"The house is right straight before you," said the conductor. "The number's in the transom."

She thanked him, descended, was on the sidewalk before Mrs. Wylie's. She looked at the house and her heart sank. She thought of the small sum in her purse; it was most unlikely that such a house as this would harbor her. For here was a grand stone stairway ascending to a deep stone portico, and within it great doors, bigger than those of the Wright mansion, the palace of Sutherland. However, she recalled the humble appearance and mode of speech of her friend the drug clerk and plucked up the courage to ascend and to ring.

A slattern, colored maid opened the door. At the first glance within, at the first whiff of the interior air, Susan felt more at ease. For she was seeing what even her bedazzled eyes recognized as cheap dowdiness, and the smell that assailed her nostrils was that of a house badly and poorly kept—the smell of cheap food and bad butter cooking, of cats, of undusted rooms, of various unrecognizable kinds of staleness. She stood in the center of the big dingy parlor, gazing round at the grimed chromos until Mrs. Wylie entered—a thin middle-aged woman with small brown eyes set wide apart, a perpetual frown, and a chin so long and so projected that she was almost jimber-jawed. While Susan explained stammeringly what she had come for, Mrs. Wylie eyed her with increasing disfavor. When Susan had finished, she unlocked her lips for the first time to say:

"The room's took."

"Oh!" cried Susan in dismay.

The telephone rang in the back parlor. Mrs. Wylie excused herself to answer. After a few words she closed the doors between. She was gone fully five minutes; to Susan it seemed an hour. She came back, saying:

"I've been talking to my nephew. He called up. Well, I reckon you can have the room. It ain't my custom to take in ladies as young as you. But you seem to be all right. Your parents allowed you to come?"

"I haven't any," replied Susan. "I'm here to find a place and support myself."

Mrs. Wylie continued to eye her dubiously. "Well, I have no wish to pry into your affairs. 'Mind your own business,' that's my rule." She spoke with defiance, as if the contrary were being asserted by some invisible person who might appear and gain hearing and belief. She went on: "If Mr. Ellison wants it, why I suppose it's all right. But you can't stay out later'n ten o'clock."

"I shan't go out at all of nights," said Susan eagerly.

"You look quiet," said Mrs. Wylie, with the air of adding that appearances were rarely other than deceptive.

"Oh, I am quiet," declared Susan. It puzzled her, this recurrence of the suggestion of noisiness.

"I can't allow much company—none in your room."

"There won't be any company." She blushed deeply. "That is, a—a young man from our town—he may call once. But he'll be off for the East right away."

Mrs. Wylie reflected on this, Susan the while standing uneasily, dreading lest decision would be against her. Finally Mrs. Wylie said:

"Robert says you want the five-dollar room. I'll show it to you."

They ascended two flights through increasing shabbiness. On the third floor at the rear was a room—a mere continuation of the narrow hall, partitioned off. It contained a small folding bed, a small table, a tiny bureau, a washstand hardly as large as that in the cabin on the boat, a row of hooks with a curtain of flowered chintz before them, a kitchen chair, a chromo of "Awake and Asleep," a torn and dirty rag carpet. The odor of the room, stale, damp, verging on moldy, seemed the fitting exhalation from such an assemblage of forbidding objects.

"It's a nice, comfortable room," said Mrs. Wylie aggressively. "I couldn't afford to give it and two meals for five dollars except till the first of September. After that it's eight."

"I'll be glad to stay, if you'll let me," said Susan. Mrs. Wylie's suspicion, so plain in those repellent eyes, took all the courage out of her. The great adventure seemed rapidly to be losing its charms. She could not think of herself as content or anything but sad and depressed in such surroundings as these. How much better it would be if she could live out in the open, out where it was attractive!

"I suppose you've got some baggage," said Mrs. Wylie, as if she rather expected to hear that she had not.

"I left it at the drug store," explained Susan.

"Your trunk?"

Susan started nervously at that explosive exclamation. "I—I haven't got a trunk—only a few things in a shawl strap."

"Well, I never!"

Mrs. Wylie tossed her head, clucked her tongue disgustedly against the roof of her mouth. "But I suppose if Mr. Ellison says so, why you can stay."

"Thank you," said Susan humbly. Even if it would not have been basest ingratitude to betray her friend, Mr. Wylie, still she would not have had the courage to confess the truth about Mr. Ellison and so get herself ordered into the street. "I—I think I'll go for my things."

"The custom is to pay in advance," said Mrs. Wylie sharply.

"Oh, yes—of course," stammered Susan.

She seated herself on the wooden chair and opened out her purse. She found the five among her few bills, extended it with trembling fingers toward Mrs. Wylie. At the same time she lifted her eyes. The woman's expression as she bored into the pocketbook terrified her. Never before had she seen the savage greediness that is bred in the city among the people who fight against fearful odds to maintain their respectability and to save themselves from the ever threatened drop to the despised working class.

"Thank you," said Mrs. Wylie, taking the bill as if she were conferring a favor upon Susan. "I make everybody pay promptly. The first of the week or out they go! I used to be easy and I came near going down."

"Oh, I shouldn't stay a minute if I couldn't pay," said the girl. "I'm going to look for something right away."

"Well, I don't want to discourage you, but there's a great many out of work. Still, I suppose you'll be able to wheedle some man into giving you a job. But I warn you I'm very particular about morals. If I see any signs——" Mrs. Wylie did not finish her sentence. Any words would have been weaker than her look.

Susan colored and trembled. Not at the poisonous hint as to how money could be got to keep on paying for that room, for the hint passed wide of Susan. She was agitated by the thought: if Mrs. Wylie should learn that she was not respectable! If Mrs. Wylie should learn that she was nameless—was born in disgrace so deep that, no matter how good she might be, she would yet be classed with the wicked.

"I'm down like a thousand of brick on any woman that is at all loose with the men," continued the landlady. "I never could understand how any woman could so far forget herself." And the woman whom the men had all her life been helping to their uttermost not to "forget herself" looked sharp suspicion and envy at Susan, the lovely. Why are women of the Mrs. Wylie sort so swift to suspect? Can it be that in some secret chamber of their never assailed hearts there lurks a longing—a feeling as to what they would do if they had the chance? Mrs. Wylie continued, "I hope you have strict Christian principles?"

"I was brought up Presbyterian," said Susan anxiously. She was far from sure that in Cincinnati and by its Mrs. Wylies Presbyterian would be regarded as Christian.

"There's your kind of a church a few squares from here," was all Mrs. Wylie deigned to reply. Susan suspected a sneer at Presbyterianism in her accent.

"That'll be nice," she murmured. She was eager to escape. "I'll go for my things."

"You can walk down and take the Fourth Street car," suggested her landlady. "Then you can watch out and not miss the store. The conductors are very impudent and forgetful."

Susan escaped from the house as speedily as her flying feet would take her down the two flights. In the street once more, her spirits rose. She went south to Fourth Street, decided to walk instead of taking a car. She now found herself in much more impressive surroundings than before, and realized that Sixth Street was really one of the minor streets. The further uptown she went, the more excited she became. After the district of stately mansions with wonderful carriages driving up and away and women dressed like those in the illustrated story papers, came splendid shops and hotels, finer than Susan had believed there were anywhere in the world. And most of the people—the crowds on crowds of people!—looked prosperous and cheerful and so delightfully citified! She wondered why so many of the men stared at her. She assumed it must be something rural in her appearance though that ought to have set the women to staring, too. But she thought little about this, so absorbed was she in seeing all the new things. She walked slowly, pausing to inspect the shop windows—the gorgeous dresses and hats and jewelry, the thousand costly things scattered in careless profusion. And the crowds! How secure she felt among these multitudes of strangers, not one of them knowing or suspecting her secret of shame! She no longer had the sense of being outcast, branded.

When she had gone so far that it seemed to her she certainly must have missed the drug store, carefully though she had inspected each corner as she went, she decided that she must stop someone of this hurrying throng and inquire the way. While she was still screwing her courage to this boldness, she espied the sign and hastened joyfully across the street. She and Wylie welcomed each other like old friends. He was delighted when he learned that she had taken the room.

"You won't mind Aunt Kate after a while," said he. "She's sour and nosey, but she's honest and respectable—and that's the main thing just now with you. And I think you'll get a job all right. Aunt Kate's got a lady friend that's head saleslady at Shillito's. She'll know of something."

Wylie was so kind and so hopeful that Susan felt already settled. As soon as customers came in, she took her parcel and went, Wylie saying, "I'll drop round after supper and see how things are getting on." She took the Sixth Street car back, and felt like an old resident. She was critical of Sixth Street now, and of the women she had been admiring there less than two hours before—critical of their manners and of their dress. The exterior of the boarding house no longer awed her. She was getting a point of view—as she proudly realized. By the time Sam came—and surely that wouldn't be many days—she would be quite transformed.

She mounted the steps and was about to ring when Mrs. Wylie herself, with stormy brow and snapping eyes, opened the door. "Go into the parlor," she jerked out from between her unpleasant-looking receding teeth.

Susan gave her a glance of frightened wonder and obeyed.



CHAPTER VIII

AT the threshold her bundles dropped to the floor and all color fled from her face. Before her stood her Uncle George and Sam Wright and his father. The two elderly men were glowering at her; Sam, white as his shirt and limp, was hanging his head.

"So, miss!—You've got back, eh?" cried her uncle in a tone she would not have believed could come from him.

As quickly as fear had seized her she now shook it off. "Yes, Uncle," she said calmly, meeting his angry eyes without flinching. And back came that expression of resolution—of stubbornness we call it when it is the flag of opposition to our will.

"What'd have become of you," demanded her uncle, "if I hadn't found out early this morning, and got after Sam here and choked the truth out of him?"

Susan gazed at Sam; but he was such a pitiful figure, so mean and frightened, that she glanced quickly back to her uncle. She said:

"But he didn't know where I was."

