous.

"Yes'm," she blurted suddenly and then fell to weeping. "I keep feelin' things like wings a-touching of me," she muttered. "I hate the feelin'. When nothing ain't happened ever, what's the reason it has ter begin now?"

It was nearly midnight when Peneluna sat down by her fireside to think. She had cooked a meal for Larry and carried it to him; she had soothed and fed Jan-an and put her to bed on a cot near the bed upon which old Philander Sniff had once rested, and now Peneluna, with Sniff's old Bible on her knees, felt safe to think and read, and it seemed as if the wings Jan-an had sensed were touching her! The book was marked at passages that had appealed to the old man. Often, after Mary-Clare had read to him and left, thinking that she had made no impression, the trembling, gnarled hand had pencilled the words to be reread in lonely moments.

Peneluna had never read the Bible from choice; indeed, her education had been so limited as to be negligible, but lately these pencilled marks had become tremendously significant to her. She was able, somehow, to follow Philander Sniff closely, catching sight of him, now and again, in an illumined way guided by the Bible verses. It was like the blind leading the blind, to be sure, and often it seemed a blind trail, but occasionally Peneluna could pause and take a long breath while she beheld the vision that must have helped her friend upon his isolated way.

To-night, however, she was tired and puzzled and worried. She kept reverting to Larry: her eyes only lighted on the printed words before her; her thoughts drifted.

What had been going on in the Forest? Why was the storm breaking?

But suddenly a verse more heavily marked than the others stayed her:

And a highway shall be there, and a way and it shall be called the way of holiness. The wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.

Over and over Peneluna read and pondered; more and more she puzzled.

"Land o' love!" she muttered at last. "Now these here words mean something particular. Seems like they must get into me with their meaning if I hold to 'em long enough. Lord! I don't see how folks can enjoy religion when you have to swallow it without tasting it."

But so powerful is suggestion through words, that presently the old woman became hypnotized by them. They sprang out at her like flashes—one by one. "Highway"—she could grasp that. "A way and it shall be called"—these words ran into each other but—the "way" held. "The wayfarer"—well! that was easy; all folks taking to the highway were wayfarers—"though fools shall not err therein."

Peneluna, without realizing it, was on The Highway over which all pass, living, seeing, feeling, and storing up experience. In old Philander's quiet memory-haunted room she was pausing and looking back; groping forward—understanding as she had never understood before!

At times, catching the meaning of what the present held, her old face quivered as a child's does that is lost, and she would think back, holding to some word or look that gave her courage again to fix her eyes ahead.

"So! so!" she would nod and mutter. "So! so!" It was like meeting others on The Highway, greeting them, and then going on alone!

That was the hurt of it all—she was alone. If only there had been someone to hold her hand, to help her when she stumbled, but no! she was like a creature in a land of shadowy ghosts. Ghosts whom she knew; who knew her, but they could not linger long with her.

More than the others, Philander persisted, but perhaps that was because of the pencilled words. They were guide-posts he had left for her. And strangest of all, this passing to and fro on The Highway seemed to concern Larry Rivers most of all. Larry, who, during all the years, had meant nothing more to King's Forest than that he was the old doctor's son, Mary-Clare's husband, and Maclin's secret employee.

Larry, asleep in the shack next door, had taken on new proportions. He meant, for the first time, to Peneluna, a person to whom she owed something by virtue of knowledge. Knowledge! What really did she know? How did she know it? She did not question—she accepted and became responsible in a deep and grateful manner. She must remember about Larry. Remember all she could—it would help her now.

The trouble, Peneluna knew, began with Larry's mother. Larry's mother had wrecked the old doctor's life; had driven him to King's Forest. No one had ever told Peneluna this—but she knew it. It did not matter what that woman had done, she had hurt a man cruelly. Once the old doctor had said to Peneluna—it came sharply back, now, like a call from a wayfarer:

"Miss Pen, it is because of such women as you and Aunt Polly that men can keep their faith."

That was when Larry was desperately ill and Polly Heathcote and Peneluna were nursing him—he was a little boy then, home on a vacation. It was because of the woman that neither of them had ever known that they tried to mother the boy—but Larry was difficult, he had queer streaks. Again Peneluna looked back, back to some of the difficult streaks.

Once Larry had stolen! He had gone, too, when quite a child, to the tavern! He had tasted the liquor, made the men laugh! The old doctor had been in a sad state at that time and Larry had been sent to school.

After that, well, Peneluna could not recall Larry distinctly for many years. She knew the old doctor clung to him passionately; went occasionally to see him, came back troubled; came back looking older each time and depending more upon Mary-Clare, whose love and devotion could smooth the sadness from his face.

Then that night, the marriage night of Mary-Clare! Peneluna had been near the old doctor when Larry bent to catch the distorted words that were but whispered. She knew, she seemed always to have known, that Larry had lied; he had not understood anything.

Peneluna had tried to interfere, but she was always fumbling; she could patiently wait, but action, with her, was slow.

And then Maclin! Since Maclin came and bought the mines and Larry—oh! what did it all mean? Had things been slumbering, needing only a touch?

And who was this man at the inn? Was he the Touch? What was going to happen in this dull, sluggish life of King's Forest?

The night was growing old, old! Peneluna, too, was old and tired. The Highway was fraught with terrors for her; the ghosts frightened her. They were trying to make her understand what she must do, now that they had shown her The Way. She must keep the old doctor's son from Maclin if she could and from the stranger at the inn, if she had need. If trouble came she must defend her own.

The weary woman nodded; her eyes closed; the Book slipped from her lap and lay like a "light unto her feet." She had, somehow, got an understanding of Larry Rivers: she believed that through his "difficult streaks" Maclin had got a hold upon him; was using him now for evil ends. It was for her, for all who loved the old doctor, to shield, at any cost, the doctor's son. That Larry was unworthy did not weigh with Peneluna. Where she gave, she gave with abandon.



CHAPTER VIII

Aunt Polly came into the living-room of the inn noiselessly, but Peter, at the fireside, opened his eyes. Nothing could have driven him to bed earlier, but he appeared to have been sleeping for hours.

Polly's glasses adorned the top of her head. This was significant. When she had arrived at any definite conclusion she pushed her spectacles away as though her physical vision and her spiritual were one and the same.

"Time, Polly?" Peter yawned.

"Going on to 'leven."

"He come in?"

Full well Peter knew that he had not!

"No, Peter, and his evening meal is drying up in the oven—I had creamed oysters, too. Creamed oysters are his specials."

"Scandalous, your goings on with this young man!" Peter sat up and stretched. Then he smiled at his sister.

"Well, Peter, all my life I've had to take snatches and scraps out of other folks' lives when I could get them; and I declare I've managed to patch together a real Lady's Delight-pattern sort of quilt to huddle under when I'm cold and tired."

"Tired now, Polly?"

"Not exactly tired, brother, but sort of rigid. Feel as if I was braced for something. I've often had that feeling."

"Women! women!" muttered Peter, and threw on another log.

"What you suppose has happened to keep our young feller from the—the oysters, eh?"

"I'm not accounting for folks or things these days, Peter. I'm just keeping my eyes and ears open. Jan-an makes me uneasy!" This came like a mild explosion.

"What's she up to?" Peter sniffed.

"Land! the poor soul is like the barometer you set such store by. Everything looking clear and peaceful and then suddenlike up she gets, as she did an hour ago, and grabs her truck and sets out for Mary-Clare's like she was summoned. Just saying she had to! These are queer times, brother. I ain't easy in my mind."

"If Jan-an doesn't calm down," Peter muttered, "she may have to be put somewhere, as Larry Rivers once suggested. Larry hasn't many earmarks of his pa—but he may have a sense about human ailments."

"Think shame of yourself, Peter Heathcote, to let anything Larry Rivers says disturb your natural good feelings. Where could we send Jan-an if we wanted to?" Peter declined to reply and Aunt Polly went on: "Larry isn't living with Mary-Clare, Peter!" she added. This was a more significant explosion. Peter turned and his hair seemed to spring an inch higher around his red, puffy face.

"Where is he living?" he asked. When deeply stirred, Peter went slow and warily.

"He's hired Peneluna's old shack."

Peter digested this; but found it chaff.

"You got this from Jan-an?"

"I got it from her and from Peneluna. Peter, Peneluna looks and acts like one of them queer sort of ancient bodies what used to sit on altars or something, and make remarks that no one was expected to differ from. She just dropped in this morning and said that Larry Rivers had taken her shack; was paying for it, too."

"Has, or is going to?" Peter was giving himself time to think.

"Has!" Aunt Polly was pulling her cushions into the cavities of her tired little body.

"Damn funny!" muttered Peter and added another log. The heat was growing ferocious. Then, as he eyed his sister: "Better turn in, Polly. You look scrunched." To look "scrunched" was to look desperately exhausted. "No use wearing yourself out for—for folks," he added with a tenderness in his voice that always brought a peculiar smile to Polly's eyes.

"I don't see as there is anything else much, brother, to wear one's self out for."

"Why frazzle yourself for anything?"

"Why shouldn't I? What should I be keeping myself for, Peter? Surely not for my own satisfaction. No. I always hold if folks want me, then I'm particularly pleased to be had. As to frazzling, seems like we only frazzle just so far, then a stitch holds and we get our breath."

In this mood Polly worried Peter deeply. He could not keep from looking ahead—he avoided that usually—to a time when the little nest at the far end of the sofa would be empty; when the click of knitting needles would sound no more in the beautiful old room.

