IV

In pleasant weather Judge Pommeroy walked to the Forresters', but on the

occasion of the dinner for the Ogdens he engaged the liveryman to take

him and his nephew over in one of the town hacks,--vehicles seldom used

except for funerals and weddings. They smelled strongly of the stable

and contained lap-robes as heavy as lead and as slippery as oiled paper.

Niel and his uncle were the only townspeople asked to the Forresters'

that evening; they rolled over the creek and up the hill in state, and

emerged covered with horsehair.

Captain Forrester met them at the door, his burly figure buttoned up in

a frock coat, a flat collar and black string tie under the heavy folds

of his neck. He was always clean-shaven except for a drooping

dun-coloured moustache. The company stood behind him laughing while Niel

caught up the whisk-broom and began dusting roan hairs off his uncle's

broadcloth. Mrs. Forrester gave Niel a brushing in turn and then took

him into the parlour and introduced him to Mrs. Ogden and her daughter.

The daughter was a rather pretty girl, Niel thought, in a pale pink

evening dress which left bare her smooth arms and short, dimpled neck.

Her eyes were, as Mrs. Forrester had said, a china blue, rather

prominent and inexpressive. Her fleece of ashy-gold hair was bound about

her head with silver bands. In spite of her fresh, rose-like complexion,

her face was not altogether agreeable. Two dissatisfied lines reached

from the corners of her short nose to the corners of her mouth. When she

was displeased, even a little, these lines tightened, drew her nose

back, and gave her a suspicious, injured expression. Niel sat down by

her and did his best, but he found her hard to talk to. She seemed

nervous and distracted, kept glancing over her shoulder, and crushing

her handkerchief up in her hands. Her mind, clearly, was elsewhere.

After a few moments he turned to the mother, who was more easily

interested.

Mrs. Ogden was almost unpardonably homely. She had a pear-shaped face,

and across her high forehead lay a row of flat, dry curls. Her bluish

brown skin was almost the colour of her violet dinner dress. A diamond

necklace glittered about her wrinkled throat. Unlike Constance, she

seemed thoroughly amiable, but as she talked she tilted her head and

"used" her eyes, availing herself of those arch glances which he had

supposed only pretty women indulged in. Probably she had long been

surrounded by people to whom she was an important personage, and had

acquired the manner of a spoiled darling. Niel thought her rather

foolish at first, but in a few moments he had got used to her mannerisms

and began to like her. He found himself laughing heartily and forgot the

discouragement of his failure with the daughter.

Mr. Ogden, a short, weather-beaten man of fifty, with a cast in one eye,

a stiff imperial, and twisted moustaches, was noticeably quieter and

less expansive than when Niel had met him here on former occasions. He

seemed to expect his wife to do the talking. When Mrs. Forrester

addressed him, or passed near him, his good eye twinkled and followed

her,--while the eye that looked askance remained unchanged and committed

itself to nothing.

Suddenly everyone became more lively; the air warmed, and the lamplight

seemed to brighten, as a fourth member of the Denver party came in from

the dining-room with a glittering tray full of cocktails he had been

making. Frank Ellinger was a bachelor of forty, six feet two, with long

straight legs, fine shoulders, and a figure that still permitted his

white waistcoat to button without a wrinkle under his conspicuously

well-cut dinner coat. His black hair, coarse and curly as the filling of

a mattress, was grey about the ears, his florid face showed little

purple veins about his beaked nose,--a nose like the prow of a ship,

with long nostrils. His chin was deeply cleft, his thick curly lips

seemed very muscular, very much under his control, and, with his strong

white teeth, irregular and curved, gave him the look of a man who could

bite an iron rod in two with a snap of his jaws. His whole figure seemed

very much alive under his clothes, with a restless, muscular energy that

had something of the cruelty of wild animals in it. Niel was very much

interested in this man, the hero of many ambiguous stories. He didn't

know whether he liked him or not. He knew nothing bad about him, but he

felt something evil.

The cocktails were the signal for general conversation, the company drew

together in one group. Even Miss Constance seemed less dissatisfied.

Ellinger drank his cocktail standing beside her chair, and offered her

the cherry in his glass. They were old-fashioned whiskey cocktails.

Nobody drank Martinis then; gin was supposed to be the consolation of

sailors and inebriate scrub-women.

"Very good, Frank, very good," Captain Forrester pronounced, drawing out

a fresh, cologne-scented handkerchief to wipe his moustache. "Are

encores in order?" The Captain puffed slightly when he talked. His eyes,

always somewhat suffused and bloodshot since his injury, blinked at his

friends from under his heavy lids.

