"That would be very nice, Mother," said the girl, slowly, "only, you see, we don't know any young people to invite."

"I've thought of that, too!" Kate spoke with an eagerness more pathetic than tears. "Of course many of those boys and girls I used to know have boys and girls of their own now. It's many years since I've seen them, but—I think they won't all have forgotten me. If you like, I'll write and ask some of them to let their children visit us?"

If Jemima had any knowledge of the wincing courage this offer cost, she did not show it. "You're very kind to think of it," she said, "but I believe it will be better if Jacqueline and I make our own friends now, thank you."

Cut to the quick, Kate made no further effort to promote the social campaign. But it went on without her.

One evening Professor Thorpe, after his weekly supper at Storm, followed her into her office with an air of mingled embarrassment and importance.

"Oh, dear!" she thought. "It's coming again."

But she was mistaken. He had a proposal of another sort to make; in fact an announcement.

"I am about to give an entertainment," he said, clearing his throat. "A party. A dancing party."

She looked at him in amazement. "You? A dancing party?"

"Why not? It is to be for your girls, and I shall expect you to chaperon it."

She threw back her head and laughed aloud. "Dear old Jim! I should be as much out of place in a ballroom now as—as a plow horse. But the girls will be overjoyed. How did you happen to evolve such an idea?"

"I didn't. It—er—was evolved for me. Jemima—"

Kate sobered. "I might have known it, Jim! I cannot have you so imposed upon. You must not undertake such a thing."

"But I wish to," he insisted stoutly. "I am very much obliged to Jemima for thinking of it. It is quite true, as she says, that I am under obligation to many people who have been most kind to me. It is true also that I have joined a country club, more by way of encouraging an infant—er—industry than with any idea of pleasure to myself. But, as Jemima says, when one joins a club one should patronize it. She tells me that it will be quite possible to make a dancing man of me with a few weeks' practice, and that in her opinion exercise and young society are what is needed to—er—to round out my individuality. Jemima is doubtless right—she usually is. So I shall issue invitations to a dancing party at the Country Club, preceded by dinner, as is customary."

Kate laughed again, but with dim eyes. The stanch devotion of this gentle, kindly scholar was a thing she found very touching. "Dear old Slow-poke!"—she used the name she and her livelier companions had given him in the days when he was the dull and quiet one among her followers. "So you are going to play sponsor to my children once more!"

Both fell silent, remembering the day when he had followed her down the aisle of the church that meant home to her, under the blank, icy stare of an entire congregation. He lifted her hand to his lips.

"Jim, I am afraid," she said suddenly. "Women—you know how cruel they can be! Suppose they choose to punish my children for my sins?" With a fierce upwelling of the maternal instinct, she dreaded to let her young go out of her own protection, out of the safe obscurity she had made for them.

He reassured her as best he could, reminding her of the years that had passed, and of her daughters' charm. "Why, those girls would bring their own welcome anywhere! They are exquisite."

"You are prejudiced, Jim, dear."

He admitted it without shame. "But those young men I brought here to supper—they are not prejudiced, Kate, and I assure you they dog my footsteps begging to be brought again."

"Oh, men!—I am never afraid of men. It is the women I dread."

"Then we won't have any women," cried the Professor.

Kate smiled. "Oh, yes, you will! Jemima has read about chaperons in novels. She'll see to that."

"Wouldn't I be a sufficient chaperon?"

"You can't be a chaperon and a dancing man as well," she teased him. "Take your choice. Oh, I foresee a strenuous career ahead of you, my friend! Think of the invitations, and the decorations, and the favors, and the menu!"

"I had not thought of it in detail," admitted the Professor, rather nervously. "You—you alarm me. Still, I shall go through with it."

"You will indeed, with Jemima at the helm," she murmured. "You poor lamb! Perhaps the famous nephew will be of some assistance? I dare say he knows a good deal about balls, and things of that sort."

"Unfortunately, J. Percival is no longer my guest"—the Professor spoke a little stiffly. "At present he is visiting your neighbor Mr. Farwell, at Holiday Hill—an old acquaintance, I understand. You have seen nothing of him?"

She shook her head. "We do not know Mr. Farwell, and we are rather simple folk to appeal to the literary palate."

"Humph!" said the other dubiously. "I should not call Jemima, for instance, exactly a simple person. Look out for him, Kate!"

She raised her eyebrows. "You speak as if your famous nephew were a ravening wild wolf, Jim!"

"He's worse—He's a—temperamentalist," said the other, grimly. It was not the word he had started to use.



CHAPTER XX

The old hall of Storm, with its memories of many a wild festivity, had never served as background for a prettier sight than Jemima and Jacqueline Kildare, coming shyly down the steps in their first ball-dresses, followed by a girl in gingham, equally young and pretty, with an anxious proprietary eye upon the hang and set of their fineries.

"Don't you hug 'em, please, Miss Kate," warned this girl as they descended. "Tulle musses so easy."

There was a long "A-ah!" of delight from the foot of the stairs, where the entire household was assembled, to the youngest pickaninny from the quarters. Jemima, exquisite and fragile as a snow-spirit in her white tulle, descended with the queenly stateliness that seems possible only to very small women; but Jacqueline, pink as a rose, flushed and dewy as if she had just been plucked from the garden, took the final steps with a run and landed in her mother's arms, despite Mag's warning.

"Aren't we perfectly grand?" she demanded. "Did you ever see anything as beautiful as us? See my gloves—almost as long as my arms! And my neck doesn't look so awfully bony, does it? There's lots of it, anyway, and it's white." She inflated her chest to full capacity, and looked around the circle for approval. Philip was there, as well as Professor Thorpe, who had come to fetch them in the Ark. Each had boxes in their hands.

"O-oh!" cried Jacqueline in delight. "Presents! What have you brought us?"

Professor Thorpe's boxes proved to contain flowers, and Philip presented to each of them a charming antique fan.

"Why, Reverend! How did you know girls used such things? It must be your French blood cropping out."

"I found them among mother's things," he explained, "and I knew she would like you to have them."

The girl sobered, and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. Jemima thanked him quietly, and laid her fan on a table. Philip and Kate exchanged a quick glance of understanding. It was evident that she meant to accept nothing from a Benoix. Young Jemima Kildare was of the stuff that makes the Kentucky blood-feuds possible.

There was an awkward pause, broken by Professor Thorpe. "We ought to be starting, I think. The Ark, while willing, has its little weaknesses, and it would not do for my guests to arrive and find neither host nor guests of honor present."

"Wait a moment," said Kate. "I, too, have presentations to make."

She produced two white velvet boxes bearing the name of a famous New York jeweler.

"Oh, what pretty little pinky-white beads!" cried Jacqueline, clasping hers about her throat and prancing to a mirror to observe the effect.

Jemima examined hers, and then looked quickly at her mother.

"Are they pearls?" she asked.

"Yes," said Kate. "Small ones, but a good investment, I think. Some day when you're older, girlies, perhaps you'll like to remember that your mother earned the money that bought them." She spoke to both of them, but it was to Jemima that her unconscious plea was made.

The older girl hesitated. Then she murmured, "Thank you, Mother. They are beautiful," and fastened them about her throat.

Kate gave a little sigh of relief, echoed by James Thorpe. Both had feared for a moment that she would refuse her mother's gift as she had refused Philip's.

"Come, come," said Professor Thorpe, "we really must start. Two hours' drive before us!"

Jacqueline clung to her mother. "Oh, if you were only coming too, Mummy! If you only were! Just say the word, and I won't go. Why, you'll be here alone, Mummy, darling, alone all night! You'll miss us dreadfully. What do I care about beaux and balls. I'd rather be with you than with any one else in the world—Almost any one else," she added honestly, flushing.

Kate laughed, and pushed her away. "Mag is looking daggers at us. We mustn't crumple that finery any more, precious.—Remember not to talk at the top of your lungs.—Have you got a pocket-handkerchief?"

She followed them out to the waiting automobile, smiling; but Philip noticed that her lips moved now and then silently, and he suspected that she was praying. He was right. It was the first time in their lives that her children had gone out of her own protection.

Mag shrouded them in long dust garments, tucked the robes about them solicitously, having first wrapped each white-slippered foot in tissue paper. The passionate interest of the girl in the pleasures of these other girls, pleasures she could never hope to share, struck two at least of the onlookers as a rather piteous thing.

"Good-by, good-by!" Jacqueline leaned out to throw last kisses impartially. "How I wish you were coming too, Mag and Mummy and Phil, you dears! I'll remember everything to tell you, compliments, and all, and dresses especially, Mag. I'll bring home all the goodies I can stuff into my pockets, too—oh, dear, there aren't any pockets to a ball dress! Never mind—I'll put 'em in Goddy's pockets. Good-by! When next you see us, we'll be real young ladies."

Kate stood gazing after them as wistfully as Mag, both following with their thoughts two happy young adventurers into a happy world forever closed to themselves. "You'd like to be going to a ball yourself, wouldn't you?" said she, to the girl beside her.

"Would I? Oh, my Gawd! Would I?" gasped Mag, and ran into the house.

The repressed intensity of the reply startled Mrs. Kildare. She looked at Philip. "Did you hear that? I wonder if the girl isn't happy here."

The past few months had done a great deal for Mag Henderson's body, whatever they had accomplished for her soul. Maternity had developed her lissome figure into beautiful lines; health, the result of care and good feeding, colored her lips and her cheeks and her pretty, shallow eyes; she had learned not only the trick of dressing becomingly, but of keeping her hair, her hands, and her feet as neat as those of a lady. Even her voice had lost something of its uncouth drawl, and its lazy softness had a charm of its own. She was very imitative.

For some time Philip had been aware that his lady's protegee was developing into an attractive young woman.

"You say she seems devoted to the child?" he asked thoughtfully.

"I think so, yes. She is always making clothes for the baby, and playing with it, and petting it—when Jacqueline will let her. But,"—Kate sighed faintly—"maternity isn't enough for all women, it seems."

It was such remarks as this that gave Philip his strong hope for the future.