"There's me!" he whispered at length like a half-ashamed but frightened boy.

Polly drew her glasses down and gave him a long, straight look full of a deep and abiding love.

"You're the stitch, Peter my man," she whispered back as if fearing someone might hear, "always the saving stitch. And take this to bed with you, brother: the frazzling isn't half so dangerous as dry rot, or moth eating holes in you. Queer, but I was getting to think of myself as laid on the shelf before Brace drifted in, and when I do that I get old-acting and stiff-jointed. But I've noticed that it's the same with folks as it is with the world, when they begin to flatten down, then the good Lord drops something into them to make 'em sorter rise. No need to flatten down until you're dead. Feeling tired is healthy and proper—not feeling at all is being finished. So now, Peter, you just go along to bed. I always have felt that a man hates to be set up for, but he can overlook a woman doing it; he sets it down to her general foolishness, but Brace would just naturally get edgy if he found us both up."

Peter came clumsily across the room and stood over the small creature on the sofa. He wanted to kiss her. Instead, he said gruffly:

"See that the fire's banked, Polly. Looks as if I'd laid on a powerful lot of wood without thinking." Then he laughed and went on: "You're durned comical, Polly. What you said about the Lord putting yeast into folks and the world is comical."

"I didn't say yeast, Peter Heathcote."

"Well, yer meant yeast."

"No, I didn't mean yeast. I just meant something like Brace was talking about to-day."

"What was it?" Peter stood round and solid with the firelight ruddily upon him.

"He said that the fighting overseas ain't properly a war, but a general upheaval of things that have got to come to the top and be skimmed off. We ain't ever looked at it that way." Polly resorted to familiar similes when deeply affected.

"I guess all wars is that." Peter looked serious. He rarely spoke of the trouble that seemed far, far from his quiet, detached life, but lately he had shaken his head over it in a new way. "But God ain't meaning for us to take sides, Polly. It's like family troubles. You don't understand them, and you better keep out. Just think of our good German friends and neighbours. We can't go back on them just 'cause their kin across the seas have taken to fighting. Our Germans have, so to speak, married in our family, and we must stand by 'em." Peter was voicing his unrest. Polly saw the trouble in his face.

"Of course, brother, and I only meant that lately so many things are stirring in the Forest that it seems more like the Forest wasn't a scrap set off by itself. I seem to have lots of scraps floating in my mind lately—things I've heard, and all are taking on meaning now. I remember someone saying, I guess it was the Bishop, that in a drop of ocean water, there was all that went into the ocean's making, except size. That didn't mean anything until Brace set me to—to turning over in my mind, and, Peter, it seems terrible sensible now. All the big, big world is just little scraps of King's Forests welded all together and every King's Forest is a drop of the world."

Peter looked gravely troubled as men often do when their women take to thinking on their own lines. Usually the heedless man dismisses the matter with but small respect, but Peter was not that kind. All his life he had depended upon his sister's "vision" as he called it. He might laugh and tease her, but he never took a definite step without reaching out to her.

"A man must plant his foot solid on the path he knows," he often said, "but that don't hinder him from lifting his eyes to the sky." And it was through Aunt Polly's eyes that Peter caught his view of skies.

"I don't exactly like Brace digging down into things so much." Peter gave a troubled sigh. "Some things ain't any use when they are dug up."

"But some things are, brother. We must know."

"Well, by gosh!" Peter began to sway toward the door like a heavily freighted side-wheeler. "I get to feeling sometimes as if I'd kicked over a hornet's nest and wasn't certain whether it was a last year's one or this year's. In one case you can hold your ground, in the other you best take to your heels. Well, I'm going to leave you, Polly, for your date with your young man. Don't forget the fire and don't set up too long."

Left to herself, Polly neatly folded her knitting and stuck the glistening needles through it. She folded her small, shrivelled hands and a radiant smile touched her old face.

Oh! the luxury of daring to sit up for a man. The excitement of the adventure! And while she waited and brooded, Polly was thinking as she had never done until recently. All her life she believed that she had thought, and to suddenly find, as she had lately, that her conclusions were either wrong or confused made her humble.

Now there was Mary-Clare! Why, from her birth, Mary-Clare had been an open book! Poor Polly shook her head. An open book? Well, if so she did not know the language in which that book was written, for Mary-Clare was troubling her now deeply.

And Larry? Larry had suddenly come into focus, and Maclin, and Northrup. They all seemed reeling around her; all united, but in deadly peril of being flung apart.

It was all too much for Aunt Polly and she unrolled her knitting and set the needles to their accustomed task. Eventually Mary-Clare would come to the inn and simply tell her story—full well Polly knew that. It was Mary-Clare's way to keep silent until necessity for silence was past and then calmly take those she loved into her confidence. But there were disturbing things going on. Aunt Polly could not blind herself to them.

At this moment Northrup's step sounded outside. He came hastily, but making little noise.

"What's up?" he asked, starting back at the sight of Aunt Polly.

"Just me, son. Your dinner is scorched to nothing, but I wanted to tell you where the cookie jar is."

Northrup came over to the sofa and sat down.

"You deep and opaque female," he said, throwing his arm over the little bent shoulders. "Own up. It isn't cookies, it's a switch. What have I done? Out with it."

Aunt Polly laughed softly.

"It's neither cookies nor switches when you come down to it," she chuckled. "It's just waiting and not knowing why."

Northrup leaned back against the sofa and said quietly:

"Guessing about me, Aunt Polly?"

"Guessing about everything, son. Just when I thought I was nearing port, where I ought to be at my age, I find myself all at sea."

"Same with me, Aunt Polly. We're part of the whole upheaval, and take it from me, some of us are going to find ourselves high and dry by and by and some of us will go under. We don't understand it; we can't; but we've got to try to—and that's the very devil. Aunt Polly, I've been on the Point, talking to some of the folks down there—there is a fellow called Twombley, odd cuss. He told me he's tried to earn his living, but found people too particular."

"Earn his living, huh!" Polly tried to look indignant. "He's a scamp, and old Doctor Rivers was the ruination of him. The old doctor used to quote Scripture in a scandalous way. He said since we have the poor always with us, it is up to us to have a place for them where they can be comfortable. Terrible doctrine, I say, but that was what the old doctor kept the Point for and it was after Twombley tried to earn his living—the scamp!" Northrup saw that he had diverted Aunt Polly and gladly let her talk on.

"Doctor had an old horse as was just pleading to be put an end to, but the doctor couldn't make his mind up to it and Twombley finally undertook to settle the matter with a shot-gun, up back in the hills. Twombley never missed the bull's-eye—a terrible hand with a gun he was. The doctor gave him two dollars for the job and looked real sick the day he heard that shot. Well, less than a week after Twombley came to the doctor and says as how he heard that a horse has to be buried and that if it isn't the owner gets fined twenty-five dollars, and he says he'll bury the carcass for five dollars. He explained how the horse, lying flat, was powerful sizable, and it would be a stern job to get it under ground. Well, old doctor gave the five dollars and Twombley took to the woods.

"It was a matter of a month, maybe, when Twombley came back, and soon after old Philander Sniff appeared with a horse and cart, and Doctor Rivers, as soon as he set his eyes on the horse, sent for Twombley. Do you know, son, that scamp actually figured it out with the doctor as to the cost of food and care he'd been put to in order to get that shot-and-buried-horse into shape for selling! He'd sold him for ten dollars and expenses were twelve."

Northrup leaned back and laughed until the quiet house reechoed with his mirth.

"Son, son!" cautioned Polly, shaking and dim-eyed, "it's going on to midnight. We can't carouse like this. But land! it is uplifting to have a talk when you ought to be sleeping. Well, the old doctor bought the Point just then and bought Twombley a new gun. Folks as couldn't earn their keep proper naturally drifted to the Point—God's living acre, as the doctor called it."

Northrup rose and stretched his arms and then bent, as Peter had done, to Aunt Polly. But unlike Peter he kissed the small yearning face upraised to his.

"It must be pleasant—being your mother," Polly whispered.

"It's pleasant having you acting as substitute," Northrup replied. "Shall I bank the fire, Aunt Polly?"

"No, son, there's something else I must see to before I turn in. Aren't you going for the cookies?"

"Yes'm. Going to munch them in bed." And tiptoeing away in the most orthodox manner Northrup left Aunt Polly alone.

Why was she staying up? She had no clear idea but she was restless, sleepless, and bed, to her, was no comfort under such conditions. However, since she had stated that she had something to do, she must find it. She went to a desk in the farther end of the room, and took from it her house-keeping book. She would balance that and surprise Peter! Peter always was so surprised when she did. She bought the book to her nest on the sofa and set to work.

Debit and credit. Figures, figures, figures. And then, mistily, words took their places. Names.

Mary-Clare: Larry.

Larry: Northrup.

Mary-Clare! It was funny. The columns danced and giddily wobbled—and at the foot there was only—Mary-Clare! Mary-Clare was troubling the dear old soul.

Then, startled by the falling of the book to the floor, Aunt Polly opened her eyes and gazed into the face of Mary-Clare standing before her!

The girl had a wind-swept look, physically and spiritually. Her hair was loose about her face, her eyes like stars, and she was smiling.

"Oh! you dear thing," she whispered, bending to recover the book, "adding and subtracting when the whole world sleeps. Isn't it a wonderful feeling to have the night to yourself?"

