It would be necessary for some one to go to Springfield to make investigations. Grace had for ever alienated Abbott Ashton, but there was always Robert Clinton. He would obey her every wish; Robert Clinton should go. And when Robert had returned with a full history of Hamilton Gregory's school-days at Springfield, and those of Gregory's intimate friend, Fran, with the proofs of her conspiracy spread before her, should be driven forth, never again to darken the home of the philanthropist.



CHAPTER XIII

ALLIANCE WITH ABBOTT



For the most part, that was a silent walk to Hamilton Gregory's. Abbott Ashton pushed the wheel-chair, and it was only Mrs. Jefferson, ignorant of what had taken place, who commented on the bright moon, and the relief of rose-scented breezes after the musty auditorium of Walnut Street church.

"They were bent and determined on Fran going to choir practice," the old lady told Abbott, "so Lucy and I went along to encourage her, for they say she has a fine voice, and they want all the good singing they can have at Uncle Tobe Fuller's funeral. Uncle Tobe, he didn't know one tune from another, but now that he's dead, he knows 'em all—for he was a good man. I despise big doings at funerals, but I expect to go, and as I can't hear the solos, nor the preacher working up feelings, all I'll have to do will be to sit and look at the coffin."

"Mother," said Mrs. Gregory, "you are not cheerful to-night."

"No," the other responded, "I think it's from sitting so long by the Whited Sepulcher."

Mrs. Gregory spoke into the trumpet, with real distress—"Mother, mother! Abbott won't understand you; he doesn't know you are using a figure of speech."

"Yes," said the old lady, "Number Thirteen, if there's anything unlucky in figures."

Abbott effected diversion. "Mrs. Gregory, I'm glad Miss Noir agreed to say nothing about her discoveries, for the only harm in them is what people might imagine. I was pretty uneasy, at first; of course I knew that if she felt she ought to tell it, she would. I never knew anybody so conscientious."

There was a pause, then Mrs. Gregory responded, "She will not tell."

Abbott had seen them safely into the house, and had reached the gate on his departure, when Fran came running up. In pleased surprise he opened the gate for her, but she stopped in the outside shadow, and he paused within the yard.

"Fran!" he exclaimed with pleasure. "Is the practice ended?"

She made no response.

"Fran, what's the matter?"

Silence.

Abbott was both perplexed and hurt. "Remember what we said on the new bridge," he urged; "we're friends 'while we're together and after we part!'"

"Somebody ought to burn that new bridge," said Fran, in a muffled tone; "it's no good making wishes come true."

"Why do you say that? Aren't we the best of friends?"

Fran collected herself, and spoke with cool distinctness: "I have a pretty hard battle to fight, Mr. Ashton, and it's necessary to know who's on my side, and who isn't. I may not come out ahead; but I'm not going to lose out from taking a foe for a friend."

"Which you will kindly explain?"

"You are Grace Noir's friend—that explains it."

"I am your friend, too, Fran."

"My friend, too!" she echoed bitterly. "Oh, thanks—also!"

Abbott came through the gate, and tried to read her face. "Does the fact that I am her friend condemn me?"

"No—just classifies you. You couldn't be her friend if you were not a mirror in which she sees herself; her conscience is so sure, that she hasn't use for anything but a faithful reflector of her opinions. She empties her friends of all personality, and leaves them filled with their imagination of her character."

"Her friends are mere puppets, it appears," Abbott said, smiling. "But that's rather to her credit, isn't it? Would you mind to explain your imagination of her character?"

His jesting tone made her impatient. "I don't think her character has ever had a chance to develop; she's too fixed on thinking herself what she isn't. Her opinion of what she ought to be is so sure, that she has never discovered what she really is. And you can't possibly hold a secret from her, if you're her friend; she takes it from you as one snatches a toy from a little child."

Abbott was still amused. "Has she emptied me of all she wants?"

"Yes. You have given her strong weapons against me, and you may be sure she'll use them to her advantage."

"Fran, step back into the light—let me see your face; are you in earnest? Your eyes are smoldering—Oh, Fran, those eyes! What weapons have I given her?"

Fran set her back against the fence, and looked at him darkly. Now and then some one passed, with a curious look, and constrained greeting— for in Littleburg every one was known. "The secret of my age, and the secret of my past."

"I told her neither."

"As soon as you and Mrs. Gregory wheeled away Mrs. Jefferson," said Fran, "I went right down from the choir loft, and straight over to her. I looked her in the eye, and I asked what you had been telling about me. Why, you told her everything, even that I was trying to find out whether you and I would ever—would ever get married! I might aswell say it, it came pat enough from her—and you told! Nobody else knew. And you dropped your King of Hearts over the fence—you told her that! And when we were standing there at the gate, you even tried—but no, I'll leave you and Miss Grace to discuss such subjects. Here we are at the same gate, but I guess there's not much danger, now!"

"Fran!" cried Abbott, with burning cheeks, "I didn't tell her, upon my honor I didn't. I had to admit dropping the card, to keep her from thinking you out here at midnight with a stranger. She saw us in the shadow, and guessed—that other. I didn't tell her anything about your age. I didn't mention the carnival company."

Fran's concentrated tones grew milder: "But Mrs. Gregory has known about the show all this time. She would die before she'd tell on me."

"I never told, Fran. I'm not going to say that again; but you shall believe me."

"Of course, Abbott. But it just proves what I said, about her emptying her friends, about taking their secrets from them even without their knowing she's doing it. I said to her, sharp and quick, 'What have you been saying about me, Miss Noir?' She said—'I understand from Professor Ashton that you are not a young girl at all, but a masquerader of at least eighteen years.' I answered—'Being a masquerader of at least thirty-five, you should have found that out, yourself.' I hardly think she's thirty-five; it wasn't a fair blow, but you have to fight Indians in the brush. Then your friend said, 'Professor Ashton informs me that you are a circus-girl. Don't you think you've strayed too far from the tent?' she asked. I said—'Oh, I brought the show with me; Professor Ashton is my advance advertising agent.' Then she said that if I'd leave, Mr. Gregory need never know that I'm an impostor. But I told her no tickets are going to be returned. I said—'This show absolutely takes place, rain or shine.'"

"Fran," said Abbott in distress, "I want to talk this over—come here in the yard where you're not so conspicuous."

"Show-girls ought to be conspicuous. No, sir, I stay right here in the glaring moonlight. It doesn't call for darkness to tell me anything that is on your mind, Professor."

"Fran, you can't hold me responsible for what Miss Grace guessed. I tell you, she guessed everything. I was trying to defend you— suddenly she saw through it all. I don't know how it was—maybe Mrs. Gregory can explain, as she's a woman. You shall not deem me capable of adding an atom to your difficulties. You shall feel that I'm your friend 'while we're together and after we part.' You must believe me when I tell you that I need your smile." His voice trembled with sudden tenderness. "You must accept what I say as the greatest fact in my life—that I can't be happy, if you are angry with me."

She looked at him searchingly, then her face relaxed to the eve of revolution. "Who have you been trying to get a glimpse of, all the times you parade the street in front of our house?"

Abbott declared, "You!" In mute appeal he held out his hand.

"You're a weak brother, but here—" And she slipped her hand into his. "If she'd been in conversation with me, I wouldn't have let her have any presentiments. It takes talent to keep from telling what you know, but genius to keep the other fellow from guessing. What I hate about it is, that the very next time you fall into her hands, you'll be at her mercy. If I told you a scheme I've been devising, she'd take it from you in broad daylight. She can always prove she's right, because she has the verse for it,—and to deny her is to deny Inspiration. And if she had her way,—she thinks I'm a sort of dissipation—there'd be a national prohibition of Fran."

"If there were a national prohibition of Fran, I'd be the first to smuggle you in somehow, little Nonpareil. I do believe that Miss Grace is the most conscientious person I ever knew, except Mr. Gregory. Just the same, I'm your friend. Isn't it something for me to have taken you on trust as I have, from the very beginning?"

His brown eyes were so earnest that Fran stepped into the shadow. "It's more than something, Abbott. Your trust is about all I have. It's just like me to be wanting more than I have. I'm going to confide in you my scheme. Let's talk it over in whispers." They put their heads together. "Tomorrow, Grace Noir is going to the city with Bob Clinton to select music for the choir—he doesn't know any more about music than poor Uncle Tobe Fuller, but you see, he's still alive. It will be the first day she's been off the place since I came. While she's away, I mean to make my grand effort."

"At what, Little Wonder?"

"At driving her away for good. I'm going to offer myself as secretary, and with her out of sight, I'm hoping to win the day."

"But she's been his secretary for five years—is it reasonable he'd give her up? And would it be honorable for you to work against her in that way? Besides, Fran, she is really necessary to Mr. Gregory's great charity enterprises—"

"The more reason for getting rid of her."

"I don't understand how you mean that. I know Mr. Gregory's work would be seriously crippled. And it would be a great blow to Walnut Street church—she's always there."

"Still, you see she can't stay."

"No, I don't see. You and Miss Grace must be reconciled."

"Oh, Abbott, can't you understand, or is it that you just won't? It isn't on my account that Miss Noir must leave this house. She's going to bring trouble—she's already done it. I've had lots of experience, and when I see people hurrying down hill, I expect to find them at the bottom, not because it's in the people, but because it's in the direction. I don't care how no-account folks are, if they keep doggedly climbing up out of the valley, just give 'em time, and they'll reach the mountain-top. I believe some mighty good-intentioned men are stumbling down hill, carrying their religion right into hell."

"Hush, little friend! You don't understand what religion is."

"If I can't find out from its fruits, I don't want to know."

"Of course. But consider how Miss Grace's labors are blessing the helpless."

"Abbott, unless the fruits of religion are flavored by love, they're no more account than apples taken with bitter-rot—not worth fifty cents a barrel. The trouble with a good deal of the church-fruit to- day is bitter-rot."

Abbott asked slyly, "What about your fruit, out there in the world?"

"Oh," Fran confessed, with a gleam, "we're not in the orchard-business at all, out here."

Abbott laid his hand earnestly upon her arm. "Fran! Come in and help us spray."

"You dear old prosy, preachy professor!" she exclaimed affectionately, "I have been thinking of it. I've half a mind to try, really. Wouldn't Grace Noir just die?...O Lord, there she comes, now!"