But now he put himself aside to consider the problem of Mag Henderson. From the first he had foreseen that it was not a problem to be handled as simply as Kate thought to handle it. The psychological instinct of the priest was very strong in him—doubtless there had been many a good cure of souls among past generations of Benoixes, professing an older faith than his. In moments of clear vision that came to him he battled, as all thinkers must battle, with a great discouragement, a sense of helplessness that was almost terrifying. Of what use man's puny human endeavors against the forces of predestination arrayed against him—the forces of heredity, temperament, opportunity?

Mag Henderson cost him a wakeful night; and from her his thoughts kept straying oddly and unaccountably to Jacqueline, little Jacqueline, his playmate and pupil and chum, with her mischievous, daredevil impulses and her generous heart. He jerked his thoughts back angrily to poor Mag Henderson.

Why should he bracket the two together thus, the one a weed shooting up in a neglected fence corner, the other the loveliest and most lovingly tended blossom in a garden?—why, indeed, except that both were come, weed and flower alike, to the period of their blooming.



CHAPTER XXI

Kate's thoughts, too, were busy with her young adventurers into the world, throughout a wakeful night; only her anxieties did not concern themselves with Jacqueline. A nature so trusting, so unconscious, so bubbling over with friendliness toward all mankind, could not fail to make friends for itself among strangers, among even enemies. She had smiled to notice Jacqueline's success with the young men Thorpe had brought to supper. Her own girlhood had been a succession of just such triumphs. But belle as she was, many a ballroom had been spoiled for her by the sight of girls to whom it was not a scene of triumph, to whom it was no less than a battlefield, where the vanquished face defeat with the fixed and piteous smile of the hopeless wallflower.

Her heart yearned over her eldest daughter. Poor, clever, pretty Jemima, who knew so well what she wanted of life, and wanted it so determinedly! A world of which carefree gaiety is the essential element might be very cruel to Jemima. If Kate could have plucked out her own charm by the roots and given it to her child for a weapon, she would have done it thankfully.

She fell asleep at last over one of the prayers that had been unconsciously upon her lips that day: "Make people nice to them, God! You must see that my girls have partners, both of them, since I am not there to attend to it myself."

Kate's relations with her Creator, while informal, were remarkably confident, for a woman who believed herself non-religious....

It was a worn and leaden-eyed professor who returned the adventurers to Storm late the next day.

"Take me to a bed," he demanded wearily. "No, I shall not have supper, nor a julep, nor anything but a bed. I'd like to sleep without stirring for a week!"

Jacqueline embraced him with the arm that was not at the moment embracing her mother. "Poor old Goddy! Was it done to a frazzle, turkey-trotting with all the chaperons? You ought to have seen 'em, Mummy! Ladies as old as you are, yes, and older! hopping about like Dervishes. I'm glad you don't do such things.—But it was glorious! Crowds of beaux, and I tore all the lace off my petticoat, and we made the band play 'Home, Sweet Home,' five times. You know that is what they play when the party is over."

"Still?" murmured Kate, smiling. She had a momentary recollection of times when she, too, had made the band repeat "Home, Sweet Home," she with Basil Kildare....

"As for Jemmy," went on the eager, excited voice. "You just ought to have seen her! My, my!"

"What about Jemmy?" asked the mother, quickly.

"Why, she gathered in the handsomest man in the room, simply annexed him. He broke in on every dance and took her to a corner to talk! All those snippy girls in the dressing-room were wild with jealousy. Don't ask me how she did it. I don't know! Tell mother how you did it, Jem."

"Oh, it was simple enough," said the other, shrugging. "I saw that I was not going to have a very good time unless I had somebody to fall back on, so I selected him. He wore his hair rather long and romantic. I told him he had the face of a poet. He spent the rest of the evening reciting original verses to me. That was all. But it looked well."

Kate gazed at her daughter with respect. Her anxiety for Jemima's future died on the spot.

"And Jacqueline?" she murmured. "Did she, too, manage to distinguish herself?"

"Oh, Jacky never needs to manage," said the older girl, with a pride in her little sister that was not lacking in nobility. "Whenever I wanted to find Jacky, I looked for the nearest crowd of men. They were like flies around a honey-pot."

Thorpe nodded smiling confirmation. "It was like old times. More than one person said to me, 'Kate Leigh is back again!'"

She flushed, incredulously. "They spoke of me?"

"Of course they did," cried Jacqueline, hugging her. "I was so proud. All the old men told me I looked like you, and most of them tried to kiss me when they got me alone."

"Great Heavens! I hope they didn't succeed?"

"Not all of them," said Jacqueline, demurely....

But her mother was not laughing when she followed Jemima into her room, and closed the door behind them.

"Now tell me everything that happened. What did Jacqueline mean by 'snippy' girls? Were any of those women rude to you?"

"Oh, no, Mother, not rude, of course." The lift of Jemima's chin said quite plainly, "I should not have permitted that."

"But they were not nice to you?"

The girl hesitated. Slowly the blood mounted up her delicate cheeks to the roots of her hair. Kate saw with dismay that her lips were trembling.

"My child!"—she took a step toward her.

But Jemima drew back, mastering herself. "Somebody ought to have told us, you or Professor Jim, or somebody," she said, quaveringly, "Perhaps you didn't know, but—Oh, Mother we made a dreadful mistake!"

"In going?" Kate clenched her hands. The look on her set face boded ill for people who had hurt her children.

"Those ball dresses!" Jemima brought it out with a despairing sob. "How was I to know? The magazines didn't say anything about it, and nobody told me. But all the other girls wore hats and high necks! Some of them even had on coat suits!"

Kate stared. "Is that all?" Suddenly she threw back her head, and laughed until she cried. She tried to stop, realizing that the thing was no less than a tragedy to ambitious Jemima. But the relief after what she had feared for them was too great.

"It seems to amuse you, Mother," said the girl, with dignity. "Perhaps you are above such things. Jacqueline and I are not. It was not pleasant to be thought country green-horns by all those strange, staring people. That author, Mr. Channing, was there, too,—and never came near me, though I think he did dance once or twice with Jacqueline.—There is nothing, nothing in this world," she said passionately, "as terrible as being different!"

Somewhere in Kate's reading she had come across a phrase that stuck, "The Herd-spirit, which shuns abnormality." She searched for the words to comfort her child, and found them.

"My dear, since the world began people of unusual ability have found themselves 'different,' and have suffered because of it. It is not a matter of dress, or manner, or any outside thing, and assuredly it is not a difference to be ashamed of. People like us," she said quietly, "must learn to smile at the Herd-spirit."

Jemima's eyes met hers squarely. An answering gleam came into them; and for the moment the barrier between mother and daughter was down. They recognized each other.

The following week brought a pleasant surprise, and Jemima was comforted further. It was a letter from an old school friend of Mrs. Kildare's, Mrs. Lawrence, reminding her of their early intimacy, speaking of the pleasure it had been to meet her two lovely daughters, and inviting them to visit her in Lexington at a date named, that they might share with her own daughters some of the gaieties of town life.

Kate suspected Thorpe's hand in this invitation. For twenty years Mrs. Lawrence had lived within an hour's railroad journey of Storm, and this was the first reminder of their friendship. But far from resenting the belated kindness, she was deeply grateful for it; a fact which caused young Jemima's pride to wince for her mother. She herself, in such circumstances, would have returned the letter without comment.

Nevertheless, it was she who decided her mother to accept the invitation. Kate had hesitated, dreading to expose her children for the second time unprotected to the mercies of people who had ostracized her. But Jemima said with her usual decision, "We must go, of course, since you have no personal objection. It would be foolish to decline any opportunity that offers. That is what Professor Jim gave us the party for; to create opportunities."

"Is it?" asked Kate. "I thought it was to make friends."

"The same thing," explained Jemima. "One has to consider the future."

To the amaze of both, however, Jacqueline flatly declined to visit Mrs. Lawrence on any terms whatsoever.

"I'd rather stay here," was her calm response to all her sister's pleading.

"But, Jacky, we must get to know some girls!"

"Why must we? Silly, giggling, whispering creatures—you go and make the girl friends, Jemmy! I'd rather have beaux."

"And how are you to find any around here, I'd like to know?"

Jacqueline smiled demurely. "Perhaps they'll come and find me." Jemima could cheerfully have shaken her. "Anyway, I'd rather stay with mummy, and baby Kitty, and the colts, and all. You go and do the society act for both of us, sister," she coaxed. "You do it so beautifully. Think how you annexed that beautiful young man all those girls were smitten with! And you know how to be politely rude to people. I don't."

Occasionally her young sister's powers of observation surprised Jemima.

She heaved a sigh. "I suppose I shall have to go alone, then," she said. "Somebody will always do your share of the world's work, Jacky,"—but she kissed her sister even as she scolded her.

Kate was more than a little puzzled. With a return of her old shrewdness, she sought for possible reasons that might be keeping this joyous, pleasure-loving replica of her young self from the scene of further triumphs. Was it simply shyness? But Jacqueline had never been self-conscious enough to be shy. Had something occurred to rouse in her the fierce Kildare pride? Kate dismissed that fear promptly. Snubs and slights would fall harmless from such an armor of confidence in the world's friendly intentions toward her. Jacqueline would not recognize an insult if she saw it.

Her study of the girl made her aware for the first time of the change that had taken place in her. She saw, startled, that tender, radiant, exquisite young woman who had replaced her little daughter.

Instantly her thoughts went to Philip. Could it be Philip who was keeping her at home?

Kate's heart leaped in her breast. This marriage, planned in Jacqueline's infancy to clear her name and her children's from at least one stigma that rested upon it, had never been out of her mind. Now it was the one thing toward which her hopes, so lately torn from their rooted hold, were still straining. Jacques' son and her daughter—at least there should be that tie between herself and the man she loved. Some day perhaps her grandson would look at her with the eyes of Jacques....

The girl, she had believed, must be still too young for any thought of marriage. But was she? Was she? The Leigh women matured early. She herself had been quite ready for marriage at seventeen. As for Philip, how was it with him?

