"Hist! What was that?" whispered Pat, and the three stopped motionless in their tracks. Billy held his breath and touched the cold steel in his pocket. Of course there was always the gun, but what was one gun against three?



V

The whistle of the Cannery at Sabbath Valley blew a relief blast five minutes ahead of midnight in deference to the church chimes, and the night shift which had been working overtime on account of a consignment of tomatoes that would not keep till Monday, poured joyously out into the road and scattered to their various homes.

The outmost of these homegoers, Tom McMertrie and Jim Rafferty, who lived at the other extreme of the village, came upon a crippled car, coughing and crawling toward them in front of the Graveyard. Its driver, much sobered by lack of stimulant, and frequent necessity for getting out and pushing his car over hard bits of road, called to them noisily.

The two workmen, pleasant of mood, ready for a joke, not altogether averse to helping if this proved to be "the right guy," halted and stepped into the road just to look the poor noble car over. It was the lure of the fine machine.

"Met with an accident?" Jim remarked affably, as if it were something to enjoy.

"Had toire thrubble?" added Tom, punching the collapsed tires.

The questions seemed to anger the driver, who demanded loftily:

"Where's your garage?"

"Garage? Oh, we haven't any garage," said Jim pleasantly, with a mute twinkle in his Irish eye.

"No garage? Haven't any garage! What town is this,—if you call it a town?"

"Why, mon, this is Sawbeth Volley! Shorely ye've heard of Sawbeth Volley!"

"No, I never heard of it!" said the stranger contemptuously, "but from what I've seen of it so far I should say it ought to be called Hell's Pit! Well, what do you do when you want your car fixed?"

"Well, we don't hoppen to hove a cyar," said Tom with a meditative air, stooping to examine the spokes of a wheel, "Boot, ef we hod mon, I'm thenkin' we'd fix it!"

Jim gave a flicker of a chuckle in his throat, but kept his outward gravity. The stranger eyed the two malevolently, helplessly, and began once more, holding his rage with a cold voice.

"Well, how much do you want to fix my car?" he asked, thrusting his hand into his pocket and bringing out an affluent wallet.

The men straightened up and eyed him coldly. Jim turned indifferently away and stepped back to the sidewalk. Tom lifted his chin and replied kindly:

"Why, Mon, it's the Sawbeth, didn't ye know? I'm s'proised at ye! It's the Sawbeth, an' this is Sawbeth Volley! We don't wurruk on the Sawbeth day in Sawbeth Volley. Whist! Hear thot, mon?"

He lifted his hand and from the stone belfry near-by came the solemn tone of the chime, pealing out a full round of melody, and then tolling solemnly twelve slow strokes. There was something almost uncanny about it that held the stranger still, as if an unseen presence with a convincing voice had been invoked. The young man sat under the spell till the full complement of the ringing was finished, the workman with his hand up holding attention, and Jim Rafferty quietly enjoying it all from the curb stone.

When the last sweet resonance had died out, the Scotchman's hand went slowly down, and the stranger burst forth with an oath:

"Well, can you tell me where I can go to get fixed up? I've wasted enough time already."

"I should say from whut I've seen of ye, mon, that yer roight in thot statement, and if I was to advoise I'd say go right up to the parson, His loight's still burnin' in the windo next beyant the tchurtch, so ye'll not be disturbin' him. Not that he'd moind. He'll fix ye up ef anybody cun; though I'm doubtin' yer in a bad wy, only wy ye tak it. Good-night to ye, the winda wi' the leight, mon, roight next beyant the tchurtch!"

The car began its coughing and spluttering, and slowly jerked itself into motion, its driver going angrily on his unthankful way. The two workmen watching him with amused expressions, waited in the shadow of a tree till the car came to a stop again in front of the parsonage, and a tall young fellow got out and looked toward the lighted window.

"Oh, boy! He's going in!" gasped Jim, slapping his companion silently on the back. "Whatt'll Mr. Severn think, Tommy?"

"It'll do the fresh laddie gude," quoth Tom, a trifle abashed but ready to stand by his guns, "I'm thenkin' he's one of them what feels they owns the airth, an' is bound to step on all worms of the dust whut comes in thur wy. But Jim, mon, we better be steppin' on, fer tomorra's the Sawbeth ya ken, an' it wuddent be gude for our souls if the parson shud cum out to investigate." Chuckling away into the silent street they disappeared, while Laurence Shafton stalked angrily up the little path and pounded loudly on the quaint knocker of the parsonage.

* * * * *

The minister was on his knees beside his desk, praying for the soul of the wandering lad who had been dear to him for years. He had finished his preparation for the coming day, and his heart was full of a great longing. As he poured out his desire he forgot the hour and his need for rest. It was often in such companionship he forgot all else. He was that kind of a man.

But he came to his feet on the instant with the knock, and was ready to go out on any errand of mercy that was needing him. It was not an unusual thing for a knock to come interrupting his midnight devotions. Sometimes the call would be to go far out on the mountain to some one who was in distress, or dying.

The minister swung the door wide and peered into the night pleasantly almost as if to welcome an unexpected guest. In the sudden flood of the porch light his face was illumined, and behind him the pretty living room gave a sweet homely setting. The stranger stood for an instant blinking, half astonished; then the memory of his rendezvous at break of day brought back his irritation at the delay.

"Are you Parsons?" he demanded, just as if "Parsons" were at fault that he had not been on hand before.

"Parsons?" said Mr. Severn reflectively. "I don't recall anyone of that name hereabouts. Perhaps you are on the wrong road. There is a Parsons at Monopoly."

"Parsons is the name. Aren't you Parsons? A couple of men down the road said you were, and that you could fix me up. They said right next the church and that your light was still burning." The visitor's tone was belligerent.

Severn's face cleared with a smile.

"Oh, they must have said 'Parson,' they often call me that. Come in. What can I do for you?"

The young man eyed him coldly and made no move to enter.

"Parson or Parsons, it makes no difference does it? Mr. Parson, if you're so particular then, come out and look at my car. It seems to be in bad shape, and be quick about it. I've got over two hundred miles to make before daybreak, so get a hustle on. I'll pay you well if you don't waste any time."

A queer look descended upon the minister in twinkles of amusement around his eyes and lips much like the smile that Tom MacMertrie had worn, only there was not a rag of hurt pride about it. With entire pleasantness he said:

"Just wait a moment till I get a light."

As he turned to go Shafton called after him:

"Oh, by the way, got anything to drink? I'm thirsty as the devil."

Severn turned, instant hospitality in his face.

"What will you have? Water or milk? Plenty of both."

He smiled and Shafton looked at him in haughty amazement.

"Man! I said I wanted something to drink!" he thundered, "but don't stand there all night doddering. I've got to get started!"

A slight lifting of the chin, a trifle of steel in the kind eyes, a shade of coolness in the voice, as the clear comprehension of heaven had sifted the visitor, and the minister said, almost sternly:

"Oh, I see," and disappeared through a swinging door into the pantry.

It was about this time that Lynn Severn awoke to near consciousness and wondered what kind of a queer noisy guest her father had now.

The minister was gone sometime and the guest grew impatient, stamping up and down the piazza and kicking a porch rocker out of his path. He looked at his watch and frowned, wondering how near he was to the end of his detour, and then he started in pursuit of his man, tramping through the Severn house as if it were a public garage, and almost running into the minister as he swung the door open. Severn was approaching with a lighted lantern in one hand and a plate of brown bread and butter, with a cup of steaming coffee in his other hand.

Laurence Shafton stopped abruptly, a curse on his lips, but something, either the genial face of the minister, or the aroma of the coffee, silenced him. And indeed there was something about Graham Severn that was worth looking at. Tall and well built, with a face at once strong and sweet, and with a certain luminousness about it that almost seemed like transparency to let the spirit shine through, although there was nothing frail about his well cut features.

Laurence Shafton, looking into the frank kind eyes of the minister suddenly became aware that this man had taken a great deal of trouble for him. He hadn't brought any liquor, probably because he did not know enough of the world to understand what it was he wanted, or because he was playing a joke. As he looked into those eyes and noted with his half befuddled senses the twinkle playing at the corners he was not quite sure but the joke was on himself. But however it was the coffee smelled good and he took it and blundered out a brief "Thanks."

Eating his brown bread and butter, the like of which had never entered his pampered lips before, and taking great swoops of the hot strong coffee he followed this strange new kind of a man out to the car in the moonlight, paying little heed to the careful examination that ensued, being so accustomed to ordering all his needs supplied and finding them forthcoming without delay.

Finally the minister straightened up:

"I'm afraid you won't go many miles to-night. You've burned out your bearings!"

"Hell!" remarked the young gentleman pausing before the last swallow of coffee.

"Oh, you won't find it so bad as that, I imagine," answered the steady voice of the minister. "I can give you a bed and take care of you over to-morrow, and perhaps Sandy McPherson can fix you up Monday, although I doubt it. He'd have to make new bearings, or you'd have to send for some to the factory."