Mary-Clare crouched down before the red blazing logs; her coat and hat fell from her and she stretched her hands out to the heat with a little shiver of luxurious content.

Aunt Polly knew the girl's mood and left her to herself. She had come to tell something but must tell it in her own way. To question, to intrude a thought, would only tend to confuse and distract her, so Polly took up her knitting and nodded cheerfully. She had a feeling that all along she had been waiting for Mary-Clare.

"I suppose big things like being born and dying are very simple when they come. It is the mistaking the big and little things that makes us all so uncertain. Aunt Polly, Larry has left me." The start had been made!

"Yes; Peneluna told us. He hasn't gone far." Aunt Polly knitted on while Mary-Clare gave a little laugh.

"Oh! dearie, he was far, far away before he started for the Point. Land doesn't count—it's more than that, only I did not know. Isn't it queer, Aunt Polly, now that I understand things, I find that marrying Larry and having the babies haven't touched me at all—I never belonged to them or they to me—except Noreen. And it's queer about Noreen, too, she will never seem part of all that."

Mary-Clare, her eyes fixed on the fire, was thinking aloud; her breath came short and quick as if she had been running.

"My dear child!" Aunt Polly was shocked in spite of herself. "No woman can shake off her responsibilities in that way. Larry is your husband and you have been a mother."

"You are talking words, Aunt Polly, not things." Aunt Polly knew that she was and it made her wince.

"That's the trouble with us all, Aunt Polly. Saying words over and over and calling them things—as if you could take God in!"

There was no bitterness in the tones, but there was the weary impatience of a child that had been too often denied the truth.

"No matter what people say and say, underneath there is truth, Aunt Polly, and it's up to us to find it."

"And you think you are competent"—Aunt Polly, reflecting that she was using words, used them doubtfully—"you think you are competent to know what is truth and to act upon it—to the extent of sending your husband out of his home?"

If a small love-bird could look and sound fierce it would resemble Aunt Polly at that moment. Mary-Clare turned from the contemplation of the fire and fixed her deep eyes upon the troubled old face.

"You dear!" she whispered and then laughed.

Presently, the fire again holding her, Mary-Clare went on:

"I think I must try to find truth with my woman-brain, Aunt Polly. That was what my doctor-daddy always insisted upon. He wouldn't even let me take his word when it came to anything that meant a lot to me."

"He wanted you to marry Larry!"

This was a telling stroke and a long silence followed. Then:

"I wonder, Aunt Polly, I wonder."

"Do you doubt, child?"

"I don't know, but even if he did he was sick and so—so tired, and Larry always worried him. I know very surely that if my doctor were here, and knew everything, he'd say harder than ever: 'Use your woman-mind.' And I'm going to! Why, Aunt Polly, I haven't driven Larry away from his home. I meant to make it a better place, once I set the wrong aside. But you see, he wanted it just his way and nothing else would do."

The dear old face that had confronted life vicariously flushed gently; but the young face that had set itself to the stern facts of life showed neither weakness nor doubt.

"It has come to me, dear"—Mary-Clare now turned and came close to Aunt Polly, resting her folded arms on the thin little knees—"It has come to me, dear, that things are not fixed right and when they are not, it won't do any good to keep on acting as if they were. Being married to Larry could never make it right for me to do what seems to me wrong. And oh! Aunt Polly, I wish that I could make you understand. Do try to understand, dear, there is a sacred place in my soul, and I just do believe it is in all women's souls if they dared to say so—that no one, not even a husband, has a right to claim. It is hers and—God's. But men don't know, and some don't care—and they just rush along and take and take, never counting what it may cost—and they make laws to help them when they might fail without, and—well, Aunt Polly, it is hard to stand all alone in the world. I think the really happy women are those who don't know what I mean, or those that have loved enough, loved a man true enough—to share that sacred place with him—the place he ought not ask for or have a law for. I know you do not understand, Aunt Polly. I did not myself until Peneluna told me."

At this Aunt Polly braced against the pillows as if they were rocks.

"Peneluna!" she gasped.

"Let me tell you, Aunt Polly. It is such a wonderful thing."

As she might have spoken to Noreen, so Mary-Clare spoke now to the woman who had only viewed life as Moses had the Promised Land, from her high mount.

"And so, can you not see, dear Aunt Polly, it isn't a thing that laws can touch; it isn't being good or bad—it is too big a Thing to call by name. Peneluna could starve and still keep it. She could be lonely and serve, but she knew. I don't love Larry, I cannot help it. All my life I am going to keep all of the promise I can, Aunt Polly, but I'm going to—to keep myself, too! A woman can give a man a good deal—but she can't give him some things if she tries to! Look at the women; some of them in the Forest. Aunt Polly, if marriage means what they look like——" Mary-Clare shuddered.

Aunt Polly had suddenly grown tender and far-seeing. She let go the sounding words that Church and State had taught her.

"Little girl," she said, and all her motherhood rushed forward to seize, as it had ever done, those "scraps" of others' lives, "suppose the time should come when there would be in your life another—someone besides Larry? Why has all this come so sudden to you?"

Northrup seemed to loom in the room, just beyond the fire's glow. Her fear was taking shape.

"Oh! dearie, I might then ask Larry to release me from my promise. My doctor used to say one could do that, but if he would not, why, then—I'd keep my bargain as far as I could. But——" and here Mary-Clare rose and flung her arms above her head. The action was jubilant, majestic. "Oh! the wonder of it all; to be free to be myself and prove what I think is right without having to take another's idea of it. I'll listen; I'll try to understand and be patient—but it cannot be wrong, Aunt Polly, the thing I've done—since this great feeling of wings has come to me instead of heavy feet! Why, dear, I want something more than—than the things women think are theirs. We don't know what is ours until we try."

"And fail, my child?" Aunt Polly was crying.

"Yes; and fail sometimes and be hurt—but paying and going on."

"And leaving your man behind you?"

"Aunt Polly"—Mary-Clare looked down upon the kind, quivering face—"a woman's man cannot be left behind. He'll be beside her somehow. If she stays back, as I've tried to do, she wouldn't be his woman! That's the dreadful trouble with Larry and me. But, dearie, it isn't always a man in a woman's life."

"But the long, lonely way, child!" Polly was retracing her own denied womanhood.

"It need not be lonely, dear, when we women find—other things. They will count. They must."

"What other things, Mary-Clare?"

"That's what we must be finding out, dear. Love; the man: some day they will be the glory, making everything more splendid, but not—the all. I think I should have died, Aunt Polly, had I kept on."

Like an inspired young oracle, Mary-Clare spoke and then dropped again by the fire.

"I've somehow learned all this," she whispered, "in my Place up on the hill. It just came to me, little by little, until it convinced me. I had to tell Larry the truth."

"Mary-Clare, I do not know; I don't feel able to put it into words, but I do believe you're going to make sad trouble for yourself, child. Such a thing as this you have done has never been done before in the Forest."

"Maybe."

A door upstairs slammed loudly and both women started nervously.

"I must tell Peter to fix the latch of the attic door to-morrow," Aunt Polly said, relieved to be back on good, plain, solid ground. "The attic winders are raised and the wind's rising. It will be slam, slam all night, unless——" she rose quickly.

"Just a minute, Aunt Polly, I'm so tired. Please let me lie here on the couch and rest for an hour and then I'll slip home."

"Let me put you to bed properly, child. You look suddenly beat flat. That's the way with women. They get to thinking they've got wings when they ain't, child, they ain't. You're making a terrible break in your life, child. Terrible."

Mary-Clare was arranging the couch.

"Come, dear," she wheedled, "you tuck me up—so! I'll bank the fire when I go and leave everything safe. A little rest and then to-morrow!—well, you'll see that I have wings, Aunt Polly; they are only tired now—for they are new wings! I know that it must seem all madness, but it had to come."

Aunt Polly pulled the soft covering over the huddled form—only the pale, wistful face was presently to be seen; the great, haunting eyes made Aunt Polly catch her breath. She bent and kissed the forehead.

"Poor, reaching-out child!" she whispered.

"For something that is there, Aunt Polly."

"God knows!"

"Of course He does. That's why He gave us the—reach. Good-night. Oh! how I love you, Aunt Polly. Good-night!"

It was Northrup's door that had slammed shut. Aunt Polly went above, secured the innocent attic door, and then pattered down to her bedroom near Peter's, feeling that her house, at least, was safe.

It was silent at last. Northrup, in his dark chamber, lay awake and—ashamed, though heaven was his witness that his sin was not one he had planned. Aunt Polly had been on his mind. He hated to have her down there alone. Her sitting up for him had touched and—disturbed him; he had left his door ajar.

"I'll listen for a few minutes and if she doesn't go to bed, I'll go down and shake her," he concluded, and then promptly went to sleep and was awakened by voices. Low, earnest voices, but he heard no words and was sleepily confused. If he thought anything, he thought Peter had been doing what was needed to be done—driving Polly to bed!

And then Northrup did hear words. A word here; a word there. He knew things he had no right to know—he was awake at last, conscientiously, as well as physically. He got up and slammed the door!

But he could not go to sleep. He felt hot and cold; mean and indignant—but above all else, tremendously excited. He lay still a little longer and then opened his door in time to hear that "good-night, good-night"; and presently Aunt Polly's raid on the unoffending attic door at the other end of the corridor and her pattering feet on their way, at last, to her bedchamber.

"She's forgot to bank the fire." Northrup could see the glow from his post and remembered Uncle Peter's carefulness. "I'll run down and make things safe and lock the door." Northrup still held his respect for doors.