"Don't lie to me," cried Warham. "It won't do you any good, any more than his lying kept us from finding you. We came on the train and saw the Waterburys in the street and they'd seen you go into the drug store. We'd have caught you there if we'd been a few minutes sooner, but we drove, and got here in time. Now, tell me, Susan"—and his voice was cruelly harsh—"all about what's been going on between you and Sam."

She gazed fearlessly and was silent.

"Speak up!" commanded Sam's father.

"Yes—and no lies," said her uncle.

"I don't know what you mean," Susan at last answered—truthfully enough, yet to gain time, too.

"You can't play that game any longer," cried Warham. "You did make a fool of me, but my eyes are open. Your aunt's right about you."

"Oh, Uncle George!" said the girl, a sob in her voice.

But he gazed pitilessly—gazed at the woman he was now abhorring as the treacherous, fallen, unsexed daughter of fallen Lorella. "Speak out. Crying won't help you. What have you and this fellow been up to? You disgrace!"

Susan shrank and shivered, but answered steadfastly, "That's between him and me, Uncle."

Warham gave a snort of fury, turned to the elder Wright. "You see, Wright," cried he. "It's as my wife and I told you. Your boy's lying. We'll send the landlady out for a preacher and marry them."

"Hold on, George," objected Wright soothingly. "I agreed to that only if there'd been something wrong. I'm not satisfied yet." He turned to Susan, said in his gruff, blunt way:

"Susan, have you been loose with my boy here?"

"Loose?" said Susan wonderingly.

Sam roused himself. "Tell them it isn't so, Susan," he pleaded, and his voice was little better than a whine of terror. "Your uncle's going to kill me and my father'll kick me out."

Susan's heart grew sick as she looked at him—looked furtively, for she was ashamed to see him so abject. "If you mean did I let him kiss me," she said to Mr. Wright, "why, I did. We kissed several times. But we had the right to. We were engaged."

Sam turned on his father in an agony of terror. "That isn't true!" he cried. "I swear it isn't, father. We aren't engaged. I only made love to her a little, as a fellow does to lots of girls."

Susan looked at him with wide, horrified eyes. "Sam!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "Sam!"

Sam's eyes dropped, but he managed to turn his face in her direction. The situation was too serious for him; he did not dare to indulge in such vanities as manhood or manly appearance. "That's the truth, Susan," he said sullenly. "You talked a lot about marrying but I never thought of such a thing."

"But—you said—you loved me."

"I didn't mean anything by it."

There fell a silence that was interrupted by Mr. Wright. "You see there's nothing in it, Warham. I'll take my boy and go."

"Not by a damn sight!" cried Warham. "He's got to marry her. Susan, did Sam promise to marry you?"

"When he got through college," replied Susan.

"I thought so! And he persuaded you to run away."

"No," said Susan. "He——"

"I say yes," stormed her uncle. "Don't lie!"

"Warham! Warham!" remonstrated Mr. Wright. "Don't browbeat the girl."

"He begged me not to go," said Susan.

"You lying fool!" shouted her uncle. Then to Wright, "If he did ask her to stay it was because he was afraid it would all come out—just as it has."

"I never promised to marry her!" whined Sam. "Honest to God, father, I never did. Honest to God, Mr. Warham! You know that's so, Susan. It was you that did all the marrying talk."

"Yes," she said slowly. "Yes, I believe it was." She looked dazedly at the three men. "I supposed he meant marriage because—" her voice faltered, but she steadied it and went on—"because we loved each other."

"I knew it!" cried her uncle. "You hear, Wright? She admits he betrayed her."

Susan remembered the horrible part of her cousin's sex revelations. "Oh, no!" she cried. "I wouldn't have let him do that—even if he had wanted to. No—not even if we'd been married."

"You see, Warham!" cried Mr. Wright, in triumph.

"I see a liar!" was Warham's furious answer. "She's trying to defend him and make out a case for herself."

"I am telling the truth," said Susan.

Warham gazed unbelievingly at her, speechless with fury. Mr. Wright took his silk hat from the corner of the piano. "I'm satisfied they're innocent," said he. "So I'll take my boy and go."

"Not if I know it!" retorted Warham. "He's got to marry her."

"But the girl says she's pure, says he never spoke of marriage, says he begged her not to run away. Be reasonable, Warham."

"For a good Christian," sneered he at Wright, "you're mighty easily convinced by a flimsy lie. In your heart you know the boy has wronged her and that she's shielding him, just as——" There Warham checked himself; it would be anything but timely to remind Wright of the character of the girl's mother.

"I'll admit," said Mr. Wright smoothly, "that I wasn't overanxious for my boy's marriage with a girl whose mother was—unfortunate. But if your charge had been true, Warham, I'd have made the boy do her justice, she being only seventeen. Come, Sam."

Sam slunk toward the door. Warham stared fiercely at the elder Wright. "And you call yourself a Christian!" he sneered.

At the door—Sam had already disappeared—Mr. Wright paused to say, "I'm going to give Sam a discipline he'll remember. The girl's only been foolish. Don't be harsh with her."

"You damned hypocrite!" shouted Warham. "I might have known what to expect from a man who cut the wages of his hands to pay his church subscription."

But Wright was far too crafty to be drawn. He went on pushing Sam before him.

As the outer door closed behind them Mrs. Wylie appeared. "I want you both to get out of my house as quick as you can," she snapped. "My boarders'll be coming to dinner in a few minutes."

Warham took his straw hat from the floor beside the chair behind him. "I've nothing to do with this girl here. Good day, madam." And he strode out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

Mrs. Wylie looked at Susan with storming face and bosom. Susan did not see. She was gazing into space, her face blanched. "Clear out!" cried Mrs. Wylie. And she ran to the outer door and opened it. "How dare you come into a respectable house!" She wished to be so wildly angry that she would forget the five dollars which she, as a professing Christian in full church standing, would have to pay back if she remembered. "Clear out this minute!" she cried shrilly. "If you don't, I'll throw your bundle into the street and you after it."

Susan took up the bundle mechanically, slowly went out on the stoop. The door closed with a slam behind her. She descended the steps, walked a few yards up the street, paused at the edge of the curb and looked dazedly about. Her uncle stood beside her. "Now where are you going?" he said roughly.

Susan shook her head.

"I suppose," he went on, "I've got to look after you. You shan't disgrace my daughter any further."

Susan simply looked at him, her eyes unseeing, her brain swept clean of thought by the cyclone that had destroyed all her dreams and hopes. She was not horrified by his accusations; such things had little meaning for one practically in complete ignorance of sex relations. Besides, the miserable fiasco of her romantic love left her with a feeling of abasement, of degradation little different from that which overwhelms a woman who believes her virtue is her all and finds herself betrayed and abandoned. She now felt indeed the outcast, looked down upon by all the world.

"If you hadn't lied," he fumed on, "you'd have been his wife and a respectable woman."

The girl shivered.

"Instead, you're a disgrace. Everybody in Sutherland'll know you've gone the way your mother went."

"Go away," said the girl piteously. "Let me alone."

"Alone? What will become of you?" He addressed the question to himself, not to her.

"It doesn't matter," was her reply in a dreary tone. "I've been betrayed, as my mother was. It doesn't matter what——"

"I knew it!" cried Warham, with no notion of what the girl meant by the word "betrayed." "Why didn't you confess the truth while he was here and his father was ready to marry him to you? I knew you'd been loose with him, as your Aunt Fanny said."

"But I wasn't," said Susan. "I wouldn't do such a thing."

"There you go, lying again!"

"It doesn't matter," said she. "All I want is for you to go away."

"You do?" sneered he. "And then what? I've got to think of Ruthie." He snatched the bundle from her hand. "Come on! I must do all I can to keep the disgrace to my family down. As for you, you don't deserve anything but the gutter, where you'd sink if I left you. Your aunt's right. You're rotten. You were born rotten. You're your mother's own brat."

"Yes, I am," she cried. "And I'm proud of it!" She turned from him, was walking rapidly away.

"Come with me!" ordered Warham, following and seizing her by the arm.

"No," said Susan, wrenching herself free.

"Then I'll call a policeman and have you locked up."

Uncle and niece stood regarding each other, hatred and contempt in his gaze, hatred and fear in hers.

"You're a child in law—though, God knows, you're anything but a child in fact. Come along with me. You've got to. I'm going to see that you're put out of harm's way."

"You wouldn't take me back to Sutherland!" she cried.

He laughed savagely. "I guess not! You'll not show your face there again—though I've no doubt you'd be brazen enough to brass it out. No—you can't pollute my home again."

"I can't go back to Sutherland!"

"You shan't, I say. You ran off because you had disgraced yourself."

"No!" cried Susan. "No!"

"Don't lie to me! Don't speak to me. I'll see what I can do to hide this mess. Come along!"

Susan looked helplessly round the street, saw nothing, not even eager, curious faces pressed against many a window pane, saw only a desolate waste. Then she walked along beside her uncle, both of them silent, he carrying her bundle, she tightly clutching her little purse.

Perhaps the most amazing, the most stunning, of all the blows fate had thus suddenly showered upon her was this transformation of her uncle from gentleness to ferocity. But many a far older and far wiser woman than seventeen-year-old Susan has failed to understand how it is with the man who does not regard woman as a fellow human being. To such she is either an object of adoration, a quintessence of purity and innocence, or less than the dust, sheer filth. Warham's anger was no gust. He was simply the average man of small intelligence, great vanity, and abject snobbishness or terror of public opinion. There could be but one reason for the flight of Lorella's daughter—rottenness. The only point to consider now was how to save the imperiled family standing, how to protect his own daughter, whom his good nature and his wife's weakness had thus endangered. The one thing that could have appeased his hatred of Susan would have been her marriage to Sam Wright. Then he would have—not, indeed, forgiven or reinstated her—but tolerated her. It is the dominance of such ideas as his that makes for woman the slavery she discovers beneath her queenly sway if she happens to do something deeply displeasing to her masculine subject and adorer.

They went to the Central Station. The O. and M. express which connected with the train on the branch line to Sutherland would not leave until a quarter past two. It was only a few minutes past one. Warham led the way into the station restaurant; with a curt nod he indicated a seat at one of the small tables, and dropped into the opposite seat. He ordered beefsteak and fried potatoes, coffee and apple pie.