But Lawrence Shafton did not wait to hear the suggestions. He stormed up and down the sidewalk in front of the parsonage and let forth such a stream of choice language as had not been heard in that locality in many a long year. The minister's voice, cool, stern, commanding, broke in upon his ravings.

"I think that will be about all, sir!"

Laurence Shafton stopped and stared at the minister's lifted hand, not because he was overawed, simply because never before in the whole of his twenty-four years had any one dared lift voice to him in a tone of command or reproof. He could not believe his ears, and his anger rose hotly. He opened his mouth to tell this insignificant person who he was and where to get off, and a few other common arguments of gentlemen of his class, but the minister had a surprising height as he stood in the moonlight, and there was that something strange and spiritual about him that seemed to meet the intention and disarm it. His jaw dropped, and he could not utter the words he had been about to speak. This was insufferable—! But there was that raised hand. It seemed like some one not of this world quite. He wasn't afraid, because it wasn't in him to be afraid. That was his pose, not afraid of those he considered his inferiors, and he did not consider that anyone was his superior. But somehow this was something new in his experience. A man like this! It was almost as if his mere being there demanded a certain homage. It was queer. The young man passed a hand over his hot forehead and tried to think. Then the minister's voice went calmly on. It was almost as if he had not said that other at all. Perhaps he had not. Perhaps he dreamed it or imagined it. Perhaps he had been taking too much liquor and this was one of the symptoms—! Yet there still ringing in his ears—well his soul anyway,—were those quiet words, "That will be about all, sir!" Sternly. As if he had a right to speak that way to him! To Laurence Shafton, son of the great Wilson J. Shafton, of New York! He looked up at the man again and found a sort of respect for him dawning in himself. It was queer, but the man was—well, interesting. What was this he was saying?

"I am sorry"—just as if he had never rebuked him at all, "I am sorry that there seems to be no other way. If I had a car I would take you to the nearest railway station, but there are no trains to-night, not even twenty miles away until six in the morning. There are only four cars owned in the village. Two are gone off on a summer trip, the third is out of commission being repaired, and the fourth belongs to the doctor, who happens to be away on the mountain to-night attending a dying man. You see how it is."

The young man opened his mouth to curse once more, and strangely enough closed it again: Somehow cursing seemed to have lost its force.

"There is just one chance," went on the minister thoughtfully, "that a young man who was visiting his mother to-day may still be here. I can call up and find out. He would take you I know."

Almost humbly the great man's son followed the minister back to the house and listened anxiously while he called a number on the telephone.

"Is that you Mrs. Carter? I'm sorry if I have disturbed you. What? You hadn't gone to bed yet? Oh, waiting for Mark? Then he isn't there? That's what I called up for. There is some one here in trouble, needing to be taken to Monopoly. I was sure Mark would help him out if possible. Yes, please, if he comes soon, ask him to call me. Just leave a note for him, can't you? I wouldn't sit up. Mark will take good care of himself. Yes, of course, that's the mother of it. Well, good-night, Mrs. Carter."

The young man strode angrily out to the door, muttering—but no words were distinct. He wanted to be away from the compelling calmness of those eyes that seemed to search him through. He dashed out the screen door, letting it slam behind him, and down the steps, intending to make his car go on at all odds until he reached another town somewhere. It had gone so far, it could go on a little farther perhaps. This country parson did not know about cars, how should he?

And then somewhere right on the top step he made a false step and slipped, or was it his blindness of rage? He caught at the vines with frantic hands, but as if they laughed at him they slipped from his grasp. His feet clattered against the step trying for footing, but he was too near the edge, and he went down straight into a little rocky nook where ferns and violets were growing, and a sharp jagged rock stuck up and bit him viciously as he slid and struggled for a firm footing again. Then an ugly twist of his ankle, and he lay in a humiliating heap in the shadow of the vines on the lawn, crying out and beginning to curse with the pain that gripped him in sharp teeth, and stung through his whole excitable inflamed being.

The minister was there almost at once, bending over him. Somehow he felt as if he were in the power of somebody greater than he had ever met before. It was almost like meeting God out on the road somewhere. The minister stooped and picked him up, lightly, as if he had been a feather, and carried him like a baby, thrown partly over his shoulder; up the steps, and into that blasted house again. Into the bright light that sickened him and made the pain leap up and bring a mighty faintness.

He laid him almost tenderly upon a soft couch, and straightened the pillows about him, seeming to know just how every bone felt, and how every nerve quivered, and then he asked a few questions in a quiet voice. "What happened? Was it your ankle? Here? Or here? All right. Just be patient a minute, I'll have you all fixed up. This was my job over in France you know. No, don't move. It won't hurt long. It was right here you said. Now, wait till I get my bottle of lotion."

He was back in an instant with bandages, and bottle, and seemed to know just how to get off a shoe with the least trouble.

An hour later the scion of a great New York family lay sleeping in the minister's study, the old couch made up with cool sheets, and the swollen ankle comfortably bandaged with cool wet cloths. Outside in the moonlight the crippled car stood alone, and Sabbath Valley slept, while the bells chimed out a single solemn stroke.



VI

Billy was doing some rapid thinking while he stood motionless in the bushes. It seemed a half hour, but in reality it was but a few seconds before he heard a low whistle. The men piled rapidly into the car with furtive looks on either side into the dark.

Billy gave a wavering glance toward the looming house in the darkness where the motionless figure had been left. Was it a dead man lying there alone, or was he only doped. But what could he do in the dark without tools or flash? He decided to stick with the machine, for he had no desire to foot it home, and anyway, with his bicycle he would be far more independent. Besides, there was the perfectly good automobile to think about. If the man was dead he couldn't be any deader. If he was only doped it would be some time before he came to, and before these keepers could get back he would have time to do something. Billy never doubted his responsibility in the matter. It was only a question of expediency. If he could just "get these guys with the goods on them," he would be perfectly satisfied.

He made a dash for his seat at the back while the car was turning, and they were off at a brisk pace down the mountain, not waiting this time to double on their tracks, but splashing through the Creek only once and on up to the road again.

Like an uneasy fever in his veins meantime, went and came a vision of that limp inert figure of the man being carried into the haunted house as it stood out in the flare of the flash light, one arm hanging heavily. What did that hand and arm remind him of? Oh—h! The time when Mark was knocked cold at the Thanksgiving Day Football game last year. Mark's hand and arm had looked like that—he had held his fingers like that—when they picked him up. Mark had the base-ball hand! Of course that rich guy might have been an athlete too, they were sometimes. And of course Mark was right now at home and in bed, where Billy wished he was also, but somehow the memory of that still dark "knocked cold" attitude, and that hanging hand and arm would not leave him. He frowned in the dark and wished this business was over. Mark was the only living soul Billy felt he could ever tell about this night's escapade, and he wasn't sure he could tell him, but he knew if he did that Mark would understand.

Billy watched anxiously for a streak of light in the East, but none had come as yet. The moon had left the earth darker than darkness when it went.

He tried to think what he should do. His bicycle was lying in the bushes and he ought to get it before daylight. If they went near the station he would drop off and pick it up. Then he would scuttle through the woods and get to the Crossroads, and beat it down to the Blue Duck Tavern. That was the only place open all night where he could telephone. He didn't like to go to the Blue Duck Tavern on account of his aunt. She had once made him promise most solemnly, bringing in something about his dead mother, that he would never go to the Blue Duck Tavern. But this was a case of necessity, and dead mothers, if they cared at all, ought to understand. He had a deep underlying faith in the principle of what a mother—at any rate a dead mother—would be like. And anyhow, this wasn't the kind of "going" to the Tavern his aunt had meant. He was keeping the spirit of the promise if not the letter. In his code the spirit meant much more than the letter—at least on this occasion. There were often times when he rigidly adhered to the letter and let the spirit take care of itself, but this was not one.

But if, on the other hand they did not take Pat all the way back to the crossing by the station it would be even better for him, for the road on which they now were passed within a quarter of a mile of the Blue Duck Tavern, and he could easily beat the car to the state line, by dropping off and running.

But suddenly and without warning it became apparent that Pat was to be let out to walk to the station crossing, and Billy had only a second to decide what to do, while Pat lumbered swearing down from the car. If he got off now he would have to wait till Pat was far ahead before he dared go after his wheel, and he would lose so much time there would be no use in trying to save the car. On the other hand if he stayed on the car he was liable to be seen by Pat, and perhaps caught. However, this seemed the only possible way to keep the car from destruction and loss, so he wriggled himself into his seat more firmly, tucked his legs painfully up under him, covered his face with his cap, and hid his hands in his pockets.

"You've plenty of time," raged Pat, "You've only a little five miles run left. It's a good half hour before light. You're a pair of cowards, that's whut ye are, and so I'll tell Sam. If I get fired fer not being there fer the early milk train, there'll be no more fat jobs fer youse. Now be sure ye do as you're told. Leave the car in the first field beyond the woods after ye cross the state line, lift yer flash light and wink three times, count three slow, and wink three times more. Then beat it! And doncha ferget to go feed that guy! We don't want he should die on us."