In heavy gown and soft slippers he noiselessly descended. The living-room at the far end was dark; the fire glowed at the other, dangerously, and one threatening log had rolled menacingly to the fore.

Bent upon quick action Northrup silently crossed the floor, grasped the long poker and pushed the blazing wood back past the safety line and held it there.

His face burned, but there was a hypnotic lure in that bed of red coals. All that he had just heard—a disjointed and rather dramatic revealment—was having a peculiar effect upon him. He had become aware of some important facts that accounted for things, such as Rivers's appearance on the Point. He had attributed that advent to Maclin's secret business; but it was, evidently, quite different.

What had occurred in the yellow house before the final break? Northrup's imagination came to the fore fully equipped. Northrup was a man of the herd—at least he had been, until lately. He knew the tracks of the herd and its laws and codes.

"The brute!" he muttered under his breath; "and that kind of a girl, too. Nothing is too fine for some devils to appropriate and—smirch. Poor little girl!"

And then Northrup recalled Mary-Clare as he had seen her that day as she emerged from the woods to meet him and her child. The glory of Peneluna's story was in her soul, the autumn sunlight on her face. That lovely, smiling, untouched face of hers! Again and again that memory of her held his fancy.

"The cursed brute—hasn't got her, thank God. She's out of the trap."

And, all unconsciously, while this moral indignation had its way, Northrup was drawing nearer to Mary-Clare; understanding her, appropriating her! God knew he meant no wrong. After all she had suffered he wasn't going to mess her life more—but he'd somehow make up to her what she'd a perfect right to. All men were not low and bestial. He had a duty—he would be above the touch of idle chatter; he would take a hand in the game!

And just then Northrup, controlled by the force of attraction, turned his head and looked at the face of Mary-Clare upon the couch near him!

In all his life Northrup had never looked upon the face of a sleeping woman, and it stirred him deeply. He became as rigid as marble; the heat beat upon him as it might have upon stone. And then—as such wild things do occur, his old, familiar dream came to him; he seemed in the dream. He had at last opened one of those closed doors and was seeing what the secret room held! He was part of the dream as he was of his book in the making.

He breathed lightly; he did not move—but he was overcome by waves of emotion that had never before even lapped his feet.

At that instant Mary-Clare's eyes opened. For a moment they held his; then she turned, sighed, and he believed that she had not really awakened.

Northrup rose stiffly and made his way to his room.

"She was asleep!" he fiercely thought until he was safe behind his locked door!

"Was she?" He had to face that in the silence of the hours after. "I'll know when I next meet her." This was almost a groan.



CHAPTER IX

Kathryn Morris, as the days of Northrup's absence stretched into weeks, grew more and more restless. She began to do some serious thinking, and while this developed her mentally, the growing pains hurt and she became twisted.

Heretofore she had been borne along on a peaceful current. She was young and pretty and believed that everyone saw her as she wanted them to see her—a charming, an unusually charming girl.

People had always responded to her slightest whim, but suddenly her own particular quarry had eluded her; did not even pine for her; was able to keep silent while he left her and his mother to think what they chose.

At this moment Kathryn placed herself beside Helen Northrup as a timid debutante shrinks beside her chaperon.

"And that old beast"—Kathryn in the privacy of her bedchamber could speak quite openly to herself—"that old beast, Doctor Manly, suggested that at forty I might be fat if——" Well, it didn't matter about the "if." Kathryn did a bit of mental arithmetic, using her fingers to aid her. What was the difference between twenty-four and forty? The difference seemed terrifyingly little. "A fat forty! Oh, good Lord!"

Kathryn was in bed and it was nine-thirty in the morning! She sprang out and looked at herself in the mirror.

"Well, my body hasn't found it out yet!" she whispered, and her pretty white teeth showed complacently.

Then she sat down in a deep chair and took account of stock. That "fat-forty" was a mere panic. She would not think of it—but it loomed, nevertheless.

Of course, for the time being, there was Sandy Arnold on the crest of one of his financial waves.

Kathryn was level-headed enough not to lose sight of receding waves but then, on the other hand, the crest of a receding wave was better than to be left on the sands—fat and forty! And Northrup was displaying dangerous traits. A distinct chill shook Kathryn.

She turned her thought to Northrup. Northrup had seemed safe. He belonged to all that was familiar to her. He would be famous some day—that she might interfere with this never occurred to the girl. She simply saw herself in a gorgeous studio pouring tea or dancing, and all the people paying court to her while knowing that they ought to be paying it to Northrup.

"But he always gets a grubby hole to work in." Kathryn fidgeted. "I daresay he is working now in some smudgy old place."

But this thought did not last. She could insist upon the studio. A man owes his wife something if he will have his way about his job.

Just at this point a tap on the door brought a frown to Kathryn's smooth forehead.

"Oh! come in," she called peevishly.

A drab-coloured woman of middle age entered. She was one of the individuals so grateful for being noticed at all that her cheerfulness was a constant reproach. She had been selected by Kathryn's father to act as housekeeper and chaperon. As the former she was a gratifying success; as the latter, a joke and one to be eliminated as much as possible.

For the first time in years Kathryn regarded her aunt now with interest.

"Aunt Anna"—Kathryn never indulged in graceful tact with her relations—"Aunt Anna, how old are you?"

Anna Morris coloured, flinched, but smiled coyly.

"Forty-two, dear, but it was only yesterday that my dressmaker said that I should not tell that. It is not necessary, you know."

"I suppose not!" Kathryn was regarding the fatness of the woman who was calmly setting the disorderly room to rights. "Aunt Anna, why didn't you marry?"

The dull, fat face was turned away. Anna Morris never lost sight of the fact that when Kathryn married she would face a stern situation unless Kathryn proved kinder than any one had any reason to expect her to be. So her remarks were guarded.

"Oh! my dear, my dear, what a question. Well, to be quite frank, I discovered at eighteen that some men could stir my senses"—Anna Morris tittered—"and some couldn't. At twenty-two the only man who could stir me was horribly poor; the other stirring ones had been snapped up. You see, there was no one to help me with my affairs. Your father never did understand. The only thing he was keen about was making money enough to marry your mother. Then you were born and your mother died and—well, there was nothing for me to do but come here and help him out. One has plain duties. I always had sense enough"—Anna Morris moved about heavily—"to realize that senses do not stir when poverty pinches, and this house was comfortable; and duty can fill in chinks. I always contend"—the dull eyes now confronted Kathryn—"that there is a dangerous age for men and women. If they get through that alive and alone—well, there is a kind of calm that comes."

"I suppose so." Kathryn felt a sinking in the region of the heart. "Are you ever lonely?" she asked suddenly. "Ever feel that you let your own life slip when you helped Father and me?"

Anna Morris's lips trembled as they always did when any one was kind to her; but she got control of herself at once—she could not afford the comfort of letting herself go!

"Oh, I don't know. Yes; sometimes. But who isn't lonely at times? Marriage can't prevent that and even your own private life, quite your own, is bound to have some lonely spells. There are all kinds of husbands. Some float about, heaven knows where; their wives must be lonely; and then the settled sort—dear me! I've often seen women terribly lonely right in the rooms with their husbands. I have come to the conclusion that once you pass the dangerous age you're as well placed one way as another. That is, if you are a woman."

Kathryn was looking unusually serious. While she was in this mood she clutched at seeming trifles and held them curiously.

"What was Brace's father like?" she suddenly asked.

Anna Morris started.

"Why, what ails you, Kathie?" she asked suspiciously. "You've never taken any interest before. Why should you? A young girl and all that—why should you?"

"Tell me, Aunt Anna. I've often wondered."

Anna Morris sat down heavily in a chair. The older Northrup had once had power to stir her; was one of the men too poor for her to consider.

"Well," she began slowly, tremblingly, "he wasn't companionable at the last, but I shall always see his side. Helen Northrup is a fine woman—I can understand how many take her part, but being married to her kind must seem like mental Mormonism. She calls it developing—but a man like Thomas Northrup married a woman because she was the kind he wanted and he couldn't be expected to keep trace of all the kinds of women Helen Northrup ran into and—out of!"

"I don't know what you mean, Aunt Anna. Do talk sense."

Kathryn was almost excited. It was like reading what wasn't intended for innocent young girls to know.

"Well, first, Helen Northrup was just like all loving young girls, I guess—but when she didn't find all she wanted, she took to developing, as she called it. For my part I believe when a woman finds her husband isn't all she expected, she ought to accept her lot and make the best of it."

"And Brace's mother started out to make her own lot? I see."

Kathryn nodded her head.

"Well, something like that. She took to writing. Thomas Northrup didn't know what ailed her and I don't wonder. She should have spent herself on his career, not making one for herself. But I must say when Brace was born she stopped that nonsense but she evolved then into a mother!" Anna sniffed. "A man can share with his children, but when it comes to giving up everything, well!"

"What did he do, Aunt Anna?"

"He went away."

"With a woman?"

"Yes."

"One he just met when Mrs. Northrup became a mother?"

"He knew her before, but if Helen Northrup had been all she should have been to him——"

"I begin to see. And then?"

"Well, then he died and proved how noble he was at heart. When he went off, Helen Northrup wouldn't take a cent. She had a little of her own and she went to work and Brace helped when he grew older—and then when Thomas Northrup died he left almost all his fortune to his wife. He never considered her anything else. I call his a really great nature." Poor Anna was in a trembling and ecstatic state.

