Tom looked at his brother vaguely; he was suffering keenly:

"Don't be a fool!" he shuddered. Jerry-Jo, huddled in a wet heap, was sobbing like a baby—gone utterly to pieces.

Another hideous space of silence followed, then Sandy spoke again:

"I'm going to make the try. I'm dying of cold. It's the only chance for any of us. Here goes!"

And before any one could interfere he made his leap and was in the water, a bobbing speck among the ugly white caps!

"Good God!"

That was all Tom said, but his crazed eyes were upon that strained, uplifted face. Jerry-Jo ceased his moaning and—laughed! It was a foolish cackle, such as a maniac might give, mistaking a death-struggle for a bit of play.

"He's—a good swimmer!" he gasped, and laughed again. Tom turned, for an instant, wondering eyes upon him. He may have, in that moment, estimated his own chance, his duty to Jerry-Jo, and his determination to be with his brother. The perplexed gaze lasted but the briefest space of time and then with:

"All right! here goes!" he was making for Sandy with a strength born of despair and madness.

"Come back!" shrieked Jerry-Jo with the frenzy of one deserted and too cowardly or helpless to follow: "Come back!"

But neither swimmer heard nor heeded. For a moment more the black and the red heads bobbed about, the faces turned toward each other grimly. Even in that waste and at the bitter last the sense of companionship held their thought. Jerry-Jo, rigid and every sense at last alert in an effort for self-preservation, saw Sandy smile. It was a wonderful smile: it was like a flash of sunlight on that black sea; then Sandy's lips moved, but no one was ever to know what he said, and then—Jerry-Jo was alone in the coming night and the rolling waves!

"They should," said Mary McAdam, "be home by seven at the latest. The wind's with them coming back; it was with them part of the way going!"

Anton Farwell sat on the steps of the Lodge, his dogs peacefully lying at his feet. All day, since hearing of the boys' trip, he had been restless and anxious. Farwell had his bad hours often, but he rarely permitted himself companionship at such times, but to-day, after his noon meal, he had been unable to keep away from the Lodge.

"Fall's setting in early," Mrs. McAdam went on; "pickerel come; whitefish go. Beasts and fish and birds ken a lot, Mr. Farwell."

"They certainly do. The more you live with dumb creatures, the more you are impressed with that. Is that Sandy's dog, Mrs. McAdam?"

A yellow, lank dog came sniffing around the side of the house and lay down, friendly wise, by Farwell.

"Yes, and he's a cute one. Do you believe me, Mr. Farwell, that there Bounder knows the engine of our boat! Any other boat can come into the Channel and he don't take any notice, but let my boys be out late and Bounder, lying asleep on the floor, will start up at the chugging of the launch and make for the dock. He never makes a mistake."

Farwell laughed and bent over to smooth Bounder's back.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"Six-thirty," Mary replied with alarming readiness. "Six-thirty, and the clock's a bit slow at that."

Farwell felt sure it was a good ten minutes slow; but because of that he turned the conversation.

"Jerry McAlpin was telling me to-day," he said in his low, pleasant voice, "of how he and others used to smuggle liquor over the border. Jerry seems repenting of his past."

Mary laughed and shrugged her shoulders.

"My man and Jerry, with old Michael McAlpin, were the freest of smugglers. In them days the McAlpins wasn't pestered with feelings; they was good sports. Jerry marrying that full-breed had it taken out of him somewhat—she was a hifty one. Them Indians never can get off their high heels—not the full-breeds. But I tell you, Mr. Farwell, and you take it for truth, when Jerry begins to maudle about repentance, it's just before a—debauch. I know the signs."

Just then Bounder raised his head and howled.

"None of that! Off with yer!" shouted Mary, making for the dog with nervous energy. "Once," she went on, her lips twitching, "my man and Michael McAlpin had a good one on the officers. They had a big load of the stuff on the cart and were coming down the road back of the Far Hill Place when they sensed the custom men in the bushes. What do they do but cut the traces and lick the horses into a run; then they turned the barrels loose, jumped off, letting them roll down the hill, and they, themselves, made for safety. It was only a bit more trouble to go back in a week's time and gather up the barrels; but those government devils followed the horses like idiots and felt mighty set up when they overtook them! But when they saw they had only the horses, oh! good Lord!"

Farwell laughed absently; his eyes were fixed on the water. Even in the Channel it had an angry look. The current was set from the Bay, and the stream rose and fell as if it had an ugly secret in its keeping.

"Mrs. McAdam," he said suddenly, "I'm going out to—to meet the boys!"

"God save ye, Mr. Farwell—for which?"

When Mary fell into that form of speech she was either troubled or infuriated.

"I'm restless; I feel like a fling. Come on, you scamps!" to his dogs, "get home and keep house till I come back."

His dogs leaped to him and then made for the Green. Without another word Farwell walked to his launch at the foot of the wharf steps and prepared for his trip.

A black wave of fear enveloped Mary McAdam. She was overcome by a certainty of evil, and, when Farwell's boat had disappeared, she strode to the Green and gave vent to her anxiety. There were those who comforted, those who jeered, but the men were largely away on fishing business, and the women and boys were more interested in her excitement than they were in her cause for fear.

It was eight o'clock and very dark when Doctor Ledyard, driving down from Far Hill Place for the mail, paused to listen to Mrs. McAdam's expressions of anxiety. Young Dick Travers was beside him, and Mary's words held him.

"Was Jerry-Jo with your boys, Mrs. McAdam?" he asked.

"He was that! And Jerry-Jo always brings ill-luck on a trip. I should have known better than to let the half-breed scamp go. 'Twas pity as moved me. Jerry-Jo is one as thinks rocking a boat is spirit, and yelling for help, when no help is needed, a rare joke. The young devil!"

Doctor Ledyard and Dick stayed on after getting the mail. A strange, tense feeling was growing in the place. Mary's terror was contagious.

"If the men would only come back," moaned the distracted mother; "I'd send the lot of them out after the young limbs!"

At eight-thirty the storm broke. A dull, thick storm which had used most of its fury out beyond Flying Point, and in the breast of the sullen wind came the sound of an engine panting, panting in the darkness that was shot by flashes of lightning and rent by thunder-claps. Mary McAdam gazed petrified at Bounder, who had followed her to the Green.

"Why don't yer yelp?" she muttered, giving the dog a kick. But Bounder blinked indifferently as the coming boat drew near and nearer.

Every boy, woman, and child, with the old men and lazy young ones, were at the wharf when the launch emerged from the darkness. Some one was standing up guiding the boat, ready to protect it from violent contact; some one was huddled on the floor of the boat—some one who made no cry, did not look up. They two were all! Just then a lurid flash of lightning seemed to photograph the scene forever on the minds of the onlookers.

Ledyard, with Dick, was close to the boat when it touched the dock. By the lurid light of electricity the face of the man in the launch rose sharply against the darkness and for one instant shone as if to attract attention.

Farwell was known by reputation to the doctor; he had probably been seen by him many times, but certainly his face had never made an impression upon him before. But now, in the hour of anguish and excitement, it held Ledyard's thought to the exclusion of everything else.

"Who? where?" The questions ran through his mind and then, because every sense was alert, he knew!

"Jerry-Jo!" Dick was calling, "where are the others?"

It was a mad question, but the boy, huddling in the launch, replied quiveringly:

"Gone! gone to the bottom off Dreamer's Rock."

Then he began to whimper piteously.

A shuddering cry rang out. It was Mary McAdam, who, followed by her dog, ran wildly, apron over head, toward the White Fish Lodge.

Farwell, casting all reserve aside, worked with Ledyard over the prostrate Jerry-Jo. The recognition was no shock to him; he had always known Ledyard; had cleverly kept from his notice heretofore, but now the one thing he had hoped to escape was upon him, and he grew strangely indifferent to what lay before.

He obeyed every command of the doctor as they sought to restore Jerry-Jo. More than once their eyes met and their hands touched, but the contact did not cause a tremor in either man.

When the inevitable arrives a strength accompanies it. Nature rarely deserts either friend or foe at the critical moment.



CHAPTER VI

The bay was dragged, various methods being used, but the bodies of Sandy and Tom McAdam were not recovered. Mary McAdam with strained eyes and rigid lips waited at the wharf as each party returned, and when at last hope died in her poor heart, she set about the doing of two things that she felt must be done.

The behaviour of the boys in the boat on the day of the accident had at last reached her ears, for, with such excitement prevailing and Jerry-Jo reduced to periods of nervous babbling as he repeated again and again the story, Mary was certain of overhearing the details. As far as possible she verified every word. That her sons had disobeyed her about the sail there could be no doubt, and when she went to the shelf of the bar and discovered the half-filled bottles which Sandy had put in the places of the brandy and whisky, her heart gave up doubt. She relinquished all that she had prided herself upon in the past. They had defied and deceived her! They had permitted her to be mocked while she prated of her superiority! It was bitter hard, but Mary McAdam made no feeble cry—she prepared for the final act in the little drama. Beyond that she could not, would not look.

"Dig me two graves," she commanded Big Hornby; "dig them one on either side of my husband's."

"You'll be thinking the bodies will yet be found, poor soul?" Hornby had a tender nature kept human by his hunger for his absent boys.

"I'm not thinking. I'm doing my part; let others do the same."

And then Mary went to Anton Farwell. Farwell, since the night of the tragedy, was waiting, always waiting for the inevitable. Every knock at his door brought him panting to his feet. He knew Doctor Ledyard would come; he fervently hoped he would, and soon, but the days dragged on. There were moments when the man had a wild desire to shoulder his bag and set forth under shadow of the night and the excitement, for one of his long absences, this one, however, to terminate as far from Kenmore as possible. Once he had even started, but at the edge of the water where his boat lay he halted, deterred by the knowledge that his safer course lay in facing what he must face sooner or later. Now that he was known to be alive it were easier to deal with one man than with the pack of bloodhounds which that one man might set upon him. Always the personal element entered in—it was weak hope, but the only one. He might win Ledyard; he could not win the pack!

