"You are suspicious because you are blest with both home and family. My mother died a few months ago, I myself have been ill. I make this explanation not because your kindness warrants it, sir, but because your family would have been willing to take me on faith." She bowed her head in the direction of Mrs. Bartlett and Dave.

"Well," the Squire interrupted, "you need not go away hungry, you can stop here and eat your dinner, and then Hi Holler can take you in the wagon to the place provided for such unfortunate cases, and where you'll have food and shelter."

"The poor farm, do you mean?" the girl said, wildly; "no, no; if you will not give me work I will not take your charity."

"Father!" exclaimed Dave and his mother together.

"Now, now," said Kate, going up to the Squire and putting her hands on his shoulders, "it seems to me as if my uncle's been getting a little hard while I've been away from home, and I don't think it has improved him a bit. The uncle I left here had a heart as big as a house. What has he done with it?"

Here the professor came to Kate's aid. "Squire," said he, "isn't it written that 'If ye do it unto the least of these, ye do it unto me?'"

"Well, well," said the Squire, "when a man's family are against him, there's only one thing for him to do if he wants any peace of mind, and that is to come round to their way, and I ain't never goin' to have it said I went agin the Scripter." He went over to Anna and took her pale, thin hand in his great brown one.

"Well, little woman, they want you to stay, and I am not going to interfere. I leave it to you that I won't live to regret it."

This time the tears splashed down the pale cheeks. "Dear sir, I thank you, and I promise you shall never repent this kindness." Then turning to the rest—"I thank you all. I can only repay you by doing my best."

"Well said, well said," and Kate gave her a sisterly pat on the shoulder.

Anna would not listen to Mrs. Bartlett's kind suggestion that she should rest a little while. She went immediately to the house, removed her hat, and returned completely enveloped in a big gingham apron that proved wonderfully becoming to her dark beauty—or was it that the homeless, hunted look had gone out of those sorrowful eyes?

And so Anna Moore had found a home at last, one in which she would have to work early and late to retain a foothold—but still a home, and the word rang in her ears like a soothing song, after the anguish of the last year. Her youth and beauty, she had long since discovered, were only barriers to the surroundings she sought. There had been many who offered to help the friendless girl, but their offers were such that death seemed preferable, by contrast, and Anna had gone from place to place, seeking only the right to earn her bread, and yet, finding only temptation and danger.

Dave, passing out to the barn, stopped for a moment to regard her, as she sat on the lowest step of the porch, with her sleeves rolled above the elbow, working a bowl of butter. He smiled at her encouragingly—it was well that none of his family saw it. Such a smile from the shy, silent Dave might have been a revelation to the home circle.



CHAPTER X.

ANNA AND SANDERSON AGAIN MEET.

"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turn'd Nor hell a fury like a woman scorn'd."—Congreve.

"And who be you, with those big brown eyes, sitting on the Bartlett's porch working that butter as if you've been used to handling butter all your life? No city girl, I'm sure." Anna had been at the Squire's for a week when the above query was put to her.

The voice was high and rasping. The whole sentence was delivered without breath or pause, as if it was one long word. The speaker might have been the old maid as portrayed in the illustrated weekly. Nothing was lacking—corkscrew curls, prunella boots, cameo brooch and chain, a gown of the antiquated Redingote type, trimmed with many small ruffles and punctuated, irrelevantly, with immovable buttons.

"I am Anna Moore."

"Know as much now as I ever did," snapped the interlocutor.

"I have come to work for Mrs. Bartlett, to help her about the house."

"Land sakes. Bartlett's keeping help! How stylish they're getting."

"Yes, Marthy, we are progressing," said Kate, coming out of the house. "Anna, this is our friend, Miss Marthy Perkins."

The village gossip's confusion was but momentary. "Do you know, Kate, I just came over a-purpose to see if you'd come. What kind of clothes are they wearing in Boston? Are shirtwaists going to have tucked backs or plain? I am going to make over my gray alpaca, and I wouldn't put the scissors into it till I seen you."

"Come upstairs, Marthy, and I'll show you my new shirtwaists."

"Land sakes," said the spinster, bridling. "I would be delighted, but you know how I can't move without that Seth Holcomb a-taggin' after me; it's just awful the way I am persecuted. I do wish I'd get old and then there'll be an end of it." She held out a pair of mittens, vintage of 1812, to Kate, appealingly.

Seth Holcomb stumped in sight as she concluded; he had been Martha's faithful admirer these twenty years, but she would never reward him; her hopes of younger and less rheumatic game seemed to spring eternal.

During the few days that Anna had made one of the Squire's family she went about with deep thankfulness in her heart; she had been given the chance to work, to earn her bread by these good people. Who could tell—as time went on perhaps they would grow fond of her, learn to regard her as one of themselves—it was so much better than being so utterly alone.

Her energy never flagged, she did her share of the work with the light hand of experience that delighted the old housekeeper. It was so good to feel a roof over her head, and to feel that she was earning her right to it.

Supper had been cooked, the table laid and everything was in readiness for the family meal, but the old clock wanted five minutes of the hour; the girl came out into the glowing sunset to draw a pail of water from the old well, but paused to enjoy the scene. Purple, gold and crimson was the mantle of the departing day; and all her crushed and hopeless youth rose, cheered by its glory.

"Thank God," she murmured fervently, "at last I have found a refuge. I am beginning life again. The shadow of the old one will rest on me forever, but time and work, the cure for every grief, will cure me."

Her eyes had been turned toward the west, where the day was going out in such a riot of splendor, and she had not noticed the man who entered the gate and was making his way toward her, flicking his boots with his riding crop as he walked.

She turned suddenly at the sound of steps on the gravel; in the gathering darkness neither could see nor recognize the other till they were face to face.

The woman's face blanched, she stifled an exclamation of horror and stared at him.

"You! you here!"

It was Lennox Sanderson, and the sight of him, so suddenly, in this out-of-the-way place, made her reel, almost fainting against the well-curb.

He grabbed her arm and shook her roughly, and said, "What are you doing here, in this place?"

"I am trying to earn my living. Go, go," she whispered.

"Do you think I came here after you?" he sneered. "I've come to see the Squire." All the selfishness and cowardice latent in Sanderson's character were reflected in his face, at that moment, destroying its natural symmetry, disfiguring it with tell-tale lines, and showing him at his par value—a weak, contemptible libertine, brought to bay.

This meeting with his victim after all these long months of silence, in this remote place, deprived him, momentarily, of his customary poise and equilibrium. Why was she here? Would she denounce him to these people? What effect would it have? were some of the questions that whirled through his brain as they stood together in the gathering twilight.

But the shrinking look in her eyes allayed his fears. He read terror in every line of her quivering figure, and in the frantic way she clung to the well-curb to increase the space between them. She, with the right to accuse, unconsciously took the attitude of supplication. The man knew he had nothing to fear, and laid his plans accordingly.

"I don't believe you've come here to look for work," he said, stooping over the crouching figure. "You've come here to make trouble—to hound the life out of me."

"My hope in coming here was that I might never see you again. What could I want of you, Lennox Sanderson?"

The measured contempt of her tones was not without its effect. He winced perceptibly, but his coarse instincts rallied to his help and again he began to bully:

"Spare me the usual hard-luck story of the deceived young woman trying to make an honest living. If you insist on drudging, it's your own fault. I offered to take care of you and provide for your future, but you received my offers of assistance with a 'Villain-take-your-gold' style, that I was not prepared to accept. If, as you say, you never wish to see me again, what is simpler than to go away?"

His cold-blooded indifference, his utter withdrawal from the calamity he had brought upon her, his airy suggestion that she should go because it suited his pleasure to remain, maddened Anna. The blood rushed to her pale cheeks and there came her old conquering beauty with it. She eyed him with equal defiance.

"I shall not go, because it does not suit me." And then wavering a little at the thought of her wretched experience—"I had too much trouble finding a place where an honest home is offered for honest work, to leave this one for your whim. No, I shall not go."

They heard footsteps moving about the house. A lamp shone out from the dining-room window. The Squire's voice, inquiring for Kate, came across to them on the still summer air. They looked into each other's pale, determined faces. Which would yield? It was the old struggle between the sexes—a struggle old as earth, unsettled as chaos.

Which should yield? The man who had sinned much, or the woman who had loved much?

Sanderson employed all the force of his brutality to frighten Anna into yielding. "See here," and he caught her arm in no uncertain grasp. "You've got to go. You can't stay here in the same place with me. If money is what you want, you shall have it; but you've got to go. Do you understand? Go!"

He had emphasized his words by tightening the grip on her arm, and the pain of it well nigh made her cry out. He relaxed his hold just as Hi Holler came out on the porch, seized the supper horn and blew it furiously. The Squire came down and looked amazed at the smartly dressed young city man talking to Anna.

"Squire," she said, taking the initiative, "this gentleman is inquiring for you."

On hearing the Squire's footsteps, Sanderson turned to him with all the cordiality at his command, and, slapping him on the back, said: "Hello, Squire, I've just ridden over to talk to you about your prize Jersey heifer." The Squire had only met Sanderson once or twice before, and that was prior to Kate's visit to Boston; but he knew all about the young man who had become his neighbor.

Lennox Sanderson was a lucky fellow, and while waiting impatiently for his father to start him in life, his uncle, the judge, died and mentioned no one but Lennox Sanderson in his will.

The Squire had known the late Judge Sanderson, the "big man" of the county, very well, and lost no time in cultivating the acquaintance of the judge's nephew, who had fallen heir to the fine property the judge had accumulated, no small part of which was the handsome "country seat" of the judge in the neighborhood.