"One more round for everybody, Captain." Ellinger brought in from the

sideboard a capacious shaker and refilled all the glasses except Miss

Ogden's. At her he shook his finger, and offered her the little dish of

Maraschino cherries.

"No, I don't want those. I want the one in your glass," she said with a

pouty smile. "I like it to taste of something!"

"Constance!" said her mother reprovingly, rolling her eyes at Mrs.

Forrester, as if to share with her the charm of such innocence.

"Niel," Mrs. Forrester laughed, "won't you give the child your cherry,

too?"

Niel promptly crossed the room and proffered the cherry in the bottom of

his glass. She took it with her thumb and fore-finger and dropped it

into her own,--where, he was quick to observe, she left it when they

went out to dinner. A stubborn piece of pink flesh, he decided, and

certainly a fool about a man quite old enough to be her father. He

sighed when he saw that he was placed next her at the dinner table.

Captain Forrester still made a commanding figure at the head of his own

table, with his napkin tucked under his chin and the work of carving

well in hand. Nobody could lay bare the bones of a brace of duck or a

twenty-pound turkey more deftly. "What part of the turkey do you prefer,

Mrs. Ogden?" If one had a preference, it was gratified, with all the

stuffing and gravy that went with it, and the vegetables properly

placed. When a plate left Captain Forrester's hands, it was a dinner;

the recipient was served, and well served. He served Mrs. Forrester last

of the ladies but before the men, and to her, too, he said, "Mrs.

Forrester, what part of the turkey shall I give you this evening?" He

was a man who did not vary his formulae or his manners. He was no more

mobile than his countenance. Niel and Judge Pommeroy had often remarked

how much Captain Forrester looked like the pictures of Grover Cleveland.

His clumsy dignity covered a deep nature, and a conscience that had

never been juggled with. His repose was like that of a mountain. When he

laid his fleshy, thick-fingered hand upon a frantic horse, an hysterical

woman, an Irish workman out for blood, he brought them peace; something

they could not resist. That had been the secret of his management of

men. His sanity asked nothing, claimed nothing; it was so simple that it

brought a hush over distracted creatures. In the old days, when he was

building road in the Black Hills, trouble sometimes broke out in camp

when he was absent, staying with Mrs. Forrester at Colorado Springs. He

would put down the telegram that announced an insurrection and say to

his wife, "Maidy, I must go to the men." And that was all he did,--he

went to them.

While the Captain was intent upon his duties as host he talked very

little, and Judge Pommeroy and Ellinger kept a lively cross-fire of

amusing stories going. Niel, sitting opposite Ellinger, watched him

closely. He still couldn't decide whether he liked him or not. In Denver

Frank was known as a prince of good fellows; tactful, generous,

resourceful, though apt to trim his sails to the wind; a man who

good-humouredly bowed to the inevitable, or to the almost-inevitable. He

had, when he was younger, been notoriously "wild," but that was not held

against him, even by mothers with marriageable daughters, like Mrs.

Ogden. Morals were different in those days. Niel had heard his uncle

refer to Ellinger's youthful infatuation with a woman called Nell

Emerald, a handsome and rather unusual woman who conducted a house

properly licensed by the Denver police. Nell Emerald had told an old

club man that though she had been out behind young Ellinger's new

trotting horse, she "had no respect for a man who would go driving with

a prostitute in broad daylight." This story and a dozen like it were

often related of Ellinger, and the women laughed over them as heartily

as the men. All the while that he was making a scandalous chronicle for

himself, young Ellinger had been devotedly caring for an invalid mother,

and he was described to strangers as a terribly fast young man and a

model son. That combination pleased the taste of the time. Nobody

thought the worse of him. Now that his mother was dead, he lived at the

Brown Palace hotel, though he still kept her house at Colorado Springs.

When the roast was well under way, Black Tom, very formal in a white

waistcoat and high collar, poured the champagne. Captain Forrester

lifted his glass, the frail stem between his thick fingers, and glancing

round the table at his guests and at Mrs. Forrester, said:

"Happy days!"

It was the toast he always drank at dinner, the invocation he was sure

to utter when he took a glass of whiskey with an old friend. Whoever had

heard him say it once, liked to hear him say it again. Nobody else could

utter those two words as he did, with such gravity and high courtesy. It

seemed a solemn moment, seemed to knock at the door of Fate; behind

which all days, happy and otherwise, were hidden. Niel drank his wine

with a pleasant shiver, thinking that nothing else made life seem so

precarious, the future so cryptic and unfathomable, as that brief toast

uttered by the massive man, "Happy days!"