When Mary McAdam knocked on Farwell's door he thought the time had come, but the sight of the distracted mother steadied him. Here was something for him to do, something to carry him away from his lonely forebodings.

"Come in, Mrs. McAdam. Rest yourself. You look sorely in need of rest."

It was the early evening of a hot day. It was lighter out of doors than in the cottage, for the shades were drawn at Farwell's windows; he disliked the idea of being watched from without.

"I can't rest, Master Farwell, till I've done my task," said the poor soul, sinking into the nearest chair. "And it's to get your help I've come."

"I'll do what I can," murmured Farwell. "What I'll be permitted to do," he felt would be more true.

"I've said more than once, Mr. Farwell, that were my boys like other boys I'd give up the business of the White Fish. Well, my lads were like others, only they were keener about deceiving me. I thought I'd made them strong and sure, but I did the same hurt to my flesh and blood that I did to others. I put evil too close and easy to them. I prided myself on what I had never done! They'll come back to me no more. Could I have a talk with them, things might be straightened out; but I must do what is to be done alone."

Not a quiver shook the low, severe voice. The very hardness moved Farwell to deep pity.

"It's now, Mr. Farwell, that I'd have you come to the Lodge and help me with my task, and when it's over I want you to stand with me beside those two empty graves and say what you can for them who never had the right mother to teach them. I'm no church woman; the job of priest and minister sickens me, but I know a good man when I see one. You helped the lads while they lived; you risked your life to help them home at the last; and it's you who shall consecrate the empty beds where I'd have my lads lie if the power were mine!"

Farwell got up and paced the room restlessly. Suddenly, with Ledyard's recognition, the poor shell of respectability and self-respect which, during his lonely years, had grown about him, was torn asunder, and he was what he knew the doctor believed him. To such, Mary McAdam's request seemed a cruel jest, a taunt to drive him into the open. And yet he knew that up to the last ditch he must hold to what he had secured for himself—the trust and friendship of these simple people. Hard and distasteful as the effort was he dared not turn himself from it. Full well he knew that Ledyard's magnifying glass was, unseen, being used against him even now. The delay was probably caused by the doctor's silent investigation of his recent life, his daily deeds. He could well imagine the amusement, contempt, and disbelief that would meet the story of his poor, blameless years during which he had played with children, worked in his garden, been friends with the common folk, not from any high motive, but to keep himself from insanity! He had had to use any material at hand, and it had brought about certain results that Ledyard would dissect and toss aside, he would never believe! Still the attempt to live on, as he had lived, must be undertaken. A kind of desperation overcame him.

What did it matter? He might just as well go on until he was stopped. He was no safer, no more comfortable, sitting apart waiting for his summons. He would, as far as in him lay, ignore the menacing thing that hovered near, and play the part of a man while he might.

"I'm ready to go with you, Mrs. McAdam," he said, turning for his hat, "and as we go tell me what you are about to do."

It was no easy telling. The mere statement of fact was so crude that Farwell could not, by any possibility, comprehend the dramatic scene he was soon to witness and partake of.

"I'm going to keep my word," Mary McAdam explained. "I'll not be waiting for the license to be given, or taken away, I'll keep my word."

It was a still, breathless night, with a moon nearly full, and as Mrs. McAdam, accompanied by Farwell, passed over the Green toward the Lodge, the idlers and loiterers followed after at a respectful distance. Mary was the centre of attraction just then, and Farwell always commanded attention, used as the people were to him.

"Come on! come on!" called Mary without turning her head. "Bring others and behold the sight of your lives. Behold a woman keeping her word when the need for the keeping is over!"

A growing excitement was rising in Mary's voice; she was nearing the end of her endurance and was becoming reckless.

By the time the Lodge was reached a goodly crowd was at the steps leading up to the bar. Jerry McAlpin was there with Jerry-Jo beside him. Hornby, just come from the digging of the two graves, stood nearby with the scent of fresh earth clinging to him.

Suddenly Mary McAdam came out of the house, her arms filled with bottles, while behind her followed Farwell rolling a cask.

What occurred then was so surprising and bewildering that those who looked on were never able to clearly describe the scene. Standing with her load, Mary McAdam spoke fierce, hot words. She showed herself no mercy, asked for no pity. She had dealt in a business that threatened the souls of men and boys, made harder the lives of women. She had blinded herself and made herself believe that she and hers were better, stronger than others, and now——

Mary was magnificent in her abandon and despair. Her words flowed freely, her eyes flashed.



"And now," she cried, "I'll keep my word to you. Here! here! here!"

The bottles went whirling and crashing on the rocks near the roadway.

"And you, Master Farwell, break open the keg and set the evil thing free."

This Farwell proceeded to do with energy born of the hour. "And fetch out all that remains!" shrieked Mary. "Here, you! McAlpin, I'll have none of your help! Stay in your place; I'd not trust you inside when all's as free as it is to-night. You have your lad—heaven help you! Keep him and give him a clean chance. Nor you, Hornby! Out with you! It's a wicked waste, is it? Better so than what I suffer. Your lads are above ground, though out of your sight, Hornby, while mine——Here, Master, more! more! let us water the earth."

The mad scene went on until the last drop of liquor was soaking into the earth or dripping from the rocks.

White-faced and stern, Farwell carried out the mother's commands and heeded not the muttered discontent or the approach of the horse and buggy bearing Doctor Ledyard and Dick Travers. He was one in the drama now and he played his part.

At the close a dull silence rested on the group, then Mary McAdam made her appeal. Her voice broke; her hands trembled. She looked aged and forlorn.

"And now," she said; "who'll come to the graveyard with me?"

She need not have asked. To the last child they followed mutely. They were overcome by curiosity and fear, and the faces in the dull light of the late day and early night looked ghostly.

As Farwell stood near Mary McAdam by the newly made graves, he raised his eyes and found Ledyard's stern, yet amused, ones on his face. For a moment he quivered, but with the courage of one facing an operation, the outcome of which he could not know, he returned the look steadily. He heard his own voice speaking words of helpfulness, words of memory-haunted scenes. He told of Tom's courage and Sandy's sunshiny nature. 'Twas youth, he pleaded for them, youth with its blindness and lack of foresight. He recalled the last dread act as Jerry-Jo had depicted it. The older brother risking all for the younger. The smile—Sandy's last bequest—the moving lips that doubtless spoke words of affection to the only one who could hear them. Together they had played their pranks, had trod the common path; together they went—Farwell paused, then returned Ledyard's sneering gaze defiantly,—"To God who alone can understand and judge!" This was flung out boldly, recklessly.

With ceremony and the sound of sobbing, the empty graves were refilled, and the strange company turned away.

Then, alone and spent, Farwell returned to his cottage with a sure sense that before he slept he would know his fate, for he acknowledged that his fate lay largely, now, in the hands of the man who no longer had any doubt of his identity.

It was half-past eight when the buggy passed Farwell's window bound for the Hill Place. Young Travers was driving and the seat beside him was empty! Nine o'clock struck; the lights went out in the village, but Farwell rose and trimmed his lamp carefully. Ten o'clock—all Kenmore, excepting Mary McAdam, slept. Still Farwell waited while his clock ticked out the palpitating seconds. The moonlight flooded the Green. Where was he, that waiting man who was to come and give the blow?

It was nearly eleven when Farwell saw him advancing across the Green. He had been down by the water, probably hiding in some anchored boat until he was sure that he would not be seen. As he reached the door of Farwell's house a clear voice called to him:

"Will you come in, or would you prefer to have me come out?"

This took Ledyard rather at a disadvantage. He could hardly have told what he expected, but he certainly did not look for this calm acceptance of him and his errand.

"I'll come in. I see you have a light. Thank you"—for Farwell had offered a chair near the table—"I hope I'm not disturbing you."

The irony of this was apparently lost upon Farwell. He sat opposite Ledyard, his arms folded on the table, waiting.

"So you're alive!"

"So it seems—at least partly so." Farwell parried the blows as one does even when he sees failure at hand.

"Perhaps you know your death was reported some years ago? There was a full account. You were escaping into Canada. The La Belle was the name of the boat. It went down near here?"

"Off Bleak Head," Farwell broke in.

"Thanks. There was even a picture of you in the papers," Ledyard said.

"A very poor one, I recall." Now that he was on the dissecting table, Farwell found himself strangely calm and collected. He saw that his manner irritated Ledyard; felt that it might ruin his chances, but he held to it grimly.

"So you saw—the papers?" The eyes under the shaggy brows looked ugly.

"Oh, yes. I had them all sent to me. It was very interesting reading after I got over the shock of the wreck and had accepted my isolated position."

"I suppose—Boswell keeps in touch with you—damn him!"

"Do you begrudge me—this one friend?"

"Yes. You have put yourself outside the pale of human companionship and friendships."

To this Farwell made no rejoinder. Again he waited.

"What do you think I'm going to do about it, now that I've run you down so unexpectedly?"

"I have supposed you would tell me, once we got together."

"Well, I've come to tell you!"

Ledyard leaned back in his chair and stretched his long legs out before him.

"But first I'm going to ask you a few questions. Your answers won't signify much one way or the other, but I'm curious. Why did you make such a fight—just to live? It must have been a devil of a game."

Farwell leaned against the table and so came nearer to his inquisitor.

"It was," he said quietly, "and I wonder if you can understand why it is that I'm glad to tell—even you about it? I don't expect sympathy, pity, or—even justice, but when a man's been on a desert isle for years it's a relief to speak his own tongue again to any one who can comprehend and who will listen."

"I'm prepared to listen," Ledyard muttered, and shrugged his heavy shoulders; "it will pass the time."

"After the thing was done," Farwell plunged in, "the thing I—had to do—I was dazed; I couldn't think clear. I'd been driven by drink and—and other things into a state bordering on delirium. Afterward, when they had me and I was forced to live normally, simply, I began to think clearly and suffer. God! how I suffered! I faced death with the horror that only an intelligent person can know. I saw no escape. The trial, the verdict, brought me closer and closer to the hideous reality. At first I thought it could not happen to me—to me! But it could! I sat day in and day out, looking at the electric chair! That was all I could see: it stood like a symbol of all the torture. I wondered how I would approach it. Would I falter, or go as most poor devils do—steadily? I saw myself—afterward—all that was left of me to give back to the world. Oh! I suffered, I suffered!"

