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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Wishing Moon, by Louise Elizabeth Dutton,
+Illustrated by Everett Shinn
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Wishing Moon
+
+
+Author: Louise Elizabeth Dutton
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 23, 2010  [eBook #31057]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WISHING MOON***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Peter Vickers, Juliet Sutherland, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 31057-h.htm or 31057-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31057/31057-h/31057-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31057/31057-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WISHING MOON
+
+by
+
+LOUISE DUTTON
+
+Author of "The Goddess Girl"
+
+
+[Illustration: "'_Oh, Judith, won't you speak to me?_'"]
+
+[Illustration: Publisher's logo]
+
+Illustrated by Everett Shinn
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Garden City   New York
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+1916
+
+Copyright, 1916, by
+Louise Dutton
+
+All rights reserved, including that of
+translation into foreign languages,
+including the Scandinavian
+
+Copyright, 1916, The Metropolitan Magazine Company
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  "'Oh, Judith, won't you speak to me?'"    _Frontispiece_
+    (See page 239)
+
+                                               FACING PAGE
+
+  "'I know what this means,' she asserted"             128
+
+  "'Shut your eyes'"                                   166
+
+  "'Judith, you don't hate me? Say it--say it'"        180
+
+
+
+
+THE WISHING MOON
+
+
+
+
+The Wishing Moon
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+
+A little girl sat on the worn front doorsteps of the Randall house. She
+sat very still and straight, with her short, white skirts fluffed
+daintily out on both sides, her hands tightly clasped over her thin
+knees, and her long, silk-stockinged legs cuddled tight together. She
+was bare-headed, and her short, soft hair showed silvery blonde in the
+fading light. Her hair was bobbed. For one miserable month it had been
+the only bobbed head in Green River. Her big, gray-green eyes had a
+fugitive, dancing light in them. The little girl had beautiful eyes.
+
+The little girl was Miss Judith Devereux Randall. She was eleven years
+old, and she felt happier to-night than she remembered feeling in all
+the eleven years of her life.
+
+The Randalls' lawn was hedged with a fringe of lilac and syringa bushes,
+with one great, spreading horse-chestnut tree at the corner. The house
+did not stand far back from the street. The little girl could see a
+generous section of Main Street sloping past, dark already under
+shadowing trees. The street was empty. It was half-past six, and
+supper-time in Green River, but the Randalls did not have supper, they
+dined at night, like the Everards. To-night mother and father were
+dining with the Everards, and the little girl had plans of her own.
+
+Father was dressed, and waiting, shut in the library. Mother was
+dressing in her big corner room upstairs, with all the electric lights
+lighted. The little girl could see them, if she turned her head, but
+mother was very far away, in spite of that, for her door was locked, and
+you could not go in. You could not watch her brush her long, wonderful
+hair, or help her into her evening gown. Mother's evening gown was black
+this summer, with shiny spangles--a fairy gown. Mother had to be alone
+while she dressed, because she was going to the Everards'.
+
+There were two Everards, the Colonel, who was old because his hair was
+white, and his wife, who wore even more beautiful clothes than mother.
+She had heard her father say that the Colonel had made the town, and she
+had heard Norah, the cook, say that he owned the town. She had an idea
+that these two things were not quite the same, though they sounded
+alike, for father was fond of the Colonel, and Norah was not. At any
+rate, he was president of the bank--father and Norah agreed about
+that--and he lived in a house at the edge of the town, in what used to
+be a part of Larribees' woods. Father used to go Mayflowering there, but
+now nobody could.
+
+The house was ugly, with things sticking out all over it, towers and
+balconies and cupolas, and it was the little girl's twin. She was born
+the year the Everards settled in Green River.
+
+"And you're marked with it," Norah said, in one of their serious talks,
+when Mollie, the second girl, was out, and the two had the kitchen to
+themselves. Norah was peeling apples for a pie, and allowing her
+unlimited ginger-snaps, straight from the jar. "Marked with it, Miss
+Judy."
+
+"What?"
+
+"That house, and what goes on in it."