"Sit still!" he said to her roughly and rose to go out to buy a paper.

The girl sat with her hands in her lap and her eyes upon them. She looked utterly, pitifully tired. A moment and he came back to resume his seat and read the paper. When the waiter flopped down the steak and the dish of greasily fried potatoes before his plate, he stuffed the paper in his pocket, cut a slice of the steak and put it on the plate. The waiter noisily exchanged it for the empty plate before Susan. Warham cut two slices of the steak for himself, took a liberal helping of the potatoes, pushed the dish toward her.

"Do you want the coffee now, or with the pie?" asked the waiter.

"Now," said Warham.

"Coffee for the young lady, too?"

Warham scowled at her. "Coffee?" he demanded.

She did not answer; she did not hear.

"Yes, she wants coffee," said Warham. "Hustle it!"

"Yes, sir." And the waiter bustled away with a great deal of motion that created a deceptive impression of speed. Warham was helping himself to steak again when the coffee came a suspicious-looking liquid diffusing an odor of staleness reheated again and again, an under odor of metal pot not too frequently scoured.

Warham glanced at Susan's plate. She had not disturbed the knife and fork on either side of it. "Eat!" he commanded. And when she gave no sign of having heard, he repeatedly sharply, "Eat, I tell you."

She started, nervously took up the knife and fork, cut a morsel off the slice of steak. When she lifted it to her lips, she suddenly put it back in the plate. "I can't," she said.

"You've got to," ordered he. "I won't have you acting this way."

"I can't," she repeated monotonously. "I feel sick." Nature had luckily so made her that it was impossible for her to swallow when her nerves were upset or when she was tired; thus, she would not have the physical woes that aggravate and prolong mental disturbance if food is taken at times when it instantly turns to poison.

He repeated his order in a still more savage tone. She put her elbows on the table, rested her head wearily upon her hands, shook her head. He desisted.

When he had eaten all of the steak, except the fat and the gristly tail, and nearly all the potatoes, the waiter took the used dishes away and brought two generous slices of apple pie and set down one before each. With the pie went a cube of American cream or "rat-trap" cheese. Warham ate his own pie and cheese; then, as she had not touched hers, he reached for it and ate it also. Now he was watching the clock and, between liftings of laden fork to his mouth, verifying the clock's opinion of the hour by his own watch. He called for the bill, paid it, gave the waiter five cents—a concession to the tipping custom of the effete city which, judging by the waiter's expression, might as well not have been made. Still, Warham had not made it with an idea of promoting good feeling between himself and the waiter, but simply to show that he knew the city and its ways. He took up the shawl strap, said, "Come on" in the voice which he deemed worthy of the fallen creature he must, through Christian duty and worldly prudence, for the time associate with. She rose and followed him to the ticket office. He had the return half of his own ticket. When she heard him ask for a ticket to North Sutherland she shivered. She knew that her destination was his brother Zeke's farm.

From Cincinnati to North Vernon, where they were to change cars, he sat beside her without speech. At North Vernon, where they had to occupy a bench outside the squat and squalid station for nearly two hours, he sat beside her without speech. And without a single word on either side they journeyed in the poking, no-sooner-well-started-than-stopping accommodation train southbound. Several Sutherland people were aboard. He nodded surlily to those who spoke to him. He read an Indianapolis paper which he had bought at North Vernon. All the way she gazed unseeingly out over the fair June landscape of rolling or hilly fields ripening in the sun.

At North Sutherland he bade her follow him to a dilapidated barn a few yards from the railway tracks, where was displayed a homemade sign—"V. Goslin. Livery and Sale Stable." There was dickering and a final compromise on four dollars where the proprietor had demanded five and Warham had declared two fifty liberal. A surrey was hitched with two horses. Warham opened the awkward door to the rear seat and ordered Susan to jump in. She obeyed; he put the bundle on the floor beside her. He sat with the driver—the proprietor himself. The horses set off at a round pace over the smooth turnpike. It was evening, and a beautiful coolness issued from the woods on either side. They skimmed over the long level stretches; they climbed hills, they raced down into valleys. Warham and the ragged, rawboned old proprietor kept up a kind of conversation—about crops and politics, about the ownership, value, and fertility of the farms they were passing. Susan sat quiet, motionless most of the time.

The last daylight faded; the stars came out; the road wound in and out, up and down, amid cool dark silence and mysterious fascinating shadows. The moon appeared above the tree tops straight ahead—a big moon, with a lower arc of the rim clipped off. The turnpike ended; they were making equally rapid progress over the dirt road which was in perfect condition as there had been no rain for several days. The beat of the flying hoofs was soft now; the two men's voices, fell into a lower key; the moon marked out the line of the road clearly, made strange spectral minglings of light and darkness in the woods, glorified the open fields and gave the occasional groups of farm buildings an ancient beauty and dignity. The girl slept.

At nine o'clock the twenty-mile drive ended in a long, slow climb up a road so washed out, so full of holes and bowlders, that it was no road at all but simply a weather-beaten hillside. A mile of this, with the liveryman's curses—"dod rot it" and "gosh dang it" and similar modifications of profanity for Christian use and for the presence of "the sex"—ringing out at every step. Susan soon awakened, rather because the surrey was pitching so wildly than because of Goslin's denunciations. A brief level stretch and they stopped for Warham to open the outer gate into his brother Zeke's big farm. A quarter of a mile through wheat to the tops of the wheels and they reached the second gate. A descent into a valley, a crossing of a creek, an ascent of a steep hill, and they were at the third gate—between pasture and barnyard. Now they came into view of the house, set upon a slope where a spring bubbled out. The house was white and a white picket fence cut off its lawn from the barnyard. A dog with a deep voice began to bark. They drove up to the front gate and stopped. The dog barked in a frenzy of rage, and they heard his straining and jerking at his chain. A clump of cedars brooded to the right of the house; their trunks were whitewashed up to the lowest branches. The house had a high stoop with wooden steps.

As Warham descended and hallooed, there came a fierce tugging at the front door from the inside. But the front door was not in the habit of being opened, and stoutly resisted. The assault grew more strenuous; the door gave way and a tall thin farmer appeared.

"Hello, Zeke," called George. He opened the surrey door. "Get down," he said to the girl, at the same time taking her bundle. He set it on the horse block beside the gate, took out his pocketbook and paid over the four dollars. "Good-by, Vic," said he pleasantly. "That's a good team you've got."

"Not so coarse," said Vic. "Good-by, Mr. Warham." And off he drove.

Zeke Warham had now descended the steps and was opening the front gate, which was evidently as unaccustomed to use as the front door. "Howdy, George," said he. "Ain't that Susie you've got with you?" Like George, Zeke had had an elementary education. But he had married an ignorant woman, and had lived so long among his farm hands and tenants that he used their mode of speech.

"Yes, it's Susie," said George, shaking hands with his brother.

"Howdy, Susie," said Zeke, shaking hands with her. "I see you've got your things with you. Come to stay awhile?"

George interrupted. "Susan, go up on the porch and take your bundle."

The girl took up the shawl strap and went to the front door. She leaned upon the railing of the stoop and watched the two men standing at the gate. George was talking to his brother in a low tone. Occasionally the brother uttered an ejaculation. She could not hear; their heads were so turned that she could not see their faces. The moon made it almost as bright as day. From the pasture woods came a low, sweet chorus of night life—frogs and insects and occasionally a night bird. From the orchard to the left and the clover fields beyond came a wonderful scented breeze. She heard a step in the hall; her Aunt Sallie appeared—a comfortable, voluble woman, a hard worker and a harder eater and showing it in thin hair and wrinkled face.

"Why, Susie Lenox, ain't that you?" she exclaimed.

"Yes, Aunt," said Susan.

Her aunt kissed her, diffusing that earthy odor which is the basis of the smell of country persons. At various hours of the day this odor would be modified with the smell of cow stables, of chickens, of cooking, according to immediate occupation. But whatever other smell there was, the earthy smell persisted. And it was the smell of the house, too.

"Who's at the gate with your Uncle Zeke?" inquired Sallie. "Ain't it George?"

"Yes," said Susan.

"Why don't he come in?" She raised her voice. "George, ain't you coming in?"

"Howdy, Sallie," called George. "You take the girl in. Zeke and I'll be along."

"Some business, I reckon," said her aunt to Susan. "Come on. Have you had supper?"

"No," said Susan. She was hungry now. The splendid health of the girl that had calmed her torment of soul into a dull ache was clamoring for food—food to enable her body to carry her strong and enduring through whatever might befall.

"I'll set something out for you," said Sallie. "Come right in. You might leave your bundle here by the parlor door. We'll put you in the upstairs room."

They passed the front stairway, went back through the hall, through the big low-ceilinged living-room with its vast fireplace now covered for the warm season by a screen of flowered wallpaper. They were in the plain old dining-room with its smaller fireplace and its big old-fashioned cupboards built into the wall on either side of the projecting chimney-piece. "There ain't much," resumed Sallie. "But I reckon you kin make out."

On the gayly patterned table cover she set an array of substantial plates and glasses. From various cupboards in dining-room and adjoining kitchen she assembled a glass pitcher of sweet milk, a glass pitcher of buttermilk, a plate of cold cornbread, a platter of cold fried chicken, a dish of golden butter, a pan of cold fried potatoes, a jar of preserved crab apples and another of peach butter. Susan watched with hungry eyes. She was thinking of nothing but food now. Her aunt looked at her and smiled.

"My, but you're shootin' up!" she exclaimed, admiring the girl's tall, straight figure. "And you don't seem to get stringy and bony like so many, but keep nice and round. Do set down."

"I—I think I'll wait until Uncle George comes."

"Nothing of the kind!" She pushed a wooden chair before one of the two plates she had laid. "I see you've still got that lovely skin. And how tasty you dress! Now, do set!"

Susan seated herself.

"Pitch right in, child," urged Sallie. "How's yer aunt and her Ruth?"