The engine began to mutter. Pat with a farewell string of oaths rolled off down the road, too sleepy to look behind, and Billy held his breath and ducked low till the rolling Pat was one with the deep gray of the morning.

The first streak of light was beginning to show in the East, and the all-night revellers at the Blue Duck were in the last stages of going home after a more than usually exciting season, when Billy like the hardened promise-breaker he felt himself to be, boldly slid in at the door and disappeared inside the telephone booth behind the last row of tables in the corner. For leave it to a boy, even though he be not a frequenter of a place, to know where everything needful is to be found!

He had to wait several minutes to get the Chief of Police in Economy, and while he waited two gaunt habitues of the Tavern slid into seats at the table to the left of the booth, ordered drinks and began to discuss something in a low tone. Billy paid no heed till he happened to hear his friend's name:

"Yep, I seen Mark come in with Cherry early in the evening. He set right over there and gotter some drink. The girl was mad because he wouldn't get her what she wanted to drink. I happened to be settin' direckly in front and I heard her gassin' about it. She tossed her head and made her eyes look little and ugly like a pig, and once she got up to go, and he grabbed her hands and made her set down; and just set there fer sometime alookin' at her hard an' holdin' her han's and chewin' the rag at her. I don't know what all they was sayin,' fer he talked mighty low, an' Ike called me to take a hand in the game over tother side the room, so I didn't know no more till I see him an' Cherry beatin' it out the side door, an' Dolphin standin' over acrost by the desk lampin' 'em with his ugly look, an' pretty quick, Dolph he slid out the other door an' was gone quite some time. When he come back Cherry was with him, laughin' and makin' eyes, and vampin' away like she always does, an' him an' her danced a lot after that—"

A voice on the end of the wire broke in upon this amazing conversation, and Billy with difficulty adjusted his jaded mind, to the matter in hand:

"'Z'is the Chief? Say, Chief, a coupla guys stole a machine— Holes-Mowbrays—license number 6362656-W—Got that? New York tag. They're on their way over to the State Line beyond the Cross Roads. They're gonta run her in the field just beyond the woods, you know. They're gonta give a flash light signal to their pal, three winks, count three slow, and three winks more, and then beat it. Then some guy is gonta wreck the machine. It's up to you and your men to hold the machine till I get the owner there. He don't know it's pinched yet, but I know where to find him, an' he'll have the license and can identify it. Where'll I find you? Station House? 'Conomy? Sure! I'll be there soon's I get'im. What's that? I? Oh, I'm just a kid that happened to get wise. My name? Oh rats! That don't cut any ice now! You get on yer job! They must be almost there by now. I gotta beat it! Gub-bye!"

Billy was all there even if he had been up all night. He hung up with a click, for he was anxious to hear what the men were saying. They had finished their glasses and were preparing to leave. The old one was gabbling on in a querrilous gossipy tone:

"Well, it'll go hard with Mark Carter if the man dies. Everybody knows he was here, and unless he can prove an alibi—!"

They were crawling reluctantly out of their haunts now, and Billy could catch but one more sentence:

"Well, I'm sorry fer his ma. I used to go to school with Mrs. Carter when we were kids."

They were gone out and the room suddenly showed empty. The waiter was fastening the shutters. In a moment more he would be locked in. Billy made a silent dash among the tables and slid out the door while the waiter's back was turned. The two men were ambling slowly down the road toward Economy. Billy started on a dead run. His rubber soled shoes made no echo and he was too light on his feet to make a thud. He disappeared into the grayness like a spirit. He had more cause than ever now for hurry. Mark! Mark! His beloved Mark Carter! What must he do about it? Must he tell Mark? Or did Mark perhaps know? What had happened anyway? There had evidently been a shooting. That Cherry Fenner was mixed up in it. Billy knew her only by sight. She always grinned at him and said: "Hello, Billee!" in her pretty dimpled way. He didn't care for her himself. He had accepted her as a part of life, a necessary evil. She wore her hair queer, and had very short tight skirts, and high heels. She painted her face and vamped, but that was her affair. He had heretofore tolerated her because she seemed in some way to be under Mark Carter's recent protection. Therefore he had growled "Ello!" grimly whenever she accosted him and let it go at that. If it had come to a show down he would have stood up for her because he knew that Mark would, that was all. Mark knew his own business. Far be it from Billy to criticize his hero's reasons. Perhaps it was one of Mark's weaknesses. It was up to him. That was the code of a "white man" as Billy had learned it from "the fellas."

But this was a different matter. This involved Mark's honor. It was up to him to find Mark!

Billy did not take the High road down from his detour. He cut across below the Crossroads, over rough ground, among the underbrush, and parting the low growing trees was lost in the gloom of the woods. But he knew every inch of ground within twenty miles around, and darkness did not take away his sense of direction. He crashed along among the branches, making steady headway toward the spot where he had left his bicycle, puffing and panting, his face streaked with dirt, his eyes bleared and haggard, his whole lithe young body straining forward and fighting against the dire weariness that was upon him, for it was not often that he stayed up all night. Aunt Saxon saw to that much at least.

The sky was growing rosy now, and he could hear the rumbling of the milk train. It was late. Pat would not lose his job this time, for he must have had plenty of time to get back to the station. Billy wormed himself under cover as the train approached, and bided his time. Cautiously, peering from behind the huckleberry growth, he watched Pat slamming the milk cans around. He could see his bicycle lying like a dark skeleton of a thing against the gravel bank. It was lucky he got there before day, for Pat would have been sure to see it, and it might have given him an idea that Billy had gone with the automobile.

The milk train came suddenly in sight through the tunnel, like a lighted thread going through a needle. It rumbled up to the station. There was a rattling of milk cans, empty ones being put on, full cans being put off, grumbling of Pat at the train hands, loud retorts of the train hands, the engine puffed and wheezed like a fat old lady going upstairs and stopping on every landing to rest. Then slamming of car doors, a whistle, the snort of the engine as it took up its way again out toward the rosy sky, its headlight weird like a sick candle against the dawn, its tail light winking with a leer and mocking at the mountains as it clattered away like a row of gray ducks lifting webbed feet and flinging back space to the station.

Pat rolled the loaded truck to the other platform ready for the Lake train at seven, and went in to a much needed rest. He slammed the door with a finality that gave Billy relief. The boy waited a moment more in the gathering dawn, and then made a dash for the open, salvaging his bicycle, and diving back into the undergrowth.

For a quarter of a mile he and the wheel like two comrades raced under branches, and threaded their way between trees. Then he came out into the Highroad and mounting his wheel rode into the world just as the sun shot up and touched the day with wonder.

He rode into the silent sleeping village of Sabbath Valley just as the bells from the church chimed out gently, as bells should do on a Sabbath morning when people are at rest, "One! Two! Three! Four! Five!"

Sabbath Valley looked great as he pedalled silently down the street. Even the old squeak of the back wheel seemed to be holding its breath for the occasion.

He coasted past the church and down the gentle incline in front of the parsonage and Joneses, and the Littles and Browns and Gibsons. Like a shadow of the night passing he slid past the Fowlers and Tiptons and Duncannons, and fastened his eyes on the little white fence with the white pillared gate where Mrs. Carter lived. Was that a light in the kitchen window? And the barn that Mark used for his garage when he was at home, was the door open? He couldn't quite see for the cyringa bush hid it from the road. With a furtive glance up and down the street he wheeled in at the driveway, and rode up under the shadow of the green shuttered white house.

He dismounted silently, stealthily, rested his wheel against the trunk of a cherry tree, and with keen eyes for every window, glanced up to the open one above which he knew belonged to Mark's room. Strong grimy fingers went to his lips and a low cautious whistle, more like a bird call issued forth, musical as any wild note.

The white muslin curtains wavered back and forth in the summer breeze, and for a moment he thought a head was about to appear for a soft stirring noise had seemed to move within the house somewhere, but the curtains swayed on and no Mark appeared. Then he suddenly was aware of a white face confronting him at the downstairs window directly opposite to him, white and scared and—was it accusing? And suddenly he began to tremble. Not all the events of the night had made him tremble, but now he trembled, it was Mark's mother, and she had pink rims to her eyes, and little damp crimples around her mouth and eyes for all the world like Aunt Saxon's. She looked—she looked exactly as though she had not slept all night. Her nose was thin and red, and her eyes had that awful blue that eyes get that have been much washed with tears. The soft waves of her hair drooped thinly, and the coil behind showed more threads of silver than of brown in the morning sun that shot through the branches of the cherry tree. She had a frightened look, as if Billy had brought some awful news, or as if it was his fault, he could not tell which, and he began to feel that choking sensation and that goneness in the pit of his stomach that Aunt Saxon always gave him when she looked frightened at something he had done or was going to do. Added to this was that sudden premonition, and a memory of that drooping still figure in the dark up on the mountain.