+
+"What does go on?"
+
+"You'll know soon enough."
+
+"I'm not marked with it. I've got a birthmark, but it's a strawberry, on
+my left side, like the princesses have in the fairy tales."
+
+"You are a kind of a princess, Miss Judy."
+
+"Is that a bad thing to be, Nana?"
+
+"It's a lonesome thing."
+
+"My strawberry's fading. Mother says it will go away."
+
+"It won't go away. What we're born to be, we will be, Miss Judy----.
+Bless your heart, you're crying, with the big eyes of you. What for,
+dear?"
+
+"I don't know. I don't want to be a princess. I don't want to be
+lonesome. I hate the Everards."
+
+"Well, there's many to say that now, and there'll be more to say it
+soon." Norah muttered this darkly, into her yellow bowl of apples, but
+Judith heard: "Here, eat this apple, child. You musn't hate anybody."
+
+"I do. I hate the Everards."
+
+Queer things came into your head to say when you were talking with
+Norah, who had an aunt with the second sight, and told beautiful fairy
+tales herself, and even believed in fairies; Judith did not. The
+Everards gave Judith and no other little girl in town presents at
+Christmas, and invited Judith and no other little girl to lunch. They
+had a great deal to do with her trouble, her serious trouble, which she
+would not discuss even with Norah. But she did not really hate the
+Everards--certainly not to-night. She was too happy.
+
+Judith was going out to hang May-baskets.
+
+So was every other little girl in town who wanted to, and it was a
+wonderful thing to be doing to-night. It was really May night, by the
+weather as well as the calendar--the kind of night that Norah's fairies
+meant should come on the first of May: warm, with a tiny chill creeping
+into the air as the dark came, a pleasant, shivery chill, as if there
+might really be fairies or ghosts about. It was still and clear. One
+star, that had just come up above the horse-chestnut tree, looked very
+small and bright and close, as if it had climbed up into the sky out of
+the dark, clustering leaves of the tree.
+
+This was the star that Judith usually wished on, but she could wish on
+the moon to-night; Norah had told her so; wish once instead of three
+nights running, and get her wish whether she thought of the red fox's
+tail or not. The new moon of May was a wishing moon.
+
+A wishing moon! The small white figure on the steps cuddled itself into
+a smaller heap. Judith sighed happily and closed her eyes. She was going
+with the others. She had her wish already.
+
+It was Judith's great trouble that she was not like other little girls.
+Until she was six Judith had a vague idea that she was the only child in
+the world. Then she tried to make friends with two small, dirty girls
+over the back fence, and found out that there were other children, but
+she must not play with them. One day Norah found her crying in the
+nursery because she could not think what to play, and soon after Willard
+Nash, the fat little boy next door, came to dinner and into her life,
+and after that, Eddie and Natalie Ward, from the white house up the
+street, and Lorena Drew, from over the river. Still other children came
+to her parties, so many that she could not remember their names. Then
+Judith's trouble began. She was not like them.
+
+She did not look like them; her clothes were not made by a seamstress,
+but came from city shops, and had shorter skirts, and stuck out in
+different places. She could not do what they did; Mollie called for her
+at nine at evening parties, and she usually had to go to bed half an
+hour after dinner, before it was dark. She had to do things that they
+did not do: make grown-up calls with her mother and wear gloves, and
+take lessons in fancy dancing instead of going to dancing school.
+
+But she had gone to school now for almost a year, a private school in
+the big billiard-room at the Larribees', but a real school, with other
+children in it. They did not make fun of her clothes, or the way she
+pronounced her words, very often now. She belonged to a secret society
+with Rena and Natalie. She had spent one night with Natalie, though she
+had to come home before breakfast. The other children did not know she
+was different, but Judith knew.
+
+Unexpected things might be required of her at a moment's notice: to be
+excused from school and pass cakes at a tea at the Everards'; to leave a
+picnic before the potatoes were roasted, because Mollie had appeared,
+inexorable; unaccountable things, but she was to be safe to-night. May
+night was not such a wonderful night for any little girl as it was for
+Judith.