That is how this fine young city man happened to drop in on the Squire so unceremoniously. He had learned of Kate's return from Boston and was hastening to pay his respects to the pretty girl. To say he was astounded to find Anna on the spot is putting it mildly. He believed she had learned of his good fortune and had followed him, to make disagreeable exactions. It put him in a rage and it cost him a strong effort to conceal it before the Squire.

"Walk right in," said the Squire, beaming with hospitality. Sanderson entered and the girl found herself alone in the twilight. Anna sat on the bench by the well-curb and faced despair. She was physically so weak from her long and recent illness that the unexpected interview with Sanderson left her faint and exhausted. The momentary flare up of her righteous indignation at Sanderson's outrageous proposition that she should go away had sapped her strength and she made ready to meet one of the great crises of life with nerveless, trembling body and a mind incapable of action.

She pressed her throbbing head on the cool stones of the well-curb and prayed for light. What could she do—where could she go? Her fate rose up before her like a great stone prison wall at which she beat with naked bleeding hand and the stones still stood in all their mightiness.

How could she cope with such heartless cruelty as that of Sanderson? All that she had asked for was an honest roof in return for honest toil. And there are so few such, thought the helpless girl, remembering with awful vividness her efforts to find work and the pitfalls and barriers that had been put in her way, often in the guise of friendly interest.

She could not go out and face it all over again. It was so bleak—so bleak. There seemed to be no place in the great world that she could fill, no one stood in need of her help, no one required her services. They had no faith in her story that she was looking for work and had no home.

"What, a good-looking young girl like you! What, no home? No, no; we don't need you," or the other frightful alternative.

And yet she must go. Sanderson was right. She could not stay where he was. She must go. But where?

She could hear his voice in the dining-room, entertaining them all with his inimitable gift of story-telling. And then, their laughter—peal on peal of it—and his voice cutting in, with its well-bred modulation: "Yes, I thought it was a pretty good story myself, even if the joke was on me." And again their laughter and applause. She had no weapons with which to fight such cold-blooded selfishness. To stay meant eternal torture. She saw herself forced to face his complacent sneer day after day and death on the roadside seemed preferable.

She tried to face the situation in all its pitiful reality, but the injustice of it cried out for vengeance and she could not think. She could only bury her throbbing temples in her hands and murmur over and over again: "It is all wrong."

David found her thus, as he made his way to the house from the barn, where he had been detained later than the others. When he saw her forlorn little figure huddled by the well-curb in an attitude of absolute dejection, he could not go on without saying some word of comfort.

"Miss Anna," he said very gently, "I hope you are not going to be homesick with us."

She lifted a pale, tear-stained face, on which the lines of suffering were written far in advance of her years.

"It does not matter, Mr. David," she answered him, "I am going away."

"No, no, you are not going to do anything of the kind," he said gently; "the work seems hard today because it is new, but in a day or two you will become accustomed to it, and to us. We may seem a bit hard and unsympathetic; I can see you are not used to our ways of living, and looking at things, but we are sincere, and we want you to stay with us; indeed, we do."

She gave him a wealth of gratitude from her beautiful brown eyes. "It is not that I find the place hard, Mr. David. Every one has been so kind to me that I would be glad to stay, but—but——"

He did not press her for her reason. "You have been ill, I believe you said?"

"Yes, very ill indeed, and there are not many who would give work to a delicate girl. Oh, I am sorry to go——" She broke off wildly, and the tears filled her eyes.

"Miss Anna, when one is ill, it's hard to know what is best. Don't make up your mind just yet. Stay for a few days and give us a trial, and just call on me when you want a bucket of water or anything else that taxes your strength."

She tried to answer him but could not. They were the first words of real kindness, after all these months of sorrow and loneliness, and they broke down the icy barrier that seemed to have enclosed her heart. She bent her head and wept silently.

"There, there, little woman," he said, patting her shoulder when he would have given anything to put his arm around her and offer her the devotion of his life. But Dave had a good bit of hard common sense under his hat, and he knew that such a declaration would only hasten her departure and the wise young man continued to be brotherly, to urge her to stay for his mother's sake, and because it was so hard for a young woman to find the proper kind of a home, and really she was not a good judge of what was best for her.

And Anna, whose storm-swept soul was so weary of beating against the rocks, listened and made up her mind to enjoy the wholesome companionship of these good people, for a little while at least.



CHAPTER XI.

RUSTIC HOSPITALITY.

"Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crowned, Where all the ruddy family around Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail, Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale."—Goldsmith.

Sanderson's clothes, his manner, his slightly English accent, were all so many items in a good letter of credit to those simple people. The Squire was secretly proud at having a city man like young Sanderson for a neighbor. It would unquestionably add tone to Wakefield society.

Kate regarded him with the frank admiration of a young woman who appreciates a smart appearance, good manner, and the indefinable something that goes to make up the ensemble of the man of the world. He could say nothing, cleverly; he had little subtleties of manner that put the other men she had met to poor advantage beside him. On the night in question the Squire was giving a supper in honor of the berry-pickers who had helped to gather in the crop the week before. Afterwards, they would sing the sweet, homely songs that all the village loved, and then troop home by moonlight to the accompaniment of their own music.

"Well, Mr. Sanderson," said the Squire, "suppose you stay to supper with us. See, we've lots of good company"—and he waved his hand, indicating the different groups, "and we'll talk about the stock afterwards."

He accepted their invitation to supper with flattering alacrity; they were so good to take pity on a solitaire, and Mrs. Bartlett was such a famous housekeeper; he had heard of her apple-pies in Boston. Dave scented patronage in his "citified" air; he and other young men at the table—young men who helped about the farm—resented everything about the stranger from the self-satisfied poise of his head to the aggressive gloss on his riding-boots.

"Why, Dave," said Kate to her cousin in an undertone, "you look positively fierce. If I had a particle of vanity I should say you were jealous."

"When I get jealous, Kate, it will be of a man, not of a tailor's sign."

"Say, Miss Kate," said Hi Holler, "they're a couple of old lengths of stove-pipes out in the loft; I'm going to polish 'em up for leggins. Darned if I let any city dude get ahead o' me."

"The green-eyed monster is driving you all crazy," laughed Kate, in great good humor. "The girls don't seem to find any fault with him." Cynthia and Amelia were both regarding him with admiring glances.

Dave turned away in some impatience. Involuntarily his eyes sought out Anna Moore to see if she, too, was adding her quota of admiration to the stranger's account. But Anna had no eyes or ears for anything but the business of the moment, which was attending to the Squire's guests. Evidently one woman could retain her senses in the presence of this tailor's figure. Dave's admiration of Anna went up several points.

She slipped about as quietly as a spirit, removing and replacing dishes with exquisite deftness. Even the Squire was forced to acknowledge that she was a great acquisition to the household. She neither sought to avoid nor to attract the attention of Sanderson; she waited on him attentively and unobtrusively as she would have waited on any other guest at the Squire's table. The Squire and Sanderson retired to the porch to discuss the purchase of the stock, and Mrs. Bartlett and Anna set to work to clear away the dishes. Kate excused herself from assisting, as she had to assume the position as hostess and soon had the church choir singing in its very best style. Song after song rang out on the clear summer air. It was a treat not likely to be forgotten soon by the listeners. All the members of the choir had what is known as "natural talent," joined to which there was a very fair amount of cultivation, and the result was music of a most pleasing type, music that touches the heart—not a mere display Of vocal gymnastics.

Toward the close of the festivities, the sound of wheels was heard, and the cracked voice of Rube Whipple, the town constable, urging his ancient nag to greater speed, issued out of the darkness. Rube was what is known as a "character." He had held the office, which on account of being associated with him had become a sort of municipal joke, in the earliest recollections of the oldest inhabitants. He apparently got no older. For the past fifty years he had looked as if he had been ready to totter into the grave at any moment, but he took it out apparently, in attending to other people's funerals instead. His voice was cracked, he walked with a limp, and his clothes, Hi Holler said: "was the old suit Noah left in the ark."

The choir had just finished singing "Rock of Ages" as the constable turned his venerable piece of horseflesh into the front yard.

"Well, well," he said, in a voice like a graphophone badly in need of repair, "I might have knowed it was the choir kicking up all that rumpus. Heard the row clear up to the postoffice, and thought I'd come up to see if anyone was getting murdered."

"Thought you'd be on the spot for once, did you, Rube?" inquired Hi Holler. "Well, seeing you're here, we might accommodate you, by getting up a murder, or a row, or something. 'Twould be too bad to have nothing happen, seeing you are on hand for once."

The choir joined heartily in the laugh on the constable, who waited till it had subsided and then said:

"Well, what's the matter with jailing all of you for disturbing the public peace. There's law for it—'disturbin' the public peace with strange sounds at late and unusual hours of the night.'"

"All right, constable," said Cynthia, "I suppose you'll drive us to jail in that rig o' yourn. I'd be willing to stay there six months for the sake o' driving behind so spry a piece of horse-flesh as that."

"'Tain't the horseflesh she's after, constable, it's the driver. Everyone 'round here knows how Cynthia dew admire you."

"Professional jealousy is what's at the bottom of this," declared Kate, "the choir is jealous of Uncle Rube's reputation as a singer, and Uncle Rube does not care for the choir's new-fangled methods of singing. Rivalry! Rivalry! That's what the matter."

"That's right, Miss Kate," squeaked the constable, "they're jealous of my singing. There ain't one of 'em, with all their scaling, and do-re-mi-ing can touch me. If I turned professional to-day, I'd make more'n all of 'em put together."