Fran left the disconsolate young man in wild precipitation, and flew into the house. He wondered if she had been seen standing there, and he realized that, if so, the purest motives could not outweigh appearances. He turned off in another direction, and Gregory and Grace came slowly toward the house, having, without much difficulty, eliminated Simon Jefferson from their company.

In truth, Simon, rather than be improved by their conversation, had dived down a back alley, and found entrance through the side door. When Hamilton Gregory and his secretary came into the reception hall, the old bachelor lay upon a divan thinking of his weak heart—Fran's flight from the choir loft had reminded him of it—and Mrs. Jefferson was fanning him, as if he were never to be a grown man. Mrs. Gregory sat near the group, silently embroidering in white silk. Fran had hastily thrown herself upon the stairway, and, with half-closed eyes, looked as if she had been there a long time.

"Fran," said Mr. Gregory coldly, "you left the choir practice before we were two-thirds done. Of course I could hardly expect you—" he looked at his wife—"to stay, although your presence would certainly have kept Fran there; and it does look as if we should be willing to resort to any expedient to keep her there!"

"How would a lock and chain do?" Fran inquired meekly.

"I don't think she came straight home, either," remarked Grace Noir significantly. "Did you, Fran?"

"Miss Noir," said Fran, smiling at her through the banister-slats, "you are so satisfactory; you always say just about what I expect. Yes, I came straight home. I'm glad it's your business, so you could ask."

Hamilton Gregory turned to his wife again, with restraint more marked. "Next Sunday is roll-call day, Mrs. Gregory. The board has decided to revise the lists. We've been carrying so many names that it's a burden to the church. The world reproaches us, saying, 'Isn't So-and-so a member? He never attends, does he?' I do hope you will go next Sunday!" Mrs. Gregory looked down at her work thoughtfully, then said, "Mother would be left—"

"It's just this way," her husband interposed abruptly: "If no excuses, such as sickness, are sent, and if the people haven't been coming for months, and don't intend coming, we are simply determined to drop the names—strike 'em out. We believe church members should show where they stand. And—and if you—"

Mrs. Gregory looked up quietly. Her voice seemed woven of the silk threads she was stitching in the white pattern. "If I am not a member of the church, sitting an hour in the building couldn't make me one."

Simon Jefferson cried out, "Is that my sister Lucy? Blessed if I thought she had so much spirit!"

"Do you call that spirit?" returned Gregory, with displeasure.

"Well!" snorted Simon, "what do you call it, then?"

"Perhaps," responded Gregory, with marked disapprobation, "perhaps it was spirit."

Grace, still attired for the street, looked down upon Mrs. Gregory as if turned to stone. Her beautiful face expressed something like horror at the other's irreverence.

Fran shook back her hair, and watched with gleaming eyes from behind the slats, not unlike a small wild creature peering from its cage.

"Oh," cried Fran, "Miss Noir feels so bad!"

Grace swept from the hall, her rounded figure instinct with the sufferings of a martyr.

Fran murmured, "That killed her!"

"And you!" cried Gregory, turning suddenly in blind anger upon the other—"you don't care whose heart you break."

"I haven't any power over hearts," retorted Fran, gripping her fingers till her hands were little white balls. "Oh, if I only had! I'd get at 'em, if I could—like this..."

She leaped to her feet.

"Am I always to be defied by you?" he exclaimed; "is there to be no end to it? But suppose I put an end to it, myself—tell you that this is no place for you—"

"You shall never say that!" Mrs. Gregory spoke up, distinctly, but not in his loud tones. She dropped her work in some agitation, and drew Fran to her heart. "I have a friend here, Hamilton—one friend—and she must stay."

"Don't you be uneasy, dear one," Fran looked up lovingly into the frightened face. "He won't tell me to go. He won't put an end to it. He won't tell me anything!"

"Listen to me, Lucy," said Gregory, his tone altering, "yes, she must stay—that's settled—she must stay. Of course. But you—why will you refuse what I ask, when for years you were one of the most faithful attendants at the Walnut Street church? I am asking you to go next Sunday because—well, you know how people judge by appearances. I'm not asking it for my sake—of course I know your real character—but go for Miss Grace's sake—go to show her where you stand. Lucy, I told her on the way from choir practice—I promised her that you should be there."

"How is it about church attendance, anyway?" asked Fran, with the air of one who seeks after knowledge. "I thought you went to church for the Lord's sake, and not for Miss Noir's."

"I have given you my answer, Mr. Gregory," said his wife faintly, "but I am sorry that it should make me seem obstinate—"

He uttered a groan, and left the hall in despair. His gesture said that he must give it up.

Mrs. Gregory folded her work, her face pale and drawn, her lips tremulous. She looked at Fran, and tried to smile. "We must go to rest, now," she said—"if we can."



CHAPTER XIV

FIGHTING FOR HER LIFE



The next day found Fran the bluest of the blue. No laughing now, as she sat alone, half-way up the ladder leading to Gregory's barn-loft. She meant to be just as miserable as she pleased, since there was no observer to be deceived by sowing cheat-seed of merriment.

"The battle's on now, to a finish," muttered Fran despondently, "yet here I sit, and here I scrooch." With her skirts gathered up in a listless arm till they were unbecomingly abridged, with every muscle and fiber seeming to sag like an ill-supported fence, Fran's thoughts were at the abysmal stage of discouragement. For a time, there seemed in her heart not the tiniest taper alight, and in this blackness, both hope and failure were alike indistinguishable.

"But we'll see," she cried, at last coming down the ladder, "we'll see!" and she clenched her fists, flung open the barn-door and marched upon the house with battle in her eyes. Girding up her loins—that is, smoothing her hair—and sharpening her weapons for instant use, she opened the library door.

She knew Grace Noir had gone to the city with Robert Clinton, and yet her feeling on seeing Hamilton Gregory alone, was akin to surprise. How queerly lonesome he looked, without his secretary! There was something ghostly about Grace Noir's typewriter—it seemed to have fallen into Fran's power like an enemy's trophy too easily captured. The pens and pencils were at her mercy, so readily surrendered that they suggested treachery. Did an ambuscade await her? But impossible— no train returned from the city until nine in the evening, and it was now only three in the afternoon—six hours of clear field.

She found the philanthropist immersed in day-dreams. So deep was he below the surface of every-day thoughts, that he might be likened to a man walking on the floor of the sea. The thought of the good his money and influence were accomplishing thrilled his soul, while through the refined ether of this pious joy appeared the loveliness of Grace Noir, lending something like spiritual sensuousness to his vision of duty.

He did not want the applause of the general public any more than he wanted his past unearthed. It was enough if his philanthropy was known to God and Grace Noir. She stood, to his mind, as a symbol of religion—there can be no harm in reverencing symbols.

Fran's eyes drew him abruptly from the bottom of the sea. He emerged, chilled and trembling. "Fran," he said, as if she had appeared in answer to a summons, "I am unhappy about you. Your determination to have nothing to do with the church not only distresses but embarrasses me. You have insisted on coming into my life. Then why do you disgrace it? You pretend that you want to be liked by us, yet you play cards with strangers at night—it's outrageous. You even threw a card in my yard where a card was never seen before."

"Do you think cards so very wicked?" asked Fran, looking at him curiously.

"You know what I think. I look on gambling as immoral. But it ought to be enough for me simply to forbid it. Cards, and dancing, and the theater—these things are what destroy the influence of the church."

"And not going to the meeting-house," remarked Fran, with quiet irony,—"that's perfectly dreadful."

She closed the door, and placed her back against it. A shake of her head seemed to throw aside what they had been saying as of no more importance than the waving tresses of black hair. She looked him in the eyes, and said abruptly—

"I want to be your secretary."

Hamilton gripped his chair. He found the air hard to breathe after his submarine inaction—doubtless he had stayed under too long. "I have a secretary," he retorted, looking at her resentfully. He checked words he would have liked to utter, on reflecting that his secret was in Fran's keeping. She need but declare it, and his picture would blossom forth in all the papers of the big cities. How Grace would shrink from him, if she knew the truth—how that magnificent figure would turn its back upon him—and those scornful, imperious, never- faltering eyes...

Fran drew nearer. She seated herself upon the arm of a chair, one foot on the floor, and spoke with restrained intensity: "I'm well enough educated. I can take dictation and make good copy."

He allowed his tone to sound defiance—"I already have a secretary."

Fran continued with an effort, "Mother didn't like studying, very well, but she was determined to get me out of the condition I was born in; she taught me all she knew. When I caught up, she'd go digging ahead on her own account to pull me a little higher. Wasn't she splendid! So patient—" Fran paused, and stared straight before her, straight into the memory of her mother's eyes.

Gregory reflected—"If this child had not come, had not intruded herself upon my life! Haven't I suffered enough for my follies?"

"When mother died," Fran resumed, "she thought maybe Uncle Ephraim had mellowed, so I went to him, because I thought I couldn't get along without love." She shook her head, with a pathetic little smile. "But I could! Uncle Ephraim didn't mellow, he dried up. He blamed me for being born—I think, myself, it was a mistake. He turned me out, but I was so tough I just couldn't be winter-killed. After that I went back to the show and stocked up in experience. I mention it to point out that a mild little job like being your private secretary wouldn't strain a muscle. I expect I could even be a foreign secretary. It's as easy to walk a rope that's rigged high, as one near the ground. All the trouble is in the imagination."

Gregory's voice cut across hers, showing no comprehension of her last words: "My secretary must be in sympathy with my work. To exercise such talents as I have, is my religion, and I need a helper whose eyes are fixed upon the higher life. This is final, and the subject must never be reopened. I find it very painful."

Fran's discovery that he had not heard her plea, crimsoned her face. She jumped from the armchair, breathing rapidly. "Then," she cried, "if you won't have me, get another. The one you have must go."

"She shall do nothing of the sort," he coldly responded.

"Yes," Fran retorted violently, "I tell you she must go!" He struck the table with his palm. "Never!"

"Shall I use my last resource?" Fran's eyes gleamed ominously.

The hand upon the table became a fist. That was his only reply.

"I would entreat you," said Fran, faltering, "and with tears—but what good would it do? None. There's no use for one woman to weep if another woman is smiling. Dismiss your secretary."