+
+The lights were on in Nashs' parlour, and not turned off in the
+dining-room, which meant that the rest of the family were not through
+supper, but Willard was. Presently she heard three loud, unmelodious
+whistles, his private signal, and a stocky figure pushed itself through
+a gap in the hedge which looked, and was, too small for it, and Judith
+rubbed her eyes and sat up--it crossed the lawn to her.
+
+"Good morning, Merry Sunshine," said Willard, ironically.
+
+"I wasn't asleep."
+
+"You were."
+
+"I heard you coming."
+
+"You did not."
+
+"I did so."
+
+These formalities over, she made room for him eagerly on the steps.
+Willard looked fatter to Judith after a meal, probably because she knew
+how much he ate. His clean collar looked much too clean and white in the
+dark, and he was evidently in a teasing mood, but such as he was, he
+was her best friend, and she needed him.
+
+"Willard, guess what I'm going to do?"
+
+"I don't know, kid." Willard's tone implied unmistakably that he did not
+want to know.
+
+"To-night!"
+
+Judith's voice thrilled. Willard stared at her. Her eyes looked wider
+than usual, and very bright. She was smiling a strange little smile, and
+a rare dimple, which he really believed she had made with a slate
+pencil, showed in her cheek. The light in her face was something new to
+him, something he did not understand, and therefore being of masculine
+mind, wished to remove.
+
+"You're going to miss it to-night for one thing, kid," he stated
+deliberately.
+
+"Oh, am I?" Judith dimpled and glowed.
+
+"We're going to stay out until ten. Vivie's not going." Willard's big
+sister had chaperoned the expedition the year before. Now it was to go
+out unrestrained into the night.
+
+"That's lovely."
+
+Willard searched his brain for more overwhelming details.
+
+"We've got a dark lantern."
+
+"That's nice."
+
+"I got it. It's father's. He won't miss it. It's hidden in the Drews'
+barn. We're going to meet at the Drews, to fool them. They'll be
+watching the Wards'."
+
+"They will?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"The--paddies?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+Judith drew an awed, ecstatic breath. He was touching now on the chief
+peril and charm of the expedition. Hanging May-baskets, conferring an
+elaborately-made gift upon a formal acquaintance, was not the object of
+it--nothing so philanthropic; it was the escape after you had hung them.
+You went out for adventure, to ring the bell and get away, to brave the
+dangers of the night in small, intimate companies. And the chief danger,
+which you fled from through the dark, was the paddies.
+
+She did not know much about them. She would not show her ignorance by
+asking questions. But there were little boys with whom a state of war
+existed. They chased you, even fought with you, made a systematic
+attempt to steal your May-baskets. They were mixed up in her mind with
+gnomes and pirates. She was deliciously afraid of them. She hardly
+thought they had human faces. She understood that they were most of them
+Irish, and that it was somehow a disgrace for them to be Irish, though
+her own Norah was Irish and proud of it.
+
+"Sure!" said Willard. "Irish boys. Paddies from Paddy Lane. Ed got a
+black eye last year. We'll get back at them. It will be some evening."
+Judith did not look jealous or wistful yet. "The whole crowd's going."
+
+"Yes, I know," thrilled Judith. "Oh, Willard----"
+
+"Oh, Willard," he mimicked. Judith pronounced all the letters in his
+name, which was not the popular method. "Oh, Willard, what do you think
+I heard Viv say to the Gaynor girl about you?"
+
+"Don't know. Willard, won't the paddies see the dark lantern?"
+
+"Viv said you were as pretty as a doll, but just as stiff and stuck-up,"
+pronounced Willard sternly. "And your father's only the cashier of the
+bank, and just because the Everards have taken your mother up is no
+reason for her to put on airs and get a second girl and get into
+debt----"
+
+He broke off, discouraged. Judith did not appear to hear him. After the
+masculine habit, as he could not control the situation, he rose to
+leave.
+
+"Well, so long, kid. I've got to go to the post-office."