Mrs. Carter sat down the candle on a shelf and raised the window:

"Is that you Billy?" she asked, and there were tears in her voice.

Billy had a brief appalling revelation of Mothers the world over. Did all Mothers—women—act like that when they were fools? Fools is what he called them in his mind. Yet in spite of himself and his rage and trembling he felt a sudden tenderness for this crumply, tired, ghastly little pink rimmed mother, apprehensive of the worst as was plain to see. Billy recalled like a flash the old man at the Blue Duck saying, "I'm sorry for his ma. I used to go to school with her." He looked at the faded face with the pink rims and trembling lips and had a vision of a brown haired little girl at a desk, and old Si Appleby a teasing boy in the desk opposite. It came over him that some day he would be an old man somewhere telling how he went to school—! And then he asked:

"Where's Mark? Up yet?"

She shook her head apprehensively, withholdingly.

Billy had a thought that perhaps some one had beat him to it with news from the Blue Duck, but he put it from him. There were tears in her eyes and one was straggling down between the crimples of her cheeks where it looked as if she had lain on the folds of her handkerchief all night. There came a new tenderness in his voice. This was Mark's mother, and this was the way she felt. Well, of course it was silly, but she was Mark's mother.

"Man up the mountain had n'accident. I thought Mark ud he'p. He always does," explained Billy awkwardly with a feeling that he ought to account for his early visit.

"Yes, of course, Mark would like to help!" purred his mother comforted at the very thought of every day life and Mark going about as usual, "But—" and the apprehension flew into her eyes again, "He isn't home. Billy, he hasn't come home at all last night! I'm frightened to death! I've sat up all night! I can't think what's happened—! There's so many hold-ups and Mark will carry his money loose in his trousers pocket—!"

Billy blanched but lied beautifully up to the occasion even as he would have liked to have somebody lie for him to Aunt Saxon:

"Aw! That's nothing! Doncha worry. He tol' me he might have t'stay down t'Unity all night. There's a fella down there that likes him a lot, an' they had somekinduva blowout in their church last night. He mightuv had ta take some girl home out of town ya know, and stayed over with the fella."

Mrs. Carter's face relaxed a shade:

"Yes, I've tried to think that—!"

"Well, doncha worry, Mizz Carter, I'll lookim up fer ya, I know 'bout where he might be."

"Oh, thank you Billy," her face wreathed in wavering smiles brought another thought of school days and life and how queer it was that grown folks had been children sometime and children had to be grown folks.

"Billy, Mark likes you very much. I'm sure he won't mind your knowing that I'm worried, but you know how boys don't like to have their mothers worry, so you needn't say anything to Mark that I said I was worried, need you? You understand Billy. I'm not really worried you know. Mark was always a good boy."

"Aw sure!" said Billy with a knowing wink. "He's a prince! You leave it t'me, Mizz Carter!"

"Thank you, Billy. I'll do something for you sometime. But how's it come you're up so early? You haven't had your breakfast yet have you?"

She eyed his weary young face with a motherly anxiety:

"Naw, I didn't have no time to stop fer breakfast," Billy spoke importantly, "Got this call about the sick guy and had to beat it. Say, you don't happen to know Mark's license number do you? It might help a lot, savin' time 'f'I could tell his car at sight. Save stoppin' to ast."

"Well, now, I don't really—" said the woman ruminatively, "let me see. There was six and six, there were a lot of sixes if I remember—"

"Oh, well, it don't matter—" Billy grasped his wheel and prepared to leave.

"Wait, Billy, you must have something to eat—"

"Aw, naw, I can't wait! Gotta beat it! Might miss 'im!"

"Well, just a bite. Here, I'll get you some cookies!"

She vanished, and he realized for the first time that he was hungry. Cookies sounded good.

She returned with a brimming glass of milk and a plate of cookies. She stuffed the cookies in his pockets, while he drank the milk.

"Say,—" said he after a long sweet draught of the foaming milk, "Ya, aint got enny more you cud spare fer that sick guy, have ya? Wait, I'll save this. Got a bottle?"

"Indeed you won't, Billy Gaston. You just drink that every drop. I'll get you another bottle to take with you. I got extra last night 'count of Mark being home, and then he didn't drink it. He always likes a drink of milk last thing before he goes to bed."

She vanished and returned with a quart of milk cold off the ice. She wrapped it well with newspapers, and Billy packed it safely into the little basket on his wheel. Then he bethought him of another need.

"Say, m'y I go inta the g'rage an' get a screw driver? Screw loose on m'wheel."

She nodded and he vanished into the open barn door. Well he knew where Mark kept his tools. He picked out a small pointed saw, a neat little auger and a file and stowed them hurriedly under the milk bottle. Thus reinforced without and within, he mounted his faithful steed and sped away to the hills.

The morning sun had shot up several degrees during his delay, and Sabbath Valley lay like a thing new born in its glory. On the belfry a purple dove sat glistening, green and gold ripples on her neck, turning her head proudly from side to side as Billy rode by, and when he topped the first hill across the valley the bells rang out six sweet strokes as if to remind him that Sunday School was not far off and he must hurry back. But Billy was trying to think how he should get into that locked house, and wondering whether the kidnappers would have returned to feed their captive yet. He realized that he must be wary, although his instinct told him that they would wait for dark, besides, he had hopes that they might have been "pinched."

Nevertheless he approached the old house cautiously, skirting the mountain to avoid Pleasant Valley, and walking a mile or two through thick undergrowth, sometimes with difficulty propelling the faithful machine.

Arrived in sight he studied the surroundings carefully, harbored his wheel where it would not be discovered and was yet easily available, and after reconnoitering stole out of covert.

The house stood gaunt and grim against the smiling morning. Its shuttered windows giving an expression of blindness or the repellant mask of death. A dead house, that was what it was. Its doors and windows closed on the tragedy that had been enacted within its massive stone walls. It seemed more like a fortress than a house where warm human faces had once looked forth, and where laughter and pleasant words had once sounded out. To pass it had always stirred a sense of mystery and weirdness. To approach it thus with the intention of entering to find that still limp figure of a man gave a most overpowering sense of awe. Billy looked up with wide eyes, the deep shadows under them standing out in the clear light of the morning and giving him a strangely old aspect as if he had jumped over at least ten years during the night. Warily he circled the house, keeping close to the shrubbery at first and listening as a squirrel might have done, then gradually drawing nearer. He noticed that the down stairs shutters were solid iron with a little half moon peep hole at the top. Those upstairs were solid below and fitted with slats above, but the slats were closed of all the front windows, and all but two of the back ones, which were turned upward so that one could not see the glass. The doors, both back and front, were locked, and unshakable, of solid oak and very thick. A Yale lock with a new look gave all entrance at the front an impossible look. The back door was equally impregnable unless he set to work with his auger and saw and took out a heavy oak panel.

He got down to the ground and began to examine the cellar windows. They seemed to be fitted with iron bars set into the solid masonry. He went all around the house and found each one unshakable, until he reached the last at the back. There he found a bit of stone cracked and loosened and it gave him an idea. He set to work with his few tools, and finally succeeded in loosening one rusted bar. He was much hindered in his work by the necessity of keeping a constant watch out, and by his attempts to be quiet. There was no telling when Link and Shorty might come to feed their captive and he must not be discovered.

It was slow work picking away at the stone, filing away at the rusty iron, but the bars were so close together that three must be removed before he could hope to crawl through, and even then he might be able to get no further than the cellar. The guy that fixed this house up for a prison knew what he was about.

Faintly across the mountains came the echo of bells, or were they in the boy's own soul? He worked away in the hot sun, the perspiration rolling down his weary dirty face, and sometimes his soul fainted within him. Bells, and the sweet quiet church with the pleasant daily faces about and the hum of Sunday School beginning! How far away that all seemed to him now as he filed and picked, and sweated, and kept up a strange something in his soul half yearning, half fierce dread, that might have been like praying only the burden of its yearning seemed to be expressed in but a single word, "Mark! Mark!"

At last the third bar came loose and with a great sigh that was almost like a sob, the boy tore it out, and cleared the way. Then carefully gathering his effects, tools, milk bottle and cap together, he let them down into the dungeon-like blackness of the cellar, and crept in after them, taking the precaution to set up in place the iron bars once more and leave no trace of his entrance.

Pausing cautiously to listen he ventured to strike a match, mentally belaboring himself at the wasteful way in which he had always used his flash light which was now so much needed and out of commission. The cellar was large, running under the whole house, with heavy rafters and looming coal pits. A scurrying rat started a few lumps of coal in the slide, and a cobwebby rope hung ominously from one cross beam, giving him a passing shudder. It seemed as if the spirit of the past had arisen to challenge his entrance thus. He took a few steps forward toward a dim staircase he sighted at the farther end, and then a sudden noise sent his heart beating fast. He extinguished the match and stood in the darkness listening with straining ears. That was surely a step he heard on the floor above!