He leaned toward her from over the table, and spoke in a low level tone: "I am going to appeal to your better nature. Think of the girls of the street who need rescue, and the women of the cities who are dying from neglect and vice. If you hinder my work, let the souls of these outcasts be upon your soul! You can ruin me, but not without ruining my good works. I don't ask you to keep silent on my account— what am I but an instrument in the hands of Providence?—but for the sake of the homeless thousands. I have atoned for my past, but the world, always ready to crucify the divine, would rejoice to point the finger of scorn at me, as if I were still the fool of twenty years ago."

"But your secretary—"

"She is a vital factor in my work. Remove her, and the work ceases."

"How important!" cried Fran, throwing back her head. "What will God dowhen she dies?"

"Perhaps I have gone too far. Still, it would be impossible to replace her."

Fran made a step toward him—"My mother was replaced."

He started up. "You shall not speak of that. She lived her life, and I demand the right to live mine. I tell you, the past is ended."

"But I am here," returned Fran. "I have not ended. Can't you look into my face and see my mother living? She paid for her secret marriage, wandering over the face of the earth with her baby, trying to find you. I don't deny that you've paid for all—yes, even for your desertion and your living a hidden life in this town. Maybe you've suffered enough. But that isn't the question. Look at me. I am here. I have come as truly out of your past as out of the past of my darling, uncomplaining—what did you call her?—'friend'. And being here, I ask, 'What will you do with me?' All I want is—just a little love."

The long loneliness of her life found expression in the eager voice, in the yearning eyes. As he stared at her, half-stupefied, he imagined she was holding out her arms to him in pleading. But it was not this erect form, slight and tense, that reached forth as if to clasp him to her heart; it was a memory of his youth, a memory that in some oddmanner blurred his perception of the living presence. From the fragile body of Fran, something leaped toward him, enveloping, overpowering.

It was partly Fran, and partly somebody else—how well he knew that other somebody, that dead woman who had found reincarnation in the soul of this wanderer.

She thought his covered face a token of weakening. "You must have loved my mother once. Is it all so dead and forgotten that there is none left for your child?"

But she was seeking to play upon strings that had long since ceased to vibrate. He could not bring back, even in retrospect, the emotions inspired by Josephine Derry. Those strings had been tuned to other love-harmonies. To remember Fran's mother was to bring back not the rapture of a first passion, but the garrish days of disillusionment. He even felt something like resentment because she had remained faithful—her search and unending love for him made so much more of his desertion than ever he had made.

He could not tell Fran that he had never loved her mother. The dead must not be reproached; the living could not be denied—so he was silent.

His silence inspired Fran with hope. "I am so lonely, so lonely!" she murmured plaintively, "so very lonely! There seems a reason for everybody but me—I can't be explained. That's why I am disliked. If there could be one heart for me to claim—whose heart should it be? Does no sort of feeling tell you whose heart it should be?"

"Of course you are lonely, child, but that is your fault. You are in this house on a footing of equality, and all seem to like you, except Miss Grace—and I must say, her disapproval disturbs you very little. But you won't adopt our ways. You get yourself virtually expelled from school—do you blame me for that? You won't go to church—can you expect church people to like you? You make everybody talk by your indiscreet behavior—then wonder that the town shuns your society, and complain because you feel lonesome!"

Fran's eyes filled with tears. "If you believe in me—if you try to like me—that's all I ask. The whole town can talk, if I have you. I don't care for the world and its street corners—there are no street corners in my world."

"But, child—"

"You never call me Fran if you can help it," she interposed passionately." Even the dogs have names. Call me by mine; it's Fran. Say it, say it. Call me—oh, father, father. I want your love."

"Hush!" he gasped, ashen pale. "You will be overheard."

She extended her arms wildly: "What do you know about God, except that He's Father. That's all—Father—and you worship Him as His son. Yet you want me to care for your religion. Then why don't you show me the way to God? Can you love Him and deny your own child? Am I to pray to Him as my Father in Heaven, but not dare acknowledge my father on earth? No! I don't know how others feel, but I'll have to reach heavenly things through human things. And I tell you that you are standing between me and God, just as the lives of so many Christians hide God from the world."

"Hush, hush!" cried Gregory. "Child! this is sacrilege!"

"No, it is not. I tell you, I can't see God, because you're in the way. You pray 'Our Father who art in Heaven...give us this day our daily bread.' And I pray to you, and I say, My father here on earth, give me—give me—your love. That's what I want—nothing else—I want it so bad...I'm dying for it, father, can't you understand? Look—I'm praying for it—" She threw herself wildly at his feet.

Deeply moved, he tried to lift her from the ground.

"No," cried Fran, scarcely knowing what she said, "I will not get up till you grant my prayer. I'm not asking for the full rich love a child has the right to expect—but give me a crust, to keep me alive— father, give me my daily bread. You needn't think God is going to answer your prayers, if you refuse mine."

Hamilton Gregory took her in his arms and held her to his breast. "Fran," he said brokenly, "my unfortunate child...my daughter—oh, why were you born?"

"Yes," sobbed Fran, resting her head upon his bosom, "yes, why was I born?"

"You break my heart," he sobbed with her.

"Fran, say the word, and I will tell everything; I will acknowledge you as my daughter, and if my wife—"

Fran shook her head. "You owe no more to my mother than to her," she said, catching her breath. "No, the secret must be kept—always. Nothing belongs to us but the future, since even the present belongs to the past. Father—I must never call you that except when we are alone—I must always whisper it, like a prayer—father, let me be your secretary."

It was strange that this request should surround Fran with the chill atmosphere of a tomb. His embrace relaxed insensibly. His moment of self-abnegation had passed, and life appeared suddenly at the level. He looked at his daughter in frightened bewilderment, as if afraid she had drawn him too far from his security for further hiding. During the silence, she awaited his decision.

It was because of her tumultuous emotions that she failed to hear advancing footsteps.

"Some one is coming," he exclaimed, with ill-concealed relief. "We mustn't be seen thus—we would be misunderstood." He strode to the window, and pretended to look out. His face cleared momentarily.

The door opened, and Grace Noir started in, then paused significantly. "Am I interrupting?" she asked, in quietest accent.

"Certainly not," Gregory breathed freedom. His surprise was so joyful that he was carried beyond himself. "Grace! It's Grace! Then you didn't go to the city with Bob. There wasn't any train—"

"I am here—" began Grace easily—

"Yes, of course, that's the main thing," his delight could not be held in check. "You are here, indeed! And you are looking—I mean you look well—I mean you are not ill—your return is so unexpected."

"I am here," she steadily persisted, "because I learned something that affects my interests. I went part of the way with Mr. Clinton, but after thinking over what had been told me, I decided to leave the train at the next station. I have been driven back in a carriage. I may as well tell you, Mr. Gregory, that I am urged to accept a responsible position in Chicago."

He understood that she referred to marriage with Robert Clinton. "But—" he began, very pale.

She repeated, "A responsible position in Chicago. And I was told, this morning, that while I was away, Fran meant to apply for the secretaryship, thus taking advantage of my absence."

Fran's face looked oddly white and old, in its oval of black hair. "Who told you this truth?" she demanded, with a menacing gleam of teeth.

"Who knew of your intentions?" the other gracefully said. "But that is no matter. The point is that I have this Chicago opportunity. So if Mr. Gregory wants to employ you, I must know it at once, to make my arrangements accordingly."

"Can you imagine," Hamilton cried reproachfully, "that without any warning, I would make a change? Certainly not. I have no intention of employing Fran. The idea is impossible. More than that, it is—er—it is absolutely preposterous. Would I calmly tear down what you and I have been building up so carefully?"

"Then you had already refused Fran before I came?"

"I had—hadn't I, Fran?"

Fran gave her father a look such as had never before come into her dark eyes—a look of reproach, a look that said, "I can not fight back because of the agony in my heart." She went away silent and with downcast head.



CHAPTER XV

IN SURE-ENOUGH COUNTRY



One morning, more than a month after the closing days of school, Abbott Ashton chanced to look from his bedroom window as Hamilton Gregory's buggy, with Fran in it, passed.

There were no more examination-papers for Abbott to struggle with; but, like bees who spend the pleasantest weather in hardest work, he was laying up mathematical sweetness and psychological succulence against the day when he might become a professor at Yale or Harvard.

Unthrifty Fran, on the contrary, was bent upon no mission of self- improvement. Long fishing-poles projecting from the back of the buggy, protested against the commercialism of the age; their yellow hue streaked the somber background of a money-getting world, while the very joints of the poles mocked at continuity of purpose.

By Fran's side, Abbott discovered a man. True, it was "only" Simon Jefferson; still, for all his fifty years and his weak heart, it was not as if it were some pleasant respectable woman—say Simon's mother. However, old ladies do not sit upon creek-banks.

The thought of sitting upon the bank of a stream suggested to Abbott that it would be agreeable to pursue his studies in the open air. The June morning had not yet had its dewy sweetness burned away by a droughty old sun. Abbott snatched up some books and went below. In almost every front yard there were roses. Up and down the street, they bloomed in all colors, with delicate, penetrating, intoxicating fragrance. They were not hidden away in miserly back-gardens, these roses; they smiled for the meanest beggar, for the most self- sufficient tramp, for the knowledge-burdened scholar, for the whistling driver of the grocer's wagon. They had often smiled in vain for Abbott Ashton, but that was before he had made the bewildering discovery that they were like Fran.

On the green veranda he paused to inhale their fragrance.

"I'm glad you've left your room," said Miss Sapphira, all innocence, all kindness. "You'll study yourself to death. It won't make any more of life to take it hard—there's just so much for every man."

Abbott smiled abstractedly. He heard nothing but the voices of the roses.

Huge and serious, Miss Sapphira sat in the shadow of the bay-window. Against the wall were arranged sturdy round-backed wooden chairs, each of which could have received the landlady's person without a quiver of a spindle. Everything about Abbott seemed too carefully ordered—he pined for the woods—some mossy bank sloping to a purling stream.

Suddenly Miss Sapphira grew ponderously significant. Her massive head trembled from a weight of meaning not to be lifted lightly in mere words, her double chins consolidated, and her mouth became as the granite door of a cave sealed against the too-curious.

Abbott paused uneasily before his meditated flight—"Have you heard any news?"

She answered almost tragically, "Board meeting, to-night."