The white, haggard face held Ledyard's fascinated gaze, but drew no word from him.

Farwell loosened the neck of his shirt—he was stifling, yet feeling relief as the past dreams of his lonely life formed themselves into words.

"At night I was haunted by visions," the low, vibrant voice rushed on. "It was worse at night when semi-unconsciousness made me helpless. I'd wake up yelling, not with fright, but pain, actual pain—the hot, knifing pain of an electric current trying to find my heart and brain.

"Then they said I was mad. Well, so I was; and the fight was on! At first there was a gleam—the chair faded from sight. If I lived—there was hope; but I was mistaken. You know the rest. The legal struggle, the escapes and captures. One friend and much money did what they could; it wasn't much.

"You've seen a cat play with a mouse? The mouse always runs, doesn't it? Well, so did I, though I didn't know where in God's world I was running, nor to what."

For some minutes Farwell had been speaking like a man distraught by fever. He had forgotten the listener across the table; he was remembering aloud at last, with no fear of consequences. He did not look at Ledyard, and when he spoke again it was in a calmer tone.

"It was on the last run—that I was supposed to have drowned. Well, I did die; at least something in me died. I lost breath, consciousness, and when I came to I was a poor, broken thing not worth turning the hounds on. I'm done for as far as the past's concerned. I'm a different man—not a reformed one! God knows I never played that role. I'm another man. I took what I could to keep me from insanity. I had to do something to occupy my time. That's why I've taught these poor little devils; it wasn't for them, it was for me; and when they grew to like me and trust me—I was grateful. Grateful for even that!"

Ledyard was holding the white, drawn face by his merciless eyes. So he looked when a particularly interesting subject lay under his knife and he was all surgeon—no man.

"But you're not equal to going back to the States without being hauled there—and taking your medicine?" he asked calmly.

"No. I suppose in the final analysis all that justice demands is that I should be put out of the way—out of the way of harming others? Well, that's accomplished. I don't suppose your infernal ideas of justice claim that a man should be hounded beyond death, and every chance for right living be barred from him? If a poor devil ever can expatiate his sin and try to live a decent life, why shouldn't he be given the opportunity here and now instead of in some mythical place among creatures of one's fancy?"

"You didn't argue that way when you shot Charles Martin down, did you? He was my friend; he had to—take his medicine!" Ledyard almost snarled out these words. "He may have deserved his punishment for the lapses of his life—but you were not the one to deal it. His family demand and should have justice for him—I mean to see that they shall. Martin, for all his folly was a genius, and gave to the world his toll of service. Why should you, who gave nothing, escape at his expense?"

"Martin was no better, no worse, than I. He and I lived on the same plane then; had the same interests. Had I not killed him, he would have killed me. He swore that."

"But you took him—at a disadvantage, like the damned——" Ledyard paused; he was losing his self-control. The calm, living face across the table enraged him.

"I met him in the open; I did not know he was unarmed. I drew my pistol in full view. A week before he had done the same; I escaped. No one believed that when I told it at the trial. I had no witnesses; he had many when I took my revenge."

"Who could believe you? What was your life compared with his?"

"Exactly. Perhaps that is why I—I kept running. Martin only dipped into such lives as mine was then; he always scurried back to respectability and honour; I grovelled in the mire and got stuck! When you get stuck you get what the world calls—justice."

"I recall"—Ledyard's face was hardening—"I recall you always squealed. You were always the wronged one; society was against you. Bah!"

Farwell sat unmoved under this attack.

"I'm not squealing now," he said quietly; "I am merely defending myself as I can. That's the prerogative of any human being, isn't it? Why, see here, Ledyard, there's one thing men like you never comprehend. On the different stratas of life exactly the same passions, impulses, and emotions exist; it's the way they're dealt with, how they affect people, that makes the difference. Up where you live and breathe they love and hate and take revenge, don't they? That's what happened down where I wallowed and where Martin sometimes came—to enjoy himself!"

And now Farwell clutched his thin hands on the table to stay their trembling as he went on:

"I loved—the woman in the case. That sounds strange to you, but it's the only thing I warn you not to laugh at! I loved her because she was beautiful, fascinating, and as—as bad as I. I knew the poor creature had never had half a show. She was born in evil and exploited from the cradle up. Martin knew it, too, and took advantage. She was fair game for him and his money. When he came down to hell to play, he played with her and defied me. But on my plane it was man against man, you see, and when he flung his plaything aside, she came to me; that's all! She told me how he had brought her where she was—yes, damn him! when she was innocent! She paid her toll then, not for his money—though who would believe that?—but for the chance to be decent and clean. He told her, when she was only sixteen, that the one way she could prove her vows to him was to give herself to him. If she trusted him so far, he could trust her. She trusted, poor child! Two years later he married up on his higher plane—your plane—and laughingly offered a second best place to her. It was the only bargain she could make then! The rest was an easy downhill grade.

"Well, I took her. I was all you say, but I meant to do the right thing by her, and she knew it! Yes, she knew it, and later he came back and tried to get her away. After I shot him and went to her with the story—she told me she'd pull herself together and wait for me until—until I came for her. She understood!"

Ledyard moistened his lips and set his jaws harshly. The story had not moved him to pity.

"And—where is she now?" he asked.

"In New York, I suppose. She thinks me dead."

"Boswell tells you that?"

"Yes. And he will never let her know. Unless I——"

"You expect to go back—some day?"

Farwell gave a dry, mirthless laugh at this, and then replied:

"After I've been dead long enough, when I've been good long enough, perhaps. You know even in a disembodied spirit hope dies hard. Yes—I had hoped to go back."

"I—I thought so." Ledyard leaned forward and across the table; his face was not three feet from Farwell's.

"I like to trace diseases down to the last germ," he said. "You're a disease, Farwell Maxwell, a mighty, ugly, dangerous one. You oughtn't to be alive; you're a menace while you have breath in your body; you should have died years ago in payment of your debt, just as Martin did, but you escaped, and now some one has got to keep an eye on you; see that you don't skip quarantine. You understand?"

Farwell felt the turning of the screw.

"I'm going to be the eye, Maxwell. You're going to stay right where you are until you pass off this sphere. Remembering what you once were, your pastimes and love of luxury, this seems as hellish a place and existence as even you deserve. When I saw you last night"—and here Ledyard laughed—"it was all I could do to control myself. You play your part well; but you always had a knack for theatricals. I know I'm a hard, unforgiving man, but there is just one phase of human nature that I will not stand for, and that is the refusal to take the medicine prescribed for the disease. What incentive have people for better living and upright thinking if every devil of a fellow who gets through his beastiality is permitted to come up into the ranks and march shoulder to shoulder with the best? If it's living you want and will lie for, steal for, and beg for—have it; but have it here where the chances are all against your old self. You'll probably never murder any one here or ruin the women; so grovel on!"

As he listened Farwell seemed to shrink and age. In that hour he recognized the fact that through all the years of self-imposed exile he had held to the hope of release in the future: the going back to that which he had once known. But looking at the hard, set face opposite he knew that this hope was futile: he must live forever where he was, or, by departing, bring about him the bloodhounds of justice and vengeance. Ledyard had but to whistle, he knew, and again the pursuit would be keen, and in the end—a long blank lay beyond that!

"You will—stay where you are!" Ledyard was saying.

"Surely. I intend to stay right here."

Then Farwell laughed and leaned back in his chair.



CHAPTER VII

Life settled into calm after the storm and subsequent happenings. Mary McAdam, having done what she felt she must do, grimly set her house in order and prepared for a new career. The bar, cleansed and altered, became her private apartment. With the courage and endurance of a martyr she determined to fight her battle out where there would be the least encouragement or comfort.

"I'll drink to the dregs," she said to Mary Terhune, who gave up her profession to share the solitude and fortunes of the White Fish; "but while I'm drinking there's no crime in serving my kind. Come summer I'll open my doors to tourists and keep the kind of house a woman—and a God-bepraised widow one at that—should keep. Time was when the best would not come to me, the bar being against their liking. Well, the best may come now and find peace."

"'Tis a changed woman you are, Mrs. McAdam."

"No, just a stricken one, Mary. When I sit by those empty graves back of the pasture lot I seem to know that I must do the work of my boys as well as my own—and the time's short! I'm over sixty."

"And looking forty, Mrs. McAdam." The manners of her trade clung to Mrs. Terhune.

"The shell doesn't count, Mary, if the heart of you is old and worn."

The people from the Far Hill Place returned early to town that year, and Anton Farwell breathed easier and sunk back into his old life when he knew they were gone.

In resurrecting the man Farwell once was, Ledyard had all but slain the man he had, perforce, become.

Whether former characteristics were dead or not, who could tell? But certainly with temptation removed, with the routine of a bleak, uninteresting existence his only choice, Farwell was a harmless creature. Gradually he had found solace in the commonplaces that surrounded him. Like a person relieved of mortal agony he was grateful for semi-invalidism. Previous to Ledyard's recognition of him he had sunk to a monotonous indifference, waiting, he realized now, for the time when he might safely shake off his disguise and slip away to what was once his own. Now, with his exit from Kenmore barred, he found that he no longer could return to his stupor; he was alert, keen, and restless. In the past he had often forced himself to exercise in order that he might be ready to journey on when the time of release came. His walks to the distant town, his long hours on the water, had all been preparations for the final leave-taking from his living tomb.

But now that he had no need of lashing himself into action, he found himself always on the move. He worked early and late at trifling tasks that occupied his hands while sharpening his wits. With shades drawn at night, he drew, with pencil and paper, plans of escape. He must choose a calm spell after a storm; he would take his launch, with a rowboat behind, to the Fox Portage. He'd set his launch free and shoulder his boat. Once he reached the Little Bay, he'd take his chances for an outgoing steamer. He'd have plenty of money and a glib story of a bad connection. It would go. He must defeat Ledyard.