VII

Laurence Shafton awoke late to the sound of church bells come alive and singing hymn tunes. There was something strangely unreal in the sound, in the utter stillness of the background of Sabbath Valley atmosphere that made him think, almost, just for an instant, that he had stumbled somehow into the wrong end of the other world, and come into the fields of the blessed. Not that he had any very definite idea about what the fields of the blessed would look like or what would be going on there, but there was something still and holy between the voices of the bells that fairly compelled his jaded young soul to sit up and listen.

But at the first attempt to sit up a very sharp very decided twinge of pain caught him, and brought an assorted list of words which he kept for such occasions to his lips. Then he looked around and tried to take in the situation. It was almost as if he had been caught out of his own world and dropped into another universe, so different was everything here, and so little did he remember the happenings of the night before. He had had trouble with his car, something infernal that had prevented his going farther—he recalled having to get out and push the thing along the road, and then two loutish men who made game of him and sent him here to get his car fixed. There had been a man, a queer man who gave him bread and butter instead of wine—he remembered that—and he had failed to get his car fixed, but how the deuce did he get landed on this couch with a world of books about him and a thin muslin curtain blowing into the room, and fanning the cheeks of a lovely rose in a long stemmed clear glass vase? Did he try to start and have a smash up? No, he remembered going down the steps with the intention of starting, but stay! Now it was coming to him. He fell off the porch! He must have had a jag on or he never would have fallen. He did things to his ankle in falling. He remembered the gentle giant picking him up as if he had been a baby and putting him here, but where was here? Ah! Now he remembered! He was on his way to Opal Verrons. A bet. An elopement for the prize! Great stakes. He had lost of course. What a fool! If it hadn't been for his ankle he might have got to a trolley car or train somehow and made a garage. Money would have taken him there in time. He was vexed that he had lost. It would have been great fun, and he had the name of always winning when he set out to do so. But then, perhaps it was just as well—Verrons was a good fellow as men went—he liked him, and he was plain out and out fond of Opal just at present. It would have been a dirty shame to play the trick behind his back. Still, if Opal wanted to run away with him it was up to him to run of course. Opal was rare sport and he couldn't stand the idea of Smart-Aleck McMarter, or that conceited Percy Emerson getting there first. He wondered which had won. It made his fury rise to think of either, and he had promised the lady neither of them should. What was she thinking of him by now that he had sent her no word of his delay? That was inexcusable. He must attend to it at once.

He glanced around the pleasant room. Yes, there on the desk was a telephone! Could he get to it? He sat up and painfully edged his way over to the desk.

"Safely through another week, God has brought us on our way—"

chimed the bells,

"Let us now a blessing seek, Waiting in His courts to-day—"

But Laurie Shafton had never sung those words in his life and had no idea what the bells were seeking to get across to him. He took down the receiver and called for Long Distance.

"Oh day of rest and gladness!"

pealed out the bells joyously,

"Oh day of joy and light! Oh balm for care and sadness, Most beautiful, most bright—"

But it meant nothing to Laurie Shafton seeking a hotel in a fashionable resort. And when he finally got his number it was only Opal's maid who answered.

"Yes, Mrs. Verrons was up. She was out walking on the beach with a gentleman. No, it was not Mr. Emerson, nor yet Mr. McMarter. Neither of those gentlemen had arrived. No, it was not Mr. Verrons. He had just telegraphed that he would not be at the hotel until tomorrow night. Yes, she would tell Mrs. Verrons that he had met with an accident. Mrs. Verrons would be very sorry. Number one-W Sabbath Valley. Yes, she would write it down. What? Oh! The gentleman Mrs. Verrons was walking with? No, it was not anybody that had been stopping at the hotel for long, it was a new gentleman who had just come the night before. She hadn't heard his name yet. Yes, she would be sure to tell Mrs. Verrons at once when she came in, and Mrs. Verrons would be likely to call him up!"

He hung up the receiver and looked around the room discontentedly. A stinging twinge of his ankle added to his discomfort. He gave an angry snarl and pushed the wavering curtain aside, wishing those everlasting bells would stop their banging.

Across the velvet stretch of lawn the stone church nestled among the trees, with a background of mountains, and a studding of white gravestones beyond its wide front steps. It was astonishingly beautiful, and startlingly close for a church. He had not been so near to a church except for a wedding in all his young life. Dandy place for a wedding that would be, canopy over the broad walk from the street, charming architecture, he liked the line of the arched belfry and the slender spire above. The rough stone fitted well into the scenery. The church seemed to be a thing of the ages placed there by Nature. His mind trained to detect a sense of beauty in garments, rugs, pictures, and women, appreciated the picture on which he was gazing. Where was this anyway? Surely not the place with the absurd name that he remembered now on the mountain Detour. Sabbath Valley! How ridiculous! It must be the home of some wealthy estate, and yet there seemed a rustic loveliness about it that scarcely established that theory.

The bells had ceased. He heard the roll of a deep throated organ skillfully played.

And now, his attention was suddenly attracted to the open window of the church where framed in English ivy a lovely girl sat at the organ. She was dressed in white with hair of gold, and a golden window somewhere back of her across the church, made a background of beaten gold against which her delicate profile was set like some young saint. Her white fingers moving among the keys, and gradually he came to realize that it was she who had been playing the bells.

He stared and stared, filled with admiration, thrilled with this new experience in his blase existence. Who would have expected to find a beauty like that in a little out of the way place like this? His theory of a great estate and a rich man's daughter with a fad for music instantly came to the front. What a lucky happening that he should have broken down close to this church. He would find out who the girl was and work it to get invited up to her house. Perhaps he was a fortunate loser of his bet after all.

As he watched the girl playing gradually the music entered his consciousness. He was fond of music, and had heard the best of the world of course. This was meltingly lovely. The girl had fine appreciation and much expression, even when the medium of her melody was clumsy things like bells. She had seemed to make them glad as they pealed out their melodies. He had not known bells could sound like happy children, or like birds.

His meditations were interrupted by a tap on the door, followed by the entrance of his host bearing a tray:

"Good-morning," he said pleasantly, "I see you're up. How is the sprain? Better? Would you like me to dress it again?"

He came over to the desk and set down the tray on which was beautifully brown buttered toast, eggs and coffee:

"I've brought you just a bite. It's so late you won't want much, for we have dinner immediately after church. I suppose you wouldn't feel like going over to the service?"

"Service?" the young man drawled almost insolently.

"Yes, service is at eleven. Would you care to go over? I could assist you."

"Naw, I shouldn't care to go," he answered rudely, "I'm pulling out of here as soon as I can get that machine of mine running. By the way, I've been doing some telephoning"—he slung a ten dollar note on the desk. "I didn't ask how much it was, guess that'll cover it. Now, help me to the big chair and I'll sample your breakfast."

The minister picked up the young man easily and placed him in the big chair before the guest realized what was doing, and then turned and took the ten dollar bill between his thumb and finger and flipped it down in the young man's lap.

"Keep it," he said briefly, "It's of no consequence." "But it was long distance," explained the guest loftily, "It'll be quite a sum. I talked overtime."

"No matter," said the minister pulling out a drawer of the desk and gathering a few papers and his Bible. "Now, would you like me to look at that ankle before I go, or will you wait for the doctor? He's likely to be back before long, and I've left a call for him."

"I'll wait for the doctor," the young man's tone approached the insolent note again, "and by the way, I wish you'd send for a mechanician. I've got to get that car running."

"I'm sorry," said Severn, "I'm afraid you'll have to wait. The only one in this region that would be at all likely to help you out with those bearings is Carter. He has a car, or had one, of that make. He might happen to have some bearings, but it is not at all likely. Or, he could tow you ten miles to Monopoly. But Carter is not at home yet."

The young man fairly frothed at the mouth: "Do you mean to tell me that there is no one can mend a broken machine around this forsaken dump? Where's your nearest garage? Send for a man to come at once. I'm willing to pay anything," he flourished a handful of bills.

The minister looked at his watch anxiously: "I'm sorry," he said again, "I've got to go to the service now. There is a garage at Monopoly and their number is 97-M. You can phone them if you are not satisfied. I tried them quite early this morning while you were still sleeping, but there was nothing doing. The truth is the people around this region are a little prejudiced against working seven days out of the week, although they will help a man out in a case like yours when they can, but it seems the repair man, the only one who knows about bearings, has gone fifty miles in another direction to a funeral and won't be back till to-morrow morning. Now, if you're quite comfortable I'll have to leave you for a little while. It is time for my service to begin."

The young man looked at his host with astonishment. He was not used to being treated in this off-hand way. He could hardly believe his ears. Throw back his money and lay down the law that way!

"Wait!" he thundered as the door was about to close upon the departing minister.

Severn turned and regarded his guest quietly, questioningly:

"Who's that girl over there in the window playing the organ?" He pulled the curtain aside and revealed a glimpse of the white and gold saint framed in the ivy. Severn gave a swift cold glance at the insolent youth and then answered with a slightly haughty note in his courteous voice, albeit a quiver of amusement on his lip:

"That is my daughter."