Ordinarily, teachers for the next year were selected before the close of the spring term; only those "on the inside" knew that the fateful board meeting had been delayed week after week because of disagreement over the superintendency. There was so much dissatisfaction over Abbott Ashton—because of "so much talk"—that even Robert Clinton had thought it best to wait, that the young man might virtually be put upon good behavior.

"To-night," the young man repeated with a thrill. He realized how important this meeting would prove in shaping his future. Miss Sapphira was too appallingly significant to mean otherwise. If anybody was on the "inside" it was the chairman's sister.

"Yes," she said warningly. "And Bob is determined to do his duty. He never went very far in his own education because he didn't expect to be a school-teacher—but ever since he's been chairman of the school- board, he's aimed to have the best teachers, so the children can be taught right; most of 'em are poor and may want to teach, too, when they're grown. I think all the board'll be for you to-night, Abbott, and I've been glad to notice that for the last month, there's been less talk. And by the way," she added, "that Fran-girl went by with Simon Jefferson just now, the two of them in Brother Gregory's buggy. They're going to Blubb's Riffle—he with his weak heart, and her with that sly smile of hers, and it's a full three mile!"

Abbott did not volunteer that he had seen them pass, but his face showed the ostensible integrity of a jam-thief, who for once finds himself innocent when missing jam is mentioned.

She was not convinced by his look of guilelessness. "You seem to be carrying away your books."

"I want to breathe in this June morning without taking it strained through window-screens," he explained.

Miss Sapphira gave something like a choked cough, and compressed her lips. "Abbott," she said, looking at him sidewise, "please step to the telephone, and call up Bob—he's at the store. Tell him to leave the clerk in charge and hitch up and take me for a little drive. I want some of this June morning myself."

Abbott obeyed with alacrity. On his return, Miss Sapphira said, "Bob's going to fight for you at the board meeting, Abbott. We'll do what we can, and I hope you'll help yourself. I don't wish any harm to that Fran-girl. Bob says I'm always expecting the worst of people and I guess I am; but I must say I don't expect half as bad as they turn out."

As Abbott went down the fragrant street with its cool hose-refreshed pavements, its languorous shadows athwart rose-bush and picket fence, its hopeful weeds already peering through crevices where plank sidewalks maintained their worm-eaten right of way, he was in no dewy- morning mood. He understood what those wise nods had meant, and he was in no frame of mind for such wisdom. He meant to go far, far away from the boarding-house, from the environment of schools and school-boards, from Littleburg with its atmosphere of ridiculous gossip.

Of course he could have gone just as far, if he had not chosen the direction of Blubb's Riffle—but he had to take some direction. He halted before he came in sight of the stream; if Fran had a mind to fish with Simon Jefferson, he would not spoil her sport.

He found a comfortable log where he might study under the gracious sky. Across the road, a bill-board flaunted a many-colored advertisement, but it did not distract his attention—it had lost its novelty from over-production. There was to be a Street Carnival beginning July first. There would be a Fortune Teller, a Lion Show, a Snake Den, etc. The Fourth of July would be the Big Day; a Day of Confetti, of Fireworks, of Riotous Mirth and patriotism—the last word was the only one on the bill not capitalized.

Abbott studied hard. He did not learn much—there seemed a bird in every line.

When he closed his books, scarcely knowing why, and decided to ramble, it was with no intention of seeking Fran. Miss Sapphira might have guessed what would happen, but in perfect innocence, the young man strolled, seeking a grassy by-road, seldom used, redolent of bush, tree, vine, dust-laden weed. It was a road where the sun seemed almost a stranger; a road gone to sleep and dreaming of the feet of stealthy Indians, of noisy settlers, and skilful trappers. All such fretful bits of life had the old road drained into oblivion, and now it seemed to call on Abbott to share their fate, the fate of the forgotten.

But the road lost its mystic meaning when Abbott discovered Fran. Suddenly it became only a road—nay, it became nothing. It seemed that the sight of Fran always made wreckage of the world about her.

She was sitting in the Gregory buggy, but, most surprising of all, there was no horse between the shafts—no horse was to be seen, anywhere. Best of all, no Simon Jefferson was visible. Fran in the buggy—that was all. Slow traveling, indeed, even for this sleepy old road!

"Not in a hurry, are you?"

"I've arrived," Fran said, in unfriendly tone.

Smaller than ever, she appeared, shrinking back in a corner of the seat, as if the vital qualities of her being were compressed to bring all within the scope of one eyeflash. Abbott loved the laced shadows of the trees upon the bared head, he adored the green lap-robe protecting her feet. The buggy-top was down and the trees from either side strove each to be first, to darken Fran's black hair with shadow upon shade.

"Are you tired of fishing, Fran?"

"Yes, and of being fished."

She had closed the door in his face, but he said—as through the keyhole—"Does that mean for me to go away?"

"You are a pretty good friend, Mr. Ashton," she said with a curl of her lip, "I mean—when we are alone."

"'While we're together, and after we part'," he quoted. "Fran, surely you don't feel toward me the way you are looking."

"Exactly as I'm looking at you, that's the way I feel. Stand there as long as you please—"

"I don't want to stand a moment longer. I want to sit with you in the buggy. Please don't be so—so old!"

Fran laughed out musically, but immediately declared: "I laughed because you are unexpected; it doesn't mean I like you any better. I hate friendship that shows itself only in private. Mr. Chameleon, I like people to show their true colors."

"I am not Mr. Chameleon, and I want to sit in your buggy."

"Well, then get in the very farthest corner. Now look me in the eyes."

"And oh, Fran, you have such eyes! They are so marvelously—er— unfriendly."

"I'm glad you ended up that way. Now look me in the eyes. Suppose you should see the school-board sailing down the road, Miss Sapphira thrown in. What would you do?"

"What should I do?"

"Hide, I suppose," said Fran, suddenly rippling.

"Then you look me in the eyes and listen to me," he said impressively. "Weigh my words—have you scales strong enough?"

"Put 'em on slow and careful."

"I am not Mr. Chameleon for I show my true color. And I am a real friend, no matter what kind of tree I am—" He paused, groping for a word.

"Up?" she suggested, with a sudden chuckle. "All right—let the school-board come. But you don't seem surprised to see me here in the buggy without Mr. Simon."

"When Mr. Simon comes, he'll find me right here," Abbott declared. "Fran, please don't be always showing your worst side to the town; when you laugh at people's standards, they think you queer—and you can't imagine just how much you are to me."

"Huh!" Fran sniffed. "I'd hate to be anybody's friend and have my friendship as little use as yours has been to me."

He was deeply wounded. "I've tried to give good advice—"

"I don't need advice, I want help in carrying out what I already know." Her voice vibrated. "You're afraid of losing your position if you have anything to do with me. Of course I'm queer. Can I help it, when I have no real home, and nobody cares whether I go or stay?"

"You know I care, Fran."

Fran caught her lip between her teeth as if to hold herself steady. "Oh, let's drive," she said recklessly, striking at the dashboard with the whip, and shaking her hair about her face till she looked the elfish child he had first known.

"Fran, you know I care—you know it."

"We'll drive into Sure-Enough Country," she said with a half-smile showing on the side of her face next him. "Whoa! Here we are. All who live in Sure-Enough Country are sure-enough people—whatever they say is true. Goodness!" She opened her eyes very wide—"It's awful dangerous to talk in Sure-Enough Country." She put up the whip, and folded her hands.

"I'm glad we're here, Fran, for you have your friendly look."

"That's because I really do like you. Let's talk about yourself—how you expect to be what you'll be—you're nothing yet, you know, Abbott; but how did you come to determine to be something?"

Into Abbott's smile stole something tender and sacred. "It was all my mother," he explained simply. "She died before I received my state certificate, but she thought I'd be a great man—so I am trying for it."

"And she'll never know," Fran lamented.

She slipped her hand into his. "Didn't I have a mother? Oh, these mothers! And who can make mother-wishes come true? Well! And you just studied with all your might; and you'll keep on and on, till you're... out of my reach, of course. Which would have suited your mother, too." She withdrew her hand.

"My mother would have loved you," he declared, for he did not understand, so well as Fran, about mothers' liking for strange young ladies who train lions.

"Mine would you," Fran asserted, with more reason.

Abbott, conscious of a dreadful emptiness, took Fran's hand again. "I'll never be out of your reach, Fran."

She did not seek to draw away, but said, with dark meaning, "Remember the bridge at midnight."

"I remember how you looked, with the moonlight silvering your face— you were just beautiful that night, little Nonpareil!"

"But not quite so in daylight," murmured Fran wickedly, "as this morning?"

"Anyway," he answered desperately, "you look as I'd have you look—can you ask more than that, since I can't?"

"My chin is so sharp," she murmured.

"Yes," he said, softly feeling the warm little fingers, one by one, as if to make sure all were there. "That's the way I like it—sharp."

"And I'm so ridiculously thin—"

"You're nothing like so thin as when you first came to Littleburg," he declared. "I've noticed how you are—have been—I mean..."

"Filling out?" cried Fran gleefully. "Oh, yes, and I'm so glad you know, because since I've been wearing long dresses, I've been afraid you'd never find it out, and would always be thinking of me as you saw me at the beginning. But I am—yes—filling out."

"And your little feet, Fran—"

"Yes, I always had a small foot. But let's get off of this subject."

"Not until I say something about your smile—oh, Fran, that smile!"

"The subject, now," remarked Fran, "naturally returns to Grace Noir."

"Please, Fran!"

"Yes—and I am going to say something to offend you; but honestly, Abbott, it's for your good. If you'll keep holding my hand, I'll know you can stand unpleasant truths. When you hold my hand, it seems to make everything so—so close."

"Everything is!" Abbott declared.

"I'll tell you why you hurt my feelings, Abbott. You've disappointed me twice. Oh, if I were a man, I'd show any meek-faced little hypocrite if she could prize secrets out of me. Just because it wears dresses and long hair, you think it an angel."

"Meaning Miss Grace, I presume?" remarked Abbott dryly. "But what is the secret, this time?"

"Didn't I trust you with the secret that I meant to apply for the position of secretary as soon as Grace Noir was out of the way? And I was just about to win the fight when here she came—hadn't been to the city at all, because you told her what I meant to do—handed her the secret, like a child giving up something it doesn't want."

"You are very unjust. I did not tell her your plan. I don't know how she found it out."