Then he would tear the sheets of paper in bits, toss them on the coals, and laugh bitterly as he realized that he was imprisoned forever.

Foolish as all this was, it had its effect upon the man. He played with the thought as a child might play with a forbidden toy. Then he decided to test the matter. He would have to buy clothes and provisions for the winter—he always made a pilgrimage about this time. There would be a letter from Boswell, too. There always was one in September. So on a certain morning Farwell turned the key in his lock and quite naturally set forth with a sense of exaltation and freedom he had imagined he would never feel again.

Followed by his dogs, he went to his boat, which happened just then to be tied at the ricketty dock of the White Fish.

"It's off for a tramp you are, maybe?" asked Mrs. McAdam from her doorway. "God keep you, Mr. Farwell, and bring you back safe and sound."

At this Farwell paused.

"I think I'll leave the dogs behind," he said. "I may wish to hurry back, and a brace of dogs, keen on scents and full of spirits, is a handicap on a journey."

"Sure I'll feed and care for the two, and welcome, and if their staying behind brings you quicker home, 'tis a good piece of work I'm doing for Kenmore."

With this Mary McAdam came down to the boat and looked keenly at Farwell.

"Are you well?" she asked with a gentleness new and touching. "'Tis pale you look, and thin, I'm thinking. I'm getting to depend upon you, and the thought of anything happening to you grieves the heart of me. In all Kenmore there's no one as I lean on like you. There be nights when I look out toward your house and see your light a-shining when all else is dark, and say to myself, 'The master and me' over and over, and I'm less lonely."

For a moment Farwell could not speak. Once an inward desire to laugh, to scoff, would have driven him to supernatural gravity; now he merely smiled with grave pleasure, and said:

"A tramp will do me good, Mrs. McAdam. Thank you. I'll take your words with me for comfort and cheer."

The first night Farwell slept beside his fire, not ten miles from Kenmore. He had revelled in his freedom all day, had played like a boy, often retracing his steps, carefully using the same footprints, and laughing as he imagined the confusion of any one trying to follow him; the vague somebody being always Ledyard.

After a frugal meal, Farwell smoked his pipe, even attempted a snatch of rollicking song, then, rolling himself in a blanket, fell into natural and happy slumber.

At four he awoke with the creeping sensation of unexplainable fear. He first thought some animal was prowling near, and, raising himself on his elbow, looked keenly about. The appearance of the fire puzzled him. It looked as if fresh wood had been laid upon it, but, as no one was in sight he concluded that his own wood had been damp, and, therefore, had burned slower.

He did not sleep again, however, and his excited thoughts trailed back to his past and the one woman who had magically caught and held all the best that was in him. To what point of vantage had she, poor, disabled little soul, drifted? The world was a hard enough place for a woman, God knew, and for her, with her sudden-born determination to rise above the squalor of her early youth, it would be a serious problem. Boswell told him so little. He could count on his fingers the few sharp facts his friend had given him with the promise that if conditions changed he should know, but if all remained well, he might be secure in his faith and hope for the future. The future! Was there any future for him except Kenmore? And if she heard now that he was alive, had only seemed dead for her safety and his own, would she come to him and share the dun-coloured life of the In-Place?

She was alive; she was faithful. Boswell was making her comfortable with Farwell's money. She was accepting less and less because she was winning her way to independence in an honourable line. Since no man had entered her life after Farwell's death was reported, Farwell could readily see why.

Over and over, that first night in the woods, Farwell rehearsed these facts for comfort's sake. Suppose he made an escape. Suppose he lost himself in the city's labyrinth—what then?

And then, just at daybreak, a vivid and sharp memory of the woman's face came to him as he had last seen it pressed against the bars of his cell. Behind the squares of metal it shone like an angel's. Fair, pitiful, wonder-filled eyes, and quivering mouth. All day the picture haunted him and seemed to draw him toward it. He walked twenty miles that day and came at sunset to a dense jungle where he made his camp and stretched himself exhaustedly before the fire.

Sleep did not come easily to him; he was too excited and nerve worn. The white face checked by iron bars would not fade, and in the red glow of the flames it began to look wan and haggard, as if the day had tired it and it could find no rest or comfort.

The feeling of suffocation Ledyard had managed to create, returned to him. He grew nervous, ill at ease, and fearful.

Then he fell to moralizing. He was not often given to that, or introspection. Longing and alternate hope and despair had been his comrades and bedfellows, but he rarely indulged in calm consideration. Smoking his pipe, stretched wearily on the moss, he wondered if men knew how much they punished while fulfilling their ideals of justice?

"If only the sense of vindictiveness could be left out," he thought; "the Lord knows they have it all in their power once the key is turned on us. I deserved all they meant to inflict, but no human being deserves all that was given unconsciously."

Then Farwell relived his life, while the wood crumbled to ashes and the moon came up over the hills. A misguided, misspent boyhood; too much money; too little common sense; then the fling in the open with every emotion and desire uncurbed. Well, he had to learn his lesson and God knew he had; but why, in the working of things, shouldn't one be given a chance to prove the well-learned task; an opportunity, while among the living, to settle the question?

However, such fancies were idle, and Farwell shook the ashes from his pipe and gave a humorous shrug.

It would be a fine piece of work to slip from the clutches of the past and make good! This idea caused him to tremble. Surely no one would look for him in the camp of the upright. Walking the paths of the clean and sane he would be more surely secure from detection than anywhere else on earth. That was what his past had done for him. The truth of this sank into the lonely man's soul with sickening finality. And as he realized it, and compared it with the fact of his youth, he groaned. What an infernal fool he had been! What fools all such fellows were who, like him, wasted everything in their determination to make the unreal, real. He did not now desire to be a drivelling repentant; he wanted, God knew he really wanted, a chance to be decent and live; but in order to live he must go on acting a part and cringing and hiding.

These thoughts led nowhere and unfitted him for his journey, so he made the fire safe, lay down beside it, and slept as many a better man would have given much to sleep.

At four he awoke as on the previous night. So quietly, however, did he open his eyes that he took by surprise a man crouching by the fire as if stealing a bit of warmth. Farwell turned over, and the two eyed each other with wide, penetrating gaze.

Tough Pine, the guide, finding himself discovered, grinned sheepishly; he was loathing himself for being taken off guard, and muttered:

"Me share fire? me helped keep it."

Farwell raised himself on his elbow, all the light and courage gone from his face. It was the old story, the dream of freedom and—the prison bars!

"Where are you going?" he asked, though he knew full well.

"Where—you go? There, Pine go! Pine—good friend and good guide."

They questioned each other no more. Farwell finished his errand in dull fashion, bought his goods, found a letter, long waiting him, read all the papers he could lay hands on, and then set his face toward Kenmore. And that winter he devoted himself as he never had before to the simple people who were the means of keeping him sane.

Upon this newly restricted and devastated horizon Priscilla Glenn loomed large and vital. With Nathaniel's loosened rein and Theodora's restored faith, the girl developed wonderfully. Farwell made no more objection to her dancing or her flights of fancy. He fiddled for her and fed the flame of her imagination. She was the sunniest creature he had ever known; the bleak life of Lonely Farm had spurred her to greater lengths of self-defence; nothing could daunt her. She had an absorbing curiosity about life, out and beyond the Kenmore confines; and more to keep his own memory clear than to satisfy Priscilla, Farwell set himself to the task of educating the girl in ways that would have appalled Nathaniel and reduced Theodora again to tears and apprehension.

The bare room of the master's house was the stage upon which were set, in turn, the scenes of distant city life. Vicariously Priscilla learned the manners of a "real lady" under the most trying circumstances. Farwell told her of plays, operas, and, over his deal table, they chatted in brilliant restaurants. They walked gay streets and stood bewildered before flashing shop windows. It was all dangerous, but fascinating, and in the playing of the game Farwell grew old and drawn, while Priscilla gradually came into her Heart's Desire of delight.

"My Road!" she proudly thought. "My Road!"

The old poem was recalled and was often repeated like a litany, while life became more and more vital and thrilling with dull Kenmore as a background and setting.

Just about this time Jerry-Jo took to wearing his Sunday suit on week days, thus proclaiming his aspirations and awaking the ribald jests of his particular set.

Mary Terhune, now partner of Mrs. McAdam, took note of Jerry-Jo's appearance, and, on a certain afternoon in midwinter, when she, Long Jean, and Mary McAdam sat by the range in the White Fish kitchen, fanned a lively bit of gossip into flame.

"Trade's a bit poor these days, eh, Jean?"

Jean grunted over her cup of green tea.

"Not so many children born as once was, eh? What you make of it, Jean—the woman getting heady or—which?"

Mary McAdam broke in.

"What with poverty and the terrors of losing them, there's enough born to my thinking. Time was when the young 'uns happened; they're thought more on, these days. Women should have a say. If there's one thing a man should keep his tongue off it's this matter of families!"

To this outrageous sentiment the listeners replied merely by two audible gulps of tea, and then Mary Terhune found grace to remark:

"You certainly do talk most wonderful things, Mary McAdam. You be an ornament to your sex, but only such women as you can grip them audacious ideas. Let them be sowed broadcast and——"

"Where would me, and such as me, be?" Long Jean muttered, defending her profession.

Mrs. Terhune tactfully turned the conversation:

"Have you noticed the change in Jerry-Jo McAlpin?" she asked with a mysterious shake of her head.

"Any change for the better would be welcome," Mrs. McAdam retorted. "Have another cup, Jean? Strong or weak?"

"Strong. I says often, says I, that unless tea curls your tongue you might just as well take water. When I'm on duty I keep a pot on the back of the stove week in and week out; it do brace me powerful."

Mrs. McAdam poured the tea into the outstretched cup and proceeded to discuss Jerry-Jo.

"Why doesn't the scamp go to the States and find himself instead of worrying old Jerry's very life out of him—the vampire!"

"He may have it in his mind," soothed Mary Terhune, "but the lad's deep and far seeing like his Injun mother—beg pardon, Jean, the term's a compliment, God save me!"