"They're—they're well, thank you."

"Do eat!"

"No," said Susan. "I'll wait for Uncle."

"Never mind your manners. I know you're starved." Then seeing that the girl would not eat, she said, "Well, I'll go fetch him."

But Susan stopped her. "Please please don't," she entreated.

Sallie stared to oppose; then, arrested by the intense, appealing expression in those violet-gray eyes, so beautifully shaded by dark lashes and brows, she kept silent, bustled aimlessly about, boiling with suddenly aroused curiosity. It was nearly half an hour by the big square wooden clock on the chimney-piece when Susan heard the steps of her two uncles. Her hunger fled; the deathly sickness surged up again. She trembled, grew ghastly in the yellow lamplight. Her hands clutched each other in her lap.

"Why, Susie!" cried her aunt. "Whatever is the matter of you!"

The girl lifted her eyes to her aunt's face the eyes of a wounded, suffering, horribly suffering animal. She rose, rushed out of the door into the yard, flung herself down on the grass. But still she could not get the relief of tears. After a while she sat up and listened. She heard faintly the voices of her uncle and his relatives. Presently her aunt came out to her. She hid her face in her arm and waited for the new harshness to strike.

"Get up and come in, Susie." The voice was kind, was pitying—not with the pity that galls, but with the pity of one who understands and feels and is also human, the pity that soothes. At least to this woman she was not outcast.

The girl flung herself down again and sobbed—poured out upon the bosom of our mother earth all the torrents of tears that had been damming up within her. And Sallie knelt beside her and patted her now and then, with a "That's right. Cry it out, sweetie."

When tears and sobs subsided Sallie lifted her up, walked to the house with her arm round her. "Do you feel better?"

"Some," admitted Susan.

"The men folks have went. So we kin be comfortable. After you've et, you'll feel still better."

George Warham had made a notable inroad upon the food and drink. But there was an abundance left. Susan began with a hesitating sipping at a glass of milk and nibbling at one of the generous cubes of old-fashioned cornbread. Soon she was busy. It delighted Sallie to see her eat. She pressed the preserves, the chicken, the cornbread upon her. "I haven't eaten since early this morning," apologized the girl.

"That means a big hole to fill," observed Sallie. "Try this buttermilk."

But Susan could hold no more.

"I reckon you're pretty well tired out," observed Sallie.

"I'll help you straighten up," said Susan, rising.

"No. Let me take you up to bed—while the men's still outside."

Susan did not insist. They returned through the empty sitting-room and along the hall. Aunt Sallie took the bundle, and they ascended to the spare bedroom. Sallie showed her into the front room—a damp, earthy odor; a wallpaper with countless reproductions of two little brown girls in a brown swing under a brown tree; a lofty bed, white and tomb-like; some preposterous artificial flowers under glass on chimney-piece and table; three bright chromos on the walls; "God Bless Our Home" in pink, blue and yellow worsted over the door.

"I'll run down and put the things away," said her aunt. "Then I'll come back."

Susan put her bundle on the sofa, opened it, found nightgown and toilet articles on top. She looked uncertainly about, rapidly undressed, got into the nightgown. "I'll turn down the bed and lie on it until Auntie comes," she said to herself. The bed was delightfully cool; the shuck mattress made soft crackling sounds under her and gave out a soothing odor of the fields. Hardly had her head touched the pillow when she fell sound asleep. In a few minutes her aunt came hurrying in, stopped short at sight of that lovely childlike face with the lamplight full upon it. One of Susan's tapering arms was flung round her dark wavy hair. Sallie Warham smiled gently. "Bless the baby" she said half aloud. Then her smile faded and a look of sadness and pity came. "Poor child!" she murmured. "The Warham men's hard. But then all the men's hard. Poor child." And gently she kissed the girl's flushed cheek. "And she never had no mother, nor nothing." She sighed, gradually lowered the flame of the little old glass lamp, blew it out, and went noiselessly from the room, closing the door behind her.



CHAPTER IX

SUSAN sat up in bed suddenly, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. It was broad day, and the birds were making a mighty clamor. She gazed round, astonished that it was not her own room. Then she remembered. But it was as a child remembers; for when we have the sense of perfect physical well-being we cannot but see our misfortunes with the child's sense of unreality—and Susan had not only health but youth, was still in the child stage of the period between childhood and womanhood. She lay down again, with the feeling that so long as she could stay in that comfortable bed, with the world shut out, just so long would all be well with her. Soon, however, the restlessness of all nature under the stimulus and heat of that brilliant day communicated itself to her vigorous young body. For repose and inaction are as foreign to healthy life as death itself, of which they are the symptoms; and if ever there was an intense and vivid life, Susan had it. She got up and dressed, and leaned from the window, watching the two-horse reaper in the wheat fields across the hollow of the pasture, and listening to its faint musical whirr. The cows which had just been milked were moving sedately through the gate into the pasture, where the bull, under a tree, was placidly awaiting them. A boy, in huge straw hat and a blue cotton shirt and linsey woolsey trousers rolled high upon his brown bare legs, was escorting the herd.

Her aunt in fresh, blue, checked calico came in. "Wouldn't you like some breakfast?" said she. And Susan read in her manner that the men were out of the way.

"No, I don't feel hungry," Susan replied.

She thought this was true; but when she was at the table she ate almost as heartily as she had the night before. As Susan ate she gazed out into the back yard of the house, where chickens of all sizes, colors and ages were peering and picking about. Through the fence of the kitchen garden she saw Lew, the farm hand, digging potatoes. There were ripening beans on tall poles, and in the farther part the forming heads of cabbages, the sprouting melon vines, the beautiful fresh green of the just springing garden corn. The window through which she was looking was framed in morning glories and hollyhocks, and over by the garden gate were on the one side a clump of elders, on the other the hardy graceful stalks of gaudily spreading sunflowers. Bees flew in and out, and one lighted upon the dish of honey in the comb that went so well with the hot biscuit.

She rose and wandered out among the chickens, to pick up little fluffy youngsters one after another, and caress them, to look in the henhouse itself, where several hens were sitting with the pensive expression that accompanies the laying of eggs. She thought of those other hens, less conventional, who ran away to lay in secret places in the weeds, to accumulate a store against the time when the setting instinct should possess them.

She thought of those cannier, less docile hens and laughed. She opened a gate into the barnyard, intending to go to the barn for a look at the horses, taking in the duck pond and perhaps the pigs on the way. Her Uncle George's voice arrested her.

"Susan," he cried. "Come here."

She turned and looked wistfully at him. The same harsh, unforgiving countenance—mean with anger and petty thoughts. As she moved hesitatingly toward him he said, "You are not to go out of the yard." And he reentered the house. What a mysterious cruel world! Could it be the same world she had lived in so happily all the years until a few days ago—the same she had always found "God's beautiful world," full of gentleness and kindness?

And why had it changed? What was this sin that after a long sleep in her mother's grave had risen to poison everyone against her? And why had it risen? It was all beyond her.

She strolled wretchedly within bounds, with a foreboding of impending evil. She watched Lew in the garden; she got her aunt to let her help with the churning—drive the dasher monotonously up and down until the butter came; then she helped work the butter, helped gather the vegetables for dinner, did everything and anything to keep herself from thinking. Toward eleven o'clock her Uncle Zeke appeared in the dining-room, called his wife from the kitchen. Susan felt that at last something was to happen. After a long time her aunt returned; there were all the evidences of weeping in her face.

"You'd better go to your room and straighten it up," she said without looking at the girl. "The thing has aired long enough, I reckon. . . . And you'd better stay up there till I call you."

Susan had finished the room, was about to unpack the heavy-laden shawl strap and shake the wrinkles out of the skirts, folded away for two days now. She heard the sound of a horse's hoofs, went to the window. A young man whom she recognized as one of her Uncle Zeke's tenants was hitching to the horse block a well-set-up young mare drawing a species of broad-seated breaking sulky. He had a handsome common face, a wavy black mustache. She remembered that his name was Ferguson—Jeb Ferguson, and that he was working on shares what was known as "the creek-bottom farm," which began about a mile and a half away, straight down the pasture hollow. He glanced up at the window, raised his black slouch hat, and nodded with the self-conscious, self-assured grin of the desired of women. She tried to return this salute with a pleasant smile. He entered the gate and she heard his boots upon the front steps.

Now away across the hollow another figure appeared—a man on horseback coming through the wheat fields. He was riding toward the farther gate of the pasture at a leisurely dignified pace. She had only made out that he had abundant whiskers when the sound of a step upon the stairs caused her to turn. As that step came nearer her heart beat more and more wildly. Her wide eyes fixed upon the open door of the room. It was her Uncle George.

"Sit down," he said as he reached the threshold. "I want to talk to you."

She seated herself, with hands folded in her lap. Her head was aching from the beat of the blood in her temples.

"Zeke and I have talked it over," said Warham. "And we've decided that the only thing to do with you is to get you settled. So in a few minutes now you're going to be married."

Her lack of expression showed that she did not understand. In fact, she could only feel—feel the cruel, contemptuous anger of that voice which all her days before had caressed her.

"We've picked out a good husband for you," Warham continued. "It's Jeb Ferguson."

Susan quivered. "I—I don't want to," she said.

"It ain't a question of what you want," retorted Warham roughly. He was twenty-four hours and a night's sleep away from his first fierce outblazing of fury—away from the influence of his wife and his daughter. If it had not been for his brother Zeke, narrow and cold, the event might have been different. But Zeke was there to keep his "sense of duty" strong. And that he might nerve himself and hide and put down any tendency to be a "soft-hearted fool"—a tendency that threatened to grow as he looked at the girl—the child—he assumed the roughest manner he could muster.

"It ain't a question of what you want," he repeated. "It's a question of what's got to be done, to save my family and you, too—from disgrace. We ain't going to have any more bastards in this family."

The word meant nothing to the girl. But the sound of it, as her uncle pronounced it, made her feel as though the blood were drying up in her veins.