From the day she had brought him home with her from his boarding-school, a sensitive, lonely lad of fourteen, he had been like a big brother to her children; at first their guardian playfellow, sharing with them his lore of field and wood and stream; later their tutor, during the months when he was not absent at the seminary which the old rector of the parish had persuaded him to enter; later still, their spiritual adviser and director, exercising over them a certain quiet authority which amused their mother but which was not resented in the least by either of the high-spirited girls. He and Jemima were excellent friends, or had been until her recent discovery about his father. It was to the older girl he turned for assistance in parish matters, and Kate realized that Jemima was far better fitted than her light-hearted sister for the manifold duties of a clergyman's wife. But from the first, little Jacqueline had been his especial pet and comrade—possibly because of her resemblance to her mother. They rode together, sang together, read together, even quarreled together, with a familiarity which shocked Jemima's inborn respect for "the Cloth".... Had there been always in this marked favoritism the germ of love? the mother wondered.

Of late Philip had been more at the house even than usual. He dropped in at all hours of the day with the excuse of books to be brought, new music to be tried, matters of many sorts to be discussed. It reminded Kate a little sadly of the days when his father had found just such excuses to spend his time at Storm. To be sure, he rarely found Jacqueline at home, and as Jemima systematically avoided him nowadays, he was thrown almost entirely upon her own companionship. But Kate easily persuaded herself that this was merely an accident, and one which she might in future control.

Now that she had thought of it, she had twice lately met Philip with Jacqueline, riding very slowly and in earnest conversation—those two, who usually took the roads and the fields at a flying gallop, daring each other on to further recklessness. Also, she recalled the last miles of that journey from Frankfort, when the girl sat between them, playing with hands, lips, and crooning voice her self-appointed role of comforter. It would be a stony-hearted celibate indeed who resisted little Jacqueline in the role of comforter.

Kate Kildare smiled to herself, content. At least one of her dreams was coming true. The old lying scandal would die in time and be forgotten. Fate, her enemy—what match was it for three such allies as propinquity, nature, and a wise mother?



CHAPTER XXII

The fact was that Philip, in his double capacity of priest and of bodyguard to the household of his liege lady, had been for some time aware of a thing that troubled him deeply. It was Philip who brought to the Madam's notice much that required her attention in her domain, but this he did not bring to her attention. His hands were tied.

Shortly after the episode of the Night Riders, he had happened to be driving in an adjoining county, when to his amazement a large automobile flashed by with Jacqueline at the wheel, speaking over her shoulder to a man who sat beside her. In the glimpse he had of them, Philip thought he recognized the man as Percival Channing. They were too absorbed in each other to notice him, hidden as he was in the depths of his buggy. Jacqueline's laugh floated back to him as they passed, a soft little laugh that brought a sudden frown to Philip's face. Her expert handling of the great car told its own story.

"That won't do at all!" muttered Philip aloud. Then he took himself up sharply—"Why won't it do?" The man was James Thorpe's nephew, a gentleman, a person of some distinction; certainly a fit companion for Kate's children. Why should he feel uneasy? That Jacqueline had not mentioned the further acquaintance with him might be merely an oversight. After all, the girl must marry some day, though the thought of losing his little playfellow gave Philip a pang.

"I see," he said casually at Storm that night, "that the author is still in our midst. I suppose he has called here, hasn't he?"

He spoke to Kate, not glancing in the direction of Jacqueline.

"Oh, yes. We found his cards one afternoon, with Mr. Farwell's," answered Kate. "I am sorry not to have seen him."

"He will probably come again," said Jemima, rather importantly. "In fact I asked him to, the other night at Professor Jim's party."

Jacqueline made a gleeful face at her sister's back, not unnoted by Philip.

"So-o!" he said to himself gravely. "I shall have to make friends with this gentleman...."

He was on his way to Holiday Hill the next afternoon, when at the very gate he met Jacqueline coming out. She laughed; rather consciously for Jacqueline. "I've been returning that call," she said.

"So I see. Has Mrs. Farwell come, then?"

"Mrs. Farwell? Oh, no. She never comes. Mr. Farwell isn't here either, just now," she said innocently. "So I dropped in to—to keep Mr. Channing company." She began to flush, realizing that she had betrayed herself. "We were practising his songs together. We—we often do." She stammered a little.

"I see," he said again, lightly. It was not his policy to discourage confidences. "So Mr. Channing writes songs, as well as novels?"

"Oh, wonderful ones, Phil! You'd love them. I do wish you could hear them."

"I'd like to. Why not bring me the next time you come to practise?"

She looked down; then her eyes met his frankly. "I'd rather not, Phil. He wouldn't like it. Geniuses are peculiar. You see, we sing better when we're not disturbed. You know how that is, don't you?"

His heart contracted with sudden sympathy. He knew only too well "how it was." It seemed to him that lately his life was one long conspiracy against Fate to find Kate Kildare alone. Abroad, the eyes of the world seemed always turned upon them; at home she was surrounded by an impregnable barrier of daughters. On the rare occasions when he did manage to achieve the coveted solitude a deux, their talk was of farming, of the parish, of business, and in the end always of his father, his father. Her dependence upon him, her affection for him, was evident, but there was a curiously impersonal, almost absent-minded quality about it that sometimes chilled Philip and his budding hopes. When she spoke out her inmost thoughts, even when she took his hand or laid her arm across his shoulders with the impulsive, caressing gestures that were as common to her as to Jacqueline, he had the feeling that she was thinking of another man.

Philip was well fitted to understand Jacqueline just then. "My dear," he said quietly, "are you in love with Mr. Channing?"

The question took her by surprise. She paled, and then the lovely rose came over her face again in a hot flood. "Oh, yes, yes, Phil!" she cried eagerly. "Do come and ride beside me, and let me tell you all about it. I've been wanting dreadfully to tell somebody who would understand. You're such a comfortable sort of person."

Philip's greatest gift was the art of listening. He employed it now, turning to her a glance steady and encouraging, concealing the anxiety that gnawed at his mind, why he could not say. The natural priest is as intuitive perhaps as the natural woman.

She took him into her confidence fully, concealing nothing. He learned about their daily meetings, either at the Ruin, or if Farwell happened to be absent, at Holiday Hill. She told him of their long automobile rides together, while she was supposed to be off exercising some of the horses; of the book he was beginning to write with her assistance; ("I inspire it," she explained gravely); of his belief in her own future career as a singer.

"He's going to help me, to introduce me to singers and teachers and—impresarios, I think they're called. He's going to make mother send me abroad to study, first. He says it's wicked to keep me shut up here away from life. All artists have got to see a great deal of life, you know, if they're to amount to anything. Oh, isn't it wonderful?" she broke off, "that such a man as that should ever have noticed me at all?"

Philip, glancing at the radiant young face, did not find it altogether wonderful.

"I suppose he makes love to you?" he asked.

She dimpled. "Of course! But in such a funny way, Phil. He doesn't seem to mean to, or to want to, exactly. We read a good deal, and talk about the world, and things like that, and sing—but all the time I know what he's thinking about, and—and I'm thinking about it, too! We don't read and sing and talk all the time—" She clasped her hands ecstatically, lines and all. "Oh, Phil darling, I wish you were in love, too! It's so perfect.—But you will be some day, and then I hope," she added quaintly, "that you'll have somebody as dear and comfortable as you are to confide in. A spiritual pastor and master is so safe, too. You may scold me, Reverend, and you may laugh at me—you're doing it now—but you can never tell on me."

"No," he admitted, "I never can. But why not tell on yourself, dear? Why so much mystery? Are you ashamed of being in love?"

He looked at her keenly. But though she hesitated, she met his eyes without embarrassment. "I think I am, a little. Not ashamed, exactly, but—shy. It's such a queer feeling, being in love. I never had it before. It makes you want not to eat, or sleep, or play with the baby, or do anything but just think of him; how he looked the last time you saw him, what he said, and—did. If people knew, they'd tease me, and watch me, and I couldn't bear that. I just couldn't bear it! Then there's Jemmy. She's so odd. She doesn't like to see me kissing the baby, even, or loving it. She thinks it isn't quite nice. If she knew about Mr. Channing—! Besides, she's so much cleverer than I am, so much more his sort, really. If he'd known her first he would probably have liked her best. I'd rather—just for a while, I'd rather—"

"Keep him out of Jemima's reach?" murmured Philip, amused.

She nodded. "You do understand things, don't you? Jemmy's so much cleverer than I am. Just until I'm sure of him, Philip—"

He asked quietly, "You're not sure of him, then?"

She gave him a demure glance under her infantile lashes. "Oh, yes, I am! But he's not quite sure of himself." She chuckled. "Mr. Channing thinks he doesn't want to marry any one, you see!"

It was what Philip had been waiting for from the first. His voice changed a little, and became the voice of the priest. "You need not tell your sister, Jacqueline; but your mother ought to know of this."

"I don't want her to know."

"Why not?"

"Oh, because," was the purely feminine answer. She added, troubled by his grave silence, "Mummy might not want me to see so much of him, if she knew. She can't realize that I'm grown up now. Old people forget how they felt when they were young." She was vaguely trying to express love's dread of being brought to earth, of being hampered by the fetters of a fixed relation.

"'Old people!' Your mother?" Philip spoke rather sharply.

"Oh, well, not old, of course. Still, she's too old to fall in love.—Anyway, there are some things a girl can't talk about with her mother; you ought to know there are." The glance she gave him was both embarrassed and appealing.

Alas for Kate's carefully fostered intimacy with her children, vanished at the first touch of a warmer breath!

Philip put his hand over hers on the bridle-rein. "My dear," he said earnestly, "there is nothing, absolutely nothing, you cannot talk about with your mother. She's that sort. Always remember it."

She jerked her hand away with a pettish gesture. "For goodness' sake, stop being so ancient and fatherly! And what right have you to tell me anything about mother? I don't mind your explaining about God to me, and Christian duty, and things like that. It's your business, and I suppose it bores you as much as anybody. But when you talk as if you had a special vested right in my own mother,—that's too much! As if you could possibly know her as well as I do!"

She spurred her horse and galloped ahead furiously. But at the next turn of the road she was waiting, remorseful.

"Forgive me for being a crosspatch, Flippy dear?" Her voice would have coaxed forgiveness from a stone. "I always am sort of—sort of foolish about mummy, you know."