"I call him a—just what he was!" Kathryn was weary of the subject. "I think Brace's mother was a fool to let him off so easy. I would have bled him well rather than to let the other woman put it all over me."

"My dear, that's not a proper way for you to talk!" Aunt Anna became the chaperon. "Come, get dressed now, dearie. There's the luncheon, you know."

"What luncheon?"

"Why, with Mr. Arnold, my dear, and he included me, too! Such a sweet fellow he is, and so wise and thoughtful."

"Oh!"

There had been a time when she and Sandy Arnold met clandestinely—it was such fun! He included Aunt Anna now. Why?

And just then, as if it were a live and demanding thing, her eyes fell on Northrup's last book. She scowled at it. It was a horrible book. All about dirty, smudgy people that you couldn't forget and who kept springing out on you in the most unexpected places. At dinners and luncheons they often wedged in with their awful eyes fixed on your plate and made you choke. They probably were not true. And those things Brace said! Besides, if they were true, people like that were used to them—they had never known anything else!

And then Brace had said some terrible things about war; that war going on over the sea. Of course, no one expected to have a war, but it was unpatriotic for any one to say what Brace had about those perfectly dear officers at West Point and—what was it he said?—oh, yes—having the blood of the young on one's soul and settling horrid things, like money and land, with lives.

At this Kathryn tossed the book aside and it fell at Anna's feet. She picked it up and handled it as if it were a tender baby that had bumped its nose.

"It must be perfectly wonderful," she said, smoothing the book, "to have an autographed copy of a novel. It's like having a lock of someone's hair. Where is Brace, Kathryn?"

This was unfortunate.

"That is my business and his!" Kathryn spoke slowly. Her eyes slanted and her lips hardened.

"My darling, I beg your pardon!" And once more Anna Morris was shoved into the groove where she belonged.

Later that day, after the luncheon with Sandy—Anna had been eliminated by a master stroke that reduced her to tears and left Sandy a victim to Kathryn's wiles—Kathryn called upon Helen Northrup.

She was told by the smiling little maid to go up into the Workshop. This room was a pitiful attempt to lure Brace to work at home; in his absence Helen sat there and scribbled. She wrote feeble little verses with a suggestion of the real thing in them. Sometimes they got published because the suggestion caught the attention of a sympathetic publisher, and these small recognitions kept alive a spark that was all but extinguished when Helen Northrup chose, as women of her time did, a profession or—the woman's legitimate sphere!

There had been no regret in Helen's soul for whatever part she played in her own life—her son was her recompense for any disappointment she might have met, and he was, she devoutly believed, her interpreter. She loved to think in her quiet hours that her longings and aspirations had found expression in her child; she had sought, always, to consider his interests wisely—unselfishly, of course—and leave him as free to live his own life as though she were not the lonely, disillusioned woman that she was.

She had never known how early Brace had understood the conditions in his home—mothers and fathers rarely do. Only once during his boyhood had Brace ventured upon the subject over which he spent many confused and silent hours.

When he was fourteen he remarked, in that strained voice that he believed hid any emotion:

"I say, Mother, a lot of fellows at our school have fathers and mothers who live apart—most of the fellows side with their mothers!"

These words nearly made Helen ill. She could make no reply. She looked dumbly at the boy facing her with a new and awful revealment. She understood that he wanted her to know, wanted to comfort her; and she knew, with terrifying certainty, that she could not deceive him—she was at his mercy!

She was wise enough to say nothing. But after that she felt his suddenly acquired strength. It was shown in his tenderness, his cheerfulness, his companionship, and, thank God! in his silence.

But while Helen gloried in her boy she still was loyal to the traditions of marriage, and her little world never got behind her screen. She had divorced her husband because he desired it—then she went on alone. When her husband died away from home, his body was brought to her. It had been his last request and she paid all respect to it with her boy close beside her. And then she forgot—really, in most cases—the things that she had been remembering. She erected over her dead husband, not a stone, but a living unreality. It answered the purpose for which it was designed; it made it possible for her to live rather a full life, be a comrade to her son—a friend indeed—and to share all his joys and many of his confidences, and to impress upon him, so she trusted, that he must not sacrifice anything for her.

Why should he, indeed? Had she not interests enough to occupy her? The sight of a widowed mother draining the life-blood from her children had always been a dreadful thing to Helen Northrup, and so well had she succeeded in her determination to leave Brace free that the subject rarely came into the minds of either.

But Brace's latest move had disturbed Helen not a little. It startled her, made her afraid, as that remark of his in his school days had done. Did he chafe under ties that he loved but found that he must flee from for awhile? Why did he and Kathryn not marry? Were they considering her? Was she blinded?

Helen had been going over all this for days before the visit of Kathryn, and during the night preceding the call she had awakened in great pain; she had had the pain before and it had power to reduce her to cowardice. It seemed to dare her, while she lay and suffered, to confide in a physician!

There was an old memory of one who had suffered and died from——"Find out the truth about me!" each dart of fire in the nerves cried, and when the pain was over Helen Northrup had not dared to meet the challenge and go to Manly or another! At first she tried to reason with herself; then she compromised.

"After all, it is so fleeting. I'll rest, take better care of myself. I'm not so young as I was—Nature is warning me; it may not be the other."

Well, rest and care helped and the attacks were less frequent. That gave a certain amount of hope.

When Kathryn entered the Workshop she found Helen on the couch instead of at the flat-topped desk. She looked very white and blue-lipped but she was smiling and happily glad to see her visitor. She was extremely fond of Kathryn. Early in life she had prepared herself to accept and love any woman her son might choose—she would never question the gift he offered! But when Kathryn was offered, she was overjoyed. Kathryn was part of the dear, familiar life; the daughter of old friends. Helen Northrup felt that she was blessed beyond all mothers. The thing, to her, seemed so exactly right. That the marriage did not take place had hardly disturbed her. Kathryn was young, Brace was winning, not only a home for the girl, but honour, and there was always time. Time is such a splendid heritage of youth and such a rare relic of age.

"Why, my dearie-dear!" exclaimed Kathryn, kneeling beside the couch. "What is it?"

"Nothing, dear child; nothing more than a vicious touch of neuralgia."

"Have you seen Doctor Manly?" Kathryn patted the pillows and soothed, by her touch, the hot forehead. Kathryn had the gift of healing in her small, smooth hands, but not in her soul.

She had always been jealous of the love between Brace and his mother. It was so unusual, so binding, so beyond her conception; but she could hide her feelings until by and by.

"Now, dearie-dear, we must send for Doctor Manly. Of course Brace ought to know. He would never forgive us if he did not know. I hate to trouble you but, my dear, you look simply terrifyingly ill." Like a lightning flash Kathryn's nimble wits caught a possibility.

Helen smiled. Then spoke slowly:

"Now, my dear, when Brace comes home, I promise to see Doctor Manly. These attacks are severe—but they pass quickly and there are long periods when I am absolutely free from them."

"You mean, you have attacks?" Kathryn looked appalled.

"Oh, yes; off and on. That fact proves how unimportant they are."

Kathryn was again taking stock.

She believed that Brace was still at that place from which the letter came! She was fiendishly subject to impressions and suspicions.

"Now if he is still there"—thoughts ran like liquid fire in Kathryn's brain—"why does he stay? It isn't far." She had made sure of that by road maps when the letter first came. "I could motor out there and see!" The liquid fire brought colour to the girl's face.

She was dramatic, too, she could always see herself playing the leading parts in emotional situations. Just now, like more flashes of lightning, disclosing vivid scenes, she saw herself, prostrated by fear and anxiety for Helen Northrup, finding Brace, confiding in him because she dared not take the chances of silence and dared not disobey and go to Doctor Manly.

Brace would be fear-filled and remorseful, would see at last how she, Kathryn, had his interests in mind. He would cling to her. Sitting close by the couch, her face pressed to Helen Northrup's shoulder, Kathryn contemplated the alluring and passionate scenes. Brace had always lacked passion. She had always to hold Arnold virtuously in check, but Brace was able to control himself. But—and here the vivid pictures reeled on, familiarity had dulled things, long engagements were flattening—Brace would at last see her as she was. She'd forgive anything that might have happened—of course, anything might have happened—she, a woman of the world, understood.

And—Kathryn was brought to a sudden halt—the reel spun on but there was no picture!

Suppose, after all, there was nothing really to be frightened about in these attacks? Well, that would be found out after Brace had been brought home and might enhance rather than detract from—her divine devotion.

Presently Kathryn became aware of the fact that Helen Northrup had been speaking while the reel reeled!

"And then that escapade of his when he was only seven." Helen patted the golden head beside her while her thoughts were back with her boy. "He was walking with me when suddenly he looked up; his poor little face was all twisted! He just said rather impishly, 'I'm going! I am really!' and he went! I was, naturally, frightened, and ran after him—then, when I caught sight of him, a long way ahead, I stopped and waited. When he thought I was not following, he waded right out into a puddle; he even had a scrappy fight with a bigger boy who contested his right to invade the puddle. It was so absurd. Kathryn, I actually went home; I felt sure Brace would find his way back and he did. I was nearly wild with anxiety, but I waited. He came back disgustingly dirty, but hilariously happy. He expected punishment. When none was meted out to him—he told me all about it—it seemed flat enough when he saw how I took it. Why, I never even mentioned the mud on him. He was disappointed, but I think he understood more than I realized. When he went to bed that night, he begged my pardon!"