"From you; nobody else knew it."

"She did not learn it from me."

"—And that's what gets me!—you tell her everything, and don't even know that you tell. Just hypnotized! Answer my questions: the morning after I told you what I meant to do—standing there at the fence by the gate—confiding in you, telling you everything—I say, the next morning, didn't you tell Grace Noir all about it?"

"Certainly not."

"You had a conversation with her, didn't you?"

Abbott tried to remember, then said casually, "I believe we did meet on the street that morning."

"Yes," said Fran ironically, "I believe you did meet somewhere. Of course she engaged you in her peculiar style of inquisitorial conversation?"

"We went down the street together."

"Now, prisoner at the bar, relate all that was said while going down the street together."

"Most charming, but unjust judge, not a word that I can remember, so it couldn't have been of any interest. I did tell her that since she— yes, I remember now—since she was to be out of town all day, I would wait until to-morrow to bring her a book she wanted to borrow."

"Oh! And then she wanted to know who told you she would be out of town all day, didn't she?"

Abbott reflected deeply, then said with triumph, "Yes, she did. I remember that, too. She asked me how I knew she was going to the city with Bob Clinton. And I avoided telling her—it was rather neat. I merely said that it was the understanding they were to select the church music. Not another word was said on the subject."

"That was enough. Mighty neat. As soon as she saw you were trying to avoid a direct answer, she knew I'd told you. That gave her a clue to my leaving the choir practice before the rest of them. She guessed something important was up. She might not have guessed all the details, but she didn't dare leave me an open field. Well, Abbott, you are certainly an infant in her hands, but I guess you can't help it."

Self-pride was touched, and he retaliated:

"Fran, I hate to think of your being willing to take her position behind her back."

She crimsoned.

"You'd know how I feel about it," he went on, "if you understood her better. I know her duty drives her to act in opposition to you, and I'm sorry for it. But her religious ideals—"

"Abbott, be honest and answer—is there anything in it—this talk of doing God's will? Can people love God and hate one another? Oh, isn't it all just words?" Her eyes burned fiercely. "I wouldn't have the love that some folks give God, I'd feel myself insulted! I want something better than He gets. I want a love that holds out. I just hate shams," she went on, becoming more excited. "I don't care what fine names you give them—whether it's marriage, or education, or culture, or religion, if there's no heart in it, it's a sham, and I hate it. I hate a lie. But a thousand times more, do I hate a life that is a lie."

"Fran! You don't know what you are saying."

"Yes I do know what I'm saying. Is religion going to church? That's all I can see in it. I want to believe there's something else, I've honestly searched, for I wanted to be comforted, I tell you, I need it. But I can't find any comfort in mortar and stained-windows. If lightning ever strikes a church-member between services, is his face toward God? No, people just name something religion,—and then it's wrong to find fault with it. I want something that makes a man true to his wife, and makes a family live together in blessed harmony, something that's good on the streets and in the stores, something that makes people even treat a show-girl well. If there's anything in it, why doesn't a father—"

She snatched away her hand that she might cover her face, for she had burst into passionate weeping. "Why doesn't a father who's always talking about religion, and singing about it, and praying about it— why doesn't that father draw his daughter to his breast...close, close to his heart—that's the only home she asks for—that's the home she has a right to, yes a right, I don't care how far she's wandered— "

"Fran!" cried Abbott, in great distress. "Don't cry, little one!" He had no intelligent word, but his arm was full of meaning as it slipped about her. "Who has been unkind to you, Nonpareil?" She let her head sink upon his shoulder, as she sobbed without restraint. "What shams have pierced your pure heart? Am I the cause of any of these tears? Am I?"

"Yes," Fran answered, between her sobs, "you're the cause of all my happy tears." She nestled there with a movement of perfect trust; he drew her closer, and stroked her hair tenderly, trusting himself.

Presently she pulled herself to rights, lifted his arm from about her, and rested it on the back of the seat—a friendly compromise. Then she shook back her hair and raised her eyes and a faint smile came into the rosy face. "I'm so funny," she declared. "Sometimes I seem so strange that I need an introduction to myself." She looked into Abbott's eyes fleetingly, and drew in the corners of her mouth. "I guess, after all, there's something in religion!"

Abbott was so warmed by returning sunshine that his eyes shone. "Dear Fran!" he said—it was very hard to keep his arm where she had put it. She tried to look at him steadily, but somehow the light hurt her eyes. She could feel its warmth burning her cheeks.

"Oh, Fran," cried Abbott impulsively, "the bridge in the moonlight was nothing to the way you look now—so beautiful—and so much more than just beautiful..."

"This won't do," Fran exclaimed, hiding her face. "We must get back to Grace Noir immediately."

"Oh, Fran, oh, no, please!"

"I won't please. While we're in Sure-Enough Country, I mean to tell you the whole truth about Grace Noir." The name seemed to settle the atmosphere—she could look at him, now.

"I want you to understand that something is going to happen—must happen, just from the nature of things, and the nature of wives and husbands—and the other woman. Oh, you needn't frown at me, I've seen you look that other way at me, so I know you, Abbott Ashton."

"Fran! Then you know that I—"

"No, you must listen. You've nothing important to tell me that I don't know. I've found out the whole Gregory history from old Mrs. Jefferson, without her knowing that she was telling anything—she's a sort of 'Professor Ashton' in my hands—and I mean to tell you that history. You know that, for about three years, Mrs. Gregory hasn't gone to church—"

"You must admit that it doesn't appear well."

"Admit it? Yes, of course I must. And the world cares for appearances, and not for the truth. That's why it condemns Mrs. Gregory—and me— and that's why I'm afraid the school-board will condemn you: just on account of appearances. For these past three years, the church has meant to Mrs. Gregory a building plus Grace Noir. You'll remember I'm rather mathematical—wasn't that a day, though, when you kept me in! I think it was the first time you learned the color of my eyes, wasn't it?"

"Your eyes," he said, "are the color of friendship." "Abbott, you say the dearest things—but let's get back to our equation. I don't mean that Mrs. Gregory got jealous of Grace Noir—I don't know how to explain—you can't handle cobwebs without marring them." She paused. The gossamer shades of sensibility which she would have defined, threatened to become coarsened by the mere specific gravity of words—such words as have been knocked about the world so long that a sort of material odor clings to them.

"Jealous of—Miss Grace!" exclaimed Abbott reprovingly.

"Let's go back, and take a running jump right into the thick of it. When Mr. Gregory came to Littleburg, a complete stranger—and when he married, she was a devoted church-member—always went, and took great interest in all his schemes to help folks—folks at a distance, you understand...She just devoured that religious magazine he edits— yes, I'll admit, his religion shows up beautifully in print; the pictures of it are good, too. Old Mrs. Jefferson took pride in beingwheeled to church where she could see her son-in-law leading the music, and where she'd watch every gesture of the minister and catch the sound of his voice at the high places, where he cried and, or nevertheless. Sometimes Mrs. Jefferson could get a dozen ands and buts out of one discourse. Then comes your Grace Noir."

Abbott listened with absorbed attention. It was impossible not to be influenced by the voice that had grown to mean so much to him.

"Grace Noir is a person that's superhumanly good, but she's not happy in her own goodness; it hurts her, all the time, because other folks are not so good as she. You can't live in the house with her without wishing she'd make a mistake to show herself human, but she never does, she's always right. When it's time to go to church, that woman goes, I don't care if there's a blizzard. She's so fixed on being a martyr, that if nobody crosses her, she just makes herself a martyr out of the shortcomings of others."

"As for instance—?"

"As for instance, she suffered martyrdom every time Mrs. Gregory nestled in an arm-chair beside the cozy hearth, when a Ladies' Aid, or a Rally was beating its way through snow-drifts to the Walnut Street church. Mr. Gregory was like everybody else about Grace—he took her at her own value, and that gave the equation: to him, religion meant Walnut Street church plus Grace Noir. For a while, Mrs. Gregory clung to church-going with grim determination, but it wasn't any use. The Sunday-school would have button contests, or the Ladies' Aid would give chicken pie dinners down-town, and Mrs. Gregory would be a red button or a blue button, and she would have her pie; but she was always third—in her home, or at church, she was the third. It was her husband and his secretary that understood the Lord. Somehow she seemed to disturb conditions, merely by being present."

"Fran, you do not realize that your words—they intimate—"

"She disturbed conditions, Abbott. She was like a turned-up light at a seance. A successful manifestation calls for semi-gloom, and when those two were alone, they could get the current. Mr. Gregory was appalled because his wife quit attending church. Grace sympathized in his sorrow. It made him feel toward Grace Noir—but I'm up against a stone wall, Abbott, I haven't the word to describe his feeling, maybe there isn't any. Sad, you know, so sad, but awful sweet—the perfume of locust blossoms, or lilacs in the dew, because Grace has a straight nose and big splendid eyes, and such a form—she's the opposite of me in everything, except that she isn't a man—more's the pity!"

"Fran Nonpareil! Such wisdom terrifies me...such suspicions!" In this moment of hesitancy between conviction and rejection, Abbott felt oddly out of harmony with his little friend. She realized the effect she must necessarily be producing, yet she must continue; she had counted the cost and the danger. If she did not convince him, his thought of her could never be the same.

"Abbott, you may think I am talking from jealousy, and that I tried to get rid of Grace Noir so I could better my condition at her expense. I don't know how to make you see that my story is true. It tells itself. Oughtn't that to prove it? Mrs. Gregory has the dove's nature; she'd let the enemy have the spoils rather than come to blows. She lets him take his choice—here is she, yonder's the secretary. He isn't worthy of her if he chooses Grace—but his hesitation has proved him unworthy, anyhow. He'll never be to Mrs. Gregory what he was—but if she spoke out, there'd be the publicity—the lawyers, the newspapers, the staring in the streets...The old lady—her mother—is a fighter; she'd have driven out the secretary long ago. But Mrs. Gregory's idea seems to be—'If he can want her, after I've given him myself, I'll not make a movement to interfere.'"

Abbott played delicately with the mere husk of this astounding revelation: "Have you talked with old Mrs. Jefferson about—about it?"

"She's too proud—wouldn't admit it. But I've slyly hinted...however, it's not the sort of story you could pour through the funnel of an ear-trumpet without getting wheat mixed with chaff. She'd misunderstand—the neighbors would get it first—anyway she wouldn't make a move because her daughter won't. It's you and I, Abbott, against Grace and Mr. Gregory."