"I have no fault to find with you for being foolish about your mother," said Philip.

"Then, that's all right!" She blew him a kiss, and prepared to leave him. "And of course I will tell her everything, soon. When she knows, she's going to be glad, gladder than anybody. I remember once,"—the girl's face grew very tender—"we were just little things, Jemmy and I, but she was talking to us, like she does. She said, 'When the right man comes along, my girlies, be sure he is the right man, and then don't be afraid. Love him with all your might and main, and be sure he knows it. There's nothing in the world so mean as a niggardly lover!' I—I am not a niggardly lover, Philip," she added shyly.

His throat contracted. Jacqueline's naivete was singularly touching to him.

"Wait a moment," he said, detaining her. "Since I must keep the great secret, I want you to promise me one thing. Do not go to Mr. Farwell's house alone any more. You see," he explained to her widened eyes, "there aren't any women there. Girls do not call on men."

"I go to your house whenever I like!"

He smiled. "As you yourself said once, I'm 'not men.' But it isn't done, little girl. Take my word for that, please."

"Very well!" she chuckled. "You sound like Jemmy!—But I promise. I like the Ruin better anyway. More private."

She waved back at him, put her horse lightly over a fence, and was off across the fields at a full gallop.

He went his way thoughtfully. Philip was beginning to find his duties as guardian of Kate Kildare and her children somewhat onerous. He tried to reassure himself with the thought of Jacqueline's youth. Mature as she had become in body, in mind she was still a child. At that age, love could not be lasting.

But while it lasted, could it not devastate?

Often in this Kentucky valley he had known languorous Februaries when orchard and garden, deceived by a fierce-wooing sun, trustingly put forth their treasures, only to find them blackened and withered when the true spring came. Dear little Jacqueline, glowing, tremulous, instinct with the joy and passion of giving—for to Kate Kildare's child love meant always giving—was she to know so soon the blight of disillusionment?

"Not if I can help it," muttered Philip, squaring his jaws, and set his horse once more in the direction of Holiday Hill.

He intended to discover just how far and for what reason Percival Channing was averse to the state of matrimony.



CHAPTER XXIII

Jacqueline had presently another confidante, who came to her by chance; not Kate, still absorbed in her readjustment to life without Jacques Benoix, and not Jemima, even more absorbed in the preparation for her approaching visit. Jacqueline, indeed, was somewhat in disgrace with her sister. "Isn't it just like her," thought the older girl impatiently, "to go and make such a success of herself, and then sit back calmly and expect me to do the rest?"

Jemima had from her mother one gift of the born executive: the ability to recognize other people's abilities as well as their limitations. In a quite unenvious and impersonal way, she appreciated the superior charm of her sister, and intended to use it, backed by her own superior intelligence, for the benefit of both of them. Jacqueline's complete lack of interest in the social campaign was a serious blow to her plans, but she met it with stoic philosophy.

"I shall have to go ahead as best I can without charm," she told herself, soberly. "Brains always count, if you keep them hid."

To the casual observer the ambitions of young Jemima at this juncture might have seemed somewhat petty; but most beginnings are petty. There was in the girl's mind a determination that cannot be called unworthy, no matter how it manifested itself—nothing less than the reinstatement before the world of the family her mother had disgraced, the once-proud Kildares of Storm. She was going forth to do battle alone for the tarnished honor of her name, a gallant little knight-errant, tight-lipped and heavy-hearted, and far more afraid than she dared admit.

Something of this the mother sensed, and her heart yearned over her daughter. But Jemima rebuffed all overtures. She declined sympathy, and as far as possible she declined help from her mother. She had offered to return the check-book Kate gave her when she expected to go to New York, but her mother bade her keep it, saying, "It is time you learned how to handle your own money."

So Jemima did her planning and ordering without interference; and presently express boxes began to arrive from "the city," which caused much excitement in the household.

"Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as these," smiled Kate one day, looking in at the sewing-room where Mag was installed, adding deft final touches. "Where's Jacky, Jemima? Why isn't she here helping you two to run ribbons and whip on laces?"

"Oh, Jacky!" The other shrugged. "Where would she be? Galloping about the country, or playing games with herself down at her precious Ruin, I suppose. Occasionally she wanders into the sewing-room like a young cyclone, leaving havoc in her wake. I'd rather not have her assistance, thank you!"

"Miss Jacky ain't much of a hand with a needle," murmured the girl at the sewing-machine.

Kate smiled, as she always smiled when she thought of her youngest daughter. "Bless her heart! I wonder what she's about down there in the ravine. We haven't heard her singing lately. Do you suppose she has abandoned grand opera entirely? I think I must go and investigate."

Mag Henderson sat suddenly rigid. It was she who had become, inadvertently, Jacqueline's second confidante.

A few days before, she had made a discovery which she would have been torn limb from limb rather than betray; for the weakest natures are capable of one strong trait, and Mag's was loyalty. Just as she had tried to defend the father who had sold her into worse than slavery, so she would defend to the last ditch any member of the family who had rescued her—more particularly Jacqueline. For Jacqueline had done more than rescue her; she had kissed her.

She said with a sort of gasp, "Miss Jacky's awful busy, Miss Kate. She wouldn't like to be disturbed. She's—she's writin' a book."

Kate laughed. "Come now, Mag! not a book?"

"Yes'm, she is, 'cause I seen it."

"Well, well, what next?" cried Kate. "What sort of chicken have I hatched? There've been queer developments in the family, but never a genius that I know of. We must leave her alone, by all means. Maybe she will get over it."

Mag breathed more freely; and with the departure next day of Jemima, accompanied by two trunks and wearing an expression that said plainly, "I shall return with my shield or on it," Mag's fears for her beloved Miss Jacky were further allayed. Of late the Storm household had begun to hold Jemima's seeing eye in even more respect than the Madam's.

Mag had stumbled upon Jacqueline's secret quite by accident. After her day's work was over she liked to walk the roads with her baby, dressed in her prettiest finery, with an eager, hopeful eye out for passing vehicles. On one of these rambles she happened into the lane which passed the haunted ravine, and there, concealed by the drooping branches of a willow beside the road, she had discovered a deserted automobile.

It aroused her curiosity. What could an automobile be doing in that unfrequented lane, and where was the owner of it? Fearfully she entered the ravine, and ventured a few steps toward the green tangle that hid the ruined cabin. When she came in sight of it, panic conquered curiosity, and she turned to run. It was very dark and hushed there in the underbrush.

But one of the young dogs, who had followed her, suddenly pricked up his ears and nosed his way to the cabin's threshold, where he paused with one foot lifted, making violent demonstrations with his tail. Mag followed him, reassured.

"A dog would have too much sense to wag hisself at ghosts," she thought....

No wonder it was still in the ravine. Birds passing overhead forbore to sing, out of sheer sympathy. The great trees stood tiptoe, guarding with finger on lip the love-dream of the little human creature who had played so long about their feet, and whose playing days were done. Mag and the young dog were silent, too, and would have gone softly away from the place where they were not wanted.

"Miss Jacky's got her a fella!" whispered Mag enviously to herself. "Ain't that grand?"

But the baby in her arms had as yet no conception that there might be places in the world where she was not wanted; poor little waif who had been unwanted anywhere! She recognized her usual companion wrapped in the arms of a strange man, and cooed inquiringly.

The lovers jumped apart.

"Oh!—It's only you, Mag!" gasped Jacqueline. "I thought Jemmy had caught us at last!..."

So it happened that Mag was elevated to the position of confidante; not a very wise confidante, but a very proud and trustworthy one, eager to help her Miss Jacky to happiness, such as she conceived the term—a "fella" to love her and give her presents, which might or might not include a wedding-ring.

She was pressed into willing service, carrying notes, arranging meetings, mounting guard watchfully, thrilled with eager sympathy, and dreaming a little on her own account; sordid, pathetic dreams they were, in which, alas! the baby Kitty played no part at all. As Mrs. Kildare had guessed, maternity was not enough for Mag Henderson.

Percival Channing, in the midst of the prettiest idyl of his experience, was bringing to it far more enthusiasm than he would have thought possible for a mere collector of impressions. He was quite pleased with himself.

"Who said I was jaded and world-worn?" he thought amusedly. His critical faculty did not become atrophied when applied to himself, as is the way of smaller critical faculties.

From week to week he prolonged his visit at Holiday Hill, to the content of Farwell, who was finding the picturesque solitude he had created for himself rather wearing. Channing thought it necessary to explain that the country furnished him just the quiet environment he needed for his work.

"And eke the inspiration?" murmured Farwell.

"And eke the inspiration," admitted his guest.

Farwell puffed at a meditative pipe. He was a tolerant man, popular with his friends because of his chariness in proffering advice and comment; so that Channing was surprised when he continued the subject.

"I fancy the little girl is quite capable of taking care of herself—these Southern beauties are that way, from the cradle. But have a care of the old 'un, my boy! There's a glint in that fine gray eye I wouldn't care to rouse, myself. She's by way of being a queen around here, you know. I'm told the law asks her permission before it makes an arrest in this neighborhood. Her subjects neither marry, nor die, nor get themselves born without her permission—fact! As for her daughters, hands off! Approach them on your knees.

"I'll give you a bit of local color, if you like. Have you noticed that long-tailed whip she carries when she's got the dogs? Well, one day I saw a couple of negroes fighting in one of the fields; big, burly brutes, one with a knife, and both full of cocaine, probably. The white man in charge danced around on the outskirts, afraid to interfere—I don't blame him! Suddenly there was a cry, 'Here comes the Madam!' And there she was, galloping into that field, hell-for-leather, unwrapping her long-tailed whip as she came. When the negroes had had enough of it and were whimpering for mercy, she turned her attention to the foreman. But she didn't whip him. She said, her voice as calm as a May morning, 'Go and get your time, Johnson. I've no room on the place for a timid man!'"

Farwell's eyes were lit with enthusiasm, but to Channing the story had been oddly distasteful. "Faugh! What a woman! And yet I'll swear she's a lady," he said, with an odd thought of introducing Mrs. Kildare to his rigid family circle in the role of mother-in-law.