+
+Even the mention of this desirable rendezvous, which was denied to her
+because Mollie always brought home the evening mail in a black silk
+bag, did not dim the dancing light in Judith's eyes. She put a hand on
+his sleeve.
+
+"Willard----"
+
+"Well, kid?"
+
+"Willard, don't you wish I was going to-night?"
+
+"What for, to fight the paddies, or carry the dark lantern?"
+
+"I could fight," said Judith, with a little quiver in her voice, as if
+she could.
+
+"Fight? You couldn't even run away. They'd"--Willard hissed it
+mysteriously--"they'd get you."
+
+"No, they wouldn't, because"--something had happened to her eyes, so
+that they did not look tantalizing--"you'd take care of me, Willard,"
+she announced surprisingly, "wouldn't you?"
+
+"Forget it," murmured Willard, flattered.
+
+"Wouldn't you?"
+
+"I----"
+
+"Willard!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well--I am. Father made mother let me. I'm going with you."
+
+The words she had been trying to say were out at last in a hushed voice,
+because her heart was beating hard, but they sounded beautiful to her,
+like a kind of song. Perhaps Willard heard it, too. He really was her
+best friend, and he did not look so fat, after all, in the twilight. She
+waited breathlessly.
+
+"You are?"
+
+Judith nodded. She could not speak.
+
+"Well!" Willard's feelings were mixed, his face was not fashioned to
+express a conflict of emotions, and words failed him, too. "You're a
+queer kid. Why didn't you tell me before?"
+
+"Aren't you glad, Willard?"
+
+"You'll get sleepy."
+
+"Aren't you glad?"
+
+"Sure I'm glad. But you can't run, and you are a cry-baby."
+
+These were known facts, not insults, but now Judith's eyes had stopped
+dancing.
+
+"Judy, are you mad with me?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You're the queerest kid." Up the street, he caught sight of a member of
+a simpler sex than Judith's. "There's Ed coming out of the gate. I've
+got to see him about something. See you later. Don't be mad. So long!"
+
+The house was astir behind Judith. Father was opening and shutting
+doors, and hunting for things. Norah was helping mother into her wraps
+and scolding. Somebody was telephoning. Mother's carriage was late.
+
+But it was turning into the yard now, a big, black hack from the Inn,
+with a white horse. Judith liked white horses best. The front door
+opened, and her father, very tall and blond, with his shirt-front
+showing white, and her mother, with something shiny in her black hair,
+swept out.
+
+"Look who's here," said her father, and picked her up with his hands
+under her elbows. "Going to paint the town red to-night, son?"
+
+"Red?" breathed Judith. How strong father was, and how beautiful mother
+was. She smelled of the perfume in the smallest bottle on the
+toilet-table. How kind they both were. "Red?"
+
+"Harry, you see she doesn't care a thing about going. She'd be better
+off in bed. Careful, baby! Your hair is catching on my sequins. Put her
+down, Harry. You'll spoil the shape of her shoulders some day."
+
+"Don't you want to go, son?"
+
+"I--" Judith choked, "I----"
+
+"Well, she's not crazy about it, is she?"
+
+"Then do send her to bed."
+
+"No, you can't break your promise to a child, Minna."
+
+"Prig," said mother sweetly, as if a prig were a pleasant thing to be.
+"All right, let her go, then. Oh, Harry, look at that horse. They've
+sent us the knock-kneed old white corpse again."
+
+Mother hurried him into the carriage, and it clattered out of the yard.
+They did not look back. They were always in a hurry, and rather cross
+when they went to the Everards. For once she was glad to see them go,
+such a dreadful crisis had come and passed. How could father think she
+did not want to go, father who used to hang May-baskets himself? Norah
+was calling her, but she did not answer. Norah was cross to-night. She
+did not know how happy Judith was.
+
+Nobody knew, but now Judith did not want to tell. She did not want
+sympathy. She was not lonely. This secret was too important to tell.