He murmured, looking away, "You take me for granted, Fran."

"Yes." Fran's reply was almost a whisper. A sudden terror of what he might think of her, smote her heart. But she repeated bravely, "Yes!"

He turned, and she saw in his eyes a confiding trust that seemed to hedge her soul about. "And you can always take me for granted, Fran; and always is a long time."

"Not too long for you and me," said Fran, looking at him breathlessly.

"I may have felt," he said, "for some time, in a vague way, what you have told me. Of course it is evident that he prefers Miss Noir's society. But I have always thought—or hoped—or wanted to feel, that it was only the common tie of religion—"

"It was not the truth that you clung to, Abbott, but appearances. As for me, let truth kill rather than live as a sham. If Grace Noir stays, the worst is going to happen. She may not know how far she's going. He may not suspect he's doing wrong. People can make anything they want seem right in their own eyes. But I've found out that wickedness isn't stationary, it's got a sort of perpetual motion. If we don't drive Grace away, the crash will come."

"Fran—how you must love Mrs. Gregory!"

"She breaks my heart."

"Dear faithful Fran! What can we do?—I say We, Fran, observe."

"Oh, you Abbott Ashton...just what I thought you! No, no, you mustn't interrupt. I'll manage Grace Noir, if you'll manage Bob Clinton."

"Where does Bob Clinton come in?"

"Grace is trying to open a door so he can come in. I mean a secret in Mr. Gregory's past. She suspects that there's a secret in his past, and she intends to send Bob to Springfield where Mr. Gregory left that secret. Bob will bring it to Littleburg. He'll hand it over to Grace, and then she'll have Mr. Gregory in her power—there'll be no getting her hands off him, after that."

"Surely you don't mean that Mr. Gregory did wrong when he was young, and that Miss Noir suspects it?"

"Bob will bring home the secret—and it will kill Mrs. Gregory, Abbott—and Grace will go off with him—I know how it'll end."

"What is this secret?"

"You are never to know, Abbott."

"Very well—so be it. But I don't believe Mr. Gregory ever did very wrong—he is too good a man."

"Isn't he daily breaking his wife's heart?" retorted Fran with a curl of the lip. "I call that murder."

"But still!—But I can't think he realizes it."

"Then," said Fran satirically, "we'll just call it manslaughter. When I think of his wife's meek patient face—don't you recall that look in her eyes of the wounded deer—and the thousands of times you've seen those two together, at church, on the street, in the library— everywhere...seeing only each other, leaning closer, smiling deeper— as if doing good meant getting close—Oh, Abbott, you know what I mean—don't you, don't you?"

"Yes!" cried Abbott sharply. "Fran, you are right. I have been—all of us have been—clinging to appearances. Yes, I know what you mean."

"You'll keep Bob Clinton from telling that secret, won't you? He's to go to-night, on the long journey—to-night, after the board meeting. It'll take him three or four days. Then he'll come back..."

"But he'll never tell the secret," Abbott declared. His mouth closed as by a spring.

Fran snatched up the whip, and leaned over as if to lash the empty shafts. She had suddenly become the child again. "We must drive out of Sure-Enough Country, now. Time to get back to the Make-Believe World. You know it isn't best to stay long in high altitudes. I've been pretty high—I feel like I've been breathing pretty close to—heaven." She stood up, and the lap-robe fell about her like green waves from which springs a laughing nymph.

Abbott still felt stunned. The crash of an ideal arouses the echo—"Is there no truth in the world?" But yes—Fran was here, Fran the adorable.

"Fran," he pleaded, "don't drive out of Sure-Enough Country. Wait long enough for me to tell you what you are to me."

"I know what I am to you," Fran retorted—"Git ap!"

"But what am I to you? Don't drive so fast—the trees are racing past like mad. I won't leave Sure-Enough Country until I've told you all—"

"You shall! No, I'll not let you take this whip—"

"I will take it—let go—Fran! Blessed darling Fran—"

She gripped the whip tightly. He could not loosen her hold, but he could keep her hand in his, which was just as well. Still, a semblance of struggling was called for, and that is why the sound of approaching wheels was drowned in laughter.

"Here we are!" Fran cried wickedly—"Make-Believe World of Every-Day, and some of its inhabitants..."

A surrey had come down the seldom-used road—had Miss Sapphira followed Abbott in order to discover him with Fran? The suspicion was not just, but his conscience seemed to turn color—or was it his face? In fact, Fran and Abbott were both rather red—caused, possibly, by their struggle over the whip.

On the front seat of the surrey were Miss Sapphira and Bob Clinton. On the back seat was Simon Jefferson whose hairy hand gripped a halter fastened to a riderless horse: the very horse which should have been between the shafts of the Gregory buggy.

Miss Sapphira stared at Abbott, speechless. So this is what he had meant by wanting the air unstrained by window-screens. Studying, indeed! Abbott, in his turn, stared speechlessly at the led horse.

Bob Clinton drew rein, and grasped his hay-colored mustache, inadequate to the situation. He glanced reproachfully at Abbott; the young fellow must know that his fate was to be decided this very night.

Abbott could not take his fill of the sight of Simon Jefferson whom he had fancied not far away, eyes glued on cork, hands in pockets to escape mosquitoes, sun on back, serenely fishing. He had supposed the horse grazing near by, enjoying semi-freedom with his grass. Now it seemed far otherwise. Miss Sapphira had even had him telephone to Bob to bring her hither. With his own hands he had dug his pitfall.

Fran, suddenly aware of her ridiculous attitude, sat down and began to laugh.

Bob Clinton inquired, "Taking a drive, Abb?"

Miss Sapphira set her heavy foot upon her brother's unseemly jocularity. "Unfortunately," said Miss Sapphira, speaking with cold civility, "Mr. Jefferson had to come clear to town before he could recapture the horse. We were giving him a lift, and had no idea—no idea that we should find—should come upon—We are sorry to intrude." Had her life depended on it, Miss Sapphira could not have withheld a final touch—"Possibly you were not looking for Mr. Jefferson to come back so soon."

"Why," answered Abbott, stepping to the ground, "hardly so soon." At any rate, he felt that nothing was to be gained by staying in the buggy. "Is that the horse that belongs to this buggy? Let me hitch it up, Mr. Simon."

"This has been a terrible experience for me," growled Simon. All the same, he let Abbott do the work, but not as if he meant to repay him with gratitude.

"What was the matter with your horse, anyway?" Abbott cheerfully inquired.

Simon looked at him sourly. "Didn't Fran tell you that the horse got scared at her throwing rocks at my cork, and broke from the tree where I'd fastened it, and bolted for town?"

"Mr. Simon," said Fran innocently, "I don't believe the horse was mentioned once, while you were gone."

"It would be interesting to know what was," remarked Robert with humor so dry that apparently it choked him; he fell to coughing huskily.

Miss Sapphira gave him a look while he was struggling in his second paroxysm. It healed him by suggestion.

"Turn," said Miss Sapphira with becoming gravity. Robert, still under the influence of her thought-wave, solemnly drove her from the scene.

When the last buckle was clasped—"I came out here for a quiet peaceable fishing," said Simon.

"I've spent my time hunting horses, and being afraid something might happen to Fran."

"Mr. Ashton took care of me," Fran said reassuringly.

Simon cried explosively, "And who took care of him?" He climbed in beside Fran and begrudgingly offered Abbott the imaginary space of a third occupant; but Abbott declared his preference for strolling.

"This has been a hard day for my heart," Simon grumbled, as he snatched up the whip vindictively.

The buggy rolled away.

"Mine, too," Abbott called after them emphatically.

Fran looked back at him, from over the lowered top. He saw her hand go to her bosom, then something fluttered in the air and fell in the grassy road. He darted after it as if it were a clue, showing the way to the princess' castle.

Perhaps it was. He pounced upon it—it was the Queen of Hearts.



CHAPTER XVI

A TAMER OF LIONS



The life of a household progresses, usually by insensible gradations, toward some great event, some climax, for the building of which each day has furnished its grain of sand. To-day, Hamilton Gregory and Grace Noir were in the library, with nothing to indicate the approach of the great moment in their lives. It was Grace's impatience to drive Fran away even before Robert Clinton should bring the secret from Springfield, that precipitated matters.

Grace might have been prompted in part by personal antipathy, but she believed herself acting from a pure sense of duty. Those who absented themselves from the house of worship were goats; those who came were sheep. In vain might you delude yourself that you were a camel, horse, or bird of plumage; to Grace's thinking, there were no such animals in the religious world—her clear eye made nothing of hump, flowing mane, or gaudy feathers; that eye looked dispassionately for the wool upon your back—or the beard under your chin.

"May I speak to you, Mr. Gregory?" She rose from the typewriter, slightly pale from sudden resolution. He noted the pallor, and it seemed to him that in that spiritual face his faith became visible. One hand rested upon the keys of the typewriter as if to show how little she needed substantial support.

Gregory never missed a movement of his secretary, but now he lifted his head ostensibly, to make his observation official.

"It's about Mr. Clinton," said Grace in a low voice, feeling her way to "that Fran".

He laid down his pen with a frown. Suddenly his missions in New York and Chicago became dead weights. Why Grace's "Mr. Clinton" instead of her customary "Brother Clinton"? It seemed to equip the school- director with formidable powers. Gregory hastened to put him where he belonged.

"Oh! Something about Bob?" he asked casually.

Her look was steady, her voice humble: "Yes."

Her humility touched him profoundly. Knowing how unshakable were her resolutions, he made a desperate attempt to divert her mind: "That is settled, Miss Grace, and it's too late now to alter the decision, for the school-board has already voted us a new superintendent—he has been sent his notification. Abbott Ashton is out of it, and it's all his fault Bob was the only one to stand up for him, but he wasn't strong enough to hold his friend above the wave of popular opinion. Don't ask me to interview Bob for Abbott Ashton."

Grace calmly waited for this futility to pass; then with an air suggesting, "Now, shall we talk sensibly?" she resumed: "I approve the action of the school-board. It did well in dismissing Professor Ashton. May I speak about Mr. Clinton? He urges me to marry him at once."

"Nonsense!" he exclaimed.