"You've saved your face, Mrs. Terhune. Go on!"

Jean had begun to resent, but the explanation mollified her.

"More tea," she said quietly, "and you might stir the dregs a mite, Mrs. McAdam; it's plain sinful to let the strength go to waste."

"If I was Theodora Glenn," Mary Terhune went on, monotonously stirring the cold liquid in her cup, "I'd have my eye on that girl of hers."

And now the ingredients were prepared for the mixing!

"What's Priscilla Glenn got to do with Jerry-Jo McAlpin?" Mrs. McAdam asked sharply, fixing her little ferret eyes on the speaker.

Long Jean bridled again and interjected:

"And for why not? Young folks is young folks, and there ain't too many boys for the gels. What with the States and the toll to death, the gels can't be too particular, not casting my flings at Jerry-Jo, either. He's a handsome lad and will get a footing some day. Glenn's girl ain't none too good for him; he'd bring her to her senses. All that dancing and fiddle-scraping at Master Farwell's is not to my liking. The goings-on are evil-looking to my mind. The girl always was a parcel of whim-whams—made up of odds and ends, as it was, of her fore-runners. What all the children of the Glenns might have been—Priscilla is!"

"So Jerry-Jo's fixed his bold eyes on the girl?" asked Mary McAdam. "It bodes no good for her. She's a sunny creature and mighty taking in her ways. I wish her no ill, and I hate to think of Jerry-Jo shadowing her life till she forgets to dance and sing. For my part, I wish the master were twenty-five years younger and could play for the lass to dance to the end of their days."

"And a poor outlook for me!" grumbled Jean humorously. "Another cup of the tea, Mary Terhune, and make it stronger. I begin to feel the bitter in my toes."

And while this talk and more like it was permeating Kenmore, Jerry-Jo, adorned and uncomfortable, did his own thinking and planned his own plans after the manner of his mixed inheritance. He could not settle to any task or give heed to any temptation from the States until he had made Priscilla secure. The girl's age in no wise daunted McAlpin. His eighteen years were all that were to be considered; he knew what he wanted, what he meant to have. He could wait, he could bide the fulfillment of his hopes, but one big, compelling subject at a time was all he could master.

He secretly and furiously objected to the dancing and visits in Farwell's cottage. He was ashamed to voice this feeling, for Farwell was his friend and had taught him all he knew, but Farwell's age did not in the least blind Jerry-Jo to the fact that he was a man, and he did not enjoy seeing Priscilla so free and easy with any other of the male sex, be he ancient enough to topple into the grave.

"She'll dance for me—for me!" the young fellow ground his teeth. "I'll make her forget to prance and grin unless she does it for me. The master's just training her away from me and putting notions in her head. I'll take her to the States—maybe her dancing will help us both there. I don't mean to drudge as Jamsie Hornby does! Better things for me!"

Sex attraction swayed Jerry-Jo madly in those days and he thought it love, as many a better man had done before him. The blood of his mother controlled him largely and he wished that he might carry the girl off to his wigwam, and, at his leisure, with beads and blankets, or other less tangible methods, win her and conquer her. But present conditions held the boy in check and compelled him to adopt more modern tactics. He stole, when he couldn't beg, from his poor father all the money Jerry wrenched from an occasional day's work. With this he bought books for Priscilla, vaguely realizing that these would most interest her, but his selection often made her laugh. Piqued by her indifference, Jerry-Jo plotted a thing that led, later, to tragic results. Remembering the favour Priscilla had long ago shown for the book from Far Hill Place, he decided to utilize the taste of the absent owner, and the owner himself, for his own ends, not realizing that Priscilla had never connected the cripple Jerry-Jo had described, with the musician of the magic summer afternoon that had set her life in new currents.

It was an easy matter to enter the Far Hill Place, and, where one was not troubled with conscience, a simple thing to select at random, but with economy, books from the well-filled shelves. These gifts presently found their way to Priscilla, cunningly disguised as mail packages. Inadvertently the very book Priscilla had once cried over came to her and touched her strangely.

"Why should he send me these—send me this?" she asked Jerry-Jo, who had brought the package to her.

"He always wanted you to have it. I told you that; he remembers, I suppose, and wants you to have it. He said it was more yours than his." To test her Jerry-Jo was hiding behind Travers.

"I'd walk a hundred miles over the rock on bare feet to thank him," the girl replied, her big eyes shining. And with the words there entered into Jerry-Jo's distorted imagination a concrete and lasting jealousy of poor Dick Travers, who was innocent of any actual memory of Priscilla Glenn. Travers at that time was studying as few college men do, always with the spur of lost years and a big ambition lashing him on.

During that winter the stolen books from the Far Hill Place caused Priscilla much wonderment and some little embarrassment. She had to keep them secret owing to her father's sentiment, and, for some reason, she did not confide in Farwell. This new and unexpected interest in her life was so foreign to anything with which the master had to do that she felt no inclination to share it.

"But I cannot understand," she often said to Jerry-Jo. "I'd like to write to him. Do you think you could find out for me where he is? That he should even remember me! I would not have him think me so ungrateful as I must seem."

She and Jerry-Jo were in the path leading to Lonely Farm from Kenmore as she spoke, and suddenly something the young fellow said brought her to a sharp standstill.

"Oh! I suppose, after your cutting up in the woods that day he wants to make you remember him."

This was an outburst that Jerry-Jo permitted himself without forethought. He was using Travers as an old tribeman might have used torture, to test his own bravery and endurance, but the effect upon Priscilla was so startling and unexpected that he fell back bewildered.

"In—the—the—woods?" she gasped.

"Sure. That time your father drove you home."

For a full moment Priscilla stared helplessly, then she began to see light.

"Do you mean," she gasped, "that he who made me dance—was the boy of the Hill Place?"

"As if you did not know it!" Jerry-Jo grunted.

"But Jerry-Jo you said he—that boy was a poor, twisted thing, ugly past all belief, while he who played and laughed that day was like an angel of light just showing me the way to heaven!"

And now Jerry-Jo's dark face was not pleasant to look upon.

"Can't a twisted thing become straight?" he muttered; "can't a devil trap himself out like an—an angel?"

"Oh! Jerry-Jo, he who played for me in the woods could never have been evil. Why, all his life he had been making himself into something big and fine. He put into words the things I had always thought and dreamed about—an ideal was what he called it! And to think I never knew! And he remembered and wanted to be kind! I shall worship him now while I live. And when he comes back to the Hill Place I will go and thank him, even if my father should kill me. I shall never be happy until I can explain. What a stupid he must think me!"

After that the secret became the sacredest thing in Priscilla's life and the most tormenting in Jerry-Jo's. They were both at ages when such an occurrence would appeal to a girl's sentimentality and a young man's hatred.

The family did not return to the Hill Place for many summers, and only once during the following years did Priscilla's name pass Travers's lips.

Apropos of something they were talking about he said to Helen Travers: "I wonder what has become of that little dancing dervish up in Canada? She wasn't plain, ordinary stuff, but I suppose she'll be knocked into shape. Maybe that half-breed, Jerry-Jo, will get her when she's been reduced to his level. There are not girls enough to go around up there, I fancy. That little thing, though, was too spiritual to be crushed and remodelled. As she danced that day, her scarlet cape flying out in the breeze, she looked like a living flame darting up from the red rock. And those awful words she uttered—poor little pagan! Jerry-Jo told me afterward what the lure of the States meant: it's a provincial expression. Mother, if the lure should ever control that girl of Lonely Farm I wish we might greet her, for safety's sake."

But it was not likely that either of the Traverses for a moment conceived of the reality of Priscilla leaving the In-Place, and in time even the memory of her became blurred to Dick by the eternal verities of his strenuous young life.

Gradually his lameness disappeared until a slight hesitation at times was all that remained. Five years of college, two abroad—one with Helen, one with Doctor Ledyard—and then Richard Thornton Travers (Helen had, when he went to college, insisted for the first time upon the middle name) hung out his modest sign—it looked brazenly glaring to him—under that of Thomas R. Ledyard, and nervously awaited the first call upon him. He was twenty-five when he started life, and Priscilla Glenn, back in forgotten Kenmore, was nearing nineteen, with Jerry-Jo in hot pursuit behind her. As to Anton Farwell, there was no doubt about his age now. Not even the very old called him young, and there was a pathos about him that attracted the attention of those with whom he had lived so long.

"He looks haunted," Mary Terhune ventured; "he starts at times when one speaks sudden, real pitiful like. The look of his eyes, too, has the queer flash of them as sees forward as well as back. Do you mind, Mrs. McAdam, how 'tis said that them as comes nigh to drowning have a glimpse on before as well as the picture of all that has past?"

"I've heard the same," nodded Mary McAdam.

"Belike the master remembers and often looks to the end of his journey. Well, he's been a good harmless sort, as men go. He's kept the children out of trouble far more than one could expect, and he's been a merciful creature to humans and beasts. I wonder what he had in his life before he washed up from the La Belle?"

All this seemed to end the discussion.

Mary McAdam was an important personage about that time. The White Fish Lodge had become famous. Without bar or special privilege of any sort, the house was patronized by the best class of tourist. Mary was a born proprietress, and, while she extracted the last penny due her, always gave full value in return. She and Mary Terhune did the cooking; a bevy of clean, young Indian girls from Wyland Island served as waitresses and maids, their quaint, keen reserve was charming, and no better public house could have been found on the Little or Big Bay.

Priscilla drifted to the Lodge as naturally as a flower turns to the sun. The easy-going people, the laughter and merriment appealed strongly to her, and again did she cause Jerry-Jo serious displeasure and arouse her father's lurking suspicions.

"Watch her! watch her!" was his warning, and Theodora returned to her fears and tears.