"That's cause they'd pay you to quit. Ha, ha," said Hi Holler.

And so the evening passed with the banter that invariably took place when Rube was of the party. It was late when they left the Squire's, the constable going along with them, and all singing merrily as birds on a summer morning.

David went out under the stars and smoked innumerable pipes, but they did not give their customary solace to-night. There was an upheaval going on in his well regulated mind. "Who was she? What was the mystery about her? How did a girl like that come to be tramping about the country looking for work?" Her manner of speaking, the very intonations of her voice, her choice of words, all proclaimed her from a different world from theirs. He had noticed her hands, white and fragile, and her small delicate wrists. They did not belong to a working woman.

And her eyes, that seemed to hold the sorrows of centuries in their liquid depths. What was the mystery of it all? And that insolent city chap! What a look he had given her. The memory of it made Dave's hands come together as if he were strangling something. But it was all too deep for him. The lights glimmered in the rooms upstairs. His father walked to the outer gate to say good-night to Mr. Sanderson—and he tried to justify the feeling of hatred he felt toward Sanderson, but could not. The sound of a shutter being drawn in, caused him to look up. Anna, leaned out in the moonlight for a moment before drawing in the blind. Dave took off his hat—it was an unconscious act of reverence. The next moment, the grave, shy countryman had smiled at his sentimentality. The shutters closed and all was dark, but Dave continued to think and smoke far into the night.

The days slipped by in pleasant and even tenor. The summer burned itself out in a riot of glorious colors, the harvest was gathered in, and the ripe apples fell from the trees—and there was a wail of coming winter to the night wind. Anna Moore had made her place in the Bartlett family. The Squire could not imagine how he ever got along without her; she always thought of everyone's comfort and remembered their little individual likes and dislikes, till the whole household grew to depend on her.

But she never spoke of herself nor referred to her family, friends or manner of living, before coming to the Bartlett farm.

When she had first come among them, her beauty had caused a little ripple of excitement among the neighbors; the young men, in particular, were all anxious to take her to husking bees and quilting parties, but she always had some excellent excuse for not going, and while her refusals were offered with the utmost kindness, there was a quiet dignity about the girl that made any attempt at rustic playfulness or familiarity impossible.

Sanderson came to the house from time to time, but Anna treated him precisely as she would have treated any other young man who came to the Squire's. She was the family "help," her duty stopped in announcing the guests—or sometimes, and then she felt that fate had been particularly cruel—in waiting on him at table.

Once or twice when Sanderson had found her alone, he had attempted to speak to her. But she silenced him with a look that seat him away cowering like a whipped cur. If he had any interest in any member of the Squire's family, Anna did not notice it. He was an ugly scar on her memory, and when not actually in his presence she tried to forget that he lived.



CHAPTER XII.

KATE BREWSTER HOLDS SANDERSON'S ATTENTION.

"A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch Incapable of pity, void and empty From any dram of mercy."—Shakespeare.

It was perhaps owing to the fact that Anna strove hourly to eliminate the memory of Lennox Sanderson from her life, that she remained wholly unaware of that which every member of the Squire's household was beginning to notice: namely, that Lennox Sanderson was becoming daily more attentive to Kate Brewster.

She had more than once hazarded a guess on why a man of Sanderson's tastes should care to remain in so quiet a neighborhood, but could arrive at no solution of the case. In discussing him, she had heard the Bartletts quote his reason, that he was studying practical farming, and later on intended to take it up, on a large scale. When she had first seen him at the Squire's, she had made up her mind that it would be better for her to go away, but the memory of the homeless wanderings she had endured after her mother's death, filled her with terror, and after the first shock of seeing Sanderson, she concluded that it was better to remain where she was, unless he should attempt to force his society on her, in which case she would have to go, if she died by the wayside.

Dave was coming across the fields late one autumn afternoon when he saw Anna at the well, trying with all her small strength to draw up a bucket of water. The well—one of the old-fashioned kind that worked by a "sweep" and pole, at the end of which hung "the old oaken bucket" which Anna drew up easily till the last few feet and then found it was hard work. She had both hands on the iron bale of the bucket and was panting a little, when a deep, gentle voice said in her ear: "Let go, little woman, that's too heavy for you." And she felt the bucket taken forcibly out of her hand.

"Never mind me, Mr. David," she said, giving way reluctantly.

"Always at some hard work or other," he said; "you won't quit till you get laid up sick."

He filled the water-pail from the bucket for her, which she took up and was about to go when he found courage to say:

"Won't you stay a minute, Anna, I want to talk to you.

"Anna, have you any relatives?"

"Not now."

"But have you no friends who knew you and loved you before you came to us?"

"I want nothing of my friends, Mr. David, but their good will."

"Anna, why will you persist in cutting yourself off from the rest of the world like this? You are too good, too womanly a girl, to lead this colorless kind of an existence forever."

She looked at him pleadingly out of her beautiful eyes. "Mr. David, you would not be intentionally cruel to me, I know, so don't speak to me of these things. It only distresses me—and can do you no good."

"Forgive me, Anna, I would not hurt you for the world—but you must know that I love you. Don't you think you could ever grow to care for me?"

"Mr. David, I shall never marry any one. Do not ask me to explain, and I beg of you, if you have a feeling of even ordinary kindness for me. that you will never mention this subject to me again. You remember how I promised your father that if he would let me make my home with you, he should never live to regret it? Do you think that I intend to repay the dearest wish of his heart in this way? Why, Mr. David, you are engaged to marry Kate." She took up the water-pail to go.

"Kate's one of the best girls alive, but I feel toward her like a brother. Besides, Anna, what have you been doing with those big brown eyes of yours? Don't you see that Kate and Lennox Sanderson are head over heels in love with each other?"

The pail of water slipped from Anna's hand and sent a flood over David's boots.

"No, no—anything but that! You don't know what you are saying!"

Dave looked at her in absolute amazement. He had no chance to reply. As if in answer to his remark, there came through the outer gate, Kate and Sanderson arm in arm. They had been gathering golden-rod, and their arms were full of the glory of autumn.

There was a certain assumption of proprietary right in the way that Sanderson assisted Kate with the golden-rod that Anna recognized. She knew it, and falseness of it burned through, her like so much corrosive acid. She stood with the upturned pail at her feet, unable to recover her composure, her bosom heaving high, her eyes dilating. She stood there, wild as a startled panther, uncertain whether to fight or fly.

"You don't know what a good time we've been having," Kate called out.

"You see, Anna dear, I was right," David said to her.

But Anna did not answer. Sorrow had broken her on its wheel. Where was the justice of it? Why should he go forth to seek his happiness—and find it—and she cower in shame through all the years to come?

Dave saw that she had forgotten his presence; she stood there in the gathering night with wild, unseeing eyes. Memory had turned back the hands of the clock till it pointed out that fatal hour on another golden afternoon in autumn, and Sanderson, the hero of the hour, had come to her with the marks of battle still upon him, and as the crowd gave away for him, right and left, he had said: "I could not help winning with your eyes on me."

Oh, the lying dishonor of it! It was not jealousy that prompted her, for a moment, to go to Kate and tell her all. What right had such vultures as he to be received, smiled upon, courted, caressed? If there was justice on earth, his sin should have been branded on him, that other women might take warning.

Dave knew that her thoughts had flown miles wide of him, and his unselfishness told him that it would be kindness to go into the house and leave her to herself, which he did with a heavy heart and many misgivings.

Hi Holler had none of Dave's sensitiveness. He saw Anna standing by the gate, and being a loquacious soul, who saw no advantage in silence, if there was a fellow creature to talk to; he came up grinning: "Say, Anna, I wonder if me and you was both thinkin' about the same thing—I was thinkin' as I seen Sanderson and Kate passing that I certainly would enjoy a piece o' weddin' cake, don't care whose it was."

"No, Hi," Anna said, being careful to restrain any bitterness of tone, "I certainly was not wishing for a wedding cake."

"I certainly do like wedding cake, Anna, but then, I like everything to eat. Some folks don't like one thing, some folks don't like another. Difference between them an' me is, I like everything."

Anna laughed in spite of herself.

"Yes, since I like everything, and I like it all the time, why, I ain't more than swallowed the last buckwheat for breakfast, than I am ready for dinner. You don't s'pose I'm sick or anything, do you, Anna?"

"I don't think the symptoms sound alarming, Hi."

"Well, you take a load off my mind, Anna, cause I was getting scared about myself." Seeing the empty water-pail, Hi refilled it and carried it in the house for Anna. Dave was not the only one in that household who was miserable, owing to Cupid's unaccountable antics. Professor Sterling, the well-paying summer boarder, continued to remain with the Bartletts, though summer, the happy season during which the rustic may square his grudge with the city man within his gates, had long since passed.

The professor had spared enough time from his bugs and beetles to notice how blue Kate's eyes were, and how luxurious her hair; then he had also, with some misgivings, regarded his own in the mirror, with the unassuring result that his hair was thinning on top and his eyes looked old through his gold-bowed spectacles.

The discovery did not meet with the indifference one might have expected on the part of the conscientious entomologist. He fell even to the depths of reading hair-restoring circulars and he spent considerable time debating whether he should change his spectacles for a pince-nez.

The spectacles, however, continued to do their work nobly for the professor, not only assisting him to make his scientific observations on the habits of a potato-bug in captivity, but showing him with far more clearness that Kate Brewster and Lennox Sanderson contrived to spend a great deal of time in each other's society, and that both seemed to enjoy the time thus spent.