"It is not nonsense," Grace calmly responded. "He thinks I could make him a better man. We would work among the very poor in the Chicago settlements; maybe in one of your own missions, I often wonder if I couldn't do more good by personal contact with evil, than I can here, with a person like Fran always clogging my efforts."

He started up. "Grace! You go away?—And—and leave me and my work?"

"Let Fran fill my position. You think she's the daughter of your boyhood friend—it would give her position and independence."

"No one can ever fill your place," Gregory exclaimed, with violence. His cheeks burned, lambent flames gleamed in his brown eyes. The effect was startlingly beautiful. At such exalted moments, thinking no evil because ceasing to think, grown all feeling, and it but an infinite longing, the glow of passion refined his face, always delicately sensitive. The vision of Grace, in giving herself to another, like a devouring fire consumed those temporary supports that held him above the shifting sands of his inner nature.

"Grace! But Grace! You wouldn't marry him!"

Because she found his beauty appealing to her as never before, her voice was the colder: "Any one's place can be filled."

"You don't care!" he cried out desperately.

"For Mr. Clinton? Yes, I admire his persistence in seeking God, and his wish to work for mankind. God comes easier to some than to others, and I believe I could help—"

Gregory, aghast at her measured tone, interrupted: "But I mean that you don't care—don't care for me."

"For—" she began abruptly, then added in an odd whisper, "for you?"

"Yes, for me...don't care how much I suffer, or whether I suffer at all—I mean my work, if it suffers. If I lose you, Grace—"

"Oh, you will always have Fran."

"Fran!" he ejaculated. "So you don't care, Grace...It seems incredible because I care so much. Grace!" His accent was that of utter despair. "How can I lose you since you are everything? What would be left to live for? Nobody else sympathizes with my aims. Who but you understands? Oh, nobody will ever sympathize—ever care—"

"But, Mr. Gregory!" she began, confused. Her face had grown white.

"Grace!" he caught her hand, expecting it to be snatched away—the hand he had hourly admired at its work; he could feel its warmth, caress its shapeliness—and it did not resist. It trembled. He was afraid to press it at first, lest it be wrenched free; and then, the next moment, he was clasping it convulsively. For the first time in her life, Grace did not meet his eyes.

"Grace!" he panted, not knowing what he was saying, "you care, I see you care for me—don't you?"

"No," she whispered. Her lips were dry, her eyes wide, her bosom heaving. Boundaries hitherto unchangeable, were suddenly submerged. Desperately, as if for her life, she sought to cling to such floating landmarks as Duty, Conscience, Virtue—but they were drifting madly beyond reach.

"But you can't love him, can you?" Gregory asked brokenly.

Grace, with closed eyes, shook her head—what harm could there be in that confession? After his voice ceased, she still heard the roaring as of a shell, as if she might be half-drowned in mere sound.

"You won't go away, will you, Grace?" he pleaded, drawing her closer.

She shook her head, lips still parted, eyes still closed.

"Speak to me, Grace. Tell me you will never leave me."

Her lips trembled, then he heard a faint "Never!" Instantly neck and brow were crimsoned; her face, always superb, became enchanting. The dignity of the queen was lost in the woman's greater charm.

"Because you love me!" cried Gregory wildly. "I know you do, now, I know you do!" His arm was about her. "You will never leave me because you love me. Look at me, Grace!"

It seemed that her eyelids were held down by tyrannous thumbs. She tried to lift them, and tried again. Her face was irradiated by the sunrise glow of a master passion. Swiftly he kissed her lips, and as she remained motionless, he kissed her again and again.

Suddenly she exclaimed blindly, "Oh, my God!" Then she threw her arms about him, as he drew her to his bosom.

It was at that moment, as if Fate herself had timed the interruption, that Fran entered.

There was a violent movement of mutual repulsion on the part of Hamilton Gregory and his secretary. Fran stood very still, the sharpness of her profile defined, with the keenness of eyes and a slight grayness about the lips that made her look oddly small and old.

Fran was a dash of water upon raging fire. The effect was not extinguishment, but choking vapors. Bewildered, lost to old self- consciousness, it was necessary for Grace to readjust herself not only to these two, but to herself as well.

Fran turned upon her father, and pointed toward his desk. "Stand there!" she said, scarcely above a whisper.

Gregory burst forth in blind wrath: "How dare you enter the room in this manner? You shall leave this house at once, and for ever....I should have driven you out long ago. Do you hear me? Go!"

Fran's arm was still extended. "Stand there!" she repeated.

Quivering in helpless fury, he stumbled to his desk, and leaned upon it. His face burned; that of Grace Noir was ghastly white.

"Now, you" said Fran, her voice vibrating as she faced the secretary, "go to your typewriter!"

Grace did not move.

Fran's eyes resembled cold stones with jagged points as her steady arm pointed: "Go! Stand where I tell you to stand. Oh, I have tamed lions before to-day. You needn't look at me so—I'm not afraid of your teeth."

Grace's fear was not inspired by dread of exposure, but by the realization that she had done what she could not have forgiven in another. But for the supreme moment she might never have realized the real nature of her feeling for her employer. She stood appalled and humiliated, yet her spirit rose in hot revolt because it was Fran who had found her in Gregory's arms. She glared at her defiantly. "Yes," said Fran somberly, "that's my profession, lion-taming. I'm the 'World-Famous Fran Nonpareil'. Go to your typewriter, Grace Noir, I say—Go!"

Grace could not speak without filling every word with concentrated hate: "You wicked little spy, your evil nature won't let you see anything but evil in the fruits of your eavesdropping. You misjudge simply because it would be impossible for you to understand."

"I see by your face that you understand—pity you hadn't waked up long ago." Fran looked from one to the other with a dark face. Whether justly or not, they reminded her of two lions in a cage; she stood between, to keep them apart, lest, combining their forces, they spring upon her.

"I understand nothing of what you imagine you know," Grace said stammeringly. "I haven't committed a crime. Stop looking at me as if I had—do you hear?" Her tone was passionate: "I am what I have always been-" Did she say that to reassure herself? "What do you mean, Fran? I command you to put your suspicions in words."

"I have had them roar at me before to-day," cried Fran. "What I mean is that you're to leave the house this day."

"I shall not leave this house, unless Mr. Gregory orders it. It would be admitting that I've done wrong, and I am what I have always been. What you saw...I will say this much, that it shall never happen again. But nothing has happened that you think, little impostor, with your evil mind...I am what I have always been. And I'm going to prove that you are an impostor in a very short time."

Fran turned to Hamilton Gregory. "Tell her to go," she said threateningly. "Tell her she must. Order it. You know what I mean when I say she must go, and she needn't show her claws at me. I don't go into the cage without my whip. Tell her to go."

He turned upon Fran, pushed to utter desperation. "No—you shall go!" he said between clenched teeth.

"Yes!" exclaimed Grace. It was a hiss of triumphant hate.

Fran lost control over herself. "Do you think, knowing what I know, that I'll stand quietly by and see you disgrace your wife as you disgraced...Do you think I'll let you have this Grace Noir for your...to be the third—Do you think I've come out of your past life to fold my hands? I tell you plainly that I'll ruin you with that secret before I'll let you have this woman."

Gregory beheld the awful secret quivering upon her lips. The danger drove him mad. "You devil!" he shouted, rushing upon her.

Fran stood immovable, her eyes fastened on his. "Don't strike me," she said tensely, "don't strike me, I warn you, unless you kill at the first blow."



He staggered back as if her words possessed physical impact. He shrunk in a heap in the library chair and dropped his head upon his arms. To prevent Grace from learning the truth, he could have done almost anything in that first moment of insane terror; but he could not strike Fran.

In the meantime, Mrs. Gregory had been ascending the stairs. They could hear her now, as she softly moved along the hall. No one in the library wished, at that moment, to confront the wife, and absolute silence reigned in the apartment. They heard her pause, when opposite the door, doubtless to assure herself that the typewriter was at work. If she did not hear the clicking of the keys, she might conclude that Grace was absent, and enter.

Gregory raised his haggard head with an air suggesting meditated flight. Even Grace cowered back instinctively. Swift as a shadow, Fran darted on tiptoe to the typewriter, and began pounding upon it vigorously.

Mrs. Gregory passed on her way, and when she reached the farther end of the hall, an old hymn which she had been humming, broke into audible words. Fran snatched the sheet from the typewriter, and bent her head to listen. The words were soft, full of a thrilling faith, a dauntless courage—

"Still all my song shall be Nearer my God to Thee, Nearer—"

A door closed. She was gone. Gregory dropped his head with a groan.

It seemed to Fran that the voice of this wife who was not a wife, lingered in the room. The hymn, no longer audible, had left behind it a fragrance, as sometimes lingers the sweet savor of a prayer, after its "amen" has, as it were, dropped back into the heart whence it issued. Fran instinctively held out both arms toward the direction of the door just closed, as if she could see Mrs. Gregory kneeling behind it.

"Almost," she said, in a solemn undertone, "thou persuadest me to be a Christian."

Had any one but Mrs. Gregory been singing that hymn, had any one but Fran been the one to intrude upon the library scene, Grace must have been overwhelmed. As it was, she stood quite untouched, resolving to stay in order to prove herself, and to show Gregory that they must sacrifice their love for conscience' sake.

Gregory, however, was deeply touched by Fran's yearning arms. He rose and stood before her.

"Fran, child, we promise that what you saw shall never happen again. But you mustn't tell about it. I know you won't tell. I can't send Grace away, because I need her. She will not go because she knows herself to be strong. We are going to hide our souls. And you can't tell what you've seen, on account of her—" He pointed in the direction of his wife.

Fran knew very well what he meant. If she told the secret, it would disgrace Mrs. Gregory. The revelation might drive Grace away, though Fran did not think so, but certainly whether Grace went, or stayed, it would break the heart of the one she loved best in that home. Gregory was right; Fran could never betray him.

She turned blindly upon Grace: "Then have you no conscience?—you are always talking about one. Does no sense of danger warn you away? Can't you feel any shame?"

Grace did not smile contemptuously. She weighed these words at their real value, and soberly interrogated herself. "No," she declared with deliberation, "I feel no sense of danger because I mean to guard myself after this. And my conscience bids me stay, to show that I have not really done anything—" But she could not deny the feeling of shame, for the burning of her cheeks proved the recollection of hot kisses.