CHAPTER VIII

Anton Farwell had, little by little, accepted the fate of those who, deprived of many blessings, learn to depend on a few. As the remaining senses are sharpened by the loss of one, so in this man's life the cramping process, begun by his own wrongdoing, and prolonged and completed by other conditions, had the effect of focussing all his power on the atoms that went to the making up of the daily record of his days. Had he kept a diary it would have been interesting from its very lack of large interest. And yet, with all this narrowing down, a certain fineness and purpose evolved that were both touching and inspiring. He never complained, not even to himself. After recognizing the power which Ledyard held in his life, he relinquished the one hope that had held him to the past. Then, for a year or two, the light of the doctor's contempt, which had been turned on him, took the zest from the small efforts he had made for better living and caused him to distrust himself. He saw himself what he knew Ledyard thought him—a mean, cowardly creature, and yet, in his better moments, he knew this was not so.

"Men have made friends of mice and insects in prison," he argued; "they have kept their reason by so doing; why, in heaven's name, shouldn't I play with these people here and make life possible?"

But try as he might he found his courage failing, and more and more he dwelt apart and clung to the few—Priscilla Glenn, Mary McAdam, and old Jerry McAlpin—who regarded him in the light of a priest to whom they might confess freely.

Then one of Farwell's dogs died and he was genuinely anxious at the effect this had upon him.

"So this is what I've come to!" he muttered as he buried the poor brute, while the tears fell from his eyes and the other dog whined dolorously beside him—"broken hearted over—a mongrel!" But he got another dog!

For a time Farwell vigorously set himself against depending upon Priscilla Glenn as a support in his narrowing sphere. Many things threatened such a friendship—Nathaniel, Jerry-Jo, and the girl herself—for Priscilla, during the first years of Nathaniel's relaxed severity, was like a bee sipping every flower, and Farwell was not at all confident that anything he had to give would hold even her passing interest for long. Then, too, like a many-wounded creature, he dreaded a new danger, even though for a moment it gave promise of comfort. But finally Priscilla got her bearings and more and more brought all her powers to bear upon one ambition.

The childish madness that prompted her to run away from anything that hurt or angered her, gradually disappeared, and in its place came a staid determination to seek her fortunes, soon, in some place distant from Kenmore.

The tourists opened a new vista to her, but many of them, with stupid ignorance, mistook her position and traditions. She was offered occupations as cook, maid, or laundress. She had sense of humour enough to laugh at these, and often wished she dared repeat them for her father's edification.

"The daughter of the King of Lonely Farm," she said to Farwell one day with her mocking smile and comical courtesy "is bidden to the service of Mrs. Flighty High as skivvy. If this comes to the king's ears, 'twill mean the head of Mrs. Flighty High!"

Farwell joined her in her amusement and felt the charm of her coming womanhood.

"But there is one up at the Lodge," Priscilla went on more gravely, "who is not such a wild fool. She has a sick baby, and for two nights she and I have watched and tended together. She says I have the touch and nature of the true nurse and she has told me how in the States, and England, too, they train young girls in this work. She says we Canadians are in great demand, and the calling is a wonderful one, Master Farwell."

This interested Anton Farwell a good deal and he and Priscilla discussed it often after the woman who had just broached it had departed. It seemed such a normal, natural opening for Priscilla if the time really came for her to go away. The doubt that she would eventually go was slight in Farwell's heart. He, keener than others, saw the closing-in of conditions. He was not blind to Jerry-Jo's primitive attempts to attract the girl's attention, but he was not deceived. When the moment came that Priscilla recognized the half-breed's real thought, Farwell knew her quick impulse would, as of old, be to fly away. She was like a wild bird, he often pondered; she would give to great lengths, flutter close, and love tenderly, but no restraining or harsh touch could do aught but set her to flight.

At twenty-three Jerry-Jo surlily and passionately came to the conclusion that he must in some way capture his prize. Other youths were wearing gaudy ties and imperilling their Sunday bests; he was letting precious time slip. Then, too, by Farwell's advice, old Jerry was growing rigid along financial lines, and at last the States took definite shape in Jerry-Jo's mind, but he meant to have Priscilla before he heeded the lure. With all his brazen conceit and daring he intuitively knew that the girl had never thought of him as he thought of her, and he dared not awaken her by legitimate means. Quite in keeping with his unrestrained nature, he plotted, indirectly, to secure what otherwise might escape him. Fully realizing Nathaniel's attitude toward his daughter, counting his distorted conceptions and foolish pride, Jerry-Jo began to construct an obstacle that would shut Priscilla from her father's protection and cause her to accept what others had to offer—others, being always and ever, himself!

Once Lonely Farm was closed to the girl, other houses in the serenely moral In-Place would inevitably slam their doors. The cunning of the half-breed was diabolic in its sureness. Anton Farwell could not assume responsibility for Priscilla if all Kenmore turned its back on her, and in that hour the girl would, of course, come running or crawling—never dancing—to him, Jerry-Jo!

It was all for her own good, the evil fellow thought.

"I'll be kind to her when I get her. I'm only playing her with the hook in her mouth."

But Jerry-Jo was scheming without considering the Lure, which never was long absent from Priscilla's mind at that time.

One early September afternoon Priscilla presented herself at Farwell's cabin in so startling a manner that she roused the man as nothing previously in his association with her had ever done.

He was sitting at the west window of his living-room, his back toward the door leading to the Green. For a wonder, what he was reading had absorbed him, and he was far and away from the In-Place. He had taken to fine, old literature lately and had found, to his delight, that his mind was capable of appreciating it.

"Wisdom, slow product of laborious years, The only fruit that life's cold winter bears, Thy sacred seeds in vain in youth we lay, By the fierce storm of passion torn away; Should some remain in rich, gen'rous soil, They long lie hid, and must be raised with toil; Faintly they struggle with inclement skies, No sooner born than the poor planter dies."

With such word-comfort did Farwell dig, from other's experiences, crude guidings for himself! And at that moment a stir outside the open door caused him to turn and confront what, in the excited moment, seemed an apparition from the past, which, for him, was sealed and barred.

"Good Lord!" he ejaculated under his breath and started to his feet. A visitor from the Lodge apparently had descended upon him.

"I beg pardon," he said aloud, and then a laugh, familiar and ringing, brought the colour to his pale, thin face.

The girl came in, threw back the veil from her merry face, and confronted Farwell.

"Miss Priscilla Glenn, sir! Behold her in the battered finery of the place she is going to—to grace some day!"

Then Priscilla wheeled about lightly and displayed her gown to Farwell's astonished eyes.

"Cast-offs," she explained; "the Honourable Mrs. Jones from the States left them with Mrs. McAlpin for the poor. Just imagine the 'poor' glinting around in this gay silk gown all frayed at the hem and in holes under the arms! The hat and veil, too, go with the smart frock; likewise the scarf of rainbow colours. But, oh! Mr. Farwell, how do I look as a real lady in my damaged outfit?"

Farwell stared without speaking. He had grown so used to the change in the girl since the time when he had prevailed upon Glenn to loosen the rein upon her, that the even stream of their intercourse had been unruffled. He had passed from teacher to friendly guide, from guide to good comrade; but here he was suddenly confronting her—man to woman!

All his misfortune and limitations had but erected a shield of age about him beneath which smouldered dangerously, but unconsciously, all the forbidden and denied passions and sentiments of a male creature of early middle life.

In thinking afterward of the shock Priscilla gave him, Farwell was always glad to remember that his first thought was for her, her danger, her need.

"I declare!" he exclaimed. "I did not know you, Priscilla Glenn."

His tone had a new ring in it, a vibration of defence—the astonished male on guard against the attack of a subtle force whose power he could not estimate.

"And no wonder. I did not know myself when I first saw myself. Do you know, Mr. Farwell, I never thought about my—my face, much, but it is really a—very nice face, isn't it? As faces go, I mean?"

"Yes," Farwell returned, looking at her critically and speaking slowly. "Yes, you are very—beautiful. I had not thought of it before, either."

"Drop me down, now, in the States, Mr. Farwell, and I fancy that with my looks and my dancing I might—well, go! What do you think?"

She was preening herself before a small mirror and did not notice the elderly man, who, under her fascination, was being transformed.

"You're a regular Frankenstein," he muttered, while the consciousness of the blue eyes in the dusky skin, the long slenderness of her body, and the hue of her strange hair grew upon him. "Do you know what a Frankenstein is?"

"No." And now Priscilla, weary of her play and self-contemplation, turned about and took a chair opposite Farwell. "Tell me."

So he told her, but she shook her head.

"You've only helped me to find myself; you did not make me," she said with a little sigh. "Oh, Mr. Farwell, I do—much thinking up at Lonely Farm. The winters are long, and the nights, too. You know there is a queer little plant beside the spring at the foot of our garden; it has roots long enough and thick enough for a thing twice its size. It grew strong and sure underground before it ventured up. It blossomed last summer; an odd flower it had. I think I am like that. You've taught me to—well, know myself. I shall not shame you, Master Farwell. You know we of the lonesome In-Place make friends with strange objects; everything in nature talks to us, if we will but listen. You have taught me to listen, too. Back a piece in the woods are a strong young hemlock and a little white birch. For years I have watched and tended them. When I was a small girl I likened the hemlock to you, sir, and there was I, leaning and huddling close to you, like the ghostly stripling of the woods. Well, I noticed to-day, Mr. Farwell, the birch stands quite securely; it doesn't bend for support on the hemlock, but it is standing friendly all the same. I think"—and here Priscilla clasped her hands close and outstretched them—"I think I am soon going away!"

Her eyes were tear-dimmed, her face very earnest.

"I wish—you would give up the childish folly, Priscilla." A fear rose in Farwell's eyes. "What could you, such an one as you have become, do out—in the States? It is madness—sheer, brutal madness."

Priscilla shook her head.

"You think it childish folly? Why, I have never lost sight of it for a day. You have not understood me if you have imagined that. I have always known I must go. Lately I have felt the nearness of the going, and it is the how to break away and begin that puzzle me. I am ready."

"Priscilla, you are a wild child still, playing with dangerous tools. You cannot comprehend the trouble into which you are willing, in your blindness, to plunge. Why, you are a—a woman; a beautiful one! Do you know what the world does with such, unless they are guarded and protected?"