The professor went back to his beetles, but they palled. The most gorgeous butterfly ever constructed had not one-tenth the charm for him that was contained in a glance of Kate Brewster's eyes, or a glimpse of her golden head as she flitted about the house. And so the autumn waned.



CHAPTER XIII.

THE QUALITY OF MERCY

"Teach me to feel another's woe, To hide the fault I see; That mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me."—Pope.

Sanderson, during his visits to the Bartlett farm—and they became more frequent as time went on—would look at Anna with cold curiosity, not unmixed with contempt, when by chance they happened to be alone for a moment. But the girl never displayed by so much as the quiver of an eye-lash that she had ever seen him before.

Had Lennox Sanderson been capable of fathoming Anna Moore, or even of reading her present marble look or tone, he would have seen that he had little to apprehend from her beyond contempt, a thing he would not in the least have minded; but he was cunning, and like the cunning shallow. So he began to formulate plans for making things even with Anna—in other words, buying her off.

His admiration for Kate deepened in proportion as the square of that young woman's reserve increased. She was not only the first woman who refused to burn incense at his shrine, but also the first who frankly admitted that she found him amusing. She mildly guyed his accent, his manner of talking, his London clothes, his way of looking at things. Never having lived near a university town, she escaped the traditional hero worship. It was a new sensation for Sanderson, and eventually he succumbed to it.

"You know, Miss Kate," he said one day, "you are positively the most refreshing girl I have ever met. You don't know how much I love you."

Kate considered for a moment. There was a hint of patronage, it seemed to her, in his compliment, that she did not care for.

"Oh, consider the debt cancelled, Mr. Sanderson. You have not found my rustic simplicity any more refreshing than I have found your poster waistcoats."

"Why do you persist is misunderstanding and hurting me?"

"I apologize to your waistcoats, Mr. Sanderson. I have long considered them the substitute for your better nature."

"Better natures and that sort of thing have rather gone out of style, haven't they?"

"They are always out of style with people who never had them."

"Is this quarreling, Kate, or making love?"

"Oh, let's make it quarreling, Mr. Sanderson. And now about that horse you lent me. That's a vile bit you've got on him." And the conversation turned to other things, as it always did when he tried to be sentimental with Kate. Sometimes he thought it was not the girl, but her resistance, that he admired so much.

Things in the Bartlett household were getting a bit uneasy. The Squire chafed that his cherished project of Kate and Dave's marrying seemed no nearer realization now than it had been two years ago.

Dave's equable temper vanished under the strain and uncertainty regarding Anna Moore's silence and apparent indifference to him. He would have believed her before all the world; her side of the story was the only version for him; but Anna did not see fit to break her silence. When he would approach her on the subject she would only say:

"Mr. David, your father employs me as a servant. I try to do my work faithfully, but my past life concerns no one but myself."

And Dave, fearing that she might leave them, if he continued to force his attentions on her, held his peace. The thought of losing even the sight of her about the house wrung his heart. He could not bear to contemplate the long winter days uncheered by her gentle presence.

It was nearly Thanksgiving. The first snow had come and covered up everything that was bare and unsightly in the landscape with its beautiful mantle of white, and Anna, sitting by the window, dropped the stocking she was darning to press the bitter tears back to her eyes.

The snow had but one thought for her. She saw it falling, falling soft and feathery on a baby's grave in the Episcopal Cemetery at Somerville. She shivered; it was as if the flakes were falling on her own warm flesh.

If she could but go to that little grave and lie down among the feathery flakes and forget it all, it would be so much easier than this eternal struggle to live. What had life in store for her? There was the daily drudgery, years and years of it, and always the crushing knowledge of injustice.

She knew how it would be. Scandal would track her down—put a price on her head; these people who had given her a home would hear, and what would all her months of faithful service avail?

"Is this true?" she already heard the Squire say in imagination, and she should have to answer: "Yes"—and there would be the open door and the finger pointing to her to go.

She heard the Squire's familiar step on the stair; unconsciously, she crouched lower; had he come to tell her to go?

But the Squire came in whistling, a picture of homely contentment, hands in pocket, smiling jovially. She knew there must be no telltale tears on her cheeks, even if her heart was crying out in the cold and snow. She knew the bitterness of being denied the comfort of tears. It was but one of the hideous train of horrors that pursued a woman in her position.

She forced them back and met the Squire with a smile that was all the sweeter for the effort.

"Here's your chair, Squire, all ready waiting for you, and the only thing you want to make you perfectly happy—is—guess?" She held out his old corncob pipe, filled to perfection.

"I declare, Anna, you are just spoiling me, and some day you'll be going off and getting married to some of these young fellows 'round here, and where will I be then?"

"You need have no fears on that score," she said, struggling to maintain a smile.

"Well, well, that's what girls always say, but I don't know what we'll do without you. How long have you been with us, now?"

"Let me see," counting on her fingers: "just six months."

"So it is, my dear. Well, I hope it will be six years before you think of leaving us. And, Anna, while we are talking, I like to say to you that I have felt pretty mean more than once about the way I treated you that first day you come."

"Pray, do not mention it, Squire. Your kindness since has quite made me forget that you hesitated to take an utter stranger into your household."

"That was it, my dear—an utter stranger—and you cannot really blame me; here was Looizy and Kate and I was asked to take into the house with them a young woman whom I had never set eyes on before; it seemed to me a trifle risky, but you've proved that I was wrong, my dear, and I'll admit it."

The girl dropped the stocking she was mending; her trembling hand refused to support even the pretense of work. Outside the snow was falling just as it was falling, perhaps, on the little grave where all her youth and hope were buried.

The thought gave her courage to speak, though the pale lips struggled pitifully to frame the words.

"Squire, suppose that when I came to you that day last June you had been right—I am only saying this for the sake of argument, Squire—but suppose that I had been a deceived girl, that I had come here to begin all over again; to live down the injustice, the scandal and all the other things that unfortunate woman have to live down, would you still have felt the same?"

"Why, Anna, I never heard you talk like this before; of course I should have felt the same; if a commandment is broke, it's broke; nothing can alter that, can it?"

"But, Squire, is there no mercy, no chance held out to the woman who has been unfortunate?"

"Anna, these arguments don't sound well from a proper behaving young woman like you. I know it's the fashion nowadays for good women to talk about mercy to their fallen sisters, but it's a mistake. When a woman falls, she loses her right to respect, and that's the end of it."

She turned her face to the storm and the softly falling flakes were no whiter than her face.

As Anna turned to leave the room on some pretext, she saw Kate coming in with a huge bunch of Jacqueminot roses in her hand. Of course, Sanderson had sent them. The perfume of them sickened Anna, as the odor of a charnel house might have done. She tried to smile bravely at Kate, who smiled back triumphantly as she went in to show her uncle the flowers. But the sight of them was like the turning of a knife in a festering wound.

Anna made her way to the kitchen. Dave was sitting there smoking. Anna found strength and sustenance in his mere presence, though she did not say a word to him, but he was such a faithful soul. Good, honest Dave.



CHAPTER XIV.

THE VILLAGE GOSSIP SNIFFS SCANDAL.

"Flavia, most tender of her own good name, Is rather careless of her sister's fame! Her superfluity the poor supplies, But if she touch a character it dies."—Cowper.

It was characteristic of Marthy Perkins and her continual pursuit of pleasure, that she should wade through snowdrifts to Squire Bartlett's and ask for a lift in his sleigh. The Squire's family were going to a surprise party to be given to one of the neighbor's, and Marthy was as determined about going as a debutante.

She came in, covered with snow, hooded, shawled and coated till she resembled a huge cocoon. The Squire placed a big armchair for her near the fire, and Marshy sat down, but not without disdaining Anna's offers to remove her wraps. She sniffed at Anna—no other word will express it—and savagely clutched her big old-fashioned muff when Anna would have taken it from her to dry it of the snow.

The sleighbells jingled merrily as the different parties drove by, singing, whistling, laughing, on their way to the party. The church choir, snugly installed in "Doc" Wiggins' sleigh, stopped at the Squire's to "thaw out," and try a step or two; Rube Whipple, the town constable, giving them his famous song, "All Bound 'Round with a Woolen String."

Rube was, as usual, the pivot around which the merry-making centered. A few nights before, burglars had broken into the postoffice and carried off the stamps, and the town constable was, as usual, the last one to hear of it. On the night in question, he had spent the evening at the corner grocery store with a couple of his old pals, the stove answering the purpose of a rather large bulls-eye, at which they expectorated, with conscientious regularity, from time to time. Seth Holcomb, Marthy Perkins' faithful swain, had been of the corner grocery party.

"Well, Constable, hear you and Seth helped keep the stove warm the other night, while thieves walked off with the postoffice," Marthy announced; "what I'd like to know is, how much bitters, rheumatism bitters, you had during the evening?"

"Well, Marthy Perkins, you ought to be the last to throw it up to Seth that he's obliged to spend his evenings round a corner grocery—that's adding insult to injury."

"Insult to injury I reckon can stand, Rube; it's when you add Seth's bitters that it staggers."

But Seth, who never minded Marthy's stings and jibes, only remarked: "The recipy for them bitters was given to me by a blame good doctor."

"That cuts you out, Wiggins," the Squire said playfully.

"No, I don't care about standing father to Seth's bitters," "Doc" Wiggins remarked, "but I've tasted worse stuff on a cold night."

"Oh, Seth ain't pertickler about the temperature, when he takes a dose of bitters. Hot or cold, it's all the same to him," finished Marthy.

Seth took the opportunity to whisper to her: "You're going to sit next to me in 'Doc' Wiggins' sleigh to-night, ain't you, Marthy?"