+And, before her eyes, a lovely and comforting thing was happening,
+silently and suddenly, as lovely things do happen. Quite still on the
+steps, a white little figure, alone in a preoccupied world, but calm in
+spite of it, Judith looked and looked.
+
+Above the horse-chestnut tree, so filmy and faint that the star looked
+brighter than ever, so pale that it was not akin to the stars or the
+flickering lights in the street, but to the dark beyond, where
+adventures were, so friendly and sweet that it could make the wish in
+your heart come true, whether you were clever enough to wish it out loud
+or not, hung the wishing moon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+
+A small, silent procession was edging its way along Church Street,
+darkly silhouetted against a faintly starred sky. It was a long hour
+later now, and looked later still on Church Street. There were few
+lights left in the string of houses near the white church, at the lower
+end of the street, and here, at the upper end, there were no lights but
+the one street lamp near the railroad bridge that arched black overhead,
+and there were few houses. The street did not look like a street at all,
+but a country road, and a muddy one.
+
+The narrow board sidewalk creaked, so the procession avoided it, and
+stuck to the muddy side of the road.
+
+The procession looked mysterious enough, even if you were walking at the
+tail of it and carrying a heavy market basket; if you had to smell the
+lantern, swung just in front of you, but did not have the fun of
+carrying it; if a shaker cloak, hooded and picturesque, in the
+procession, hampered your activities; if you had questions to ask, and
+nobody answered you.
+
+"Willard."
+
+"Sh!"
+
+One by one, they came into sight, in the wavering light of the street
+lamp, and melted into the dark under the bridge; Ed, in his white
+sweater, captaining them, and keenly aware of it; Rena and Natalie, with
+the larger market basket between them; Willard, bulky in two sweaters,
+and tenderly shielding his lantern with a third, and Judith. Her face
+showed pale with excitement against the scarlet of her hood. One hand
+plucked vainly at Willard's sleeve; he stalked on, and would not turn.
+Only these five, but they had consulted and organized and reorganized
+for half an hour in the Drews' barn before they started, and had hung
+only three May-baskets yet. However, the adventure was under way now.
+
+"Willard, now it's my turn to carry the lantern."
+
+"Judy, you can't."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It might explode." The feeble flame gave one dispirited upward spurt at
+this encouragement, causing excitement in front.
+
+"Oh, Ed!"
+
+"Ed, make him put it out."
+
+"Rena and Nat, you keep still. Judy's not scared, are you Judy?"
+
+"No! Oh, no!"
+
+"The lantern's a sick looking sight, and he can carry it
+if he wants to, but we don't need it."
+
+"I like that. You tried to get me to let you carry it, Ed."
+
+"Don't talk so much."
+
+"Who started the talk?"
+
+"Well, who's running this, anyway--you, Willard Nash?"
+
+"There's a dog in that house."
+
+"Sh!"
+
+"But that dog's only a cocker spaniel. He can't hurt you."
+
+"Judy, sh!"
+
+Sh! Somebody was always saying that. It was part of the ceremony, which
+had been the same all three times. The procession was halting opposite
+the Nealy house. A whispered quarrel started every time they approached
+a house, and was hushed halfway through and not taken up again. The
+quarrel and the hush were part of the ceremony, too.
+
+The Nealy house was small and harmless looking, and entirely dark, but
+they did not allow that to make them reckless. They stood looking warily
+across the dark street.
+
+"But there's nobody there. Maggie Nealy's out, too, to-night, and her
+mother----"
+
+"Sh!" Willard put a hand over Judith's mouth. It smelled of kerosene,
+and she struggled, but did not make a noise. Just at this dramatic
+moment the Nealy's dog barked.
+
+Judith could hear her heart beat and feel her damp feet getting really
+wet and cold.
+
+"Now," Ed whispered, close to her ear and uncomfortably loud, and she
+fumbled in her basket. Willard jiggled the lantern dizzily over her
+shoulder, tissue paper tore under her fingers, and bonbons rattled.
+Hanging May-baskets was certainly hard on the May-baskets, and they were
+so pretty; pale coloured, like flowers.