Kathryn got up and walked about the room. She was staging another drama. Brace was now playing in puddles—not such simple ones as those of his childhood. He was having his little fight, too, possibly; with whom?

Well, how perfectly thrilling to save him!

Such a girl as Kathryn has as cheap an imagination as any lurid factory girl, but it is kept as safely from sight as the contents of her vanity bag.

"Kathryn, have you heard from Brace?"

The girl started almost guiltily. Helen hated to ask this, she feared Kathryn might think her envious; but Kathryn rose and drew a chair to the couch.

"No, dearie-dear," she said sweetly.

"So you don't know just where he is?"

"How could I know, dearie thing?"

So they were not keeping things from her; shutting her out! Helen Northrup raised her head from the pillow.

"We're in the same boat, darling," she said, so glad to be in the same boat. "Lately I've had a few whim-whams." Helen felt she could be confidential. "I suppose I am touching the outer circle of old age, and before it blinds me, I'm going to have my say. It would be just like you and Brace to forget yourselves and think of me. And if I do not look out, I'll be taking your sacrifice and calling it by its wrong name. You and Brace must marry. I half believe you've been waiting for me to push you out of the nest. Well, here you go! Your own nest will be sacred to me, another place for me to go to, another interest. I'll be having you both closer. Now, don't cry, little girl. I've found you out and found myself, too!"

Kathryn was shedding tears—tears of gratitude for the material Helen was putting at her disposal.

"My dear little Kathryn! It is going to be all right, all right. Why, childie, when he comes home I am going to insist upon the wedding. I am not a young woman, really, though I put up a bit of a bluff—and the time isn't very long, no matter how you look at it—so, darling, you and Brace must humour me, do the one big thing to make me happy—you must be married!"

Kathryn looked up. The tears hung to her long lashes.

"You want this?" she faltered with quivering lips.

Helen believed she understood at last.

"My darling!" she said tenderly, "it is the one great longing of my heart."

Then she dropped back on her pillow and closed her eyes while the pain gripped her. But the pain, for a moment, seemed a friend, not a foe. It might be the thing that would open the door—out.

Helen had spoken truth as truth should be but never quite is, to a mother. She had taken her place in the march, her colours flying. But her place was the mother's place, lagging in the rear.

Such an effort as she had just made caused angels to weep over her.



CHAPTER X

By a kind of self-hypnotism Northrup had gained his ends so far as drifting with the slow current of King's Forest was concerned, and in his relation toward his book. The unrest, as to his duty in a world-wide sense, was lulled. Whatever of that sentiment moved him was focussed on Maclin who, in a persistent, vague way became a haunting possibility of danger almost too preposterous to be considered seriously. Still the possibility was worth watching. Maclin's attitude toward Northrup was interesting. He seemed unable to ignore him, while earnestly desiring to do so. The fact was this: Maclin looked upon Northrup as he might have upon a slow-burning fuse. That he could not estimate the length of the fuse, nor to what it was attached, did not mend matters. One cannot ignore a trail of fire, and a guilty conscience is never a sleeping one.

The people on the Point had long since come to the conclusion that Northrup was a trailer of Maclin, not their enemy. The opinion was divided as to his relations with Mary-Clare, but that was a different matter.

"I'll bet my last dollar," Twombley muttered, forgetting that his last dollar was a thing of the past, "that this young feller will find out about those inventions. Inventions be damned! That's what I say. There's something going on at the mines that don't spell inventions."

This was said to Peneluna who was aging under the strain of unaccustomed excitement.

"When he lands Maclin," she said savagely, "I'll grab Larry. Larry is a fool, but from way back, Maclin is the sinner. Queer"—she gave a deep sigh—"how a stick muddling up a biling brings the scum to the surface! I declare! I wish we had something to grip hold of. Suspicioning your neighbours ain't healthy."

Jan-an, untroubled by moral codes, was unconditionally on Northrup's side. She patched her gleanings into a vivid conclusion and announced, much to Peneluna's horror:

"Supposin' we are goin' ter hell 'long of not knowin' where we are goin', ain't it a lot pleasanter than the way we was traipsin' before things began to happen?"

Poor Jan-an was getting her first taste of romance and tragedy and she was thriving on the excitement. When she was not watching the romance in the woods with Mary-Clare and Noreen, she was actively engaged in tragedy. She was searching for the lost letters and she did not mince matters in her own thoughts.

"Larry stole 'em!" she had concluded from the first. "What's old letters, anyway? But I'll get those letters if I die for it!"

She shamelessly ransacked Larry's possessions while she cleaned his disorderly shack, but no letters did she find. She became irritable and unmoral.

"Lordy!" she confided to Peneluna one day while they were preparing Larry's food, "don't yer wish, Peneluna, that it wasn't evil to poison some folks' grub?"

Peneluna paused and looked at the girl with startled eyes.

"If you talk like that," she replied, "I'll hustle you into the almshouse." Then: "Who would you like to do that to?" she asked.

"Oh! folks as just clutter up life for decent folks. Maclin and Larry."

"Now, see here, Jan-an, that kind of talk is downright creepy and terrible wicked. Listen to me. Are you listening?"

Jan-an nodded sullenly.

"I'm your best friend, child. I mean to stand by yer, so you just heed. There are folks as can use language like that and others will laugh it off, but you can't do it. The best thing for you to do is to slip along out of sight and sound as much as yer can. If you attract attention—the Lord above knows what will happen; I don't."

Jan-an was impressed.

"I ain't making them notice me," she mumbled, "but yer just can't take a joke."

Noreen and Jan-an, in those warm autumn days—and what an autumn it was!—often came to the little chapel where Northrup wrote.

They knew this was forbidden; they knew that the mornings were to be undisturbed, but what could a man who loved children say to the two patient creatures crouching at the foot of the stone steps leading up to the church?

Northrup could hear them whisper—it blended with the twittering of the birds—he heard Noreen's chuckle and Jan-an's warning. Occasionally a flaming maple branch would fall through the window on to his table; once Ginger was propelled through the door with a note, badly printed by Noreen, tied to his collar.

"We're here," the strangely scrawled words informed him; "me and Jan-an. We've got something for you."

But Northrup held rigidly to his working hours and finally made an offer to his most persistent foes.

"See here, you little beggars," he said, including the gaunt Jan-an in this, "if you keep to the other side of the bridge, I'll tell you a story, once a day."

This had been the beginning of romance to Jan-an.

The story-telling, thus agreed upon, opened a new opportunity for meeting Mary-Clare. Quite naturally she shared with Noreen and Jan-an the hours of the late afternoon walks in the woods or, occasionally, by the fireside of her own home when the chilly gloaming fell early.

Often Northrup, casting a hurried thought to his past, and then forward to the time when all this pleasure must end, looked thoughtful. How circumscribed those old days had been; how uneventful at the best! How strange the old ways would seem by and by, touched by the glamour of what he was passing through now!

And, as was often the case, Manly's words came out like guiding and warning flashes. The future could only be made safe by the present; the past—well! Northrup would not dwell upon that. He would keep the compact with himself.

He went boldly to the yellow house when the mood seized him. His first encounters with Mary-Clare, after that night at the inn when he had watched her sleeping, had reassured him.

"She was not awake!" he concluded. The belief made it possible for him to act with assurance.

Peter and Polly preserved a discreet silence concerning affairs in the Forest. "You never can tell when a favouring wind will right things again," Polly remarked. She cared more for Mary-Clare than anything else.

"Or upset 'em," Peter added. He had his mind fixed upon Maclin.

"Well, brother, sailing safe, or struggling in the water, it won't help matters to stir up the mud."

"No; and just having Brace hanging around like a threat is something. I allas did hold to them referendum and recall notions. Once a feller knows he ain't the only shirt in the laundry, he keeps decenter. So long as Maclin scents Brace, he keeps to his holdings. Did yer hear how he's cleaning up the Cosey Bar? He thinks maybe he's going to be attacked from that quarter. Then, again, he's been offering work to the men around here—and he's letting out that he never understood our side of things rightly and that he's listening to Larry—get that, Polly?—listening to Larry and letting him make the folks on the Point get on to the fact that he's their friend. Gosh! Maclin their friend."

And Mary-Clare all this time mystified her friends and her foes. She had foes. Men, and women, too, who looked askance at her. The less they knew, the more they had to invent. The proprieties of the Forest were being outraged. The women who envied Mary-Clare her daring fell upon her first. From their own misery and disillusionment, they sought to defend their position; create an atmosphere of virtue around their barren lives, by attacking the woman who refused to be a martyr.

"You can't tell me," said a downtrodden wife of one of Maclin's men, "that she turned her husband out of doors after wheedling him out of all he should have had from his father, unless she meant to leave the door open for another! A woman only acts as she has for some man."

The women, the happy ones, drove down upon Mary-Clare from another quarter. The happy women are always first to lay down the laws for the unhappy ones. Not knowing, they are irresponsible. The men of the Forest did some laughing and side talking, but on the whole they denounced Mary-Clare because she was a menace to the Established Code.

"God!" said the speaker of the Cosey Bar, "what's coming to the world, anyhow? There ain't any rest and peace nowheres, and when it comes to women taking to naming terms, I say it's time for us to stand for our rights fierce."

Maclin had delicately and indirectly set forth Mary-Clare's "terms" and the Forest was staggered.

But Mary-Clare either did not hear, or the turmoil was so insistent that she had become used to it. She suddenly displayed an energy that made her former activities seem tame.