"Of course she is! A great lady, of a type we're not familiar with, that's all. A relic of feudalism. I give you fair warning—don't monkey with the buzz-saw!"

"Nonsense!" Channing flushed. "Who's monkeying with buzz-saws? You're rather crude, you know."

"So is she. Don't you make any mistake about that! The Kildare is no parlor product. A woman who's led the life she has," drawled Farwell, "would be quite capable of protecting her children, even at the point of a pistol, I fancy."

The author gave a short, angry laugh. "You're incurably dramatic, Morty! You will carry your stage effects into real life. What do you think I'm up to, anyway? You don't suppose I mean that pretty child any harm?"

Farwell rolled protesting eyes toward heaven. "The very suggestion shocks me," he murmured. "But I have noticed that only the juice of the orange interests you, old man. The rest of it you leave on your plate, luxurious chap that you are!..."

His warning had its effect. There were no more stolen drives about the country in Farwell's automobiles, much to Jacqueline's disappointment; and once more Channing called in state at Storm, where he was received cordially by Mrs. Kildare, and took very little notice of demure Jacqueline in the background. So little, indeed, that Kate afterwards felt it necessary to apologize for him.

"You're too young for Mr. Channing, Jacky dear. What a pity Jemima was not here to talk to him! He's just the sort of man for her," she said.

Whereat Jacqueline's dimples became riotous, and she kept silence with difficulty.

Channing's new caution, however, did not carry him to the length of giving up his daily visits to the Ruin. He needed the girl too much. His belonged to the class of creative brain that works only under the stimulus of emotion. Channing was fond of saying that he took his material red-hot out of life itself, and his novels represented a series of personal experiences, psychological and otherwise, which perhaps accounted for their marked success with a certain public.

Channing was not without genius. He had to a great degree the poet's sensitiveness to all things exquisite, and added to that he had a gift of facile expression. Subtleties of style, that effort to find exactly the right phrase and shade of meaning which is the stumbling-block of so many conscientious writers, troubled him not at all. Given the sensation, words in which to clothe it came instinctively, faster often than he could write them down. But first he must needs experience the sensation. This type of brain suffers from one disadvantage. In time the receptive surface of it becomes dulled, calloused, and as the confirmed drug-user requires constantly increasing or varying doses to produce effect, so such an imagination requires constantly increasing or varying doses of emotion.

These young Jacqueline Kildare was supplying in full measure. To his sophisticated palate she was as refreshing as cool spring water. She roused, among impulses more familiar to his experience, certain others with which he had not credited himself, impulses of tenderness, of protection, of chivalry. He began to be aware of a pleasure that was entirely new to him in the sight of Jacqueline with Mag's baby, their very frequent companion.

"I am getting primitive!" he thought. "This is going back to nature with a vengeance."

For the first time in his life, the thought of marriage came to him occasionally and was put away with some regret. "I must not lose my head," he admonished himself. "It will not last, of course. It never does."

Channing knew himself very thoroughly.

But if he must not offer marriage to the girl, he could at least help her to a career. It flattered his amour propre to realize that the object of his present affections, crude young thing as she was, might be called in a certain sense his equal, a fellow artist, one of the world's chosen. He spoke very often of her career, and Jacqueline listened, dreamily.

Of late she had somewhat lost interest in careers. Or rather, she had another sort of career in view; that of the lady in the tower, to whom her knight brings all his trophies. It seemed to her that this might be the happiest career of all.

She knew very well what she was doing for Channing. In the morning hours, and often after he left her far into the night, the author wrote steadily, with the ease and smoothness of creation that is one of the most satisfying pleasures known to human experience. Daily, when he came to her for refreshment, he brought manuscript to read, incidents, character sketches, whole chapters in the novel he had started. All of which filled Jacqueline with a new and heady sense of power. If she was not "writing a book," as Mag reported, she was at least helping to write one.

And she gave more to her lover than inspiration. He found her criticism unexpectedly valuable. There had been no lack of brains in her family, and the library at Storm was large and excellent. Philip Benoix and James Thorpe had both supplemented the girls' reading with great wisdom, so that Jacqueline's taste was formed upon far better literature than that of the average woman of his acquaintance. She was not easily shocked—Kate boasted that she had never put her girls' brains into petticoats—but now and then, despite Channing's growing care, unconscious product of his new chivalry, matter crept into his pages which made her shake her head in quick distaste.

"People might do things like that," she said once, of a particularly unsavory episode, "but they'd never sit around and talk of it afterwards. They'd be ashamed!"

It was a comment on human nature the shrewdness of which he promptly appreciated. Jacqueline came to represent to him that invaluable portion of a writer's public, the average female mind. Under her proud guidance, Channing knew that he was writing the best and by far the cleanest of his novels.

It was at such moments that the thought of marriage came to him, and he reminded himself reluctantly that it would not do. "He travels fastest who travels alone...."

"I must speak to your mother about your voice," he said once. "She will have to let you study in Europe, or at least in New York. You're seventeen, aren't you? There's a long road to travel. No time to be lost."

"New York? But you live in Boston, don't you?"

"Heaven forbid! I was born in Boston, but one gets over it in time."

"I'm not sure now that it's worth while taking any more lessons," she said dreamily.

"You'll never be a singer without them."

"Well—sometimes I think I don't want to be a singer, Mr. Channing. Sometimes I think I'd rather be a—housekeeper, for instance."

"What! Give up fame and fortune for a hypothetical domestic career?"

"Not for a hypothetical one, no." She gave him a side-wise glance, dimpling. "But I would love to have a home of my own."

He humored her, for the sake of watching her rapt and eager face. "What would you do with a house of your own?"

"Oh, I'd have pink silk curtains at all the windows, and loads of books, and flowers, and a cook who could make things like Mr. Farwell's cook can—and—and a grand piano, and an automobile, and a stable full of thoroughbreds and puppies—" She paused for breath.

"Anything else?"

"Oh, yes. Babies! All ages and sizes of babies, small red wrinkled ones, and trot-abouts, and fat little boys in their first trousers—"

"Help, help!" murmured Channing. "Would there be any room in that house for a husband?"

"Yes," she said softly. "I used to think it was a nuisance, having to have a husband before you could have babies; but now—" she glanced at him shyly, and looked away again.

"But now?" he repeated, leaning toward her.

"I—I've changed my mind," she murmured, her heart beating very hard. Was he going to say anything?

The indications were that he was. His eyes had a look that she called to herself "beaming," and he put out his arms as if to take her into them. She swayed a little toward him, to make it easier.

But at the critical moment, discretion came once more to the rescue. He fumbled hastily in his pocket for a cigarette, and with that in his lips, felt safer.

"There is really no reason," he remarked, puffing, "that the operatic career may not be combined with the luxuries you mention, Jacqueline—pink silk curtains, infants, and all."

"Do singers marry?" she asked; and he could not but admire the nonchalance with which she covered her disappointment.

"Rather! Fast and frequently."

"But surely they don't have babies?"

"Why not? A friend of mine on the operatic stage"—he mentioned her name—"assures me that each baby improves her voice noticeably."

"I think it is very hard on her husband," declared Jacqueline. "You know he'd rather have her at home taking care of the children properly, and darning the stockings, and ready to greet him when he comes home tired at night!"

"Judging from the size of her income," murmured Channing, "I fancy that he would not."

Jacqueline jumped up, scarlet. The chagrin of her recent repulse, the nervous strain of the past few weeks, the reaction from too exalted a plane of emotion, all found vent in a burst of temper rare indeed to her sunny nature.

"That's a horrid thing to say," she flared out, "and sometimes I think you're a horrid man! Yes, I do! When you're cynical and—and worldly that way, I just can't bear you. So there! I'm going straight up to the house. Good-by! You needn't try to stop me."

She went, but very slowly, regretting already her foolish anger, waiting for him to call her back. Her feet lagged. She said to herself that these clever men could be very stupid....

But Channing did not call her back. He followed the ascending figure, so boyishly slender yet so instinct with feminine grace, with eyes that held regret, and pity, and something else. When it was out of sight among the upper trees, he heaved a sigh of relief.

"That was a narrow squeak, Percival, my boy," he admonished himself. "Another instant, and it would have been all up with you. Time you were finding pressing business elsewhere!"

As has been said, Mr. Channing knew himself extremely well; a knowledge that was the result of expert study. He had learned that men pay a penalty for keeping their emotions highly sensitized. They react too readily to certain stimuli; they are not always under perfect control. There are times when the only safety lies in flight.

However, he was not quite ready to flee. He had his novel to finish. It is always a mistake, he had found, to change environment in the middle of a book.



CHAPTER XXIV

Philip, true to his promise to himself, deliberately set about the business of making friends with Jacqueline's lover. He found the matter less difficult than he had expected. Channing was an agreeable surprise to him. There was an atmosphere about him, man of the world that he was, as comforting to the young country cleric as an open fire to one unconsciously chilled. Philip recognized in the other a certain finish, a certain fine edge of culture and comprehension, that had set his own father apart from the people about them, kept him always a stranger in his environment, even to the perceptions of a young boy. With Channing he found many tastes in common, the love of books, of music, of art in every form; as well as a keen interest in the study of humanity, pursued by both from vastly different angles, but with equal ardor. Philip came to understand very well the man's fascination for Jacqueline; but the better he understood it, the more uneasy he became.

Channing's life seemed so rounded, so filled, so complete—what permanent place was there in it for a crude, untrained little country girl? He suspected that the author thought of her, as everybody else had thought of her, as a charming, impulsive, beautiful child, whose blandishments were almost impossible to resist; and he knew men well enough to guess that Channing had not tried very hard to resist them. Why should he? She was too young to be taken seriously, and she was very sweet. Philip himself, lover of another woman as he was, had more than once been quite uncomfortably stirred by the near sweetness of Jacqueline.... Neither as priest nor as man could he bring himself to condemn a thing he so well understood. The sense of responsibility deepened. What was he to do about it?