+
+"I can't find the right one. The marks are all falling off. The candy's
+falling out."
+
+"We can't stand here all night. Here----"
+
+"Willard, take your hands out. Not that one----"
+
+"Willard and Judy stop fighting. That one will do. I'm going."
+
+There was dead silence now, and Ed, clutching the wreck of a sizable
+crêpe-paper creation to the bosom of his white sweater, doubled into a
+crouching, boy scout attitude, crossed the road, and approached the
+house. Nothing but his own commendable caution delayed his approach. The
+small dog's dreams within were untroubled now. There were no signs of
+life.
+
+He reached the front door, deposited the May-basket with a force that
+further demolished it, and took to his heels. After another breathless
+wait the procession formed behind him and trailed after him up the road,
+hilly here, so that the market basket grew heavier.
+
+"Some evening," Willard murmured to himself, not the rest of the world,
+but he sounded amiable.
+
+"Willard."
+
+"Well, kid."
+
+"There wasn't anybody in that house. Ed knew it."
+
+"There might have been. They might have come home."
+
+"But they didn't ... Willard, is this all there is to it?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Hanging May-baskets. Throwing them down that way. I thought maybe they
+really hung them, on the doorknob--I thought----"
+
+"Silly! Ed's going cross lots, and up the wood road to Larribees'. Good
+work. That will throw them off the track."
+
+"Throw who off the track?"
+
+"You scared? Want to go home?"
+
+"Oh, no! But who? There's nobody chasing us. Nobody."
+
+"No. We've got them fooled. It's some evening."
+
+"Willard, where are the paddies?"
+
+That was the question Judith had been wanting to ask more and more, for
+an hour, but it came in a choked voice, and nobody heard. They were
+plunging into a rough and stubbly wood lot, and hushing each other
+excitedly. Twigs caught at Judith's skirt, and it was hard to see your
+way, with the moon, small and high above the trees in Larribee's woods,
+only making the trees look darker. The wood road was little used and
+overgrown.
+
+"If they get us in here!"
+
+"They won't, Willard." Judith's voice trembled.
+
+"Cry-baby!"
+
+"I am not."
+
+"Here, buck up. We're coming out right here, back of the carriage house.
+If Ed catches you crying he'll send you home."
+
+But Ed had his mind upon higher things. "You girls stay here with the
+baskets. Don't move. Willard, you go right and I'll go left, and we'll
+meet at the carriage-house steps, if the coast is clear."
+
+"If they get us----"
+
+If! The boys crunched out of hearing on the gravel, awesome silence set
+in, and Rena and Natalie whispered; Judith was not to be awed. Four
+May-baskets hung, and nobody objecting; dark cross-streets chosen
+instead of Main Street and no danger pursuing them there. If there was
+no danger in the whole town, why should there be in one little strip of
+woods, though it was dark and strange, and full of whispering noises?
+Judith had clung to Willard's hand in terror, turning into the
+cross-streets, and nothing came of it. She was not to be fooled any
+longer. There was no danger.
+
+Not that she wanted to be chased. She did not know what she wanted. But
+she had come out into the dark to find something that was not there. She
+had been happier on the doorsteps thinking about it. This, then, was
+hanging May-baskets--all there was to it. But it was pleasant here in
+the dark, pleasanter than walking through mud, and quarrelling. Now Rena
+and Nat were quarrelling again.
+
+"Get back there! Ed said not to move."
+
+"They've been gone too long. Something's the matter."
+
+"There they come. I hear them. Get back!"
+
+They were coming, but something else was happening. Willard's three
+whistles sounded, then Ed's voice, and a noise of scuffling on the
+gravel--and a new boy's voice.
+
+Rena and Natalie, upsetting their basket as they started, and not
+noticing it, pushed through the trees and ran. Judith stood still and
+listened. She did not know the voice. It was shrill and clear. She could
+hear the words it said above the others' voices, all clamouring, now, at
+once. She held her breath and listened. She could not move.
+
+"I don't want your damn May-baskets."