Laurence Shafton dropped the curtain and turned to stare at his host, but the minister had closed the door and was already on his way to church. Then the youth pulled back the curtain again and regarded the lady. The man's daughter! And playing like that!

The rich notes of the organ were rolling out into the summer day, a wonderful theme from an old master, grandly played. Yes, she could play. She had been well taught. And the looks of her! She was wonderful at this distance. Were these then wealthy people perhaps summering in this quiet resort? He glanced about at the simple furnishings. That was a good rug at his feet, worn in places, but soft in tone and unmistakably of the Orient. The desk was of fumed oak, somewhat massive and dignified with a touch of hand carving. The chairs were of the same dark oak with leather cushions, and the couch so covered by his bed drapery that he could not see it, but he remembered its comfort. There was nothing showy or expensive looking but everything simple and good. One or two fine old pictures on the wall gave evidence of good taste. The only luxury seemed books, rows and rows of them behind glass doors in cases built into the wall. They lined each space between windows and doors, and in several spots reached to the ceiling. He decided that these people must have had money and lost it. These things were old and had perhaps been inherited. But the girl! She teased his curiosity. She seemed of a type entirely new, and most attractive. Well, here was good luck again! He would stay till church was out and see what she might be like at nearer view. It might amuse him to play the invalid for a day or two and investigate her. Meantime, he must call up that garage and see what could be done for the car. If he could get it patched up by noon he might take the girl out for a spin in the afternoon. One could judge a girl much better getting her off by herself that way. He didn't seem to relish the memory of that father's smile and haughty tone as he said "My daughter." Probably was all kinds of fussy about her. But if the girl had any pep at all she surely would enjoy getting away from oversight for a few hours. He hoped Opal would call before they got back from their service. It might be awkward talking with them all around.

But the organ was suddenly drowned in a burst of song:

"Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be—world without end, Amen!"

Somehow the words struck him with a strange awe, they were so distinct, and almost in the room with him. He looked about half feeling that the room was filled with people, and felt curiously alone. There was an atmosphere in the little house of everybody being gone to church. They had all gone and left him alone. It amused him. He wondered about this odd family who seemed to be under the domination of a church service. They had left him a stranger alone in their house. The doors and windows were all open. How did they know but he was a burglar?

Some one was talking now. It sounded like the voice of his host. It might be a prayer. How peculiar! He must be a preacher. Yet he had been sent to him to fix his car. He did not look like a laboring man. He looked as if he might be,—well almost anything—even a gentleman. But if he was a clergyman, why, that of course explained the ascetic type, the nun-like profile of the girl, the skilled musician. Clergymen were apt to educate their children, even without much money. The girl would probably be a prude and bore, but there was a chance that she might be a princess in disguise and need a prince to show her a good time. He would take the chance at least until after dinner.

So he ate his delicate toast, and drank his delicious coffee, and wished he had asked that queer man to have his flask filled at the drug store before he went to his old service, but consoled himself with numerous cigarettes, while he watched the face of the musician, and listened idly to the music.

It was plain that the young organist was also the choir leader, for her expressive face was turned toward the singers, and her lovely head kept time. Now and then a motion of the hand seemed to give a direction or warning. And the choir too sang with great sweetness and expression. They were well trained. But what a bore such a life must be to a girl. Still, if she had never known anything else—! Well, he would like to see her at closer range. He lit another cigarette and studied her profile as she slipped out of the organ bench and settled herself nearer the window. He could hear the man's voice reading now. Some of the words drew his idle attention:

"All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weigheth the spirits."

Curious sentence that! It caught in his brain. It seemed rather true. From the Bible probably of course, though he was not very familiar with that volume, never having been obliged to go to Sunday School in his childhood days? But was it true? Were all a man's ways clean in his own eyes? Take, for instance, his own ways? He always did about as he pleased, and he had never asked himself whether his ways were clean or not. He hadn't particularly cared. He supposed some people would think they were not—but in his own eyes, well—was he clean? Take for instance this expedition of his? Running a race to get another man's wife,—an alleged friend's wife, too? It did seem rather despicable when one thought of it after the jag was off. But then one was not quite responsible for what one did with a jag on, and what the deuce did the Lord have to do with it anyway? How could the Lord weigh the spirit? That meant of course that he saw through all subterfuges. Well, what of it?

Another sentence caught his ear:

"When a man's ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him."

How odd, the Lord,—if there was a Lord, he had never thought much about it—but how odd, if there was a Lord for Him to care about a man's ways. If he were Lord he wouldn't care, he'd only want them to keep out of his way. He would probably crush them like ants, if he were Lord. But the Lord—taking any notice of men's ways, and being pleased by them and looking out to protect him from enemies! It certainly was quaint—a quaint idea! He glanced again at the reverent face of the girl, the down drooped eyes, the lovely sensitive mouth. Quaint, that was the word for her, quaint and unusual. He certainly was going to enjoy meeting her.

"Ting-aling-ling-ling!" burst out the telephone bell on the desk. He frowned and dropped the curtain. Was that Opal? He hobbled to the desk painfully, half annoyed that she had called him from the contemplation of this novel scene, not so sure that he would bother to call up that garage yet. Let it go till he had sampled the girl.

He took down the receiver and Opal's voice greeted him, mockingly, tauntingly from his own world. The little ivy leaved church with its Saint Cecilia at the organ, and its strange weird message about a God that cared for man's ways, dropped away like a dream that was past.

When he hung up the receiver and turned back to his couch again the girl had closed the window. It annoyed him. He did not know how his giddy badinage had clashed in upon the last words of the sermon.

It seemed a long time after the closing hymn before the little throng melted away down the maple lined street. The young man watched them curiously from behind his curtain, finding only food for amusement in most of them. And then came the minister, lingering to talk to one here and there, and his wife—it was undoubtedly his wife, even the hare-brained Laurie knew her, in the gray organdie, with the white at her neck, and the soft white hat. She had a pleasant light in her eyes, and one saw at once that she was a lady. There was a grace about her that made the girl seem possible. And lastly, came the girl.

She stepped from the church door in her white dress and simple white hat, white even to her little shoes, and correct in every way, he could see that. She was no country gawk! She came forth lightly into the sunshine which caught her hair in golden tendrils around her face as if it loved to hide therein, and she was immediately surrounded by half a dozen urchins. One had brought her some lilies, great white starry things with golden hearts, and she gathered them into her arms as if she loved them, and smiled at the boys. One could see how they adored her. She lingered talking to them, and laid her hand on one boy's shoulder, he walking like a knight beside her trying to act as if he did not know her hand was there. His head was drooped, but he lifted it with a grin at last and gave her a nod which seemed to make her glad, for her face broke forth in another smile:

"Well, don't forget, to-night," she called as they turned to go, "and remember to tell Billy!"

Then she came trippingly across the grass, a song on her lips. Some girl! Say! She certainly was a stunner!



VIII

Opal Verrons was small and slight with large childlike eyes that could look like a baby's, but that could hold the very devil on occasions. The eyes were dark and lustrous with long curling black lashes framing them in a face that might have been modeled for an angel, so round the curves, so enchanting the lips, so lofty the white brow. Angele Potocka had no lovelier set to her head, no more limpal fire in her eye, than had Opal Verrons. Indeed her lovers often called her the Fire Opal. The only difference was that Angele Potocka developed her brains, of which she had plenty, while Opal Verrons had placed her entire care upon developing her lovely little body, though she too had plenty of brains on occasion.

And she knew how to dress! So simply, so slightly sometimes, so perfectly to give a setting—the right setting—to her little self. She wore her heavy dark hair bobbed, and it curled about her small head exquisitely, giving her the look of a Raphael Cherub or a boy page in the court of King Arthur. With a flat band of silver olive leaves about her brow, and the soft hair waving out below, nothing more was necessary for a costume save a brief drapery of silver spangled cloth with a strap of jewels and a wisp of black malines for a scarf. She was always startling and lovely even in her simplest costume. Many people turned to watch her in a simple dark blue serge made like a child's girded with a delicate arrangement of medallions and chains of white metal, her dark rough woollen stockings rolled girlishly below white dimpled knees, and her feet shod in flat soled white buckskin shoes. She was young enough to "get away with it," the older women said cattishly as they watched her stroll away to the beach with a new man each day, and noted her artless grace and indifferent pose. That she had a burly millionaire husband who still was under her spell and watched her jealously only made her more interesting, and they pitied her for being tied to a man twice her age and bulky as a bale of cotton. She who could dance like a sylph and was light on her little feet as a thistle down. Though wise ones sometimes said that Opal had her young eyes wide open when she married Ed Verrons, and she had him right under her little pink well manicured thumb. And some said she was not nearly so young as she looked.