Mrs. Ogden turned to the host with her most languishing smile: "Captain

Forrester, I want you to tell Constance"-- (She was an East Virginia

woman, and what she really said was, "Cap'n Forrester, Ah wan' yew to

tell, etc." Her vowels seemed to roll about in the same way her eyes

did.)--"I want you to tell Constance about how you first found this

lovely spot, 'way back in Indian times."

The Captain looked down the table between the candles at Mrs. Forrester,

as if to consult her. She smiled and nodded, and her beautiful earrings

swung beside her pale cheeks. She was wearing her diamonds tonight, and

a black velvet gown. Her husband had archaic ideas about jewels; a man

bought them for his wife in acknowledgment of things he could not

gracefully utter. They must be costly; they must show that he was able

to buy them, and that she was worthy to wear them.

With her approval the Captain began his narrative: a concise account of

how he came West a young boy, after serving in the Civil War, and took a

job as driver for a freighting company that carried supplies across the

plains from Nebraska City to Cherry Creek, as Denver was then called.

The freighters, after embarking in that sea of grass six hundred miles

in width, lost all count of the days of the week and the month. One day

was like another, and all were glorious; good hunting, plenty of

antelope and buffalo, boundless sunny sky, boundless plains of waving

grass, long fresh-water lagoons yellow with lagoon flowers, where the

bison in their periodic migrations stopped to drink and bathe and

wallow.

"An ideal life for a young man," the Captain pronounced. Once, when he

was driven out of the trail by a wash-out, he rode south on his horse to

explore, and found an Indian encampment near the Sweet Water, on this

very hill where his house now stood. He was, he said, "greatly taken

with the location," and made up his mind that he would one day have a

house there. He cut down a young willow tree and drove the stake into

the ground to mark the spot where he wished to build. He went away and

did not come back for many years; he was helping to lay the first

railroad across the plains.

"There were those that were dependent on me," he said. "I had sickness

to contend with, and responsibilities. But in all those years I expect

there was hardly a day passed that I did not remember the Sweet Water

and this hill. When I came here a young man, I had planned it in my

mind, pretty much as it is to-day; where I would dig my well, and where

I would plant my grove and my orchard. I planned to build a house that

my friends could come to, with a wife like Mrs. Forrester to make it

attractive to them. I used to promise myself that some day I would

manage it." This part of the story the Captain told not with

embarrassment, but with reserve, choosing his words slowly, absently

cracking English walnuts with his strong fingers and heaping a little

hoard of kernels beside his plate. His friends understood that he was

referring to his first marriage, to the poor invalid wife who had never

been happy and who had kept his nose to the grindstone.

"When things looked most discouraging," he went on, "I came back here

once and bought the place from the railroad company. They took my note.

I found my willow stake,--it had rooted and grown into a tree,--and I

planted three more to mark the corners of my house. Twelve years later

Mrs. Forrester came here with me, shortly after our marriage, and we

built our house." Captain Forrester puffed from time to time, but his

clear account commanded attention. Something in the way he uttered his

unornamented phrases gave them the impressiveness of inscriptions cut in

stone.

Mrs. Forrester nodded at him from her end of the table. "And now, tell

us your philosophy of life,--this is where it comes in," she laughed

teasingly.

The Captain coughed and looked abashed. "I was intending to omit that

tonight. Some of our guests have already heard it."

"No, no. It belongs at the end of the story, and if some of us have

heard it, we can hear it again. Go on!"

"Well, then, my philosophy is that what you think of and plan for day by

day, in spite of yourself, so to speak--you will get. You will get it

more or less. That is, unless you are one of the people who get nothing

in this world. There are such people. I have lived too much in mining

works and construction camps not to know that." He paused as if, though

this was too dark a chapter to be gone into, it must have its place, its

moment of silent recognition. "If you are not one of those, Constance

and Niel, you will accomplish what you dream of most."

"And why? That's the interesting part of it," his wife prompted him.

"Because," he roused himself from his abstraction and looked about at

the company, "because a thing that is dreamed of in the way I mean, is

already an accomplished fact. All our great West has been developed from

such dreams; the homesteader's and the prospector's and the

contractor's. We dreamed the railroads across the mountains, just as I

dreamed my place on the Sweet Water. All these things will be everyday

facts to the coming generation, but to us--" Captain Forrester ended

with a sort of grunt. Something forbidding had come into his voice, the

lonely, defiant note that is so often heard in the voices of old

Indians.