"We ain't going to take any chances," pursued Warham, less roughly; for now that he had looked the situation full and frankly in the face, he had no nerve to brace himself. The necessity of what he was prepared to do and to make her do was too obvious. "Ferguson's here, and Zeke saw the preacher we sent for riding in from the main road. So I've come to tell you. If you'd like to fix up a little, why your Aunt Sallie'll be here in a minute. You want to pray God to make you a good wife. And you ought to be thankful you have sensible relations to step in and save you from yourself."

Susan tried to speak; her voice died in her throat. She made another effort. "I don't want to," she said.

"Then what do you want to do—tell me that!" exclaimed her uncle, rough again. For her manner was very moving, the more so because there was none of the usual appeal to pity and to mercy.

She was silent.

"There isn't anything else for you to do."

"I want to—to stay here."

"Do you think Zeke'd harbor you—when you're about certain to up and disgrace us as your mother did?"

"I haven't done anything wrong," said the girl dully.

"Don't you dare lie about that!"

"I've seen Ruth do the same with Artie Sinclair—and all the girls with different boys."

"You miserable girl!" cried her uncle.

"I never heard it was so dreadful to let a boy kiss you."

"Don't pretend to be innocent. You know the difference between that and what you did!"

Susan realized that when she had kissed Sam she had really loved him. Perhaps that was the fatal difference. And her mother—the sin there had been that she really loved while the man hadn't. Yes, it must be so. Ruth's explanation of these mysteries had been different; but then Ruth had also admitted that she knew little about the matter—and Susan most doubted the part that Ruth had assured her was certainly true.

"I didn't know," said Susan to her uncle. "Nobody ever told me. I thought we were engaged."

"A good woman don't need to be told," retorted Warham. "But I'm not going to argue with you. You've got to marry."

"I couldn't do that," said the girl. "No, I couldn't."

"You'll either take him or you go back to Sutherland and I'll have you locked up in the jail till you can be sent to the House of Correction. You can take your choice."

Susan sat looking at her slim brown hands and interlacing her long fingers. The jail! The House of Correction was dreadful enough, for though she had never seen it she had heard what it was for, what kind of boys and girls lived there. But the jail—she had seen the jail, back behind the courthouse, with its air of mystery and of horror. Not Hell itself seemed such a frightful thing as that jail.

"Well—which do you choose?" said her uncle in a sharp voice.

The girl shivered. "I don't care what happens to me," she said, and her voice was dull and sullen and hard.

"And it doesn't much matter," sneered Warham. Every time he looked at her his anger flamed again at the outrage to his love, his trust, his honor, and the impending danger of more illegitimacy. "Marrying Jeb will give you a chance to reform and be a good woman. He understands—so you needn't be afraid of what he'll find out."

"I don't care what happens to me," the girl repeated in the same monotonous voice.

Warham rose. "I'll send your Aunt Sallie," said he. "And when I call, she'll bring you down."

The girl's silence, her non-resistance the awful expression of her still features—made him uneasy. He went to the window instead of to the door. He glanced furtively at her; but he might have glanced openly as there wasn't the least danger of meeting her eyes. "You're marrying about as well as you could have hoped to, anyhow—better, probably," he observed, in an argumentative, defensive tone. "Zeke says Jeb's about the likeliest young fellow he knows—a likelier fellow than either Zeke or I was at his age. I've given him two thousand dollars in cash. That ought to start you off well." And he went out without venturing another look at her. Her youth and helplessness, her stony misery, were again making it harder for him to hold himself to what he and the fanatic Zeke had decided to be his duty as a Christian, as a father, as a guardian. Besides, he did not dare face his wife and his daughter until the whole business was settled respectably and finally. His sister-in-law was waiting in the next room. As soon as his descent cleared the way she hurried in. From the threshold she glanced at the girl; what she saw sent her hurrying out to recompose herself. But the instant she again saw that expression of mute and dazed despair the tears fought for release. The effort to suppress outward signs of pity made her plain fat face grotesque. She could not speak. With a corner of her apron she wiped imaginary dust from the glass bells that protected the artificial flowers. The poor child! And all for no fault of hers—and because she had been born out of wedlock. But then, the old woman reflected, was it not one of the most familiar of God's mysterious ways that people were punished most severely of all for the things that weren't their fault—for being born in shame, or in bad or low families, or sickly, or for being stupid or ugly or ignorant? She envied Zeke—his unwavering belief in religion. She believed, but her tender heart was always leading her into doubts.

She at last got some sort of control over her voice. "It'll turn out for the best," she said, with her back to Susan. "It don't make much difference nohow who a woman marries, so long as he's steady and a good provider. Jeb seems to be a nice feller. He's better looking than your Uncle George was before he went to town and married a Lenox and got sleeked up. And Jeb ain't near so close as some. That's a lot in a husband." And in a kind of hysteria, bred of fear of silence just then, she rattled on, telling how this man lay awake o' nights thinking how to skin a flea for its hide and tallow, how that one had said only a fool would pay over a quarter for a new hat for his wife——

"Will it be long?" asked the girl.

"I'll go down and see," said Mrs. Warham, glad of a real excuse for leaving the room. She began to cry as soon as she was in the hall. Two sparrows lit upon the window sill near Susan and screamed and pecked at each other in a mock fight. She watched them; but her shiver at the faint sound of her aunt's returning step far away down the stairs showed where her attention was. When Zeke's wife entered she was standing and said:

"Is it time?"

"Come on, honey. Now don't be afraid."

Susan advanced with a firm step, preceded her aunt down the stairs. The black slouch hat and the straw of dignified cut were side by side on the shiny hall table. The parlor door was open; the rarely used showroom gave forth an earthy, moldy odor like that of a disturbed grave. Its shutters, for the first time in perhaps a year, were open; the mud daubers that had built in the crevices between shutters and sills, fancying they would never be disturbed, were buzzing crossly about their ruined homes. The four men were seated, each with his legs crossed, and each wearing the funereal expression befitting a solemn occasion. Susan did not lift her eyes. The profusely whiskered man seated on the haircloth sofa smoothed his black alpaca coat, reset the black tie deep hid by his beard, rose and advanced with a clerical smile whose real kindliness took somewhat from its offensive unction. "This is the young lady, is it?" said he, reaching for Susan's rising but listless hand. "She is indeed a young lady!"

The two Warham men stood, shifting uneasily from leg to leg and rubbing their faces from time to time. Sallie Warham was standing also, her big unhealthy face twitching fantastically. Jeb alone was seated—chair tilted back, hands in trousers pockets, a bucolic grin of embarrassment giving an expression of pain to his common features. A strained silence, then Zeke Warham said:

"I reckon we might as well go ahead."

The preacher took a small black-bound book from the inside pocket of his limp and dusty coat, cleared his throat, turned over the pages. That rustling, the creaking of his collar on his overstarched shirt band, and the buzzing of the mud daubers round the windows were the only sounds. The preacher found the place, cleared his throat again.

"Mr. Ferguson——"

Jeb, tall, spare, sallow, rose awkwardly.

"—You and Miss Lenox will take your places here——" and he indicated a position before him.

Susan was already in place; Jeb shuffled up to stand at her left. Sallie Warham hid her face in her apron. The preacher cleared his throat vigorously, began—"Dearly beloved"—and so on and on. When he put the questions to Susan and Jeb he told them what answer was expected, and they obeyed him, Jeb muttering, Susan with a mere, movement of the lips. When he had finished—a matter of less than three minutes—he shook hands warmly first with Susan, then with Jeb. "Live in the fear of the Lord," he said. "That's all that's necessary."

Sallie put down her apron. Her face was haggard and gray. She kissed Susan tenderly, then led her from the room. They went upstairs to the bedroom. "Do you want to stay to dinner?" she asked in the hoarse undertone of funeral occasions. "Or would you rather go right away?"

"I'd rather go," said the girl.

"You set down and make yourself comfortable. I'll hook up your shawl strap."

Susan sat by the window, her hands in her lap. The hand with the new circlet of gold on it was uppermost. Sallie busied herself with the bundle; abruptly she threw her apron over her face, knelt by the bed and sobbed and uttered inarticulate moans. The girl made no sound, did not move, looked unseeingly at her inert hands. A few moments and Sallie set to work again. She soon had the bundle ready, brought Susan's hat, put it on.

"It's so hot, I reckon you'll carry your jacket. I ain't seen as pretty a blue dress as this—yet it's plain-like, too." She went to the top of the stairs. "She wants to go, Jeb," she called loudly. "You'd better get the sulky ready."

The answer from below was the heavy thump of Jeb's boots on the oilcloth covering of the hall floor. Susan, from the window, dully watched the young farmer unhitch the mare and lead her up in front of the gate.

"Come on, honey," said Aunt Sallie, taking up the bundle.

The girl—she seemed a child now—followed her. On the front stoop were George and his brother and the preacher. The men made room for them to pass. Sallie opened the gate; Susan went out. "You'll have to hold the bundle," said Sallie. Susan mounted to the seat, took the bundle on her knees. Jeb, who had the lines, left the mare's head and got up beside his bride.

"Good day, all," he said, nodding at the men on the stoop. "Good day, Mrs. Warham."

"Come and see us real soon," said Sallie. Her fat chin was quivering; her tired-looking, washed-out eyes gazed mournfully at the girl who was acting and looking as if she were walking in her sleep.

"Good day, all," repeated Jeb, and again he made the clucking sound.

"Good-by and God bless you," said the preacher. His nostrils were luxuriously sniffing the air which bore to them odors of cookery.

The mare set out. Susan's gaze rested immovably upon the heavy bundle in her lap. As the road was in wretched repair, Jeb's whole attention was upon his driving. At the gate between barnyard and pasture he said, "You hold the lines while I get down."

Susan's fingers closed mechanically upon the strips of leather. Jeb led the mare through the gate, closed it, resumed his seat. This time the mare went on without exacting the clucking sound. They were following the rocky road along the wester hillside of the pasture hollow. As they slowly made their way among the deep ruts and bowlders, from frequent moistenings of the lips and throats, noises, and twitchings of body and hands, it was evident that the young farmer was getting ready for conversation. The struggle at last broke surface with, "Zeke Warham don't waste no time road patchin'—does he?"