"Indeed I ain't," said the spinster, scornfully tossing her head, "my place will have to be filled by the bitters-bottle; I am going with the Squire and Mrs. Bartlett."

"Doc" Wiggins' party left in high good humor, the Squire and his party promising to follow immediately. Anna ran upstairs to get Mrs. Bartlett's bonnet and cloak, and Marthy, with a great air of mystery, got up, and, carefully closing the door after the girl, turned to the Squire and his wife with:

"I've come to tell you something about her."

"Something about Anna?" said the Squire indignantly.

"Oh, no, not about our Anna," protested Mrs. Bartlett: "Why, she is the best kind of a girl; we are all devoted to her."

"That's just the saddest part of it, I says to myself when I heard. How can I ever make up my mind to tell them pore, dear Bartletts, who took her in, and has been treating her like one of their own family ever since? It will come hard on, them, I sez, but that ought not to deter me from my duty."

"Look here, Marthy," thundered the Squire, "if you've got anything to say about that girl, out with it——"

"Well, land sake—you needn't be so touchy; she ain't kin to you, and you might thank your lucky stars she ain't."

"Well, what is it, Marthy?" interposed Mrs. Bartlett. "Anna'll be down in a minute."

"Well, you know, I have been sewin' down to Warren Center this last week, and Maria Thomson, from Belden, was visiting there, and naturally we all got to talking 'bout folks up this way, and that girl Anna Moore's name was mentioned, and I'm blest if Maria Thomson didn't recognize her from my description.

"I was telling them 'bout the way she came here last June, pale as a ghost, and how she said her mother had just died and she'd been sick, and they knew right off who she was."

Marthy loved few things as she did an interested audience. It was her meat and drink.

"Well, she didn't call herself Moore in Belden, though that was her mother's name—she called herself Lennox," Marthy grinned. "She was one of those married ladies who forgot their wedding rings."

The Squire knit his brows and his jaws came together with a snap; there were tears in Mrs. Bartlett's eyes. The gossip looked from one to the other to see the impression her words were making.

It spurred her on to new efforts. She positively rolled the words about in delight before she could utter them.

"Well, the girl's mother, who had been looking worried out of her skin, took sick and died all of a sudden, and the girl took sick herself very soon afterwards—and what do you think? A girl baby was born to Mrs. Lennox, but her husband never came near her. Fortunately, the baby did not live to embarrass her. It died, and she packed up and left Belden. That's when she came here.

"And now," continued the village inquisitor, summing up her terrible evidence, "what are we to think of a girl called Miss Moore in one town and Mrs. Lennox in the other, with no sign of a wedding ring and no sign of a husband? And what are we going to think of that baby? It seems to me scandalous." And she leaned back in her chair and rocked furiously.



The Squire brought his hand down or the table with terrible force, his pleasant face, was distorted with rage and indignation.

"Just what I always said would come of taking in strange creatures that we knew nothing about. Do you think that I will have a creature like that in my house with my wife and my niece, polluting them with her very presence?—out she goes this minute!"

He strode over to the door through which Anna had passed a few moments before, he flung it open and was about to call when he felt his wife cling frantically to his arm.

"Father, don't do anything in anger that you'll repent of later. How do you know this is true? Look how well the girl has acted since she has been here"—and in a lower voice, "you know that Marthy's given to talking."

The hand on the knob relaxed, a kindly light replaced the anger in his eyes.

"You are right, Looizy, what we've heard is only hearsay, I'll not say a word to the girl till I know; but to-morrow I am going to Belden and find out the whole story from beginning to end."

Kate and the professor came in laden with wraps, laughing and talking in great glee. Kate was going to ride in the sleigh with the professor, and the discovery of a new species of potato-bug could not have delighted him more. He was in a most gallant mood, and concluding that this was the opportunity for making himself agreeable, he undertook to put on Kate's rubbers over her dainty dancing slippers.

Perhaps it was a glimpse of the cobwebby black silk stocking that ensnared his wits, perhaps it was the delight of kneeling to Kate even in this humble capacity. In either case, the result was equally grotesque; Kate found her dainty feet neatly enclosed in the professor's ungainly arctics, while he hopelessly contemplated her overshoe and the size of his own foot.

Anna returned with Mrs. Bartlett's bonnet and cloak before the laugh at the professor had subsided. She adjusted the cloak, tied Mrs. Bartlett's bonnet strings with daughterly care and then turned to look after the Squire's comfort, but he strode past her to the sleigh with Marthy. Kate and the professor called on a cheery "Good-night," but Mrs. Bartlett remained long enough to take the pretty, sorrowful face in her hands and give it a sweet, motherly kiss.

When the jingling of the sleighbells died away across the snow, Hi offered to read jokes to Anna from "Pickings from Puck," which he had selected as a Christmas present from Kate, if she would consent to have supper in the sitting-room, where it was warm and cosy. Anna began to pop the corn, and Hi to read the jokes with more effort than he would have expended on the sawing of a cord of wood.

He bit into an apple. An expression of perfect contentment illuminated his countenance and in a voice husky with fruit began: "Oh, here is a lovely one, Anna," and he declaimed, after the style usually employed by students of the first reader.

"Weary Raggles: 'Say, Ragsy, w'y don't you ask 'em for something to eat in dat house. Is you afraid of de dog?'"

"Ragsy Reagan: 'No, I a-i-n-t 'fraid of the dog, but me pants is frayed of him.'"

"Ha, ha, ha—say, Anna, that's the funniest thing I ever did see. The tramp wasn't frayed of him, but his pants was 'fraid of him. Gee, ain't that a funny joke? And say, Anna, there's a picture with his clothes all torn."

Hi was fairly convulsed; he read till the tears rolled down his cheeks. "'Pickin's from Puck, the funniest book ever wrote.' Here's another, Anna."

"'A p-o-o-r old man was sunstruck on Broadway this morning. His son struck him for five dollars.'" Hi sat pondering over it for a full minute, then he burst into a loud guffaw that continued so long and uproariously that neither heard the continued rapping on the front door.

"Hi, some one is knocking on the front door. Do go and see who it is."

"O! let 'em knock, Anna; don't let's break up our party for strangers."

"Well, Hi, I'll have to go myself," and she laid down the corn-popper, but the boy got up grumbling, lurched to the door and let in Lennox Sanderson.

"'Tain't nobody at home, Mr. Sanderson," said Hi, inhospitably blocking the way. Anna had crouched over the fire, as if to obliterate herself.

"Here, Hi, you take this and go out and hold my horse; he's mettlesome as the deuce this cold weather. I want to get warm before I go to Putnam's."

Hi put on his muffler, mits and cap—each with a favorite "swear word," such as "ding it," "dum it," "darn it." Nevertheless he wisely concluded to take the half dollar from him and save it for the spring crop of circuses.

Anna started to leave the room, but Sanderson's peremptory "Stay here, I've got to talk to you," detained her.

They looked into each other's faces—these two, who but a few short months ago had been all in all to each other—and the dead fire was not colder than their looks.

"Well, Anna," he said sneeringly, "what's your game? You've been hanging about here ever since I came to the neighborhood. How much do you want to go away?"

"Nothing that you could give me, Lennox Sanderson. My only wish is that I might be spared the sight of you."

"Don't beat around the bush, Anna; is it money, or what? You are not foolish enough to try to compel me to marry you?"

"Nothing could be further from my mind. I did think once of compelling you to right the wrong you have done me, but that is past. It is buried in the grave with my child."

"Then the child is dead?" He came over to the fireplace where she stood, but she drew away from him.

"You have nothing to fear from me, Lennox Sanderson. The love I felt once is dead, and I have no feeling for you now but contempt."

"You need not rub it in like that, Anna. I was perfectly willing to do the square thing by you always, but you flared up, went away, and Heaven only knew what became of you. It's bad enough to have things made unpleasant for me in Boston on your account without having you queering my plans here."

"Boston—I never told anyone in Boston."

"No, but that row got into the papers about Langdon and the Tremonts cut me."

"Hush," said Anna, as a spasm of pain crossed her face: "I never wish you to refer to my past life again."

"Indeed, Anna, I am only too anxious to do the right thing by you, even now. If you will go away, I will give you what you want, if you don't intend to interfere between Kate and me."

"Are you sure that Kate is in earnest? You know that the Squire intends her to marry Dave."

"I shall have no difficulty in preventing that if you don't interfere."

She did not answer. She was again considering the same old question that she had thrashed out a thousand times—should she tell Kate? How would she take it? Would the tragedy of her life be regarded as a little wild-oat sowing on the part of Sanderson and her own eternal disgrace?

The man was in no humor for her silence. He grasped her roughly by the arm, and his voice was raised loud in angry protest. "Tell me—do you, or do you not intend to interfere?"

In the excitement of the moment neither heard the outer door open, and neither heard David enter. He stood in his quiet way, looking from one to the other. Sanderson's angry question died away in some foolish commonplace, but David had heard and Anna and Sanderson knew it.



CHAPTER XV.

DAVID CONFESSES HIS LOVE.

"Come live with me and be my love; And we will all the pleasures prove That hills and valleys, dales and fields, Woods, or steep mountains, yield."—Marlowe.

Sanderson, recovering his self-possession almost immediately, drawled out:

"Glad to see you, Dave. Came over thinking I might be in time to go over to Putnam's with your people. They had gone, so I stopped long enough to get warm. I must be going now. Good-night, Miss—Miss"—(he seemed, to have great difficulty in recalling the name) "Moore."