Percival Channing, on his part, always sensitive to environment, gave of his very best to Philip, reason enough for liking whoever brought it forth. But he had other reasons for liking the grave, simple, courteous young countryman—a sincere respect for his courage in choosing to live out his life in the very shadow of his father's disgrace, and also a very sincere if pagan admiration for the other's physical prowess—the admiration of the weakling for the man who is as nature meant men to be.

On the occasion of Philip's initial visit at Holiday Hill, Channing had stood on the porch watching him ride away, his well-knit body moving in the perfect accord with his horse that means natural horsemanship, taking a gate at the foot of the road without troubling to open it, in one long, clean leap that brought an envious sigh from the watcher.

"What a man!" thought Channing. "I'll bet he doesn't know what a headache is, nor a furry tongue, nor a case of morning blues.—Heigho for the simple life!"

It was not Philip's last visit to Holiday Hill; and more than once on returning from his pastoral rounds, he found Channing in possession of the rectory, deep in one of his father's French books, practising rather futilely with the punching bag that decorated one corner of the living-room, or prowling about with an appreciative eye for old bindings and portraits, and what egg-shell china was left to remind Philip vaguely of the vague, fragile lady who had been his mother.

Farwell, too, came to the rectory; an adaptable, friendly soul, accustomed to fit himself comfortably into whatever surroundings offered themselves, but underneath his casual exterior extremely observant and critical of such things as seemed to him important. Philip, having dined in some elegance at Holiday Hill, had the courage to invite the two to one of his own simple suppers. And as his ancient negress selected that occasion, out of sheer excitement, to revert to her unfortunate habits, Philip himself cooked the meal, serving it without apology or explanation upon a cloth of fine yellowed damask, with his mother's egg-shell china, and certain spoons and forks that bore upon their attenuated tips the worn outlines of a crest. The table was drawn into a window, through which the scent of Philip's little garden floated in. There were flowers upon the table, too; garden roses in a low pewter bowl, and wax tapers in very beautiful bronze candelabra, at sight of which Farwell's eyes widened enviously.

The actor, an aesthete to his finger-tips, looked with satisfaction about the long, low room, wainscoted in vari-colored books, its great old-fashioned fireplace filled with fragrant pine-boughs, and overhung by a portrait in an oval frame of a dim gentleman in a stock; the mantel crowded with pipes, a punching-bag and dumb-bells in one end of the room, in the other an old square piano, open and inviting, showing evidence of constant use; shabby, comfortable chairs; a large desk with many pigeon-holes, very neat and business-like. Indeed, the whole room, despite its odd agglomeration of furnishings, was neat, meticulously neat, even to the spotless curtains, darned in many places by Jemima and the ladies of the Altar Guild.

Farwell spoke his thought aloud, "There's more character in this room of yours, Benoix, than in all that fine, self-conscious, art-y house of mine," he declared. "It could give pointers to any studio I know. It's the real thing!"

Philip flushed with surprise and pleasure. His unpretentious household gods were very dear to him, dear as they are sometimes to women. They meant more than furniture to the lonely young man; they meant home, and kindred, and all the gentler things that life had denied him.

Channing became lyrical over the salad, and was moved to propose a toast. He lifted his glass of beer—the best Philip's cellar afforded. "Here's to the greatest nation on earth, one drop of whose blood is worth more to Art than all the stolid corpuscles that clog the veins of lesser races. Without it what man can hope to write great prose, or paint great pictures, or mix a great salad? Vive la France!—Benoix, who taught you how to cook?"

"My father," said Philip, in a low voice. He had not often occasion to speak of his father, except to Mrs. Kildare.

"I knew it! There's nothing Anglo-Saxon or negroid about this cooking. Again I say, Vive la France!"

After they had gone, Philip did not go immediately to bed. He was too excited—as excited, he thought, smiling, as little Jemima had been with the success of her first party. He put out the lights, and sat by his window in the dark for a long time, going over in his mind the talk of that night. Good man-talk it had been, touching on all the big things that occupy the world's thought to-day, which hitherto Philip had got for himself only out of books and periodicals. He had listened eagerly to these young men, who were interested in larger matters than crops and stock-breeding and local politics. And they had listened to him—he knew that. More than once a remark of Channing recurred to him: "You're too big for this place, you know. Before long you'll be moving on."

It was a thought that he had often put deliberately out of his mind. His bishop had been the first to suggest it, some years before.

He looked now through the darkness toward Storm. "Moving on"? with his lady there, alone, deserted? He tried to picture Kate Kildare away from her environment of field and wood and open spaces, sharing with him that crowded intense life of cities toward which his mind yearned. But it was impossible. Once more he put ambition from him—if it was ambition that called. What right has a priest with ambition?

No!—exile he might be, but exile he would remain, and gladly. What were they all but exiles—her daughters, his father in prison and out of prison, James Thorpe, who stayed because she might miss his friendship—all exiles from the world that called them, because of Kate Kildare?

"It's enough to be near her," he said to himself with a little sigh, looking once more through the darkness toward Storm.

With Farwell and Channing, too, on their way home, some glow of that good talk lingered.

"There's something about the chap—I don't know what it is," murmured Farwell, vaguely.

Channing nodded comprehension. "It's that you want him to like you, somehow. You want him to—respect you, I think."

Farwell looked around at him mockingly. "What a novel and virtuous sentiment! You'll be getting religion next." He added after a moment, "Can't say you're going about it exactly the right way, if you really want the dominie's respect, you know."

Channing flushed. "You mean the girl? It's not his girl, Morty—it's the mother he's after. If it were the girl—damned if I wouldn't get out of the way and give him a clear field!"

Farwell jeered. "Yes, you would! With the quarry in full view?"

"In full pursuit, you mean," said Channing, ruefully. "I wish I could make you understand that this affair isn't entirely of my own seeking, Farwell!"

His companion yawned. "Awkward to be so damned fascinating, isn't it? Look out—one of these days some of your fair friends are going to band themselves together, and catch you unawares, and marry you, my boy."

"One isn't a Mormon, worse luck," grunted the other.



CHAPTER XXV

It was a part of Channing's new policy of caution with regard to Jacqueline that took him occasionally to Storm in the role of casual caller, especially now that the older girl was not there to disconcert him with her oddly observant gaze. Here he frequently found other callers, young men who since Professor Thorpe's entertainment had discovered that the distance between Storm and their homes, by automobile and even by train, was a negligible trifle.

These young men Jacqueline referred to, with innocent triumph and evident justice, as "victims."

"I told Jemmy there was no need of going away from home to get beaux," she said complacently to Channing. "Here I've sat, just like a spider in a web, and—look at them all! To say nothing of you," she added, with a little gasp at her own daring.

Channing frowned slightly. He was not altogether pleased with the numbers and the frequency of the victims; a fact which added distinctly to Jacqueline's pride in them. But she never allowed her duties as hostess nor her instincts as coquette to interfere with any engagements at the Ruin.

It was Channing's custom, when he called at Storm, to bid her a nonchalant, not to say indifferent, farewell, and repair by devious ways to the ravine; where some moments later he welcomed a very different Jacqueline from the demure young person he had left—ardent, glowing, very eager to atone to him for the enforced restraint of the previous encounter. The coquette in Jacqueline was only skin deep.

One day, arriving at Storm at a belated lunch hour, the hospitable negress who opened to him led him back at once into the dining-room; and there he found a guest quite different from Jacqueline's victims. He was a singular-looking old man, clad in worn butternut jeans; an uncouth, uncombed, manifestly unwashed person at whose side on the floor rested a peddler's pack. He was doing some alarming trencher-work with his knife, and kept a supply of food convenient in his cheek while he greeted Channing with a courteous, "Howdy, stranger!"

"No, no, darter"—he continued without interruption his conversation with Jacqueline. "'Tain't a mite of use puttin' that little washtub in my room no more, bekase you ain't a-goin' to toll me into it. I takes my bath when I gits home to Sally. She kinder expects it of me. Hit's a wife's privilege to cut her man's hair and pare his nails and scrub his ears an' all them little things, 'specially ef she ain't got no chillun to do hit fur, an' I'd feel mighty mean ef I disapp'inted her. I don't do much fer Sally, noways. No, darter, oncet or twicet a year's often enough fer a human critter to git wet all over, 'cep'n in a nateral way, by swimmin' in the crick. These here baths and perfumery-soaps an' all ain't nature. They're sinful snares to the flesh, that's what they be, not fitten' fer us workers in the Lord's vineyard."

"You think the Lord prefers you dirty?" murmured Jacqueline, with a side glance at the astonished Channing.

"I dunno, darter, but some of His chillun does, an' that's a fack. Ef I was too clean, I wouldn't seem to 'em like home-folks." He added, in all reverence, "I 'lows the Lord went dirty Hisself sometimes when He was among pore folks, jes' to show 'em He wa'n't no finer than what they be."

"I haven't a doubt of it," said Philip Benoix, beside him.

Channing suddenly realized who this peddler was. Jacqueline had spoken of him often—a protege of her mother's whom she called the Apostle, half fanatic and half saint, who appeared at Storm occasionally on his way between the mountains of his birth and the city where he had taken unto himself a wife; bringing down to the "Settlements," for sale, certain crude handiwork of the mountain women, carrying back with him various products of civilization, such as needles, and shoe-strings, and stick-candy, and Bibles. It was his zeal in spreading what he called "the Word of God" along his route that had won the old peddler his title of "the Apostle."

Channing looked at him with new interest, the literary eye lighting even while he frowned at the sight of so uncouth a creature seated at lunch with ladies.

The Apostle suddenly turned to him with a gentle, quizzical smile, and Channing had the startled sensation of having spoken his thoughts unwittingly aloud.

"Stranger, I reckon you ain't never been up in them barren mountings, whar men has to wrastle with the yearth and the Devil fer every mouthful of food they puts into their bellies? When I comes down from thar, I always aims a bee line fer Sister Kildare's house, bekase I'm hongry. She don't never turn no hongry man away. 'Tain't safe to turn a hongry man away. You cain't never tell," he added slowly and significantly, "who He might be."

There was a little pause, uncomfortable on Channing's part. Mysticism did not often come his way. He decided that the peddler was a trifle mad.