Susan did not answer.

Jeb studied her out of the corner of his eye, the first time a fairly good bit of roadway permitted. He could make nothing of her face except that it was about the prettiest he had ever seen. Plainly she was not eager to get acquainted; still, acquainted they must get. So he tried again:

"My sister Keziah—she keeps house for me—she'll be mighty surprised when I turn up with a wife. I didn't let on to her what I was about, nary a word."

He laughed and looked expectantly at the girl. Her expression was unchanged. Jeb again devoted himself to his driving.

"No, I didn't let on," he presently resumed. "Fact is, I wan't sure myself till I seed you at the winder." He smiled flirtatiously at her. "Then I decided to go ahead. I dunno, but I somehow kinder allow you and me'll hit it off purty well—don't you?"

Susan tried to speak. She found that she could not—that she had nothing to say.

"You're the kind of a girl I always had my mind set on," pursued Jeb, who was an expert love-maker. "I like a smooth skin and pouty lips that looks as if they wanted to be kissed." He took the reins in one hand, put his arm round her, clumsily found her lips with his. She shrank slightly, then submitted. But Jeb somehow felt no inclination to kiss her again. After a moment he let his arm drop away from her waist and took the reins in both hands with an elaborate pretense that the bad road compelled it.

A long silence, then he tried again: "It's cool and nice under these here trees, ain't it?"

"Yes," she said.

"I ain't saw you out here for several years now. How long has it been?"

"Three summers ago."

"You must 'a' growed some. I don't seem to recollect you. You like the country?"

"Yes."

"Sho! You're just sayin' that. You want to live in town. Well, so do I. And as soon as I get things settled a little I'm goin' to take what I've got and the two thousand from your Uncle George and open up a livery stable in town."

Susan's strange eyes turned upon him. "In Sutherland?" she asked breathlessly.

"Right in Sutherland," replied he complacently. "I think I'll buy Jake Antle's place in Jefferson Street."

Susan was blanched and trembling. "Oh, no," she cried. "You mustn't do that!"

Jeb laughed. "You see if I don't. And we'll live in style, and you can keep a gal and stay dolled up all the time. Oh, I know how to treat you."

"I want to stay in the country," cried Susan. "I hate Sutherland."

"Now, don't you be afraid," soothed Jeb. "When people see you've got a husband and money they'll not be down on you no more. They'll forget all about your maw—and they won't know nothin' about the other thing. You treat me right and I'll treat you right. I'm not one to rake up the past. There ain't arry bit of meanness about me!"

"But you'll let me stay here in the country?" pleaded Susan. Her imagination was torturing her with pictures of herself in Sutherland and the people craning and whispering and mocking.

"You go where I go," replied Jeb. "A woman's place is with her man. And I'll knock anybody down that looks cockeyed at you."

"Oh!" murmured Susan, sinking back against the support.

"Don't you fret, Susie," ordered Jeb, confident and patronizing. "You do what I say and everything'll be all right. That's the way to get along with me and get nice clothes—do what I say. With them that crosses me I'm mighty ugly. But you ain't a-goin' to cross me. . . . Now, about the house. I reckon I'd better send Keziah off right away. You kin cook?"

"A—a little," said Susan.

Jeb looked relieved. "Then she'd be in the way. Two women about always fights—and Keziah's got the Ferguson temper. She's afraid of me, but now and then she fergits and has a tantrum." Jeb looked at her with a smile and a frown. "Perk up a little," he more than half ordered. "I don't want Keziah jeerin' at me."

Susan made a pitiful effort to smile. He eyed it sourly, grunted, gave the mare a cut with the whip that caused her to leap forward in a gallop. "Whoa!" he yelled. "Whoa—damn you!" And he sawed cruelly at her mouth until she quieted down. A turning and they were before a shallow story-and-a-half frame house which squatted like an old roadside beggar behind a weather-beaten picket fence. The sagging shingle roof sloped abruptly; there were four little windows downstairs and two smaller upstairs. The door was in the center of the house; a weedy path led from its crooked step, between two patches of weedy grass, to the gate in the fence.

"Whoa!" shouted Jeb, with the double purpose of stopping the mare and informing the house of his arrival. Then to Susan: "You git down and I'll drive round to the barn yonder." He nodded toward a dilapidated clapboard structure, small and mean, set between a dirty lopsided straw heap and a manure heap. "Go right in and make yourself at home. Tell Keziah who you air. I'll be along, soon as I unhitch and feed the mare."

Susan was staring stupidly at the house—at her new home.

"Git down," he said sharply. "You don't act as if your hearin' or your manners was much to brag on."

He felt awkward and embarrassed with this delicately bred, lovely child-woman in the, to him, wonderfully fine and fashionable dress. To hide his nervousness and to brave it out, he took the only way he knew, the only way shy people usually know—the way of gruffness. It was not a ferocious gruffness for a man of his kind; but it seemed so to her who had been used to gentleness only, until these last few days. His grammar, his untrained voice, his rough clothes, the odor of stale sweat and farm labor he exhaled, made him horrible to her—though she only vaguely knew why she felt so wretched and why her body shrank from him.

She stepped down from the sulky, almost falling in her dizziness and blindness. Jeb touched the mare with the whip and she was alone before the house—a sweet forlorn figure, childish, utterly out of place in those surroundings. On the threshold, in faded and patched calico, stood a tall gaunt woman with a family likeness to Jeb. She had thin shiny black hair, a hard brown skin, high cheekbones and snapping black eyes. When her thin lips parted she showed on the left side of the mouth three large and glittering gold teeth that in the contrast made their gray, not too clean neighbors seem white.

"Howdy!" she called in a tone of hostility.

Susan tried in vain to respond. She stood gazing.

"What d'ye want?"

"He he told me to go in," faltered Susan. She had no sense of reality. It was a dream—only a dream—and she would awaken in her own clean pretty pale-gray bedroom with Ruth gayly calling her to come down to breakfast.

"Who are you?" demanded Keziah—for at a glance it was the sister.

"I'm—I'm Susan Lenox."

"Oh—Zeke Warham's niece. Come right in." And Keziah looked as if she were about to bite and claw.

Susan pushed open the latchless gate, went up the short path to the doorstep. "I think I'll wait till he comes," she said.

"No. Come in and sit down, Miss Lenox." And Keziah drew a rush-bottomed rocking chair toward the doorway. Susan was looking at the interior. The lower floor of the house was divided into three small rooms. This central room was obviously the parlor—the calico-covered sofa, the center table, the two dingy chromos, and a battered cottage organ made that certain. On the floor was a rag carpet; on the walls, torn and dirty paper, with huge weather stains marking where water had leaked from the roof down the supporting beams. Keziah scowled at Susan's frank expression of repulsion for the surroundings. Susan seated herself on the edge of the chair, put her bundle beside her.

"I allow you'll stay to dinner," said Keziah.

"Yes," replied Susan.

"Then I'll go put on some more to cook."

"Oh, no—please don't—I couldn't eat anything—really, I couldn't." The girl spoke hysterically.

Just then Jeb came round the house and appeared in the doorway. He grinned and winked at Susan, looked at his sister. "Well, Keziah," said he, "what d'ye think of her?"

"She says she's going to stay to dinner," observed Keziah, trying to maintain the veneer of manners she had put on for company.

The young man laughed loudly. "That's a good one—that is!" he cried, nodding and winking at Susan. "So you ain't tole her? Well, Keziah, I've been and gone and got married. And there she is."

"Shut up—you fool!" said Keziah. And she looked apologetically at their guest. But the expression of Susan's face made her catch her breath. "For the Lord's sake!" she ejaculated. "She ain't married you!"

"Why not?" demanded Jeb. "Ain't this a free country? Ain't I as good as anybody?"

Keziah blew out her breath in a great gust and seated herself on the tattered calico cover of the sofa. Susan grew deathly white. Her hands trembled. Then she sat quiet upon the edge of the old rush-bottomed chair. There was a terrible silence, broken by Jeb's saying loudly and fiercely, "Keziah, you go get the dinner. Then you pack your duds and clear out for Uncle Bob's."

Keziah stared at the bride, rose and went to the rear door. "I'm goin' now," she answered. "The dinner's ready except for putting on the table."

Through the flimsy partitions they heard her mounting the uncarpeted stairs, hustling about upon an uncarpeted floor above, and presently descending. "I'll hoof it," she said, reappearing in the doorway. "I'll send for my things this afternoon."

Jeb, not caring to provoke the "Ferguson temper," said nothing.

"As for this here marryin'," continued Keziah, "I never allowed you'd fall so low as to take a baby, and a bastard at that."

She whirled away. Jeb flung his hat on the table, flung himself on the sofa. "Well—that's settled," said he. "You kin get the dinner. It's all in there." And he jerked his head toward the door in the partition to the left. Susan got up, moved toward the indicated door. Jeb laughed. "Don't you think you might take off your hat and stay awhile?" said he.

She removed her hat, put it on top of the bundle which she left on the floor beside the rocking chair. She went into the kitchen dining-room. It was a squalid room, its ceiling and walls smoke-stained from the cracked and never polished stove in the corner. The air was foul with the strong old onions stewing on the stove. In a skillet slices of pork were frying. On the back of the stove stood a pan of mashed potatoes and a tin coffeepot. On the stained flowered cloth which covered the table in the middle of the room had been laid coarse, cracked dishes and discolored steel knives and forks with black wooden handles. Susan, half fainting, dropped into a chair by one of the open windows. A multitude of fat flies from the stable were running and crawling everywhere, were buzzing about her head. She was aroused by Jeb's voice: "Why, what the—the damnation! You've fell asleep!"

She started up. "In a minute!" she muttered, nervously.