David paid no attention to him; his eyes were riveted on Anna, who had changed color and was now like ivory flushing into life. She trembled and fell to her knees, making a pretense of gathering up her knitting that had fallen.

"What brought Sanderson here, Anna? Is he anything to you—are you anything to him?"

She tried to assume a playful lightness, but it failed dismally. It was all her pallid lips could do to frame the words: "Why, Mr. David, what a curious question! What possible interest could the 'catch' of the neighborhood have in your father's servant?"

The suggestion of flippancy that her words contained irritated the grave, quiet man as few things could have done. He turned from her and would have left the room, but she detained him.

"I am sorry I wounded you, Mr. David, but, indeed, you have no right to ask."

"I know it, Anna, and you won't give me the right; but how dared that cub Sanderson speak to you in that way?" He caught her hand, and unconsciously wrung it till she cried out in pain. "Forgive me, dear, I would not hurt you for the world; but that man's manner toward you makes me wild."

She looked up at him from beneath her long, dark lashes; he thought her eyes were like the glow of forest fires burning through brushwood. "We will never think of him again, Mr. David. I assure you that I am no more to Mr. Sanderson than he is to me, and that is—nothing."

"Thank you for those words, Anna. I cannot tell you how happy they make me. But I do not understand you at all. Even a countryman like me can see that you have never been used to our rough way of living; you were never born to this kind of thing, and yet when that man Sanderson looks at you or talks to you, there is always an undertone of contempt in his look, his words."

She sank wearily into an armchair. It seemed to her that her limit of endurance had been reached, but he, taking her silence for acquiescence, lost no time in following up what he fondly hoped might be an advantage. "I did not go to the Putnams to-night, Anna, because you were not going, and there is no enjoyment for me when you are not there."

"Mr. David, if you continue to talk to me like this I shall have to leave this house."

"Tell me, Anna," he said so gravely that the woman beside him knew that life and death were balanced with her words: "tell me, when you said that day last autumn by the well that you never intended to marry, was it just a girl's coquetry or was there some deeper reason for your saying so?"

She could not face the love in those honest eyes and answer as her conscience prompted. She was tired, so tired of the struggle, what would she not have given to rest here in the shelter of this perfect love and trust, but it was not for her.

"Mr. David," she said, looking straight before her with wide, unseeing eyes; "I can be no man's wife."

He knew from the lines of suffering written deep on the pale young face, that maiden coquetry had not inspired her to speak thus; but word for word, it had been wrung from out of the depths of a troubled soul.

"Anna!" cried David, in mingled astonishment and pain. But Anna only turned mutely toward him with an imploring look. She stretched out her hands to him, as if trying to tell him more. But words failed her. Her tears overcame her and she fled, sobbing, to her room. All the way up the winding night of stairs, David could hear her anguished moans. He would have followed her, but Hi burst into the room, stamping the snow from his boots. He shoved in the front door as if he had been an invading army. He unwound his muffler and cast it from him as if he had a grudge against it, as he proceeded to deliver himself of his wrongs.

"If there's any more visitors coming to the house to-night that wants their horses held, they can do it themselves, for I am going to have my supper." David made no reply, but went to his own room to brood over the day's events. And so Anna was spared any further talk with David that night; a circumstance for which she was devoutly thankful.

The next day the snow was deeper by a foot, but this did not deter the Squire from making his proposed trip to Belden. He started immediately after breakfast, prepared to sift matters to the bottom.

An air of tension and anxiety pervaded the household all that long, miserable day. Anna was tortured with doubts. Should she slip away quietly without telling, or should she make her humiliating confession to Kate? Mrs. Bartlett, who knew the object of her husband's errand, could not control her nerves. She knew intuitively "that something was going to happen," as the good soul put it to herself.

Altogether it was one of those nerve-wracking days that come from time to time in the best regulated households, apparently for no other purpose but to prove the fact that a solitary existence is not necessarily the most unhappy.

Mrs. Bartlett, for the first time in her life, was worried about Dave. He was moody and morose, even to her, his sworn friend and ally, with whom he had never had a word's difference. He had gone off that morning shortly after the Squire left the house; and his mother, watching him carefully at breakfast, noticed that he had shoved away his plate with the food untasted.

A fatal symptom to the ever-watchful maternal eye.

Kate felt sulky because her aunt and uncle had been urging her to marry Dave, and apparently Dave had no affection for her beyond that of a cousin, the situation irritating her in the extreme.

"Aunt Louisa, what is the matter with every one?" she said, flouncing into the kitchen. "Something seems to have jarred the family nerves. Here is uncle off on some mysterious business, Dave goes off in the snow in a tantrum, and you look as if you had just buried your last friend." And the young lady left the room as suddenly as she entered it.

"It does feel as if trouble was brewing," Mrs. Bartlett admitted to Anna, with a gloomy shake of the head. "I'm getting that worried about Dave, he's been away all day, and it's not usual for him to stay away like this." Her voice broke a little, and she left the room hurriedly.

He came in almost immediately, stamping the snow from his boots and looking twice as savage as when he went away.

"Mrs. Bartlett had been worrying about you all day, Mr. David," Anna said as she turned from the dresser with her arms full of plates.

"And did you care, Anna, that I was not here?" He gave her the appealing glance of a great mastiff who hopes for a friendly pat on the head.

"My feelings on the subject can be of no interest to you," she answered with chilling decision.

"All right," and he went to the hat-rack to get his muffler and cap, preparatory to again facing the storm.

The snow had been falling steadily all day. Drifting almost to the height of the kitchen window, it whirled about the house and beat against the window panes with a muffled sound that was inexpressibly dreary to the girl, who felt herself the center of all this pitiful human contention.

"David, David; where have you been all day, and where are you going now?" His mother looked at his gray, haggard face and tried to guess his hidden trouble, the first he had ever kept from her.

"Mother, I am not a child, and you can't expect me to hang about the stove like a cat, all my life." It was his first harsh word to her and she shrank before it as if it had been a blow. David, her boy, to speak to her like that! She turned quickly away to hide the tears, the first she had ever shed on his account.

"Here, Anna," she said, struggling to recover her composure, "take this bucket and get it filled for me, please."

The girl reached for her cloak that hung on a peg near the door.

"No, Anna, you shall not go out for water a night like this; it's not the work for you to do." David had sprung forward and caught the bucket from her hand and plunged with it into the storm. Kate's quick eyes caught the expression of David's face—while Mrs. Bartlett only heard his words. She gave Anna a searching look as she said: "So it is you whom David loves." At last Kate understood the secret of Anna's distracted face—and at last the mother understood the secret of her boy's moodiness—he loved Anna. And her heart was filled with bitterness and anger at the very thought; she had taken her boy, this stranger, with whom the tongue of scandal was busy. The kindly, gentle, old face lost all its sweetness; jealous anger filled it with ugly lines. Turning to Anna she said:

"It would have been better for all of us if we had not taken you in that day to break up our home with your mischief."

Anna was cut to the quick. "Oh, Mrs. Bartlett, please do not say that; I will go away as soon as you like, but it is not with my consent that David has these foolish fancies about me."

"And do you mean to say that you have never encouraged him," indignantly demanded the irate mother, who with true feminine inconsistency would not have her boy's affections go begging, even while she scorned the object of it.

"Encouraged him? I have begged, entreated him to let me alone; I do not want his love."

An angry sparrow defending her brood could not have been more indignantly demonstrative than this gentle old lady.

"And isn't he good enough for you, Miss?" she asked in a voice that shook with wrath.

"Dear Mrs. Bartlett, would you have me take his love and return it?"

"No, no; that would never do!" and the inconsistent old soul rocked herself to and fro in an agony of despair.

Anna did not resent Mrs. Bartlett's indignation, unjust though it was; she knew how blind good mothers could be when the happiness of their children is at stake. She felt only pity for her and remembered only her kindness. So slipping down on her knees beside the old lady's chair, she took the toil-worn old hands in her own and said:

"Do not think hardly of me, Mrs. Bartlett. You have been so good—and when I am gone, I want you to think of me with affection. I will go away, and all this trouble will straighten itself out, and you will forget that I ever caused you a moment's pain."

Dave came in with the bucket of water that had caused the little squall and prevented his mother from replying, but the hard lines had relaxed in the good old face. She was again "mother" whom they all knew and loved. Sanderson followed close after David; he had just come from Boston, he said, and inquired for Kate with a simple directness that left no doubt as to whom he had come to see.

It is an indisputable law of the eternal feminine for all women to flaunt a conquest in the face of the man who had declined their affection. Kate was not in love with her cousin David, but she was devoutly thankful to Providence that there was a Lennox Sanderson to flaunt before him in the capacity of tame cat, and prove that he "was not the only man in the world," as she put it to herself.

Therefore when Lennox Sanderson handed her a magnificent bunch of Jacqueminot roses that he had brought her from Boston, Kate was not at all backward in rewarding Sanderson with her graciousness.

"How beautiful they are, Mr. Sanderson; it was so good of you."

"You make me very happy by taking them," he answered with a wealth of meaning.

Anna, who had gone to the storeroom for some apples, after her reconciliation with Mrs. Bartlett, returned to find Sanderson talking earnestly to Kate by the window. Kate held up the roses for Anna to smell. "Aren't they lovely, Anna? There is nothing like roses for taking the edge off a snowstorm."

Anna was forced to go through the farce of admiring them, while Sanderson looked on with nicely concealed amusement.

"Well, what do you think of them, Anna?" said Kate, disappointed that she made no comment.