"But suppose I tell what I have seen."

"Well," said Grace, flashing out defiantly, "and suppose you do!"

Gregory muttered, "Who would believe you?"

Fran looked at him. "Then" she said, "the coward spoke." She added, "I guess the only way is for you to make her leave. There's nothing in her for me to appeal to."

"I will never tell her to go," he assured her defiantly.

"While, on the contrary," said Grace, "I fancy you will be put to flight in three or four days."

Fran threw back her head and laughed silently while they stared at her in blank perplexity.

Fran regained composure to say coolly, "I was just laughing." Then she stepped to her father's chair and handed him the sheet she had drawn from the typewriter. The upper part was an unfinished letter to the Chicago mission, just as Grace had left it in her haste to get rid of Fran. At odd variance with its philanthropic message were the words Fran had pounded out for the deception of Mrs. Gregory.

Hamilton Gregory glared at them at first uncomprehendingly, then in growing amazement. They read—

"Ask her why she sent Bob Clinton to Springfield."

He started up. "What is this?" he exclaimed wildly, extending the paper toward Grace.

She read it, and smiled coldly. "Yes," she said, "the little spy has even ferreted that out, has she! Very well, she won't be so cool when Mr. Clinton returns from Springfield."

"From Springfield!" echoed Gregory, aghast. "From Springfield. Mr. Gregory, I have made the discovery that this Fran, whom you imagine only about sixteen years old, and the daughter of an old friend, is really of age. She's nothing but a circus-girl. You thought her joking when she called herself a lion-tamer; that's the way she meant for us to take it—but she can't deceive me. She's nothing but a show-girl pretending to come from Springfield. But I know better. So I've sent Mr. Clinton there to find out all about the family of your friend, and in particular about the girl that this Fran is impersonating."

"You sent Bob Clinton to Springfield!" gasped Gregory, as if his mind could get no further than that. Then he turned savagely upon Fran— "And did you tell her about Springfield?"

Fran smiled her crooked smile.

Grace interposed: "You may be sure she didn't! Do you think she wanted her history cleared up? Mr. Gregory, you have been blind all the time; this girl never saw Springfield. She's a complete fraud. Since you are so blinded by what she says that you won't investigate her claims, I decided to do this for your sake. When Mr. Clinton comes back, it's good-by to this circus-girl!"

Fran looked at her father inscrutably. "I believe, after this," she said, "it will be safe to leave you two together."



CHAPTER XVII

SHALL THE SECRET BE TOLD?



Fran had expected Robert Clinton's return in four or five days, as had Grace Noir, but secrets that have been buried for many years are not picked up in a day. However, had the chairman of the school-board returned the day after his departure, Abbott Ashton would have met him at the station. Twice, in the opinion of Fran, the young man had failed her by allowing Grace's mind to flash to important discoveries along the path of his insulated remarks about the weather. This third test was more equal, since he was to deal with no Grace Noir—merely with a man.

As Littleburg had only one railroad, and it a "branch", it was not difficult to meet every train; moreover, Miss Sapphira's hasty notes from her brother kept Abbott advised. At first, Miss Sapphira said, "It will be a week;" later—"Ten days more—and the business left like this!" Then came the final bulletin: "I may come to-morrow. Look for me when you see me."

What the secret was that Abbott must prevent Clinton from divulging, he did not care to guess; doubtless the picture of Gregory's past, with its face to the wall, might be inscribed, "Some other woman." For surely Grace Noir was some other woman. Having admitted the truth to himself, he wondered that all the world did not see—or was it that all the world needed a Fran to open eyes willfully blind?

With these thoughts, Abbott met the evening train, to see Robert Clinton hastily emerge from the solitude he had endured in the midst of many.

Robert was in no pacific mood, and when he found himself almost in the arms of Abbott, his greeting was boisterous because impatient at being stopped. Abbott, knowing that Robert was not ordinarily effusive, thought, "He has the secret!"

Robert shook hands without delaying progress toward the waiting hack, bearing Abbott along on waves of greeting.

"But surely you are not going to ride!" Abbott expostulated.

"Business—very pressing—see you later."

"But I have business with you, Mr. Clinton, that can't wait. Come, walk with me to town and I'll explain; it'll delay you only a few minutes."

Like a restive horse on finding himself restrained, Robert Clinton lifted a leg without advancing. "Oh, very well," he agreed. "In fact, I've something important for you, old fellow, and I'll explain before I—before the—yes, before," he ended, turning his back upon the hack with a smothered growl.

They penetrated the silent by-streets of the outskirts of Littleburg, Robert going as fast as he could drag his companion, and Abbott walking as slowly as he could hold back the other.

"Lucky I was at the station," Abbott exclaimed, "since you've something to tell me, Bob. What is it?" In thus addressing his old friend as "Bob" the young man was officially declaring that their relationship as teacher and school-director was for ever at an end, and they stood as man to man.

Clinton spoke rapidly, with his wonted bruskness: "Guess you know I've been knocking about the country for the last three or four weeks—saw a good many old friends—a fellow can't go anywhere without meeting somebody he knows—curious, isn't it? Well, I've got an opening for you. You know how sorry I am because we had to plump another teacher on to your job, but don't you worry if Fran did hold your hand—just you keep your hands in your pockets after this, when there's danger— Say! I've got something lots better for you than Littleburg. School out in Oklahoma—rich—private man behind it—he owns the whole plant, and he's determined to run it to suit the new ideas. This rich man— chum of mine—went West, bought land, sat on it, got up with his jeans full of money. Wants you to come at once."

Abbott was elated. "What kind of new ideas, Bob?" he asked joyously.

"Oh, that impractical nonsense of teaching life instead of books—I guess it's as much an advance over the common thing, as teaching words instead of a, b, c's. You know what I mean, but I don't think I do. Don't worry about it now—something terrible's on my mind—just awful! I can't think of anything else. What you want to do is to scoot out to Tahlelah, Oklahoma, to this address—here's his card—tell 'em Bob sent you—" He looked at Abbott feverishly, as if almost hoping Abbott would bolt for Tahlelah then and there. His broad red face was set determinedly.

"This news is splendid!" Abbott declared enthusiastically. "I had already applied for a country school; I was afraid I had lost out a whole year, on account of—everything. I must thank—"

"Abbott, I don't want to be thanked, I haven't got time to be thanked. Yonder's Hamilton Gregory's house and that's where I'm bound—good night—"

"But, Bob, I haven't told you my business—"

"I'll hear it later, old fellow—dear old fellow—I think a heap of you, old Abb. But I must go now—"

"No, you mustn't. Before you go into that house, we must have a little talk. We can't talk here—people are coming and going—"

"I don't want to talk here, bless you! I want to go in that house. My business is private and pressing." The gate was but a few yards away; he looked at it fixedly, but Abbott held his hand upon the agitated arm.

"Bob, what I have to tell you can't wait, and that's all about it. I won't keep you long, just turn down this alley with me, for it's a matter of life and death."

"Confound your life and death! My business is life and death, too."

At that moment, a light was turned on in Gregory's library, and Grace Noir was seen to pass the window.

Abbott's hand tightened on the other's arm, as he urged, "Down that alley, a nice dark place for talking—"

"'Nice dark', be hanged!" growled Robert. "What business can you have with me that wouldn't wait till morning? Look here, I'm desperate!"

"So am I," retorted Abbott. "Bob, you've been to Springfield."

Robert Clinton snatched open the yard-gate, muttering, "That's my business."

"Miss Noir sent you to unearth a secret."

"Oh!" exclaimed Robert, in an altered tone, stopping in the gateway, "did she tell you about it?"

"No—but you've brought back that secret, and you must not tell it to Miss Noir."

"Not tell her? That's funny!" Robert produced a sound which he expected to pass as laughter. "So that's what you wanted to tell me, is it? Do you know what the secret is?"

"I do not. But you mustn't tell it."

"However, that's what I'm going to do, as soon as I reach that door— take your hand off, man, my blood's up, by George! Can't you see my blood's up? It's a-boiling, that's what it's doing! So all you want is to ask me not to tell that secret?"

"Not exactly all."

"Well, well—quick! What else?"

"To see that you don't tell it."

"How do you mean to 'see' that I don't tell it?"

"You will listen to reason, Bob," said Abbott persuasively.

"No, I won't!" cried Robert. "Not me! No, sir! I'm going to tell this minute."

"You shall not!" said Abbott, in a lower and more compelling tone. His manner was so absolute, that Robert Clinton, who had forced his way almost to the porch-steps, was slightly moved.

"See here, Abbott—say! Fran knows all about it, and you pretend to think a good deal of her. Well, it's to her interests for the whole affair to be laid open to the world."

"I think so much of Fran," was the low and earnest rejoinder, "that if I were better fixed, I'd ask her to marry me without a moment's delay. And I think enough of her, not to ask her to marry me, until I have a good position. Now it was Fran who asked me to see that you didn't betray the secret. And I think so much of her, that I'm going to see that you don't!"

For a moment Clinton was silent; then he said in desperation: "Where is your nice dark alley? Come on, then, let's get in it!"

When they were safe from interruption, Clinton resumed: "You tell me that Fran wants that secret kept? I'd think she'd want it told everywhere. This secret is nothing at all but the wrong that was done Fran and her mother. And since you are so frank about how you like Fran, I'll follow suit and say that I have asked Grace Noir to marry me, and I know I'll stand a better show by getting her out of the hypnotic spell of that miserable scoundrel who poses as a bleating sheep—"

Abbott interrupted: "The wrong done Fran? How do you mean?"

"Why, man, that—that hypocrite in wool, that weed that infests the ground, that—"

"In short, Mr. Gregory? But what about the wrong done Fran?"

"Ain't I telling you? That worm-eaten pillar of the church that's made me lose so much faith in religion that I ain't got enough left worth the postage stamp to mail it back to the revival meeting where it come from—"

"For heaven's sake, Bob, tell me what wrong Mr. Gregory did Fran!"

"Didn't he marry Fran's mother when he was a college chap in Springfield, and then desert her? Didn't he marry again, although his first wife—Fran's mother—was living, and hadn't been divorced? Don't he refuse to acknowledge Fran as his daughter, making her pass herself off as the daughter of some old college chum? That's what he did, your choir-leader! I'd like to see that baton of his laid over his back; I'd like to lay it, myself."