And somehow, with Jeb's eyes on her from the doorway, she got the evil-smelling messes from the stove into table dishes from the shelves and then on the table, where the flies descended upon them in troops of scores and hundreds. Jeb, in his shirt sleeves now, sat down and fell to. She sat opposite him, her hands in her lap. He used his knife in preference to his fork, leaping the blade high, packing the food firmly upon it with fork or fingers, then thrusting it into his mouth. He ate voraciously, smacking his lips, breathing hard, now and then eructing with frank energy and satisfaction.

"My stummick's gassy right smart this year," he observed after a huge gulp of coffee. "Some says the heavy rains last spring put gas into everything, but I dunno. Maybe it's Keziah's cooking. I hope you'll do better. Why, you ain't eatin' nothin'!"

"I'm not hungry," said Susan. Then, as he frowned suspiciously, "I had a late breakfast."

He laughed. "And the marrying, too," he suggested with a flirtatious nod and wink. "Women's always upset by them kind of things."

When he had filled himself he pushed his chair back. "I'll set with you while you wash up," said he. "But you'd better take off them Sunday duds. You'll find some calikers that belonged to maw in a box under the bed in our room." He laughed and winked at her.

"That's the one on t'other side of the settin'-room. Yes—that's our'n!" And he winked again.

The girl, ghastly white, her great eyes staring like a sleepwalker's, rose and stood resting one hand on the back of the chair to steady her.

Jeb drew a cigar from his waistcoat pocket and lighted it. "Usually," said he, "I take a pipe or a chaw. But this bein' a weddin' day——"

He laughed and winked again, rose, took her in his arms and kissed her. She made a feeble gesture of thrusting him away. Her head reeled, her stomach turned.

She got away as soon as he would release her, crossed the sitting-room and entered the tiny dingy bedroom. The windows were down and the bed had not yet been made. The odor was nauseating—the staleness left by a not too clean sleeper who abhors fresh air. Susan saw the box under the bed, knelt to draw it out. But instead she buried her face in her hands, burst into wild sobs. "Oh, God," she prayed, "stop punishing me. I didn't mean to do wrong—and I'm sure my mother didn't, either. Stop, for Thy Son's sake, amen." Now surely she would wake. God must answer that prayer. She dared not take her palms from her eyes. Suddenly she felt herself caught from behind. She gave a wild scream and sprang up.

Jeb was looking at her with eyes that filled her with a fear more awful than the fear of death. "Don't!" she cried. "Don't!"

"Never mind, hon," said he in a voice that was terrible just because it was soft. "It's only your husband. My, but you're purty!" And he seized her. She fought. He crushed her. He kissed her with great slobbering smacks and gnawed at the flesh of her neck with teeth that craved to bite.

"Oh, Mr. Ferguson, for pity's sake!" she wailed. Then she opened her mouth wide as one gasping for breath where there is no air; and pushing at him with all her strength she vented a series of maniac shrieks.



CHAPTER X

LATE that afternoon Jeb returned to the house after several hours of uneasy, aimless pottering about at barn and woodshed. He stumped and stamped around the kitchen, then in the sitting-room, finally he mustered the courage to look into the bedroom, from which he had slunk like a criminal three hours before. There she lay, apparently in the same position. Her waxen color and her absolute stillness added fear to his sense of guilt—a guilt against which he protested, because he felt he had simply done what God and man expected of him. He stood in the low doorway for some time, stood there peering and craning until his fear grew so great that he could no longer put off ending or confirming it.

"Sleepin'?" said he in a hoarse undertone.

She did not reply; she did not move. He could not see that she was breathing.

"It'll soon be time to git supper," he went on—not because he was thinking of supper but because he was desperately clutching for something that must draw a reply from her—if she could reply. "Want me to clean up the dinner and put the supper things on?"

She made a feeble effort to rise, sank back again. He drew an audible sigh of relief; at least she was not what her color had suggested.

In fact, she was morbidly conscious. The instant she had heard him at the outer door she had begun to shiver and shake, and not until he moved toward the bedroom door did she become quiet. Then a calm had come into her nerves and her flesh—the calm that descends upon the brave when the peril actually faces. As he stood there her eyes were closed, but the smell of him—beneath the earthy odor of his clothing the odor of the bodies of those who eat strong, coarse food—stole into her nostrils, into her nerves. Her whole body sickened and shrank—for to her now that odor meant marriage—and she would not have believed Hell contained or Heaven permitted such a thing as was marriage. She understood now why the Bible always talked of man as a vile creature born in sin.

Jeb was stealthily watching her ghastly face, her limp body. "Feelin' sickish?" he asked.

A slight movement of the head in assent.

"I kin ride over to Beecamp and fetch Doc Christie."

Another and negative shake of the head, more determined. The pale lips murmured, "No—no, thank you." She was not hating him. He existed for her only as a symbol, in this hideous dream called life, that was coiled like a snake about her and was befouling her and stinging her to death.

"Don't you bother 'bout supper," said he with gruff, shamefaced generosity. "I'll look out for myself, this onct."

He withdrew to the kitchen, where she heard him clattering dishes and pans. Daylight waned to twilight, twilight to dusk, to darkness. She did not think; she did not feel, except an occasional dull pang from some bodily bruise. Her soul, her mind, were absolutely numb. Suddenly a radiance beat upon her eyes. All in an instant, before the lifting of her eyelids, soul and body became exquisitely acute; for she thought it was he come again, with a lamp. She looked; it was the moon whose beams struck full in at the uncurtained window and bathed her face in their mild brightness. She closed her eyes again and presently fell asleep—the utter relaxed sleep of a child that is worn out with pain, when nature turns gentle nurse and sets about healing and soothing as only nature can. When she awoke it was with a scream. No, she was not dreaming; there was an odor in the room—his odor, with that of a saloon added to it.

After cooking and eating supper he had taken the jug from its concealment behind the woodbox and had proceeded to cheer his drooped spirits. The more he drank the better content he was with himself, with his conduct, and the clearer became his conviction that the girl was simply playing woman's familiar game of dainty modesty. A proper game it was too; only a man must not pay attention to it unless he wished his woman to despise him. When this conviction reached the point of action he put away the jug, washed the glass, ate a liberal mouthful of the left-over stewed onions, as he would not for worlds have his bride catch him tippling. He put out the lamp and went to the bedroom, chuckling to himself like a man about to play a particularly clever and extremely good-humored practical joke. His preparations for the night were, as always, extremely simple merely a flinging off of his outer clothes and, in summer, his socks. From time to time he cast an admiring amorous glance at the lovely childlike face in the full moonlight. As he was about to stretch himself on the bed beside her he happened to note that she was dressed as when she came. That stylish, Sundayish dress was already too much mussed and wrinkled. He leaned over to wake her with a kiss. It was then that she started up with a scream.

"Oh—oh—my God!" she exclaimed, passing her hand over her brow and staring at him with crazed, anguished eyes.

"It's jest me," said he. "Thought you'd want to git ready fur bed, like as not."

"No, thank you, no," she stammered, drawing away toward the inner side of the bed. "Please I want to be as I am."

"Now, don't put on, sweetness," he wheedled. "You know you're married and 'ave got to git used to it."

He laid his hand on her arm. She had intended to obey, since that was the law of God and man and since in all the world there was no other place for her, nameless and outcast. But at his touch she clenched her teeth, cried:

"No—Mr. Ferguson—please—please let me be."

"Now, hon," he pleaded, seizing her with strong gentleness. "There ain't no call to be skittish. We're married, you know."

She wrenched herself free. He seized her again. "What's the use of puttin' on? I know all about you. You little no-name," he cursed, when her teeth sank into his hand. For an instant, at that reminder of her degradation, her indelible shame that made her of the low and the vile, she collapsed in weakness. Then with new and fierce strength she fought again. When she had exhausted herself utterly she relaxed, fell to sobbing and moaning, feebly trying to shelter her face from his gluttonous and odorous kisses. And upon the scene the moon shone in all that beauty which from time immemorial has filled the hearts of lovers with ecstasy and of devotees with prayer.

They lay quietly side by side; he fell into a profound sleep. He was full upon his back, his broad chest heaving in the gray cotton undershirt, his mouth wide open with its upper fringe of hair in disarray and agitated by his breath. Soon he began to snore, a deafening clamor that set some loose object in the dark part of the room to vibrating with a tapping sound. Susan stealthily raised herself upon her elbow, looked at him. There was neither horror nor fear in her haggard face but only eagerness to be sure he would not awaken. She, inch by inch, more softly than a cat, climbed over the low footboard, was standing on the floor. One silent step at a time, with eyes never from his face so clear in the moonlight, she made her way toward the door. The snoring stopped—and her heart stopped with it. He gasped, gurgled, gave a snort, and sat up.

"What—which——" he ejaculated. Then he saw her near the door. "Hello—whar ye goin'?"

"I thought I'd undress," she lied, calmly and smoothly.

"Oh—that's right." And he lay down.

She stood in the darkness, making now and then a faint sound suggestive of undressing. The snoring began again—soft, then deep, then the steady, uproarious intake with the fierce whistling exhalation. She went into the sitting-room, felt round in the darkness, swift and noiseless. On the sofa she found her bundle, tore it open. By feeling alone she snatched her sailor hat, a few handkerchiefs, two stockings, a collar her fingers chanced upon and a toothbrush. She darted to the front door, was outside, was gliding down the path, out through the gate into the road.

To the left would be the way she had come. She ran to the right, with never a backward glance—ran with all the speed in her lithe young body, ran with all the energy of her fear and horror and resolve to die rather than be taken. For a few hundred yards the road lay between open fields. But after that it entered a wood. And in that dimness she felt the first beginnings of a sense of freedom. Half a mile and open fields again, with a small house on the right, a road southeastward on the left. That would be away from her Uncle Zeke's and also away from Sutherland, which lay twenty miles to the southwest. When she would be followed Jeb would not think of this direction until he had exhausted the other two.