Then Mrs. Kildare said, "Tell this gentleman something about your own mountain, Brother Bates. He'd like to hear."

"I'm mighty discouraged about 'em up thar, an' that's a fack." He shook his head gloomily. "Folks on Misty is hongrier, and drunker, and meaner than ever—most as mean as they be in the cities. They're pison ign'rant. That's the trouble. The Word of God comes to 'em, but they're too ign'rant to onderstand. 'Tain't wrote in no language they knows, and ef it was, they couldn't read it. Take this here, now—'Love thy neighbor as thyself.' What does that mean to 'em? They ain't got no neighbors to speak of, and them they has, ef they ain't kin-folks, is enemies. Ef the Book was to say 'Git the drop on thy neighbor before he gits the drop on thee,' they'd understand. That's their language—but it ain't God's. I goes on totin' 'em the Word of God in my pack, and them that won't buy I gives it to. But there ain't nobody to explain it to 'em."

"What about you? Why can't you explain it to them?" asked Kate Kildare.

He shook his head again. "None of 'em wants to listen to old Brother Bates. They know I'm as ign'rant as what they be. I used to think ef I could manage someway to git book-l'arnin', I might be a preacher some day. But I dunno. Reckon I never could 'a' yelled and hollered loud enough, nor scared 'em up proper about hell-fire. I ain't so sure I got convictions about hell-fire," he admitted, apologetically. "Seems to me it ain't nateral. Seems to me ef there ever was such a thing, the Lord in His loving-kindness would 'a' put it out long ago.—And I couldn't ever have started the hymn for 'em—never could remember a tune in my born days. No, no! The best I can do for 'em is just to keep on totin' the Word of God around in my pack, hopin' they'll kind of absorb it in at the skin, like I done."

Philip said, "What about the Circuit Riders? Do none of them come to Misty?" He referred to a class of itinerant preachers who are entitled to as much honor for the work they have done among Cumberland mountaineers as any missionaries to the heathen of savage lands.

"Not no more, they don't. The last Circuit Rider that come was a young fellow who looked upon a woman to lust after her," explained the peddler with Biblical simplicity, "and her man shot him up, and I reckon he was too skeert to come back again. Hit's mighty nigh a year sence there's bin a proper baptizin' or buryin' or marryin' on Misty, with young folks pairin' off and babies comin' along as fast as ever. They git tired of waitin' to be tied proper, you see. They've done backslid even from whar they was at."

"I had always understood," murmured the interested Channing, "that jumping over a broomstick was the accepted form of marriage in these mountains."

"Well, stranger, a broomstick's better than nothin', I reckon," replied the peddler tolerantly. "It kinder stands for law and order, anyway. I've knowed folks down around these parts, whar they's a-plenty of preachers, to take up with each other 'thout'n so much as a broomstick to make things bindin'-like."

Philip exchanged glances with the author. "Touche!" he murmured. He turned to Brother Bates. "If I can manage to get away for a week or two, will you pilot me up to Misty?" he asked. "I might make up a few arrears of weddings, funerals, and so forth."

"You, Philip? Good!" exclaimed Kate, heartily.

The Apostle for the first time allowed his gaze to rest on Philip. He chuckled, with the sly malice of a child that has played some trick upon an elder. "I 'lowed you'd be speakin' up purty soon," he said. "I bin talkin' at you all the time, son. Hit don't matter what kind of a preacher you be—Methody or Cam'elite, or what—jest so's you kin give 'em the Word strong."

"I'll give it to them as strong as I can," smiled Philip, "though I must confess that I share your doubts with regard to hell-fire."

"Can ye start a tune? That's what gits 'em every time."

"I can do better than that." He looked at Jacqueline.

Even as he spoke, inspiration had come to him. It was the answer to the problem of how to separate Jacqueline from Channing. "Will you come, too, and be my choir?" he asked her.

She clapped her hands. "What a lark! Mummy, may I? You know how I've always longed to go up into the mountains!"

Suddenly she paused, dismayed. She had remembered Channing.

But that gentleman rose to the occasion with promptitude, somewhat to the chagrin of Philip.

"How would you like to add a passable tenor to your choir, Benoix? If you will let me in on this missionary expedition, it would be awfully good of you. Just the opportunity I've been looking for."

The Apostle beamed on them all. "They's always room for workers in the Lord's vineyard," he said solemnly.

Philip could think of no reasonable objection to offer. He murmured something vague to Kate about the necessity of a chaperon.

She stared at him in frank amazement. "A chaperon for Jacqueline—with you? What an idea! You and Mr. Channing will take the best possible care of my little girl. Of course she shall go! I wish I could go myself."

"Why can't you?" he asked eagerly.

She shook her head. "At State Fair time? Impossible, with my head men away. It would demoralize the farm."

Jacqueline caught Philip's eye and winked, wickedly. "You'll just have to be that chaperon yourself, Reverend Flip," she murmured.



CHAPTER XXVI

Philip did his best, somewhat hampered by the fact that the girl regarded his enforced chaperonage as a joke, and flirted with Channing quite brazenly and openly under his very eye. Even the Apostle shortly became aware of how matters stood, and remarked to Philip benignly, at an early stage of their journey, "I like to see young folks sweet-heartin'. It's a nateral thing, like the Lord intended."

Philip could not agree with any heartiness; but presently the high spirits of the other two infected him, and he entered into the adventure with a growing zest. The clean September air was like wine, and they chattered and laughed like children starting off on a picnic.

Channing had spent the night before at Storm, to be in time for a sunrise start, and he appeared at breakfast in a costume which he and Farwell had evolved as suitable for mountaineering; an affair of riding-boots, pale corduroy breeches, flannel shirt, and a silk handkerchief knotted becomingly about the throat. He was disconcerted to discover that the suit-case of other appropriate garments he had brought with him must be left behind, his luggage being finally reduced to a package of handkerchiefs and a toothbrush.

"But we are to be gone at least a week!" he pleaded unhappily. "Surely a change of linen—"

"There'll be a creek handy," said Jacqueline, "and I'm taking a cake of soap in my bundle. We can't be bothered with luggage."

When he saw the mules that were to convey them from the mountain town at which the railroad left them, up to their final destination, he realized the undesirability of luggage. He also envied the other two their horsemanship.

But the mule proved easier riding than he had expected. They traveled at a slow, steady lope that ate up the miles imperceptibly, through wild and beautiful country, always climbing; passing at first occasional groups of unpainted pine houses which gave way, as they penetrated farther into the hills, to rough log cabins, growing fewer and farther apart. These had a bare, singularly unkempt look; and although many of them were so old as to be tumbledown, they did not fit, somehow, into their surroundings. It was as if nature had never yet accepted man and his works, still tolerated him under protest, a blot upon her loveliness.

Channing commented upon this. "Why are there no vines and flowers about, nothing to make these pitiful places look as if people lived in them?"

"Folks is too busy wrestin' a livin' out of the bare yearth to pretty-up much," explained the Apostle.

"But why stay here at all? Why not go down into the valleys, where land is more fertile?"

The other answered quietly, "Folks that have lived on the mounting-top ain't never content to be cooped up in the valleys, son."

"If you think the outsides are pitiful," exclaimed Philip, "wait till you see the insides! I was only a child when we lived up here, but I have never forgotten. I ought to have come back long ago. Frankly, I have shirked it."

"When you lived up here? Why, Philip! When did you ever live in the mountains?" cried Jacqueline.

"Father and I brought my mother up here to get well. It was before you appeared on the scene, dear."

"I'd forgotten. And she didn't get well," said the girl, pityingly, reaching over to touch his hand. "Poor little boy Philip!"

Jacqueline could think of nothing more dreadful than a world without a mother in it. The pathos of that lonely little fellow who was so soon to lose his father, too, came over her in a wave.

"I wish I had been alive then to comfort you!" she said, quite passionately.

This new thing that had come to her lately had made her heart almost too big and tender. Since she had learned to love Channing, that always sensitive heart of hers ached and swelled with every grief or joy that passed, as a wind-harp thrills to the touch of passing airs.

She looked back at her lover suddenly, to remind herself of the blissful fact that he was there, and that presently, somehow, they would manage to be alone together.

The two had come to the stage where the world seems crowded with onlookers, and the silent solitude of the heights beyond lured them on as to a haven of refuge. Philip could not always be with them during the week ahead, nor Brother Bates. Meanwhile, the most assiduous of chaperons was powerless to deflect the precious current of consciousness that flowed between them, striking out sparks at every contact of touch or glance....

At noon they rested beside a little clear leaping stream, and investigated with satisfaction the lunch-basket Big Liza had packed for them at Storm. Afterwards, Jacqueline curled herself up in the leaves and went to sleep like a contented young kitten, while the three men smoked in silence, careful not to disturb her. Once, glancing at Channing, Philip surprised in his face, as he watched her, such a look of tenderness that his heart smote him.

"What a fool I am with my suspicions!" he thought. "Of course he wants her. Dear little thing! How could he help it?"

After that he was a more merciful chaperon, and rode ahead up the trail quite obliviously, engaging Brother Bates in conversation.

It was sunset before they came to their destination, their high spirits fallen into rather weary silence, all of them glad of the sight of the cabin where the peddler had arranged for them to spend the night. He had sent word ahead to friends of his, and they were evidently expected. A man watching in the doorway called over his shoulder, "Here they be, Mehitabel," and came forward with the grave mountain greeting, "Howdy, strangers."

They were led in at once to supper, an appalling meal of soggy cornbread and molasses, with hog-meat swimming in grease. Their host and his two sons ate with them, waited on by his wife and daughter, all five staring at Jacqueline in unwinking silence, regarding her friendly efforts to draw them into conversation as frivolity beneath their notice.

The author glanced around him with a rather alarmed interest. It was evident that the room in which they were served not only as kitchen and living-room, but as bed-chamber also. It was the only room the cabin boasted, with the exception of a small lean-to, devoted, if he could trust his nostrils, to the family pig. Each end of the room was filled by a long bunk, and he came to the correct conclusion that one was for the women of the household, the other for the men. There were no windows, no means of ventilation whatever except the two doors opposite each other, and the rough chimney at which the woman Mehitabel performed her extremely primitive feats of cooking.