Mrs. Ogden had listened to the story with such sympathy that Niel liked

her better than ever, and even the preoccupied Constance seemed able to

give it her attention. They rose from the dessert and went into the

parlour to arrange the card tables. The Captain still played whist as

well as ever. As he brought out a box of his best cigars, he paused

before Mrs. Ogden and said, "Is smoke offensive to you, Mrs. Ogden?"

When she protested that it was not, he crossed the room to where

Constance was talking with Ellinger and asked with the same grave

courtesy, "Is smoke offensive to you, Constance?" Had there been half a

dozen women present, he would have asked that question of each,

probably, and in the same words. It did not bother him to repeat a

phrase. If an expression answered his purpose, he saw no reason for

varying it.

Mrs. Forrester and Mr. Ogden were to play against Mrs. Ogden and the

Captain. "Constance," said Mrs. Forrester as she sat down, "will you

play with Niel? I'm told he's very good."

Miss Ogden's short nose flickered up, the lines on either side of it

deepened, and she again looked injured. Niel was sure she detested him.

He was not going to be done in by her.

"Miss Ogden," he said as he stood beside his chair, deliberately

shuffling a pack of cards, "my uncle and I are used to playing together,

and probably you are used to playing with Mr. Ellinger. Suppose we try

that combination?"

She gave him a quick, suspicious glance from under her yellow eyelashes

and flung herself into a chair without so much as answering him. Frank

Ellinger came in from the dining-room, where he had been sampling the

Captain's French brandy, and took the vacant seat opposite Miss Ogden.

"So it's you and me, Connie? Good enough!" he exclaimed, cutting the

pack Niel pushed toward him.

Just before midnight Black Tom opened the door and announced that the

egg-nog was ready. The card players went into the dining-room, where the

punch-bowl stood smoking on the table.

"Constance," said Captain Forrester, "do you sing? I like to hear one of

the old songs with the egg-nog."

"Ah'm sorry, Cap'n Forrester. Ah really haven't any voice."

Niel noticed that whenever Constance spoke to the Captain she strained

her throat, though he wasn't in the least deaf. He broke in over her

refusal. "Uncle can start a song if you coax him, sir."

Judge Pommeroy, after smoothing his silver whiskers and coughing, began

"Auld Lang Syne." The others joined in, but they hadn't got to the end

of it when a hollow rumbling down on the bridge made them laugh, and

everyone ran to the front windows to see the Judge's funeral coach come

lurching up the hill, with only one of the side lanterns lit. Mrs.

Forrester sent Tom out with a drink for the driver. While Niel and his

uncle were putting on their overcoats in the hall, she came up to them

and whispered coaxingly to the boy, "Remember, you are coming over

tomorrow, at two? I am planning a drive, and I want you to amuse

Constance for me."

Niel bit his lip and looked down into Mrs. Forrester's laughing,

persuasive eyes. "I'll do it for you, but that's the only reason," he

said threateningly.

"I understand, for me! I'll credit it to your account."

The Judge and his nephew rolled away on swaying springs. The Ogdens

retired to their rooms upstairs. Mrs. Forrester went to help the Captain

divest himself of his frock coat, and put it away for him. Ever since he

was hurt he had to be propped high on pillows at night, and he slept in

a narrow iron bed, in the alcove which had formerly been his wife's

dressing-room. While he was undressing he breathed heavily and sighed,

as if he were very tired. He fumbled with his studs, then blew on his

fingers and tried again. His wife came to his aid and quickly unbuttoned

everything. He did not thank her in words, but submitted gratefully.

When the iron bed creaked at receiving his heavy figure, she called from

the big bedroom, "Good-night, Mr. Forrester," and drew the heavy

curtains that shut off the alcove. She took off her rings and earrings

and was beginning to unfasten her black velvet bodice when, at a tinkle

of glass from without, she stopped short. Re-hooking the shoulder of her

gown, she went to the dining-room, now faintly lit by the coal fire in

the back parlour. Frank Ellinger was standing at the sideboard, taking a

nightcap. The Forrester French brandy was old, and heavy like a cordial.

"Be careful," she murmured as she approached him, "I have a distinct

impression that there is some one on the enclosed stairway. There is a

wide crack in the door. Ah, but kittens have claws, these days! Pour me

just a little. Thank you. I'll have mine in by the fire."