"The best thing about roses, speaking generally, Miss Kate, is that they fade quickly and do not embarrass one by outliving the little affairs in which they have played a part." She returned Sanderson's languid glance in a way that made him quail.

"That is quite true," said Kate, being in the humor for a little cynicism. "What a pity that love letters can't be constructed on the same principle."

Sanderson did not feel particularly at ease while these two young women served and returned cynicism; he was accordingly much relieved when Mrs. Bartlett and Anna both left the room, intent on the solemn ceremony of opening a new supply of preserved peaches.

"Kate, did you mean what you just said to that girl?" Sanderson asked when they were alone.

"What did I say? Oh, yes, about the love letters. Well, what difference does it make whether I meant it or not?"

"It makes all the difference in the world to me, Kate." He read refusal in the big blue eyes, and he made haste to plead his cause before she could say anything.

"Don't answer yet, Kate; don't give me my life-sentence," he said playfully, taking her hand. "Think it over; take as long as you like. Hope with you is better than certainty with any other woman."



Professor Sterling, who had been to a neighboring town on business for the past two or three days, walked into the middle of this little tableau in time to hear the last sentence. Kate and Sanderson had failed to hear him, partly because he had neglected to remove his overshoes, and partly because they were deeply engrossed with each other.

Though his rival's declaration, which he had every reason to suppose would be accepted, was the death blow to his hopes, yet he unselfishly stepped out into the snow, waited five minutes by his watch—a liberal allowance for an acceptance, he considered—and then rapped loud and theatrically before entering a second time. Could unselfishness go further?

Kate and Sanderson had no other opportunity for confidential talk that evening.

They were barely seated about the supper table, when there came a tremendous rapping at the door, and Marthy Perkins came in, half frozen. For once her voluble tongue was silenced. She retailed no gossip while submitting to the friendly ministrations of Mrs. Bartlett and Anna, who chafed her hands, gave her hot tea and thawed her back to life—and gossip.

"Is the Squire back yet?" asked Marthy with returning warmth. "Land sakes, what can be keeping him? Heard him say last night that he intended going away this morning, and thought he might have come back."

"With news?" naively asked Sanderson.

"Why, yes. I did think it was likely that he might have gathered up something interesting, away a whole day." Every one laughed but Mrs. Bartlett. She alone knew the object of her husband's quest.

"Your father's not likely to be back to-night—do you think so, Dave?" she asked her son, more by way of drawing him out than in the hope of getting any real information.

"No, I do not think it is likely, mother," he answered.

"Good land! and I nearly froze to death getting here!" Marthy said in an aside to Mrs. Bartlett. "I tell you, Looizy, there is nothing like suspense for wearing you out. I couldn't get a lick of sewing done to-day, waiting for Amasy to get in with the news."

"Hallo! hallo! Let us in quick—here we are, me and the Squire—most froze! Hallo, hallo"—The rest of Hi's remarks were a series of whoops.

Every one rose from the table, Mrs. Bartlett pale with apprehension. Marthy flushed with delight. She was not to be balked of her prey. The Squire was here with the news.



CHAPTER XVI.

ALONE IN THE SNOW.

"The cold winds swept the mountain-height, And pathless was the dreary wild, And mid the cheerless hours of night A mother wandered with her child: As through the drifting snows she pressed, The babe was sleeping on her breast."—Seba Smith.

The head of the house was home from his mysterious errand, the real object of which was unknown to all but Marthy and his wife.

Kate unwound his muffler and took his cap; his wife assured him that she had been worried to death about him all day; the men inquired solicitously about his journey—how had he stood the cold—and Anna made ready his place at the table. But neither this domestic adulation nor the atmosphere of warmth and affection awaiting him at his own fireside served for a moment to turn him from the wanton brutality that he was pleased to dignify by the name of duty.

Anna could not help feeling the "snub," and David, whose eyes always followed Anna, saw it before the others. "Father," said he, "what's the matter, you don't speak to Anna."

"I don't want to speak to her. I don't want to look at her. I don't want anything to do with her," replied the Squire. Every one except Martha and Mrs. Bartlett was startled by this blunt, almost brutal outburst.

"I am glad you are all here, the more the better: Marthy, Professor, Mr. Sanderson, glad to see you and all the home folks"—he had a word, a nod, a pat on the back for every one but Anna, and though she sought more than one opportunity to speak to him, he deliberately avoided her.

His wife, who knew all the varying weathers of his temper was using all her small stock of diplomacy to get him to eat his supper. "When in doubt about a man, feed him," had been Louisa Bartlett's unfailing rule for the last thirty years. "Here, Amasy, sit down in your place that Anna has fixed for you. You can talk after you've had your tea. Anna, please make the Squire some fresh tea. I'm afraid this is a little cool."

"She need not make my tea, now, or on any future occasion—her days of service in my family are done for." And he hammered the table with his clenched fist.

Anna closed her eyes; it had come at last; she had always known that it was only a question of time.

The rest looked at the Squire dumbfounded. Ah, that is, but Marthy. She was licking her lips in delightful anticipation—with much the same expression as a cat would regard an uncaged canary.

"Why, father, what do you mean?" asked David in amazement. He had heard no rumor of why his father had gone to Belden.

"Now, listen, all of you," and again he thundered on the table with his fist. "Last summer I was persuaded, against my will, to take a strange woman into my house. I found out to-day that my judgment then was right. I have been imposed on—she is an imposter, an adventuress."

"Amasy, Amasy, don't be so hard on her," pleaded his wife. But the Squire had the true huntsman's instinct—when he went out to hunt, he went out to kill.

"The time has come," he continued, raising his voice and ignoring his wife's pleading, "when this home is better without her."

Anna had already begun her preparation to go. She took her cloak down from its peg and wrapped it about her without a word.

"Father, if Anna goes, I go with her," and David rose to his feet, the very incarnation of wrath, and strode over to where Anna stood apart from the rest. He put his arm about her protectingly, and stood there defiant of them all.

"David, you must be mad. What, you, a son of mine, defy your father here in the presence of your friends for that—adventuress?"

"Father, take back that word about Anna. A better woman never lived. You—who call yourself a Christian—would you send away a friendless girl a night like this? And for what reason? Because a few old cats have been gossiping about her. It is unworthy of you, father; I would not have believed it."

"So you have appointed yourself her champion, sir. No doubt she has been trying her arts on you. Don't be a fool, David; stand aside, if she wants to go, let her; women like her can look out for themselves; let her go."

"Don't make me forget, sir, that you are my father. I refuse absolutely to hear the woman I love spoken of in this way."

The rest looked on in painful silence; they seemed to be deprived of the power of speech or action by the Squire's vehemence; the wind howled about the house fitfully, and was still, then resumed its wailing grief.

"And you stand there and defy me for that woman in the presence of Kate, to whom you are as good as betrothed?"

"No, no; there is no question of an engagement between David and me, and there never can be," said Kate, not knowing in the least what to make of the turn that things had taken.

David continued to stand with his arm about Anna. He had heard the Belden gossip—a wealthy young man from Boston had been attentive to her, then left the place; jilted her, some said; been refused by her, said others. It did not make a bit of difference to David which version was true; he was ready to stand by Anna in the face of a thousand gossips. This was just his father's brutal way of upholding what he was pleased to term his authority.

"What do you know about her, David?" reiterated the Squire. "I heard reports, but like you, I would not believe them till I had investigated them fully. Ask her if she has not been the mother of an illegitimate child, who is now buried in the Episcopal cemetery at Belden—ask her if she was not known there under the name of Mrs. Lennox?"

"It is true," said the girl, raising her head, "that I was known as Mrs. Lennox. It is true that I have a child buried in Belden——"

David's arm fell from her, he buried his face in his hands and groaned. Anna opened the door, a whirling gust flared the lamps and drove a skurrying cloud of snowflakes within, yet not one hand was raised to detain her. She swayed uncertain for a moment on the threshold, then turned to them: "You have hunted me down, you have found out that I have been a mother, that I am without the protection of a husband's name, and that was enough for you—your duty stopped at the scandal. Why did you not find out that I was a young, inexperienced girl who was betrayed by a mock marriage—that I thought myself an honorable wife—why should your duty stop in hunting down a defenseless girl while the man who ruined her life sits there, a welcome guest in your house to-night?"

She was gone—David, who had been stunned by his father's words, ran after her, but the whirling flakes had hidden every trace of her, and the howling wind drove back his cry of "Anna, Anna! come back!"

Anna did not feel the cold after closing the door between her and the Squire's family; the white flame of her wrath seemed to burn up the blood in her veins, as she plunged through the snowdrifts, unconscious of the cold and storm. She had no words in which to formulate her fury at the indignity of her treatment. Her native sweetness, for the moment, had been extinguished and she was but the incarnation of wronged womanhood, crying aloud to high Heaven for justice.

The blood throbbed at her brain and the quickened circulation warmed her till she loosened the cloak at her throat and wondered, in a dazed sort of way, why she had put it on on such a stifling night. Then she remembered the snow and eagerly uplifted her flushed cheeks that the falling flakes might cool them.

But of the icy grip of the storm she was wholly unconscious. There was a mad exhilaration in facing the wild elements on such a night, the exertion of forcing through the storm chimed in with her mood; each snowdrift through which she fought her way was so much cruel injustice beaten down. She felt that she had the strength and courage to walk to the end of the earth and she went on and on, never thinking of the storm, or her destination, or where she would rest that night. Her head felt light, as if she had been drinking wine, and more than once she stopped to mop the perspiration from her forehead. How absurd for the snow to fall on such a sultry night, and foolish of those people who had turned her out to die, thinking it was cold—the thermometer must be 100. She paused to get her breath; a blast of icy wind caught her cape, and almost succeeded in robbing her of it, and the chill wrestled with the fever that was consuming her, and she realized for the first time that it was cold.