"What does it do?" The true eyes held Farwell commandingly, and with a sense of dismay he looked back at the only world he really knew: the world of his own ungoverned passions and selfishness. A kind of shame came over him, and he felt he was no safe guide. There were worlds and worlds! He had sold his birthright; this woman, bent upon finding hers, might inherit a fairer kingdom.

"What does it do, Master Farwell?"

"I do not know. It depends upon—you. It is like a great quarry—I have read somewhere something like this—we must all mould and chisel our characters; some of us crush them and chip them. It isn't always the world's fault. God help us!"

Priscilla looked at him with large, shining eyes and the maternal in her rose to the call of his sad recognition of failure where she was to go with such brave courage.

"Do not fear for me," she said gently; "'twould be a poor return if I failed, after all you have done for me."

"I—what have I done?"

"Everything. Have you ever thought what sort I would have been had Lonely Farm been my only training?" she smiled faintly, and her girlish face, in the setting of the faded hat and soiled veil, struck Farwell again by its change, which now seemed to have settled into permanency. Of course it was only the ridiculous fashion of the world he once knew, but he could not free himself of the fancy that Priscilla was more her real self in the shabby trappings than she had ever been in the absurd costumes of the In-Place.

With the acceptance of the fact that the girl really meant to get away and at once, a wave of dreariness swept over him. He thought of the time on ahead when his last vital interest would be taken from him. Then he aroused from his stupor and brought his mind to bear upon the inevitable; the here and now.

"It's a big drop in your ambition, Priscilla," he said; "you used to think you could dance your way to your throne."

"There is no throne now, Master Farwell. I'm just thinking all the time of My Road."

"But there's the Heart's Desire at the end, you know."

"Yes; but I do not think I would want it to be a throne."

"What then?"

"Oh! love—my own life—the giving and giving just where I long to give. It's splendid to tramp along your road, if it is your road, and be jolly and friendly with those you care for. It will all be so different from Kenmore, where one has to take what one must."

"I wonder how Jerry-Jo will feel about all this?"

"Jerry-Jo! And what right has he to think at all—about me?"

The girl's eyes flashed with mischief and daring.

"Jerry-Jo!" she laughed with amusement. "Just big, Indian-boy Jerry-Jo! We've played together and quarrelled together, but you're all wrong, Master Farwell, if you think he cares about me! He knows better than that—far, far, better."

But even as she spoke the light and fun left her eyes. She looked older, more thoughtful.

"Isn't it queer?" she said after a pause.

"What, Priscilla?"

"Oh, life and people and the things that go to their making? You're quite wrong about Jerry-Jo. I'm sure you're wrong."

Then suddenly she sprang up.

"I must go," she said abruptly; "go and exchange these rags for my own plain things. I only wanted to surprise you, sir; and how deadly serious we have grown."

She passed out of the cottage without a word more. Farwell watched her across the Green and up to the Lodge. He was disturbed and restless. The old fever of escape overcame him. With the thought of Priscilla's flight into the open, he strained against the trap that Ledyard had caught him in. The guide who, he knew, never permitted him to escape his vigilance, became a new and alarming obstacle, and Farwell set his teeth grimly. Then he muttered:

"Curse him! curse him!" and an emotion which he had believed was long since dead rose hotly in his consciousness. Before the dread spectre, suddenly imbued with vitality, Farwell reeled and covered his face. Murder was in his heart—the old madness of desire to wipe out, by any means, that which barred his way to what he wanted.

"My God!" he moaned; "my God! I—I thought I—was master. I thought it was dead in me."

Farwell ate no evening meal that night. Early he closed and locked his outer door, drew the dark green shades, and lighted his lamp. His hands were clammy and cold, and he could not blot out with book or violin the horror of Charles Martin's face as it looked up at him that night so long ago. Way on toward morning Farwell paced his room trying to forget, but he could not.

But Priscilla, after leaving Farwell, dressed again in her plain serviceable gown and hat, had made her way toward the farm. Her happy, light-hearted mood was past; she felt unaccountably gloomy, and as she walked on she sought to explain herself to herself, and presently Jerry-Jo came into focus and would not stir from her contemplation. Yes, it was Jerry-Jo's personality that disturbed her, and it was Farwell's words that had torn the shield she herself had erected, and set the truth free. Yes, she had played with Jerry-Jo; she had tested her coquetry and charm upon him for lack of better material. In her outbreaks of youthful spirits she had claimed him as prey because the others of his sex were less desirable. Jerry-Jo had that subtle, physical attraction that responded to her youthful allurements, but the young fellow himself, taken seriously, repelled her, and Farwell had taken Jerry-Jo seriously!

That was it! She was no longer a child. She was a woman and must remember it. Undoubtedly Jerry-Jo himself had never given the matter a moment's deep thought. Well, she must take care that he never did. Jerry-Jo in earnest would be unbearable.

And then, just as she reached the pasture bars separating her father's farm from the red rock highway, Jerry-Jo McAlpin strode in sight from the wood path into which the highway ran. She waited for him and gave him a nervous smile as he came near. His first words startled her out of her dull mood.

"I've been up to the Hill Place. Him and her's there for a few days."

"Him and her!" Priscilla repeated, her face flushing. "Oh, him and her!"

"Sure!" McAlpin was holding her with a hard, fixed gaze.

In the mesh that was closing about Priscilla, strangely enough names were always largely eliminated. They might have altered her course later on, might have held her to the past, but Kenmore dealt briefly with personalities and visualized whatever it could. The name Travers had rarely, if ever, been spoken in Priscilla's presence. "The Hill Place folks" was the title found sufficient for general use.

"And I was remembering," Jerry-Jo went on, "how once you said you wanted to thank him for—for the books. We might take the canoe, come to-morrow, and the day is fine, and pay a visit."

Still Priscilla did not notice the gleam in McAlpin's keen eyes.

"Oh! if I only dared, Jerry-Jo! What an adventure it would be, to be sure. And how good of you to think of it."

"What hinders?"

"Father would never forgive me!"

"And are you always to be at the beck and whistle of your father even in your pleasures?"

Priscilla was in just the attitude of mind to receive this suggestion with appreciation.

"There's no reason why I shouldn't go if I want to," she said with an uplift of her head.

"And—don't you want to?" Jerry-Jo's eyes were taking in the loveliness of the raised face as the setting sun fell upon it.

"Yes, I do want to! I'll go, Jerry-Jo."

Then McAlpin came close to her and said in a low voice:

"Priscilla, give us a kiss for pay."

So taken out of herself was the girl, so overpowered by the excitement of adventure, that before she realized her part in the small drama of passionate youth, she gave a mocking laugh and twisted her lips saucily.

Jerry-Jo had her in his arms on the instant, and the hot kiss he pressed on her mouth roused her to fury.

"If you ever touch me again," she whispered, struggling into freedom, "I'll hate you to the last day of my life!"

So had she spoken to her father years ago; so would she always speak when her reservations were threatened. "I declare I am afraid to go with you to-morrow."

McAlpin fell back in shamed contrition.

"You need not be afraid," he muttered. "I reckon I was bidding you—good-bye. Him and me is different. Once you see him and he sees you, it's good-bye to Jerry-Jo McAlpin."

Something in the words and tone of humility brought Priscilla, with a bound, back to a kindlier mood. After all, it was a tribute that McAlpin was paying her. She must hold him in check, that was all.

They parted with no great change. There had been a flurry, but it had served to clear the atmosphere—for her at least.

But Nathaniel, that evening in the kitchen, managed to arouse in the girl the one state of mind needed to drive her on her course.

"What was the meaning of that scuffling by the bars a time back?" he asked, eyeing Priscilla with the old look of suspicious antagonism. Every nerve in the girl's body twitched with resentment and her spirit flared forth. She shielded herself behind the one flimsy subterfuge that Glenn could never understand or tolerate.

"A kiss you mean. What's a kiss? You call that a scuffle?"

Theodora, who was washing the tea dishes while Priscilla wiped them, took her usual course and began to cry dispiritedly and forlornly.

"What's between you and—McAlpin?" Nathaniel asked, scowling darkly.

"Between us? What need for anything between us?"

Priscilla ceased smiling and looked defiant.

"Maybe you better marry that half-breed and have done with it."

"It's more like—would he marry me?"

This was unfortunate.

"And why not?" Nathaniel shook the ashes from his pipe angrily. "A little more such performance as I saw to-day and no decent man will marry you! As for Jerry-Jo, he'll marry you if I say so! You foul my nest, miss, and out you go!"

"Husband! husband!" And with this Theodora dropped a cup, one of Glenn's mother's cups, and somehow this added fire to his fury.

"And when the time comes, wife, you make your choice: Go with her, who you have trained into what she is, or stay with me who has been defied in his own home, by them nearest and closest to him."

Priscilla breathed fast and hard. The tangible wall of misunderstanding between her and her father stifled her to-night as it never had before. Again she realized the finality of something—the breaking of the old ties, the helpless sense of groping for what lay hidden, but none the less real, just on before.



CHAPTER IX

The next day was gloriously clear and threateningly warm. Such days do not come to Kenmore in September except to lure the unheeding to acts of folly. And at two o'clock in the afternoon Priscilla, from the kitchen door, saw Jerry-Jo paddling his canoe in still, Indian fashion around Lone Tree Island. Theodora was off erranding, and Nathaniel, as far as human knowledge went, was in some distant field; he had started off directly after dinner. Priscilla was ready for her adventure. With the natural desire of youth, she had decked herself out in her modest finery—a stiffly starched white gown of a cheap but pretty design, a fluff of soft lace at throat and wrist, and, over it, the old red cape that years before had added to her appearance as she danced on the rocks. Perhaps remembering that, she had utilized the garment and was thankful that cloth lasted so long in Kenmore!

The coquetry of girlhood rose happily in Priscilla's heart. Jerry-Jo had become again simply a link in her chain of events; he had lost the importance the flash of the evening before had given him; he was not forgiven, but for the time he was, as a human being, forgotten. He was Jerry-Jo who was to paddle her to her Heart's Desire! That was it, and the old words, set to music of her own, were the signals used to attract McAlpin's attention. But the merry call brought Glenn from out the barn just as the canoe touched the rocks lightly, and Priscilla prepared to step in.