Her hands were the weakest point in Opal Verron's whole outfit. Not that they were unlovely in form or ungraceful. They were so small they hardly seemed like hands, so undeveloped, so useless, with the dimpling of a baby's, yet the sharp nails of a little beast. They were so plump and well cared for they were fairly sleek, and had an old wise air about them as she patted her puffy curls daintily with a motion all her own that showed her lovely rounded arm, and every needle-pointed shell-tinted finger nail, sleek and puffy, and never used, not even for a bit of embroidery or knitting. She couldn't, you know, with those sharp transparent little nails, they might break. They were like her little sharp teeth that always reminded one of a mouse's teeth, and made one shudder at how sharp they would be should she ever decide to bite.

But her smile was like the mixing of all smiles, a baby's, a woman-of- the-world, a grieved child's, and a spirit who had put aside all moral purpose. Perhaps, like mixed drinks it was for that reason but the more intoxicating. And because she did not hide her charms and was lavish with her smiles, there were more poor victims about her little feet than about any other woman at the shore that summer. Men talked about her in the smoking rooms and billiard rooms and compared her to vamps of other seasons, and decided she had left them all in the shade. She was a perfect production of the modern age, more perfect than others because she knew how to do the boldest things with that cherubic air that bereft sin of its natural ugliness and made it beautiful and delicious, as if degradation had suddenly become an exalted thing, like some of the old rites in a Pagan Temple, and she a lovely priestess. And when each new folly was over there was she with her innocent baby air, and her pure childlike face that looked dreamily out from its frame of little girl hair, and seemed not to have been soiled at all. And so men who played her games lost their sense of sin and fell that much lower than those who sin and know it and are afraid to look themselves in the face. When a man loses his sense of shame, of being among the pigs, he is in a far country indeed.

But Opal Verrons sauntering forth to the Hotel piazza in company with three of her quondam admirers suddenly lost her luxurious air of nestling content. The hotel clerk handed her two telegrams as she passed the desk. She tore them open carelessly, but her eyes grew wide with horror as she read.

Percy Emerson had been arrested. He had run over a woman and a baby and both were in a hospital in a critical condition. He would be held without bail until it was seen whether they lived.

She drew in her breath with a frightened gasp and bit at her red lip with her little sharp teeth. A pretty child with floating curls and dainty apparel ran laughing across her way, its hand outstretched to a tiny white dog that was dancing after her, and Opal gave a sharp cry and tore the telegram into small bits. But when she opened the second message her face paled under its delicate rouge as she read: "Mortimer McMarter killed in an accident when his car collided with a truck. His body lies at Saybrook Inn. We find your address on his person, with a request to let you know if anything happens to him. What do you wish done with the body?"

Those who watched her face as she read say that it took on an ashen color and she looked years older. Her real spirit seemed to be looking forth from those wide limpid eyes for an instant, the spirit of a coward who had been fooling the world; the spirit of a lost soul who had grown old in sin; the spirit of a soul who had stepped over the bounds and sinned beyond her depth.

She looked about upon them all, stricken, appalled,—not sorry but just afraid,—and not for her friends, but for herself! And then she gave a horrid little lost laugh and dropping the telegram as if it had burned her, she flung out her voice upon them with a blaze in her big eyes and a snarl in her lute-voice:

"Well, I wasn't to blame was I? They all were grown men, weren't they? It was up to them. I'm going to get out of here! This is an awful place!"

She gave a shudder and turning swiftly fled to the elevator, catching it just as the door was being shut, and they saw her rising behind the black and gold grating and waving a mocking little white hand at them as they watched her amazed. Then one of them stooped and picked up the telegram. And while they still stood at the doorway wondering some one pointed to a brilliant blue car that was sliding down the avenue across the beach road.

"She has gone!" they said looking at one another strangely. Did she really care then?

* * * * *

The dinner at Sabbath Valley parsonage was a good one. It was quite different from any dinner Laurie Shafton had ever eaten before. It had a taste that he hadn't imagined just plain chicken and mashed potatoes and bread and butter and coffee and cherry pie could have.

Those were things he seldom picked out from a menu, and he met them as something new and delicious, prepared in this wonderful country way.

Also the atmosphere was queer and interesting.

The minister had helped him into the dining-room, a cheery room with a bay window looking toward the church and a window box of nasturtiums in which the bees hummed and buzzed.

The girl came in and acknowledged the casual introduction of her father with a quite sophisticated nod and sat down across from him. And there was a prayer at the beginning of the meal! Just as he was about to say something graceful to the girl, there was a prayer. It was almost embarrassing. He had never seen one before like this. At a boarding school once he had experienced a thing they called "grace" which consisted in standing behind their chairs while the entire assembled hungry multitude repeated a poem of a religious nature. He remembered they used to spend their time making up parodies on it—one ran something about "this same old fish upon my plate," and rhymed with "hate." He stared at the lovely bowed hair of the girl across the table while it was going on, and got ready a remark calculated to draw her smiles, but the girl lifted eyes that seemed so far away he felt as though she did not see him, and he contented himself with replying to his host's question something about the part of the chicken he liked best. It was a queer home to him, it seemed so intimate. Even the chicken seemed to be a detail of their life together, perhaps because there was only one chicken, and one breast. Where he dwelt there were countless breasts, and everybody had a whole breast if he wanted it, or a whole chicken for the matter of that. Here they had to stop and ask what others liked before they chose for themselves. This analysis went queerly on in his mind while he sat waiting for his plate and wondering over the little things they were talking about. Mrs. Severn said Miss Saxon had been crying all through church, and she told her Billy had been away all night. She was awfully worried about his going with that baseball team.

A fleeting shadow passed over the girl's face:

"Billy promised me he would be there to-day," she said thoughtfully, "something must have happened. I don't think Billy was with the baseball team—" then her eyes travelled away out the window to the distant hills, she didn't seem to see Laurence Shafton at all. It was a new experience for him. He was fairly good looking and knew it.

Who the deuce was this Billy? And what did she care about Miss Saxon crying? Did she care so much for Billy already? Would it be worth his while to make her uncare?

"Mrs. Carter wasn't out," said Mrs. Severn as she poured coffee, "I hope she's not having more trouble with her neuralgia."

The minister suddenly looked up from his carving:

"Did Mark come back yesterday, Marilyn?"

The girl drew a quick breath and brought back her eyes from the hills, but she did not look at the young man: "No, father he didn't come."

Who the deuce was Mark? Of course there would be several, but there was always one. Billy and Mark! It was growing interesting.

But Billy and Mark were not mentioned again, though a deep gravity seemed to have settled into the eyes of the family since their names had come up. Laurie decided to speak of the weather and the roads:

"Glorious weather we're having," he chirped out condescendingly, "But you certainly have the limit for roads. What's the matter with the highway? Had a Detour right in the best part of the road. Bridge down, it said, road flooded! Made the deuce of a time for me—!"

"Bridge?" remarked Marilyn looking up thoughtfully.

"Flood?" echoed the minister sharply.

"Yes. About two miles back where the highway crosses this valley. Put me in some fix. Had a bet on you know. Date with a lady. Staked a lot of money on winning, too. Hard luck," Then he looked across at Marilyn's attentive face. Ah! He was getting her at last! More on that line.

"But it'll not be all loss," he added gallantly with a gesture of admiration toward her, "You see I didn't have any idea I was going to meet you."

But Marilyn's eyes were regarding him soberly, steadily, analytically, without an answering smile. It was as if she did not like what he had said—if indeed she had heard it at all—as if she were offended at it. Then the eyes look on an impersonal look and wandered thoughtfully to the mountains in the distance. Laurie felt his cheeks burn. He felt almost embarrassed again, like during the prayer. Didn't the girl know he was paying her a compliment? Or was she such a prude that she thought him presuming on so slight an acquaintance? Her father was speaking:

"I don't quite understand," 'he said thoughtfully. "There is no bridge within ten miles, and nothing to flood the road but the Creek, which never was known to overflow its banks more than a few feet at most. The highway is far above the valley. You must have been a bit turned around."

The young man laughed lightly:

"Well, perhaps I had a jag on. I'm not surprised. I'd been driving for hours and had to drink to keep my nerve till morning. There were some dandy spilling places around those mountain curves. One doesn't care to look out and see when one is driving at top speed."

Heavens! What had he said now? The girl's eyes came round to look him over again and went through to his soul like a lightning flash and away again, and there was actually scorn on her lips. He must take another line. He couldn't understand this haughty country beauty in the least.

"I certainly did enjoy your music," he flashed forth with a little of his own natural gaiety in his voice that made him so universal a favorite.

The girl turned gravely toward him and surveyed him once more as if she were surprised and perhaps had not done him justice. She looked like one who would always be willing to do one justice. He felt encouraged:

"If it hadn't been for this blamed foot of mine I'd have hobbled over to the—service. I was sorry not to hear the music closer."

"There is another service this evening," she said pleasantly, "Perhaps father can help you over. It is a rather good organ for so small a one." She was trying to be polite to him. It put him on his metal. It made him remember how rude he had been to her father the night before.

"Delightful organ I'm sure," he returned, "but it was the organist that I noticed. One doesn't often hear such playing even on a good organ."

"Oh, I've been well taught," said the girl without self-consciousness. "But the children are to sing this evening. You'll like to hear the children I'm sure. They are doing fairly well now."