"Well, what next?" she asked herself, throwing back her head and unconsciously assuming the attitude of a creature brought to bay but still unconquered.

"What next?" She repeated it with the dull despair of one who has nothing further to fear in the way of suffering. The Fates had spent themselves on her, she no longer had the power to respond. Suppose she should become lost in a snowdrift? "Well, what did it matter?"

Then came one of those unaccountable clearings of the mental vision that nature seems to reserve for the final chapter. Her quickened brain grasped the tragedy of her life as it never had before. She saw it with impersonal eyes. Anna Moore was a stranger on whose case she could sit with unbiased judgment. Her mind swung back to the football game in the golden autumn eighteen months ago, and she heard the cheers and saw the swarms of eager, upturned faces and the dots of blue and crimson, like flowers, in a great waving field. What a panorama of life, and force, and struggle it had been! How typical of life, and the end—but no, the end was not yet; there must be some justice in life, some law of compensation. God must hear at last!

The wind came tearing down from, the pine forest, surging through the hills till it became a roar. Ah, it had sounded like that at the game. They had called "Rah, Rah Sanderson" till they were hoarse, "Sanderson, Rah! Sander-son! Rah! Rah!" The crackling forest seemed to have gone mad with the echo of his name. It had become the keynote of the wind. Rah! Rah! Sanderson!

"You can't escape him even in death" something seemed to whisper in her ear. "Ha-ha, Sanderson, San-der-son." She put her hands to her ears to shut out the hateful sound, but she heard it, like the wail of a lost soul; this time faint and far off: Sander-son—San-der-son. It was above her in the groaning, creaking branches of the trees, in the falling snow, in the whipping wind, the mockery would not be stilled.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, howled the wind, then sinking to a sigh, San-der-son—San-der-son.

The cold had begun to strike into the marrow. She moved as if her limbs were weighted. There was a mist gathering before her eyes, and she put up her hand and tried to brush it away, but it remained. She felt as if she were carrying something heavy in her arms and as she walked it grew heavier and heavier. To her wandering mind it took a pitifully familiar shape. Ah, yes! She knew what it was now; it was the baby, and she must not let it get cold. She must cover it with her cape and press it close to her bosom to keep it warm, but it was so far, so far, and it was getting heavier every moment.

And the wind continued to wail its dirge of "San-der-son, San-der-son." She went through the motion of covering up the baby's head; she did not want it to waken and hear that awful cry. She lifted up her empty arms and lowered her head to soothe the imaginary baby with a kiss, and was shocked to feel how cold its little cheek had grown. She hurried on and on. She would beg the Squire to let his wife take it in for just a minute, to warm it. She would not ask to come in herself, but the baby—no one would be so cruel as to refuse her that. It would die out here in the cold and the storm. It was so cruel, so hard to be wandering about on a night like this with the baby. Her eyes began to fill with tears, and her lower lip to quiver, but she plodded on, sometimes gaining a few steps and then retracing them, but always with the same instinct that had spurred her on to efforts beyond her strength, and this done, she had no further concern for herself. Her body especially, where the cape did not protect it against the blast, was freezing, shivering, aching all over. A latent consciousness began to dawn as the dread presence of death drew nearer; some intuitive effort of preservation asserted itself, and she kept repeating over and over: "I must not give up. I must not give up."

Presently the scene began to change, and the white formless world about her began to assume definite shape. She had seen it all before, the bare trees pointing their naked branches upward, the fringe of willows, the smooth, glassy sheet of water that was partly frozen and partly undulating toward the southern shore. The familiarity of it all began to haunt her. Had she dreamed it—was she dreaming now? Perhaps it was only a dream after all! Then, as if in a wave of clear thought, she remembered it all. It was the lake, and she had been there with the Sunday school children last summer on their picnic.

It came to her like a solution of all her troubles; it was so placid, so still, so cold. A moment and all would be forgotten. She stood with one foot on the creaking ice. It was but to walk a dozen steps to the place where the ice was but a crash of crystal and that would end it all. She was so weary of the eternal strife of things, she was so glad to lay down the burden under which her back was bending to the point of breaking.

And yet, there was the primitive instinct of self-preservation combating her inclination, urging her on to make one more final effort. Back and forth, through the snow about the lake she wandered; without being able to decide. Her strength was fast ebbing. Which—which, should it be? "God have mercy!" she cried, and fell unconscious.



CHAPTER XVII.

THE NIGHT IN THE SNOWSTORM.

"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven."—Emerson.

All through that long, wild night David searched and shouted, to find only snow and silence.

Through the darkness and the falling flakes he could not see more than a foot ahead, and when he would stumble over a stone or the fallen trunk of a tree, he would stoop down and search through the drifts with his bare hands, thinking perhaps that she might have fallen, and not finding her, he would again take up his fruitless search, while cold fear gnawed at his heart.

At home in the warm farm house, sat the Squire who had done his duty. The consciousness of having done it, however, did not fill him with that cheerful glow of righteousness that is the reward of a good conscience—on the contrary, he felt small. It might have been imagination, but he felt, somehow, as if his wife and Kate were shunning him. Once he had tried to take his wife's hand as she stood with her face pressed to the window trying to see if she could make out the dim outline of David returning with Anna, but she withdrew her hand impatiently as she had never done in the thirty years of their married life. Amasy's hardness was a thing no longer to be condoned.

Furthermore, when the clock had struck eleven and then twelve, and yet no sign of David or Anna, the Squire had reached for his fur cap and announced his intention of "going to look for 'em." But like the proverbial worm, the wife of his bosom had turned, and with all the determination of a white rabbit she announced:

"If I was you, Amasy, I'd stay to hum; seems as if you had made almost enough trouble for one day." With the old habit of authority, strong as ever, he looked at the worm, but there was a light in its eyes that warned him as a danger signal.

They were alone together, the Squire and his wife, and each was alone in sorrow, the yoke of severity she had bowed beneath for thirty years uncomplainingly galled to-night. It had sent her boy out into the storm—perhaps to his death. There was little love in her heart for Amasy.

He tried to think that he had only done his duty, that David and Anna would come back, and that, in the meantime, Louisa was less a comfort to him, in his trouble, than she had ever been before. It was, of course, his trouble; it never occurred to him that Louisa's heart might have been breaking on its own account.

The Squire found that duty was a cold comforter as the wretched hours wore on.

Sanderson had slunk from the house without a word immediately after Anna's departure. In the general upheaval no one missed him, and when they did it was too late for them to enjoy the comfort of shifting the blame to his guilty shoulders.

The professor followed Kate with the mute sympathy of a faithful dog; he did not dare attempt to comfort her. The sight of a woman in tears unnerved him; he would not have dared to intrude on her grief; he could only wait patiently for some circumstance to arise in which he could be of assistance. In the meantime he did the only practical thing within his power—he went about from time to time, poked the fires and put on coal.

Marthy would have liked to discuss the iniquity of Lennox Sanderson with any one—it was a subject on which she could have spent hours—but no one seemed inclined to divert Marthy conversationally. In fact, her popularity was not greater that night in the household than that of the Squire. She spent her time in running from room to room, exclaiming hysterically:

"Land sakes! Ain't it dreadful?"

The tension grew as time wore on without developments of any kind, the waiting with the haunting fear of the worst grew harder to bear than absolute calamity.

Toward five o'clock the Squire announced his intention of going out and continuing the search, and this time no one objected. In fact, Mrs. Bartlett, Kate and the professor insisted on accompanying him and Marthy decided to go, too, not only that she might be able to say she was on hand in case of interesting developments, but because she was afraid to be left in the house alone.

* * * * * *

Toward morning, David, spent and haggard, wandered into a little maple-sugar shed that belonged to one of the neighbors. Smoke was coming out of the chimney, and David entered, hoping that Anna might have found here a refuge.

He was quickly undeceived, however, for Lennox Sanderson stood by the hearth warming his hands. The men glared at each other with the instinctive fierceness of panthers. Not a word was spoken; each knew that the language of fists could be the only medium of communication between them; and each was anxious to have his say out.

The men faced each other in silence, the flickering glare of the firelight painting grotesque expressions on their set faces. David's greater bulk loomed unnaturally large in the uncertain light, while every trained muscle of Sanderson's athletic body was on the alert.

It was the world old struggle between patrician and proletarian.

Sanderson was an all-round athlete and a boxer of no mean order. This was not his first battle. His quick eye showed him from David's awkward attitude, that his opponent was in no way his equal from a scientific standpoint. He looked for the easy victory that science, nine times out of ten, can wrest from unskilled brute force.

For, perhaps, half a minute the combatants stood thus.

Then, with lowered head and outstretched arms, David rushed in.

Sanderson side-stepped, avoiding the on-set. Before David could recover himself, the other had sent his left fist crashing into the country-man's face.

The blow was delivered with all the trained force the athlete possessed and sent David reeling against the rough wall of the house.

Such a blow would have ended the fight then and there for an ordinary man; but it only served to rouse David's sluggish blood to white heat.

Again he rushed.

This time he was more successful.

True, Sanderson partially succeeded in avoiding the sledge-hammer fist, though it missed his head, it struck glancingly on the left shoulder. numbing for the moment the whole arm. Sanderson countered as the blow fell, by bringing his right arm up with all his force and striking David on the face. He sank to his knees, like a wounded bull, but was on his feet again before Sanderson could follow up his advantage.