Channing began to wish that he had been less avid for local color; but at that moment he caught Jacqueline's eye regarding him demurely, and was of a sudden reconciled to his surroundings.

While they ate, through the open door they saw a scattering stream of people pass along the trail below, all going in the same direction; on foot, on horseback, and mule-back, and ox-back. Many animals carried more than one rider. One old plow-horse came along, led by a sturdy patriarch, crowded from mane to crupper with children of assorted sizes.

"Why, how queer, when we never passed a single soul all day!" said Jacqueline. "Where do they all come from, Brother Bates, and where are they going?"

"To the meetin'-house down the trail a ways," he explained. "I sont word ahead that a preacher was comin', and all the folks is turnin' out."

Philip gave a faint groan. "What, to-night?" He had hoped for a few hours' rest after the day's journey.

"Why, in co'se! Hit's moonlight to-night, an' the teacher's done let out school a-purpose. I done sont word," said the Apostle. "'T ain't no time to waste. 'Watch and wait lest the Bridegroom cometh and find thee sleepin'.'"

"So there's a school even in these wilds? A lonely job for a school-ma'am, I should think. Is she pretty?" asked Channing, hopefully, with a thought of the accepted mountain school-teacher of current fiction.

"'T ain't no her. It's a him," remarked the host; his one contribution to the conversation.

"Reckon a her'd have right smart trouble keepin' school on Misty, wouldn't she, Anse?" chuckled Brother Bates.

"'Low she would," grunted the other, and relapsed into silence.

Afterwards, on their way to the meeting-house, Jacqueline inquired into his meaning. "Why would a woman have trouble teaching school here? Are the children so very bad?"

The Apostle explained, "'T ain't so much the chillun as the grown folks, specially the men folks. You see Teacher makes 'em all come on moonlight nights; the paws and maws, and the gran'paws and gran'maws, too. He's got a whole lot of new-fangled notions, Teacher has. They don't allus take to 'em kindly—you know how old folks are about new-fangled ways. But he makes 'em come ef they wants to or not, and he larns 'em, too—not only spellin' and sums and such-like, but how to take keer of the babies, and the sick folks, and how to git the hens to lay, and how to cook, and all!"

"To cook! That is indeed a noble work," murmured Channing, devoutly, having recourse to his flask of soda-mints. "Would that our hostess might take advantage of the opportunity!"

"She have," said Brother Bates, proudly. "She done nussed the whole fambly through a fever-sickness a little while ago, doin' like Teacher told her, and nary one of 'em died. But she ain't got so fur as cookin' yet."

"I'd like to meet this teacher," said Philip, heartily. "Will he be at the meeting to-night?"

The Apostle sighed. "Reck'n he won't. Ain't it queer how a smart man like that don't take no stock in the Word of God? 'Lows he's scrambled along without it all his life, and allus will. But I dunno. I dunno. I expect the Lord's got a surprise up his sleeve for Teacher."

The door-yard of the rough cabin that was dignified by the name of meeting-house was quite crowded with men when they arrived. Philip went among them pleasantly, saying, "Good evening, my friends," shaking hands where he could find a hand to shake, greeted here and there by a gruff, "Howdy, Preacher," but for the most part welcomed in solemn, almost hostile silence.

"They're just kind o' bashful," murmured the peddler, in apology for his people.

"I know," smiled Philip, himself feeling a little shy, and like an intruder.

They filed in silently behind him, each depositing a gun in a rack beside the meeting-house door.

"I breathe more easily," murmured Channing in Jacqueline's ear. "For small mercies, let us be duly thankful. Lord, what a crew!"

The two followed Philip to the bare, uncarpeted platform that was to serve as altar. The girl saw to her dismay that there was no piano, not even a harmonium to assist her singing. Brother Bates acted as master of ceremonies. The peddler was evidently a man of great importance in the community, its one traveler, acquainted with the ways of cities.

"Let marryin' couples set on the right-hand, front benches. Preacher will attend to 'em after meetin'," he announced.

Four or five couples obeyed these instructions with subdued tittering, the fact that several of the brides-to-be carried young infants in their arms not adding appreciably to their embarrassment.

"Have they licenses?" murmured Philip.

"I dunno," replied the Apostle, serenely. "Ef they ain't, they kin git 'em afterwards. The Lord knows how fur they be from law-places."

The little community of Misty Ridge was at that time one of the poorest and most uncivilized in the Cumberland Mountains; many hours' ride, over trails that were at times impassable, from the nearest railroad; entirely unknown to the world below save when one of its sons was sent, for good and sufficient reason, down to the penitentiary. It is a literary fashion of the day to laud the Kentucky mountaineer as an uncouth hero, a sort of nobleman in disguise, guarding intact in his wilderness an inheritance of great racial traits for the strengthening of future generations. Unfortunately, with his good old Saxon name and his good old Saxon customs, he also inherits occasionally something of the moral nature which caused his Saxon ancestor to be deported overseas. The mountains of Kentucky, and of Tennessee, were settled to some extent by convicts who had served their time in the English penal colonies along the sea-coast.

Such an origin, doubtless, might have been claimed by the sparse settlement on Misty, and time had done nothing to mitigate any curse of inheritance. The beautiful, barren hills, their hidden riches as yet undiscovered, yielding so meager a livelihood in return for such bitter labor, served as ramparts between their people and the world beyond. Little help at that time reached them from without. Solitude, ignorance, direst poverty, form a soil in which bodies flourish better than souls, and even bodies do not flourish exceedingly.

Channing, gazing about at the faces below him, one and all with eyes fixed upon the fresh loveliness of Jacqueline, had a moment of acute uneasiness. What right had Benoix, who knew the mountains, to bring the girl into contact with such bestiality? The odor of packed humanity that came to his fastidious nostrils was as sickening as the odor of a bear-pit. He recalled tales of their untamable fierceness. He remembered the row of guns even now resting in a rack outside the door. His eye, going inadvertently to the sturdy figure of the clergyman, noticed a suspicious bulge in the hip-pocket of his riding-breeches. He started.

"Does Benoix carry a pistol?" he whispered to Jacqueline.

"Of course! I've got one, too," she answered cheerfully. "Where's yours?"

The author felt that he had lost his taste for mountaineering. He looked in vain for one of the beauteous mountain maids so satisfyingly frequent in the pages of current fiction. The women were all sallow, stolid, sullen, old beyond their years. Even the babies were sallow and stolid and old. Many of the men were muscular and well-grown, but with a lanky, stooping height that did not suggest health. Inflamed eyes were common in that congregation, hollow cheeks flushed with the sign there is no mistaking, faces vacuous and dull-eyed and foolishly a-grin.

"Ugh! Think of the germs," he said unhappily, under his breath. "Your friend the peddler is making signs at you."

Jacqueline, obedient to the signal, stopped to the edge of the platform and began to sing the first hymn that came to her mind. She found that she was singing alone. Channing did not know the air. She glanced imploringly at Philip, but he did not see her. He was studying his congregation. They sat in solemn silence, staring at Jacqueline.

At first her voice shook a little with self-consciousness, but she threw her head up gallantly, and went on, verse after verse. At the end she was singing as confidently as if Jemima and the little organ and the faithful choir of Storm church were behind her. Her voice died away in the final "Amen," and she went to her seat, still amid dead silence.

"Why didn't you help me out?" she whispered reproachfully to Philip.

"It wasn't necessary. Look at them!"

Then she saw that the stupidity, the grimness of all those watching faces was gone as if by magic. They had become bright, eager, almost tremulous with pleasure. The girl was touched. She understood why the peddler had so insisted upon Philip's ability to start a hymn. Music, such crude and simple music as came their way, meant to these starved natures all that they knew of beauty, of higher things, perhaps of religion.

In the hush that followed, Philip began: "The Lord is in His holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before Him."

It was a strange setting for the stately Episcopal service, simplified as Philip made it for the occasion; a bare, log-walled room, lit by smelling kerosene lamps, without altar, candles or cross, without religious symbol of any sort. Only Jacqueline followed the service, kneeling where the congregation should have knelt, making the responses in her clear young voice, joining him in the prayers. But Philip was aware of no incongruity. He gave them what he had to give, and felt none the less a priest because of his flannel shirt and his shabby riding-trousers. Cathedral or log-cabin, it was all one to him. He knew that with Jacqueline's singing, the Lord had indeed entered into His holy temple.

Presently he spoke to them as he would have spoken to his Sunday-school classes at home, earnestly and very simply, with none of the condescending blandness of the elder. Some of their homely phrases, their very accent, had crept unconsciously into his speech, a remnant of the impressionable days when he had lived for a while among mountain folk. Jacqueline realized that this unconscious adaptability was the secret of his hold on people, of their confiding trust in him. Whatever they might be, he was for the moment one of them, looking at their temptations, their failures, never from the outside but from their own point of view.

Brother Bates, a little worried at first by the mildness of his protege's voice and manner, realized after a few moments the people were listening to him as they had never listened to the hell-fire-and-damnation preachers of their previous experience. Not a man in that room, including Percival Channing, escaped the somewhat uncomfortable feeling that the text, "Do unto others as ye would be done by," had been chosen particularly for his benefit—which is perhaps the secret of great preaching.

Jacqueline, gazing about with great pride in her friend, saw that not only was the room crowded with listeners, but that others were standing outside in the porch. One profile, outlined for a few moments against a window, attracted her attention by contrast with those about it; an elderly face, worn by evident illness or suffering, sensitive and intelligent and refined, despite the gray stubble of beard on his cheeks and the rough flannel collar about his throat. Jacqueline watched him curiously, until her gaze drew his and he suddenly disappeared.

"He looked almost like a gentleman," she thought. "I wonder why he did not come inside?"

Her mind reverted to this man more than once.

When they were on their way back up the moonlit trail, she and Channing lingering behind the others, an explanation suddenly struck her.

"The non-believing school teacher, of course!" she exclaimed. "Ashamed to be caught listening to 'the Word of God.' Well, he may not be interested in the Word of God," she added musingly, "but he certainly was interested in the word of Philip. Never took his eye off Phil's face!"