"Charmed, I'm sure," he said with added flattery of his eyes which she did not take at all because she was passing her mother's plate for more gravy. How odd not to have a servant pass it!

"You come from New York?" the host hazarded.

"Yes," drawled the youth, "Shafton's my name, Laurence Shafton, son of William J., of Shafton and Gates you know," he added impressively.

The host was polite but unimpressed. It was almost as though he had never heard of William J. Shafton the multi-millionaire. Or was it? Dash the man, he had such a way with him of acting as though he knew everything and nothing impressed him; as though he was just as good as the next one! As though his father was something even greater than a millionaire! He didn't seem to be in the least like Laurie's idea of a clergyman. He couldn't seem to get anywhere with him.

The talk drifted on at the table, ebbing and flowing about the two ladies as the tide touches a rising strand and runs away. The girl and her mother answered his questions with direct steady gaze, and polite phrases, but they did not gush nor have the attitude of taking him eagerly into their circle as he was accustomed to being taken in wherever he went. Nothing he said seemed to reach further than kindly hospitality. When that was fulfilled they were done and went back to their own interests.

Marilyn did not seem to consider the young man a guest of hers in any sense personally. After the dinner she moved quietly out to the porch and seated herself in a far chair with a leather bound book, perhaps a Bible, or prayer book. He wasn't very familiar with such things. She took a little gold pencil from a chain about her neck and made notes on a bit of paper from what she read, and she joined not at all in the conversation unless she was spoken to, and then her thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. It was maddening.

Once when a tough looking little urchin went by with a grin she flew down off the porch to the gate to talk with him; she stood there some time in earnest converse. What could a girl like that find to say to a mere kid? When she came back there was a look of trouble in her eyes, and by and by her father asked if Harry had seen Billy, and she shook her head with a cloud on her brow. It must be Billy then. Billy was the one! Well, dash him! If he couldn't go one better than Billy he would see! Anyhow Billy didn't have a sprained ankle, and a place in the family! A girl like that was worth a few days' invalidism. His ankle didn't hurt much since the minister had dressed it again. He believed he could get up and walk if he liked, but he did not mean to. He meant to stay here a few days and conquer this young beauty. It was likely only her way of vamping a man, anyway, and a mighty tantalizing one at that. Well, he would show her! And he would show Billy, too, whoever Billy was! A girl like that! Why,—A girl like that with a face like that would grace any gathering, any home! He had the fineness of taste to realize that after he got done playing around with Opal and women like her, this would be a lady any one would be proud to settle down to. And why not? If he chose to fall in love with a country nobody, why could'nt he? What was the use of being Laurie Shafton, son of the great William J. Shafton, if he couldn't marry whom he would? Shafton would be enough to bring any girl up to par in any society in the universe. So Laurie Shafton set himself busily to be agreeable.

And presently his opportunity arrived. Mrs. Severn had gone in the house to take a nap, and the minister had been called away to see a sick man. The girl continued to study her little book:

"I wish you would come and amuse me," he said in the voice of an interesting invalid.

The girl looked up and smiled absently:

"I'm sorry," she said, "but I have to go to my Sunday-school class in a few minutes, and I was just getting my lesson ready. Would you like me to get you something to read?"

"No," he answered crossly. He was not used to being crossed in any desire by a lady, "I want you to talk to me. Bother the Sunday-school! Give them a vacation to-day and let them go fishing. They'll be delighted, I'm sure. You have a wonderful foot. Do you know it? You must be a good dancer. Haven't you a victrola here? We might dance if only my foot weren't out of commission."

"I don't dance, Mr. Shafton, and it is the Sabbath," she smiled indulgently with her eyes on her book.

"Why don't you dance? I could teach you easily. And what has the Sabbath got to do with it?"

"But I don't care to dance. It doesn't appeal to me in the least. And the Sabbath has everything to do with it. If I did dance I would not do it to-day."

"But why?" he asked in genuine wonder.

"Because this is the day set apart for enjoying God and not enjoying ourselves."

He stared.

"You certainly are the most extraordinary young woman I ever met," he said admiringly, "Did no one ever tell you that you are very beautiful."

She gave him the benefit of her beautiful eyes then in a cold amused glance:

"Among my friends, Mr. Shafton, it is not considered good form to say such things to a lady of slight acquaintance." She rose and gathered up her book and hat that lay on the floor beside her chair, and drew herself up till she seemed almost regal.

Laurie Shafton stumbled to his feet. He was ashamed. He felt almost as he had felt once when he was caught with a jag on being rude to a friend of his mother's:

"I beg your pardon," he said gracefully, "I hope you will believe me, I meant no harm."

"It is no matter," said the girl graciously, "only I do not like it. Now you must excuse me. I see my class are gathering."

She put the hat on carelessly, with a push and a pat and slipped past him down the steps and across the lawn. Her dress brushed against his foot as she went and it seemed like the touch of something ethereal. He never had felt such an experience before.

She walked swiftly to a group of boys, ugly, uncomely, overgrown kids, the same who had followed her after church, and met them with eagerness. He felt a jealous chagrin as he watched them follow her into the church, an anger that she dared to trample upon him that way, a fierce desire to get away and quaff the cup of admiration at the hand of some of his own friends, or to quaff some cup, any cup, for he was thirsty, thirsty, thirsty, and this was a dry and barren land. If he did stay and try to win this haughty country beauty he would have to find a secret source of supply somewhere or he never would be able to live through it.

The Sunday-school hour wore away while he was planning how to revenge himself, but she did not return. She lingered for a long time on the church steps talking with those everlasting kids again, and after they were gone she went back into the church and began to play low, sweet music.

It was growing late. Long red beams slanted down the village street across the lawn, lingered and went out. A single ruby burned on one of the memorial windows like a lamp, and went purple and then gray. It was growing dusk, and that girl played on! Dash it all! Why didn't she quit? It was wonderful music, but he wanted to talk to her. If he hobbled slowly could he get across that lawn? He decided to try. And then, just as he rose and steadied himself by the porch pillar, down the street in a whirl of dust and noisy claxon there came a great blue car and drew up sharp in front of the door, while a lute-like voice shouted gaily: "Laurie, Laurie Shafton, is that you?"



IX

After Billy had listened a long time he took a single step to relieve his cramped toes, which were numb with the tensity of his strained position. Stealthily as he could he moved his shoe, but it seemed to grind loudly upon the cement floor of the cellar, and he stopped frozen in tensity again to listen. After a second he heard a low growl as if someone outside the house were speaking. Then all was still. After a time he heard the steps again, cautiously, walking over his head, and his spine seemed to rise right up and lift him, as he stood trembling. He wasn't a bit superstitious, Billy wasn't. He knew there was no such thing as a ghost, and he wasn't going to be fooled by any noises whatsoever, but anybody would admit it was an unpleasant position to be in, pinned in a dark unfamiliar cellar without a flash light, and steps coming overhead, where only a dead man or a doped man was supposed to be. He cast one swift glance back at the cobwebby window through which he had so recently arrived, and longed to be back again, out in the open with the bells, the good bells sounding a call in his ears. If he were out wouldn't he run? Wouldn't he even leave his old bicycle to any fate and run? But no! He couldn't! He would have to come back inevitably. Whoever was upstairs in that house alone and in peril he must save. Suppose—!—His heart gave a great dry sob within him and he turned away from the dusty exit that looked so little now and so inadequate for sudden flight.

The steps went on overhead shuffling a little louder, as they seemed further off. They were climbing the stair he believed. They wore rubber heels! Link had worn rubber heels! And Shorty's shoes were covered with old overshoes! Had they come back, perhaps to hide from their pursuers? His heart sank. If that were so he must get out somehow and go after the police, but that should be his last resort. He didn't want to get any one else in this scrape until he knew exactly what sort of a scrape it was. It wasn't square to anybody—not square to the doped man, not square to himself, not even square to Pat and the other two, and—yes, he must own it,—not square to Cart. That was his first consideration, Cart! He must find Cart. But first he must find out somehow who that man was that had been kidnapped.

It seemed an age that he waited there in the cellar and everything so still. Once he heard a door far up open, and little shuffling noises, and by and by he could not stand it any longer. Getting down softly on all fours, he crept slowly, noiselessly over to the cellar stairs, and began climbing, stopping at every step to listen. His efforts were much hampered by the milk bottle which kept dragging down to one side and threatening to hit against the steps. But he felt that milk was essential to his mission. He dared not go without it. The tools were in his other pocket. They too kept catching in his sleeve as he moved cautiously. At last he drew himself to the top step. There was a crack of light under the door. Suppose it should be locked? He could saw out a panel, but that would make a noise, and he still had the feeling that someone was in that house. A cellar was not a nice place in which to be trapped. One bottle of milk wouldn't keep him alive very long. The haunted house was a great way from anywhere. Even the bells couldn't call him from there, once anybody chose to fasten him in the cellar, and find the loose window and fasten it up—!