He followed her into the next room, where she stood by the grate,

looking at him in the light of the pale blue flames that ran over the

fresh coal, put on to keep the fire.

"You've had a good many brandies, Frank," she said, studying his

flushed, masterful face.

"Not too many. I'll need them . . . tonight," he replied meaningly.

She nervously brushed back a lock of hair that had come down a little.

"It's not tonight. It's morning. Go to bed and sleep as late as you

please. Take care, I heard silk stockings on the stairs. Good-night."

She put her hand on the sleeve of his coat; the white fingers clung to

the black cloth as bits of paper cling to magnetized iron. Her touch,

soft as it was, went through the man, all the feet and inches of him.

His broad shoulders lifted on a deep breath. He looked down at her.

Her eyes fell. "Good-night," she said faintly. As she turned quickly

away, the train of her velvet dress caught the leg of his broadcloth

trousers and dragged with a friction that crackled and threw sparks.

Both started. They stood looking at each other for a moment before she

actually slipped through the door. Ellinger remained by the hearth, his

arms folded tight over his chest, his curly lips compressed, frowning

into the fire.

V

Niel went up the hill the next afternoon, just as the cutter with the

two black ponies jingled round the driveway and stopped at the front

door. Mrs. Forrester came out on the porch, dressed for a sleigh ride.

Ellinger followed her, buttoned up in a long fur-lined coat, showily

befrogged down the front, with a glossy astrachan collar. He looked even

more powerful and bursting with vigour than last night. His

highly-coloured, well-visored countenance shone with a good opinion of

himself and of the world.

Mrs. Forrester called to Niel gaily. "We are going down to the Sweet

Water to cut cedar boughs for Christmas. Will you keep Constance

company? She seems a trifle disappointed at being left behind, but we

can't take the big sleigh,--the pole is broken. Be nice to her, there's

a good boy!" She pressed his hand, gave him a meaning, confidential

smile, and stepped into the sleigh. Ellinger sprang in beside her, and

they glided down the hill with a merry tinkle of sleighbells.

Niel found Miss Ogden in the back parlour, playing solitaire by the

fire. She was clearly out of humour.

"Come in, Mr. Herbert. I think they might have taken us along, don't

you? I want to see the river my own self. I hate bein' shut up in the

house!"

"Let's go out, then. Wouldn't you like to see the town?"

Constance seemed not to hear him. She was wrinkling and unwrinkling her

short nose, and the restless lines about her mouth were fluttering.

"What's to hinder us from getting a sleigh at the livery barn and going

down to the Sweet Water? I don't suppose the river's private property?"

She gave a nervous, angry laugh and looked hopefully at Niel.

"We couldn't get anything at this hour. The livery teams are all out,"

he said with firmness.

Constance glanced at him suspiciously, then sat down at the card table

and leaned over it, drawing her plump shoulders together. Her fluffy

yellow hair was wound round her head like a scarf and held in place by

narrow bands of black velvet.

The ponies had crossed the second creek and were trotting down the high

road toward the river. Mrs. Forrester expressed her feelings in a laugh

full of mischief. "Is she running after us? Where did she get the idea

that she was to come? What a relief to get away!" She lifted her chin

and sniffed the air. The day was grey, without sun, and the air was

still and dry, a warm cold. "Poor Mr. Ogden," she went on, "how much

livelier he is without his ladies! They almost extinguish him. Now

aren't you glad you never married?"

"I'm certainly glad I never married a homely woman. What does a man do

it for, anyway? She had no money,--and he's always had it, or been on

the way to it."

"Well, they're off tomorrow. And Connie! You've reduced her to a state

of imbecility, really! What an afternoon Niel must be having!" She

laughed as if the idea of his predicament delighted her.

"Who's this kid, anyway?" Ellinger asked her to take the reins for a

moment while he drew a cigar from his pocket. "He's a trifle stiff. Does

he make himself useful?"

"Oh, he's a nice boy, stranded here like the rest of us. I'm going to

train him to be very useful. He's devoted to Mr. Forrester. Handsome,

don't you think?"

"So-so." They turned into a by-road that wound along the Sweet Water.

Ellinger held the ponies in a little and turned down his high astrachan

collar. "Let's have a look at you, Marian."

Mrs. Forrester was holding her muff before her face, to catch the flying

particles of snow the ponies kicked up. From behind it she glanced at

him sidewise. "Well?" she said teasingly.

He put his arm through hers and settled himself low in the sleigh. "You

ought to look at me better than that. It's been a devil of a long while

since I've seen you."