"Where you two going?" he shouted in the tone that always roused the worst in Priscilla's nature. Jerry-Jo paused, paddle in air, but his companion whispered:

"Go on!" To Nathaniel she flung back: "We're going to have a bit of fun, and why not, father? I'm tired of staying at home."

This was unfortunate: on the home question Glenn was very clear and decided.

"Come back!" he ordered, but the little canoe had shot out into the Channel. "Hi, there McAlpin, do you hear?"

"Go on!" again whispered Priscilla, and Jerry-Jo heard only her soft command, for his senses were filled with the loveliness of her charming, defiant face set under the broad brim of a hat around which was twined a wreath of natural flowers as blue as the girl's laughing eyes.

Nathaniel, defied and helpless, stood by the barn door and impotently fumed as the canoe rounded Lone Tree Island and was lost to his infuriated sight.

"You'll catch it," Jerry-Jo comforted when pursuit was impossible, and he had the responsibility of the rebel on his hands. "I wouldn't be in your place, and you need not drag me in, for I'd have turned back had you said the word."

A fleeting contempt stirred the beauty of the girl's face for a moment, and then she told him of that which was seething in her heart.

"What does it matter, Jerry-Jo? All my life, ever since I can remember, I have been growing surely to what is now near at hand. I cannot abide my father; nor can he find comfort in me. Why should I darken the lives of my parents and have no life of my own? The lure of the States has always been in my thought and now it calls near and loud."

McAlpin stared helplessly at her, and her beauty, enhanced by her unusual garments, moved him unwholesomely.

"What you mean?" he muttered.

"Only this: It would be no strange thing did a boy start for the States. A little money, a ticket on a steamer, and—pouf! Off the boys and men go to make their lives. Well, then, some day you will—find me gone, Jerry-Jo. Gone to make my life. Will you miss me?"

This question caused McAlpin to stop paddling.

"You won't be—let!" he murmured; "you—a girl!"

"I, a girl!" Priscilla laughed scornfully. "You will see. This day, after I have thanked him up yonder, I am going to ask his mother to help me get away. Surely a lady such as she could help me. I will not ask much of her, only the guiding hand to a safe place where I can—live! Oh! can you understand how all my life I have been smothered and stifled? I often wonder what sort I will be—out there! I'm willing to suffer while I learn, but Jerry-Jo"—and here the excited voice paused—"I have a strange feeling of—myself! I sometimes feel as if there were two of me, the one holding, demanding, and protecting the other. I will not have men always making my life and shielding me; the woman of me will have its way. Men and boys never know this feeling."

And Jerry-Jo could, of course, understand nothing of this, but the thing he had set out to do, more in rude, brutish fun than anything else, assumed graver purpose. A new and ugly look grew in his bold eyes, a sinister smile on his red mouth, which showed the points of his white, fang-like teeth. But Priscilla, too absorbed with her own thoughts, did not notice.

It was four o'clock when the canoe touched the landing spot of Far Hill Place, and Priscilla sprang out.

"I'll bide here; don't be long," said McAlpin.

But Priscilla paused and glanced up at the sky.

"It's darkening," she faltered, a shyness overcoming her. "I smell—thunder. Don't you think you better come up with me Jerry-Jo? Suppose they are not at home?"

"They'll be back soon in that case, and as for a shower, that would hasten them and you would be under shelter. I can turn the canoe over me and be dry as a mouse in a hayrick. I'll not go with you, not I. Do your own part, with them looking on as will enjoy it."

"I believe you are—jealous, Jerry-Jo." This was said idly and more to fill in an awkward pause than for anything else.

"And much good that would do me, after what you've just said. If you're bound for the devil, Priscilla, 'tis little power I have to stay you."

"I'm not—for the devil!" Priscilla flung back, and started sturdily up the hill path toward the house hidden among the trees.

Out of McAlpin's sight, the girl went more slowly, while she sought to arrange her mode of attack. If her host were what he once was, he would make everything easy after she recalled herself to him. As for the mother, Priscilla had only a dim memory of her, but something told her that the call would be a happy and memorable one after the first moment.

A bit of tune cheered the girl; a repeating of the Road Song helped even more, for it resurrected most vividly the young fellow who had introduced music and happiness into her life.

"I'll be doshed!" she cried. The word had not passed her lips for years; it brought a laugh and a complete restoration of poise. So she reached the house. Smoke was issuing from the chimney. A fire had been made even on this hot day, but like enough it was to dry the place after the years of closed doors and windows. Evidently it was a many-houred fire, for the plume of smoke was faint and steady. The broad door was set wide but the windows were still boarded up at the front of the house, though the side ones had escaped that protection.

Priscilla knocked and waited. No reply or sound came in response, and presently a low muttering of distant thunder broke.

"That will bring them in short order," she said, "and surely they will not object if I make myself comfortable until they come."

She went inside. The room had the appearance of one from which the owner had long been absent, that unaccountable, vacant look, although a work-bag hung on the back of a chair by the roaring fire, and a blot of oil lay on the table near the lamp which had evidently been recently filled. Back of these tokens lay a wide sense of desolation.

For a moment Priscilla hesitated before sitting down; her courage failed, but a second thought reconciled conditions with a brief stay after long absence, and she decided to wait.

And while she waited, suddenly and alarmingly, the storm burst! The darkness of the room and the wooded space outside had deceived her: there was no escape now!

She was concerned for the people she had come to see. Jerry-Jo, she knew, would crawl under his boat and be as dry as a tortoise in its shell. But those others!

With this thought she set about, mechanically, making the room comfortable. She piled on fresh wood and noticed that it was so wet that it sputtered dangerously. Presently the wind changed sharply, and a blast of almost icy coldness carried the driving rain halfway across the floor.

It was something of a struggle to close the heavy door, for it opened outward, and Priscilla was drenched by the time it was made secure. Breathing hard, she made her way to the fire and knelt before it. The glow drew her attention from the darkness of the space back and around her.

It was unfortunate and depressing, and she had no choice but to make herself as comfortable as she might, though a sense of painful uneasiness grew momentarily. At first she imagined it was fear of what she must encounter upon her return home; then she felt sure it was her dread of meeting the people for whom she had risked so much. Finally Jerry-Jo loomed in the foreground of her thought and an entirely new terror was born in her soul.

"Jerry-Jo!" she laughed aloud as his name passed her lips. "Jerry-Jo, to be sure. My! how thankful I'd be to see him this instant!"

And with the assertion she turned shudderingly toward the door. The gloom behind her only emphasized her nervousness.

"I'll—I'll have to go!" she whispered suddenly, while the wind and the slashing of sleety rain defied her. "It will be better out of doors, bad as it is!"

The grim loneliness of four walls, compared with the dangers of the open, was worse. But when Priscilla, trembling and panting, reached the door and pushed, she found that the storm was pitting its strength against hers and she could not budge it.

"Oh, well," she half sobbed; "if I must, I must." And she stealthily tiptoed back to the warmth and light as if fearing to arouse something, she knew not what, in the dim place.

There was no way of estimating time. The minutes were like hours and the hours were like minutes while Priscilla sat alone. As a matter of fact, it was after seven when steps, unmistakable steps, sounded on the porch and carried both apprehension and relief to the storm-bound prisoner inside.

"Thank heaven!" breathed she, and sprang to her feet. She was midway in the room when the door opened, and, as if flayed forward by the lashing storm, Jerry-Jo broke into the shadow and drew the heavy oak door after him. In a black panic of fear Priscilla saw him turn the key in the lock before he spoke a word to her; then he came forward, flung his wet cap toward the hearth, and laughed.

"What's the matter?" he asked quickly as Priscilla's white face confronted him. "Disappointed, I suppose. Do you begrudge me a bit of warmth and shelter? God knows I'm drenched to the bone. The rain came up from the earth as well as down from the clouds. It's a devil's storm and no mistake. What you staring at, Priscilla? Had you forgotten me? Thought me dead, and now you're looking at my ghost? Didn't I wait long enough for you? Where are the—others?"

This seemed to clarify and steady the situation and Priscilla gave a slight laugh:

"To be sure. You did not know. They—they were away. The storm came up suddenly. I had to wait. You are wet through and through, Jerry-Jo. It's good we have such a fire. You'll be comfortable in a moment. I'm glad you came; I was getting—afraid."

"Let's see if there is any oil in the lamp!" Jerry-Jo exclaimed. He was in no mood for darkness himself.

"They must have filled it before they went," Priscilla answered. "See, there is some oil on the table."

McAlpin struck a match and soon the room was flooded with a new brightness that reached even to the far corners and seemed to set free the real loneliness that held these two together.

"I—I managed to keep this dry," McAlpin spoke huskily. "I always have a bite with me when I take to the woods. Who can ever tell what may happen!"

He pushed a coarse sandwich toward Priscilla and began eating one himself.

"Go on!" he said.

"I'm not hungry, Jerry-Jo, and I want to start back home at once."

Jerry-Jo leered at her over his bread and meat.

"What's your hurry? I want to get warm and dry before I set out again. This is an all-nighter of a storm, if I know anything about it."

"Get dry, of course, Jerry-Jo. It won't take long with this heat; then we must start, storm or no storm."

The old discomfort and unrest returned, and she fixed her eyes on Jerry-Jo.

"There's no great hurry," said he, munching away. "It's warm here and cozy. What's got you, Priscilla? You was mighty keen to come, and you ain't finished your errand yet. What's ailing you? No one could help the storm, and we'd be swamped in the bay if we was there now."

Priscilla got up and walked slowly toward the door, but without any apparent reason Jerry-Jo arose also, and, still chewing his bread and meat, backed away from the table, keeping himself between the girl and whatever her object was. Noticing this, a real terror seized upon Priscilla and she darted in the opposite direction, reached the hearth, and was bending toward a heavy poker which lay there, before she herself could have explained her motive. Jerry-Jo was alert. Tossing his food upon the table as he strode forward, he gripped her wrist.