She brought from the attic an old loom and got Aunt Polly to teach her to weave; she presently designed quaint patterns and delighted in her work. She invited several children, neglected little souls, to come to the yellow house and she taught them with Noreen. She resorted largely to the method the old doctor had used with her. Adapting, as she saw possible, her knowledge to her little group, she gave generously but held her peace.

Northrup often had a hearty laugh after attending one of the "school" sessions.

"It's like tossing all kinds of feed to a flock of birds," he told Aunt Polly, "and letting the little devils pick as they can."

"I reckon they pick only as much as their little stomachs can hold," Aunt Polly replied, "and it makes me smile to notice how folks as ain't above saying lies about Mary-Clare can trust their children to her teaching."

"Oh! well, lies are soon killed," Northrup returned, but his smile vanished.

Mary-Clare was often troubled by Larry's persistence at the Point. She could not account for it, but she did not alter her own way of life. She went, occasionally, to the desolate Point; she rarely saw Larry, but if she did, she greeted him pleasantly. It was amazing to find how naturally she could do this. Indeed the whole situation was at the snapping point.

"I do say," Twombley confided to Peneluna, "it don't seem nater for a woman not to grieve and fuss at such goings on."

Peneluna tossed her head and sneezed.

"I ain't ever understood," she broke in, "why a woman should fuss and break herself on account of a man doing what he oughtn't ter do. Let him do the fussing and breaking."

"She might try and save him." Twombley, like all the male Forest, was stirred at what he could not understand.

"Women have got their hands full of other things"—Peneluna sneezed again as if the dust of ages was stifling her—"and I do say that after a woman does save a man, she's often too worn out to enjoy her savings."

And Larry, carefully dressed, living alone and to all appearances brave and steady, simply, according to Maclin's ordering, "let out more sheet rope" in order that Mary-Clare might sail on to the rocks and smash herself to atoms before the eyes of her fellow creatures.

Surely the Forest had much to cogitate upon.

"There is just one ledge of rocks for her kind," said Maclin. "You keep yourself clear and safe, Rivers, and watch the wreck."

Maclin could be most impressive at times and his conversation had a nautical twist that was quite effective.

Northrup at this time would have been shocked beyond measure had any one suggested that his own attitude of mind resembled in the slightest degree that of Maclin, Twombley, and Rivers. He was too sane and decent a man to consider for a moment that Mary-Clare's actions were based in the slightest degree upon his presence in the Forest. He knew that he had had nothing to do with the matter, but that was no reason for thinking that he might not have. Suggestion was enmeshing him in the disturbance.

He felt that Larry was a brute. That he had the outer covering of respectability counted against him. Larry always kept his best manners for public exhibition; his inheritance of refinement could be tapped at any convenient hour. Northrup knew his type. He had not recalled his father in years as he did now! A man legally sustained by his interpretation of marriage could make a hell or a heaven of any woman's life. This truism took on new significance in the primitive Forest.

But in that Mary-Clare had had courage to escape from hell—and Northrup had pictured it all from memories of his boyhood—roused him to admiration.

She was of the mettle of his mother. She might be bent but never broken. She was treading a path that none of her little world had ever trod before. Alone in the Forest she had taken a stand that she could not hope would be understood, and how superbly she was holding it!

Knowing what he did, Northrup compared Mary-Clare with the women of his acquaintance; what one of them could defy their conventions as she was doing, instinctively, courageously?

"But she ought not to be permitted to think all men are like Rivers!"

This thought grew upon Northrup, and it was the first step, generously taken, to establish higher ideals for his sex. With the knowledge he had, he was in a position of safety. Not to be seen with Mary-Clare while the silly gossip muttered or whispered would be to acknowledge a reason for not meeting her—so he flung caution to the winds.

There were nutting parties for the children—innocent enough, heaven knew! There were thrilling camping suppers on the flat ridge of the hills in order to watch the miracle of sunset and moonrise.

No wonder Jan-an cast her lot in with those headed, so the whisper ran, for perdition. She had never been so nearly happy in her life; neither had Mary-Clare nor Noreen nor—though he did not own it—Northrup, himself.

No wonder Maclin, and the outraged Larry, saw distinctly the ridge on which the wreck was to occur.

But no one was taking into account that idealism in Mary-Clare that the old doctor had devoutly hoped would save her, not destroy her. Northrup began to comprehend it during the more intimate conversations that took place when the children, playing apart, left him and Mary-Clare alone. The wonder grew upon him and humbled him. It was something he had never encountered before. A philosophy and code built entirely upon knowledge gained from books and interpreted by a singular strength and purity of mind. It piqued Northrup; he began to test it, never estimating danger for himself.

"Books are like people," Mary-Clare said one day—she was watching Northrup build a campfire and the last bit of sunlight fell full upon her—"the words are the costumes." She had marked the surprised look in Northrup's eyes as she quoted rather a bald sentiment from an old book.

"Yes, of course, and that's sound reasoning." For a moment Northrup felt as though a clear north wind were blowing away the dust in an overlooked corner of his mind. "But it's rather staggering to find that you read French," he added, for the quotation had been literally translated. "You do, don't you?"

"I do, a little. I'm taking it up again for Noreen."

Noreen's name was continually being brought into focus. It had the effect of pushing Northrup, metaphorically, into a safe zone. He resented this.

"She is afraid!" he thought. "Rivers has left his mark upon her mind, damn him!"

This sentiment should have given warning, but it did not.

"I study nights"—Mary-Clare was speaking quite as if fear had no part in her thought—"French, mathematics—all the hard things that went in and—stuck."

"Hard things do stick, don't they?" Northrup hated the pushed-aside feeling.

"Terribly. But my doctor was adamant about hard things. He used to say that I'd learn to love chipping off the rough corners." Here Mary-Clare laughed, and the sound set Northrup's nerves a-tingle as the clear notes of music did.

"I can see myself now, Mr. Northrup, sitting behind my doctor on his horse, my book flattened out against his back. I'd ask questions; he'd fling the answers to me. Once I drew the map of Italy on his blessed old shoulders with crayon and often French verbs ran crookedly up the seam of his coat, for the horse changed his gait now and then."

Northrup laughed aloud. He edged away from his isolation and said:

"Your doctor was a remarkable man. His memory lives in the Forest; it's about the most vital thing here. It and all that preserves it." His eyes rested upon Mary-Clare.

"Yes. He was wonderful. Lately he seems more alive than ever. He had such simple rules of life—but they work. He told me so often that when a trouble or anything like that came, there were but two ways to meet it. If it was going to kill you, die at your best. If it wasn't, get over it at once; never waste time—live as soon as possible." Was there a note of warning in the words?

"And you're doing it?"

An understanding look passed between them.

"Yes, Mr. Northrup, for Noreen."

Back went Northrup to his place with a dull thud! Then Mary-Clare hurried to a safer subject.

"I wish you would tell me about your book, Mr. Northrup. I have the strangest feeling about it. It seems like a new kind of flower growing in the Forest. I love flowers."

Northrup looked down at his companion. Her bared head, her musing, radiant face excited and moved him. He had forgotten his book.

"You're rather like a strange growth yourself," he said daringly.

Mary-Clare smiled gaily.

"You'll have to blame my old doctor for that," she said.

"Or bless him," Northrup broke in.

"Yes, that's better, if it is true."

"It's tremendously true."

"A book"—again that elusive push—"must be a great responsibility. Once you put your thoughts and words down and send them out—there you are!"

"Yes. Good Lord! There you are."

"I knew that you would feel that way about it and that is why I would like to hear you talk of it. It's a story, isn't it?"

"Yes, a story."

"You can reach further with a story."

"I suppose so. You do not have to knuckle down to rules. You can let your vision have a say, and your feelings." Northrup, seeing that his book must play a part, accepted that fact.

"I suppose"—Mary-Clare was looking wistfully up at Northrup—"all the people in your books work out what you believe is truth. I can always feel truth in a book—or the lack of it."

In the near distance Noreen and Jan-an were gathering wood. They were singing and shouting lustily.

"May I sit on your log?" Northrup spoke hurriedly.

"Of course," and Mary-Clare moved a little. "The sun's gone," she went on. "It's quite dark in the valley."

"It's still light here—and there's the fire." Northrup was watching the face beside him.

"Yes, the fire, and presently the moon rising, just over there."

Restraint lay between the two on the mossy log. They both resented it.

"You know, you must know, that I'd rather have you share my book than any one else." Northrup spoke almost roughly.

He had meant to say something quite different, but anything would do so long as he controlled the situation.

"I wonder why?" Mary-Clare kept her face turned away.

"Well, you are so phenomenally keen. You know such a lot."

"I used to snap up everything like a hungry puppy, Uncle Peter often said. I suppose I do now, Mr. Northrup, but I only know life as a blind person does: I feel."

"That's just it. You feel life. It isn't coloured for you by others. You get its form, its hardness or softness, its fragrance or the reverse, but you fix your own colour. That's why you'd be such a ripping critic. Will you let me read some of my book to you?"

"Oh! of course. I'd be so glad and proud."

"Come, now, you're not joking?"

The large golden eyes turned slowly and rested upon Northrup.

"I do not think I ever joke"—Mary-Clare's words fell softly—"about such things. Why, it would seem like seeing a soul get into a body. You do not joke about that."

"You make me horribly afraid about my book. People do not usually take the writing of a book in just that way."