She walked, she ran, she rested; she walked and ran and walked again. The moon ascended to the zenith, crossed the levels of the upper sky, went down in the west; a long bar of dusky gray outlined a cloud low upon the horizon in the northeast. She was on the verge of collapse. Her skin, the inside of her mouth, were hot and dry. She had to walk along at snail's pace or her heart would begin to beat as if it were about to burst and the blood would choke up into the veins of her throat to suffocate her. A terrible pain came in her side—came and went—came and stayed. She had passed turning after turning, to the right, to the left—crossroads leading away in all directions. She had kept to the main road because she did not wish to lose time, perhaps return upon her path, in the confusion of the darkness. Now she began to look about her at the country. It was still the hills as round Zeke Warham's—the hills of southeastern Indiana. But they were steeper and higher, for she was moving toward the river. There was less open ground, more and denser undergrowth and forest. She felt that she was in a wilderness, was safe. Night still lay too thick upon the landscape for her to distinguish anything but outlines. She sat down on the ruined and crumbling panel of a zigzag fence to rest and to wait for light. She listened; a profound hush. She was alone, all alone. How far had she come? She could not guess; but she knew that she had done well. She would have been amazed if she had known how well. All the years of her life, thanks to Mrs. Warham's good sense about health, she had been steadily adding to the vitality and strength that were hers by inheritance. Thus, the response to this first demand upon them had been almost inevitable. It augured well for the future, if the future should draw her into hardships. She knew she had gone far and in what was left of the night and with what was left of her strength she would put such a distance between her and them that they would never believe she had got so far, even should they seek in this direction. She was supporting her head upon her hands, her elbows upon her knees. Her eyes closed, her head nodded; she fought against the impulse, but she slept.

When she straightened up with a start it was broad day. The birds must have finished their morning song, for there was only happy, comfortable chirping in the branches above her. She rose stiffly. Her legs, her whole body, ached; and her feet were burning and blistered. But she struck out resolutely.

After she had gone halfway down a long steep hill, she had to turn back because she had left her only possessions. It was a weary climb, and her heart quaked with terror. But no one appeared, and at last she was once more at the ruins of the fence panel. There lay her sailor hat, the handkerchiefs, wrapped round the toothbrush, the collar—and two stockings, one black, the other brown. And where was her purse? Not there, certainly. She glanced round in swift alarm. No one. Yet she had been absolutely sure she had taken her purse from the sitting-room table when she came upon it, feeling about in the dark. She had forgotten it; she was without a cent!

But she had no time to waste in self-reproaches or forebodings. Though the stockings would be of no use to her, she took them along because to leave them was to leave a trail. She hastened down the hill. At the bottom ran a deep creek—without a bridge. The road was now a mere cowpath which only the stoutest vehicles or a horseman would adventure. To her left ran an even wilder trail, following the downward course of the creek. She turned out of the road, entered the trail. She came to a place where the bowlders over which the creek foamed and splashed as it hurried southeastward were big and numerous enough to make a crossing. She took it, went slowly on down the other bank.

There was no sign of human intrusion. Steeply on either side rose a hill, strewn with huge bowlders, many of them large as large houses. The sun filtered through the foliage to make a bright pattern upon the carpet of last year's leaves. The birds twittered and chirped; the creek hummed its drowsy, soothing melody. She was wretchedly weary, and Oh, so hungry! A little further, and two of the great bowlders, tumbled down from the steeps, had cut off part of the creek, had formed a pool which their seamed and pitted and fern-adorned walls hid from all observation except that of the birds and the squirrels in the boughs.

At once she thought how refreshed she would be if she could bathe in those cool waters. She looked round, stepped in between the bowlders. She peered out; she listened. She was safe; she drew back into her little inclosure. There was a small dry shelf of rock. She hurried off her clothes, stood a moment in the delicious warmth of the sunshine, stepped into the pool. She would have liked to splash about; but she dared make no sound that could be heard above the noise of the water. Luckily the creek was just there rather loud, as it was expressing its extreme annoyance over the stolid impudence of the interrupting bowlders. While she was waiting for the sun to dry her she looked at her underclothes. She simply could not put them on as they were. She knelt at the edge of the shelf and rinsed them out as well as she could. Then she spread them on the thick tufts of overhanging fern where the hot sun would get full swing at them. The brown stocking of the two mismates she had brought along almost matched the pair she was wearing. As there was a hole in the toe of one of them, she discarded it, and so had one fresh stocking. She dried her feet thoroughly with the stocking she was discarding. Then she put her corsets and her dress directly upon her body. She could not afford to wait until the underclothes dried; she would carry them until she found for herself a more remote and better hiding place where she could await nightfall. She stuffed the stocking with the hole deep into a cleft in the rock and laid a small stone upon it so that it was concealed. Here where there were no traces, no reminders of the human race which had cast her out and pursued her with torture of body and soul, here in the wilderness her spirits were going up, and her young eyes were looking hopefully round and forward. The up-piling horrors of those two days and their hideous climax seemed a dream which the sun had scattered. Hopefully! That blessed inexperience and sheer imagination of youth enabling it to hope in a large, vague way when to hope for any definite and real thing would be impossible.

She cleaned her tan low shoes with branches of fern and grass, put them on. It is impossible to account for the peculiarities of physical vanity. Probably no one was ever born who had not physical vanity of some kind; Susan's was her feet and ankles. Not her eyes, nor her hair, nor her contour, nor her skin, nor her figure, though any or all of these might well have been her pleasure. Of them she never thought in the way of pride or vanity. But of her feet and ankles she was both proud and vain—in a reserved, wholly unobtrusive way, be it said, so quietly that she had passed unsuspected. There was reason for this shy, secret self-satisfaction, so amusing in one otherwise self-unconscious. Her feet were beautifully formed and the curves of her instep and ankle were beautiful. She gave more attention now to the look of her shoes and of her stockings than to all the rest of this difficult woodland toilet. She then put on the sailor hat, fastened the collar to her garter, slipped the handkerchiefs into the legs of her stockings. Carrying her underclothes, ready to roll them into a ball should she meet anyone, she resumed her journey into that rocky wilderness. She was sore, she had pains that were the memories of the worst horrors of her hideous dream, but up in her strong, healthy body, up through her strong young soul, surged joy of freedom and joy of hope. Compared with what her lot had been until such a few brief days before, this lot of friendless wanderer in the wilderness was dark indeed. But she was comparing it with the monstrous dream from which it was the awakening. She was almost happy—and madly hungry.

An enormous bowlder, high above her and firmly fixed in the spine of the hill, invited as a place where she could see without being seen, could hide securely until darkness came again. She climbed to the base of it, found that she might reach the top by stepping from ledge to ledge with the aid of the trees growing so close around it that some of their boughs seemed rooted in its weather-dented cliffs. She dragged herself upward the fifty or sixty feet, glad of the difficulties because they would make any pursuer feel certain she had not gone that way. After perhaps an hour she came upon a flat surface where soil had formed, where grass and wild flowers and several little trees gave shade and a place to sleep. And from her eyrie she commanded a vast sweep of country—hills and valleys, fields, creeks, here and there lonely farmhouses, and far away to the east the glint of the river!

To the river! That was her destination. And somehow it would be kind, would take her where she would never, never dream those frightful dreams again!

She went to the side of the bowlder opposite that which she had climbed. She drew back hastily, ready to cry with vexation. It was not nearly so high or so steep; and on the slope of the hill a short distance away was set a little farmhouse, with smoke curling up from its rough stone chimney. She dropped to all fours in the tall grass and moved cautiously toward the edge. Flat upon her breast, she worked her way to the edge and looked down. A faintly lined path led from the house through a gate in a zigzag fence and up to the base of her fortress. The rock had so crumbled on that side that a sort of path extended clear up to the top. But her alarm quieted somewhat when she noted how the path was grass-grown.

As nearly as she could judge it was about five o'clock. So that smoke meant breakfast! Her eyes fixed hungrily upon the thin column of violet vapor mounting straight into the still morning air. When smoke rose in that fashion, she remembered, it was sure sign of clear weather. And then the thought came, "What if it had been raining!" She simply could not have got away.

As she interestedly watched the little house and its yard she saw hurrying through the burdock and dog fennel toward the base of her rock a determined looking hen. Susan laughed silently, it was so obvious that the hen was on a pressing and secret business errand. But almost immediately her attention was distracted to observing the movements of a human being she could obscurely make out through one of the windows just back of the chimney. Soon she saw that it was a woman, cleaning up a kitchen after breakfast—the early breakfast of the farmhouse in summer.

What had they had for breakfast? She sniffed the air. "I think I can smell ham and cornbread," she said aloud, and laughed, partly at the absurdity of her fancy, chiefly at the idea of such attractive food. She aggravated her hunger by letting her imagination loose upon the glorious possibilities. A stealthy fluttering brought her glance back to the point where the hen had disappeared. The hen reappeared, hastened down the path and through the weeds, and rejoined the flock in the yard with an air which seemed to say, "No, indeed, I've been right here all the time."

"Now, what was she up to?" wondered Susan, and the answer came to her. Eggs! A nest hidden somewhere near or in the base of the rock!

Could she get down to that nest without being seen from the house or from any other part of the region below? She drew back from the edge, crawled through the grass to the place where the path, if path it could be called, reached the top. She was delighted to find that it made the ascent through a wide cleft and not along the outside. She let herself down cautiously as the footway was crumbling and rotten and slippery with grass. At the lower end of the cleft she peered out. Trees and bushes—plenty of them, a thick shield between her and the valleys. She moved slowly downward; a misstep might send her through the boughs to the hillside forty feet below. She had gone up and down several times before her hunger-sharpened eyes caught the gleam of white through the ferns growing thickly out of the moist mossy cracks which everywhere seamed the wall. She pushed the ferns aside. There was the nest, the length of her forearm into the dim seclusion of a deep hole. She felt round, found the egg that was warm. And as she drew it out she laughed softly and said half aloud: "Breakfast is ready!"

No, not quite ready. Hooking one arm round the bough of a tree that shot up from the hillside to the height of the rock and beyond, she pressed her foot firmly against the protecting root of an ancient vine of poison ivy. Thus ensconced, she had free hands; and she proceeded to remove the thin shell of the egg piece by piece. She had difficulty in restraining herself until the end. At last she put the whole egg into her mouth. And never had she tasted anything so good.