"Perhaps it's been too long," she murmured. The mocking spark in her

eyes softened perceptibly under the long pressure of his arm. "Yes, it's

been long," she admitted lightly.

"You didn't answer the letter I wrote you on the eleventh."

"Didn't I? Well, at any rate I answered your telegram." She drew her

head away as his face came nearer. "You'll really have to watch the

ponies, my dear, or they'll tumble us out in the snow."

"I don't care. I wish they would!" he said between his teeth. "Why

didn't you answer my letter?"

"Oh, I don't remember! You don't write so many."

"It's no satisfaction. You won't let me write you love letters. You say

it's risky."

"So it is, and foolish. But now you needn't be so careful. Not too

careful!" she laughed softly. "When I'm off in the country for a whole

winter, alone, and growing older, I like to . . ." she put her hand on

his, "to be reminded of pleasanter things."

Ellinger took off his glove with his teeth. His eyes, sweeping the

winding road and the low, snow-covered bluffs, had something wolfish in

them.

"Be careful, Frank. My rings! You hurt me!"

"Then why didn't you take them off? You used to. Are these your cedars,

shall we stop here?"

"No, not here." She spoke very low. "The best ones are farther on, in a

deep ravine that winds back into the hills."

Ellinger glanced at her averted head, and his heavy lips twitched in a

smile at one corner. The quality of her voice had changed, and he knew

the change. They went spinning along the curves of the winding road,

saying not a word. Mrs. Forrester sat with her head bent forward, her

face half hidden in her muff. At last she told him to stop. To the right

of the road he saw a thicket. Behind it a dry watercourse wound into the

bluffs. The tops of the dark, still cedars, just visible from the road,

indicated its windings.

"Sit still," he said, "while I take out the horses."

When the blue shadows of approaching dusk were beginning to fall over

the snow, one of the Blum boys, slipping quietly along through the

timber in search of rabbits, came upon the empty cutter standing in the

brush, and near it the two ponies, stamping impatiently where they were

tied. Adolph slid bade into the thicket and lay down behind a fallen log

to see what would happen. Not much ever happened to him but weather.

Presently he heard low voices, coming nearer from the ravine. The big

stranger who was visiting at the Forresters' emerged, carrying the

buffalo robes on one arm; Mrs. Forrester herself was clinging to the

other. They walked slowly, wholly absorbed by what they were saying to

each other. When they came up to the sleigh, the man spread the robes on

the seat and put his hands under Mrs. Forrester's arms to lift her in.

But he did not lift her; he stood for a long while holding her crushed

up against his breast, her face hidden in his black overcoat.

"What about those damned cedar boughs?" he asked, after he had put her

in and covered her up. "Shall I go back and cut some?"

"It doesn't matter," she murmured.

He reached under the seat for a hatchet and went back to the ravine.

Mrs. Forrester sat with her eyes closed, her cheek pillowed on her muff,

a faint, soft smile on her lips. The air was still and blue; the Blum

boy could almost hear her breathe. When the strokes of the hatchet rang

out from the ravine, he could see her eyelids flutter . . . soft shivers

went through her body.

The man came back and threw the evergreens into the sleigh. When he got

in beside her, she slipped her hand through his arm and settled softly

against him. "Drive slowly," she murmured, as if she were talking in her

sleep. "It doesn't matter if we are late for dinner. Nothing matters."

The ponies trotted off.

The pale Blum boy rose from behind his log and followed the tracks up

the ravine. When the orange moon rose over the bluffs, he was still

sitting under the cedars, his gun on his knee. While Mrs. Forrester had

been waiting there in the sleigh, with her eyes closed, feeling so safe,

he could almost have touched her with his hand. He had never seen her

before when her mocking eyes and lively manner were not between her and

all the world. If it had been Thad Grimes who lay behind that log, now,

or Ivy Peters?

But with Adolph Blum her secrets were safe. His mind was feudal; the

rich and fortunate were also the privileged. These warm-blooded,

quick-breathing people took chances,--followed impulses only dimly

understandable to a boy who was wet and weather-chapped all the year;

who waded in the mud fishing for cat, or lay in the marsh waiting for

wild duck. Mrs. Forrester had never been too haughty to smile at him

when he came to the back door with his fish. She never haggled about the

price. She treated him like a human being. His little chats with her,

her nod and smile when she passed him on the street, were among the

pleasantest things he had to remember. She bought game of him in the

closed season, and didn't give him away.