"I wish they did. You see, my doctor often said that books would live if they only held truth. He loved these words, 'And above all else—Truth taketh away the victory!' I can see him now waving his arms and singing that defiantly, as if he were challenging the whole world. He said that truth was the soul of things."

"But who knows Truth?"

"There is something in us that knows it. Don't you think so?"

"But we see it so differently."

"That does not matter, if we know it! Truth is fixed and sure. Isn't that so?"

"I do not know. Sometimes I think so: then—good Lord! that is what I'm trying to find out."

Northrup's face grew tense.

"And so am I."

"All right, then, let's go on the quest together!" Northrup stood up and offered his hand to Mary-Clare as if actually they were to start on the pilgrimage. "Where and when may I begin to read to you?"

The children were coming nearer.

"While this weather lasts, I'd love the open. Wouldn't you? Logs, like this, are such perfect places."

"I thought perhaps"—Northrup looked what he dared not voice—"I thought perhaps in that cabin of yours we might be more comfortable, more undisturbed."

Mary-Clare smiled and shook her head.

"No, I think it would be impossible. That cabin is too full—well, I'm sure I could not listen as I should, to you, in that cabin."

And so it was that the book became the medium of expression to Northrup and Mary-Clare. It justified that which might otherwise have been impossible. It drugged them both to any sense of actual danger. It was like a shield behind which they might advance and retreat unseen and unharmed. And if the shield ever fell for an unguarded moment, Northrup believed that he alone was vouchsafed clear vision.

He grew to marvel at the simplicity and purity of Mary-Clare's point of view. He knew that she must have gone through some gross experiences with a man like Rivers, but they had left her singularly untouched.

But, while Northrup, believing himself shielded from the woman near him, permitted his imagination full play, Mary-Clare drew her own conclusions. She accepted Northrup without question as far as he personally was concerned. He was making her life rich and full, but he would soon pass; become a memory to brighten the cold, dark years ahead, just as the memory of the old doctor had done: would always do.

Desperately Mary-Clare clung to this thought, and reinforced by it referred constantly to her own position as if to convince Northrup of perfect understanding of their relations.

But the book! That was another matter. In that she felt she dared contemplate the real nature of Northrup. She believed he was unconsciously revealing himself, and with that keenness of perception that Northrup had detected, she threshed the false notes from the true and, while hesitating to express herself—for she was timid and naturally distrustful of herself—she was being prepared for an hour when her best would be demanded of her.

Silently Mary-Clare would sit and listen while Northrup read. Without explanation, the children had been eliminated and, if the day was too cool to sit by the trail side, they would walk side by side, the crushed leaves making a soft carpet for their feet; the falling leaves touching them gently as they were brushed from their slight holdings.

Mary-Clare had suddenly abandoned her rough boyish garb. She was sweet and womanly in her plain little gown—and a long coat whose high collar rose around her grave face. She wore no hat and the light and shade did marvellous things to her hair. There were times when Northrup could not take his eyes from that shining head.

"Why are you stopping?" Mary-Clare would ask at such lapses.

"My writing is diabolical!" Northrup lied.

"Oh! I'm sorry. The stops give me a jog. Go on."

And Northrup would go on!

Without fully being aware of it, until the thing was done, Mary-Clare got vividly into the story.

And Northrup was doing some good, some daring work. His man, born from his own doubts, aspirations, and cravings, was a live and often a blundering creature who could not be disregarded. He was safe enough, but it was the woman who now gave trouble.

Northrup saw, with fear and trembling, that he had drawn her, so he devoutly believed, so close to reality that he felt that Mary-Clare would discover her at once and resent the impertinence. But he need not have held any such thought. Mary-Clare was far too impersonal; far too absorbed a nature to be largely concerned with herself, and Northrup had failed absolutely in his deductions, as he was soon to learn.

What Mary-Clare did see in Northrup's heroine was a maddening possibility that he was letting slip through his fingers. At first this puzzled her; pained her. She was still timid about expressing her feeling. But so strong was Northrup's touch in most of his work that at last he drove his quiet, silent critic from her moorings. She asked that she might have a copy of a certain part of the book.

"I want to think it out with my woman-brain," she laughingly explained. "When you read right at this spot—well, you see, it doesn't seem clear. When I have thought it out alone, then I will tell you and be—oh! very bold."

And Northrup had complied.

He had blazed for himself, some time before, a roundabout trail through the briery underbrush from the inn to within a few hundred feet of the cabin. Often he watched from this hidden limit. He saw the smoke rise from the chimney; once or twice he caught a glimpse of Mary-Clare sitting at the rough table, and, after she had taken those chapters away, he knew they were being read there.

Alone, waiting, expecting he knew not what, Northrup became alarmingly aware that Mary-Clare had got a tremendous hold upon him. The knowledge was almost staggering. He had felt so sure; had risked so much.

He could not deceive himself any longer. Like other men, he had played with fire and had been burnt. "But," he devoutly thought, "thank God, I have started no conflagration."



CHAPTER XI

There had been five days in which to face a rather ugly and bald fact before Northrup again saw Mary-Clare. He had employed the time, he tried to make himself believe, wisely, sanely.

He had spent a good portion of it at the Point. He had irritated Larry beyond endurance by friendly overtures. In an effort to be just, he tried to include Rivers in his reconstruction. The truth, he sternly believed, would never be known, but if it were, certainly Rivers might have something to say for himself, and with humiliation Northrup regarded himself "as other men." He had never, thank heaven! looked upon himself as better than other men, but he had thought his struggle, early in life, his unhappy parenthood, and later devotion to his work, had set him apart from the general temptations of many young men and had given him a distaste for follies that could hold no suggestion of mystery for him.

Well, Fate had merely bided its time.

With every reason for escaping a pitfall, he had floundered in. "Like other men?" Northrup sneered at himself. No other man could be such a consummate fool, knowing what he knew.

Viewed from this position, Larry was not as contemptible as he had once appeared.

But Rivers resented Northrup's advances, putting the lowest interpretation upon them. In this he was upheld by Maclin, who was growing restive under the tension that did not break, but stretched endlessly on.

Northrup resolved to see Mary-Clare once more and then go home. He would make sure that the fire he himself was scorched by had not touched her. After that he would turn his back upon the golden selah in his life and return to his niche in the wall.

This brought his mother and Kathryn into the line of vision. How utterly he had betrayed their confidence! His whole life, from now on, should be devoted to their service. Doubtless to other men, like himself, there were women who were never forgotten, but that must not blot out reality.

And then Northrup considered the task of unearthing Maclin's secrets, and ridding the Forest of that subtle fear and distrust that the man created. That was, however, too big an undertaking now. He must get Twombley to watch and report. Northrup had a great respect for Twombley's powers of observation.

And so the time on the Point had been put to some purpose, and it had occupied Northrup. Noreen and Jan-an had helped, too. It was rather tragic the way Northrup had grown to feel about Noreen. The child had developed his latent love for children—they had never figured in his life before. So much had been left out, now that he came to think of it!

And Jan-an. Poor groping creature! To have gained her affection and trust meant a great deal.

Then the Heathcotes! Polly and Peter! During those five distraught days they developed halos in Northrup's imagination.

They had taken him in, a stranger. They had fathered and mothered him; staunchly and silently stood by him. What if they knew?

They must never know! He would make sure of that.

In this frame of mind, chastened and determined, Northrup on the fifth day took his place behind the laurel clump back of Mary-Clare's cabin, and to his relief saw her coming out of the door. His manuscript was not in her hands, but her face had an uplifted and luminous look that set his heart to a quicker pulsing.

After a decent length of time, Northrup, whistling carelessly, scruffing the dead leaves noiselessly, followed on and overtook Mary-Clare near the log upon which they had sat at their last meeting.

The quaint poise and dignity of the girl was the first impression Northrup always got. He had never quite grown accustomed to it; it was like a challenge—his impulse was to test it. It threatened his exalted state now.

"It's quite mysterious, isn't it?"

Mary-Clare sat down on her end of the log and looked up, her eyes twinkling.

"What is mysterious?" Northrup took his place. The log was not a long one.

"The way we manage to meet."

She was setting him at a safe distance in that old way of hers that somehow made her seem so young.

It irritated Northrup now as it never had before.

He had prepared himself for an ordeal, was keyed to a high note, and the quiet, smiling girl near him made it all seem a farce.

This was dangerous. Northrup relaxed.

"It's been nearly a week since I saw you," he said, and let his eyes rest upon Mary-Clare's face.

"Yes, nearly a week," she said softly, "but it took me all that time to make up my mind."

"About what?"

"Your book."

Northrup had forgotten, for the moment, his book, and he resented its introduction.

"Damn the book!" he thought. Aloud he said: "Of course! You were going to tell me where I have fallen down."

"I hope you are not making a joke of it"—Mary-Clare's face flushed—"but even if you are, I am going to tell you what I think. I must, you know."

"That's awfully good of you"—Northrup became earnest—"but it doesn't matter now, I am going away. Let us talk of something else."

Mary-Clare took this in silence. The only evidence of her surprise showed in the higher touch of colour that rose, then died out, leaving her almost pale.

"Then, there is all the more reason why I must tell you what I think," she said at last.

The words came like sharp detached particles; they hurt.

"We must talk about the book!"

And Northrup suddenly caught the truth. The book was their common language. Only through that could they reach each other, understandingly.

"All right!" he murmured, and turned his face away.

"It's your woman," Mary-Clare began with a sharp catching of her breath as if she had been running. "Your woman is not real."