+
+"Liar! Get back of him, Rena. Come on, Nat."
+
+"You'll get hurt. Let me go."
+
+"Liar--Paddy!"
+
+The magic word fell unheeded. The boy was laughing, and the laugh filled
+her ears, a splendid laugh, fearless and clear.
+
+"Paddy!"
+
+"I don't want your damn May-baskets."
+
+"Paddy--Paddy!"
+
+This time there was no answer. Judith, tearing at the hooks of her cape,
+and throwing it off as she ran, broke through the circling trees. Then
+she stopped and looked.
+
+Rena stood high on the carriage-house steps and held the lantern. It
+wavered and swung in her hand, and threw a flickering circle of light
+round the group by the steps.
+
+The sprawled shadows at their feet seemed to have an undue number of
+arms and legs, and the children were a struggling, uncertain mass of
+motion, hard to make out, like the shadows, but they were only four:
+Willard, grunting and groaning; Natalie attacking spasmodically in the
+rear, and the strange little boy, the enemy. He was the heart of the
+struggling group, and Judith looked only at him. She could do nothing
+but look, for Judith had never seen a little boy like this.
+
+They were three against one, and the one was a match for them. He was
+slender and strong, holding his ground and making no noise. He was
+coatless and ragged shirted, and one sleeve of his shirt was torn, so
+that you could see how thin his shoulder was. He held his head high, and
+smiled as he fought. A shock of blond hair was tossed high above his
+forehead. He had a thin, white face, and dark jewels of flashing eyes.
+As she stood and looked, they met Judith's eyes, and Judith knew that
+she had never seen a boy like this, because there was no boy like
+this--no little boy so wild and strange and free, so ragged and brave.
+If he could come out of the dark, it was full of unguessable things,
+splendid and strange and new. Judith's heart beat hard, a hot feeling
+swept over her, and a queer mist came before her eyes. A wonderful boy;
+a fairy boy! What would they do to him? What did they do to paddies?
+There was no little boy like this in the world.
+
+"Judy!" The others had seen her and were calling her. "Come on. Help get
+him down."
+
+"He chased Willard round here."
+
+"He led the gang last year."
+
+"It's Neil Donovan."
+
+"Get him down!"
+
+Judith did not answer then. Her cheeks flamed red, and her eyes looked
+as big and dark as the stranger's, and her small hands clenched tight.
+It was only a minute that she stood so. The three were close to him,
+hiding him. She saw his face again, above Willard's pushing shoulder,
+and then--she could not see it.
+
+"Judy, what's the matter? Come on!"
+
+And Judith came. She plunged straight into the struggling group, and
+hammered at it indiscriminately with two small fists. She caught at a
+waving coat sleeve, and pulled it--Willard's, and it tore in her hands.
+She spotted Eds white sweater, and beat at it fiercely, with all her
+strength.
+
+"That's me, Judy. Cut it out!"
+
+"Then let him go. Three to one is no fair. Let him go!" They did not
+hear her, or care which side she was on, or take the trouble to drive
+her away. Judith drew back and stood and looked at them, breathless and
+glowing and undefeated, for one long minute.
+
+"Boy," she called then, softly, as if he could hear when the others
+could not, "wait! It's all right, boy. It's all right."
+
+Then she charged up the steps at Rena. Judy, the most demure and
+faithful of allies, confronted Rena, amazingly but unmistakably changed
+to a foe; Judy, with her immaculate and enviable frock smirched and
+torn, and her sleek hair wildly tossed, her cheeks darkly flushed, and
+her eyes strange and shining; a Judy to be reckoned with and admired and
+feared--a new Judy.
+
+"What's the matter? Are you crazy? What do you want?"
+
+"Make them let him go. They've got to let him go."
+
+"He's a paddy--Neil Donovan--a paddy."
+
+"They've got to let him go.... Give that to me."
+
+"What for? Judy, don't hurt me. Judy!"
+
+Judith wasted no more words. She caught Rena's wrist, twisted it, and
+snatched the lantern out of her hand. She held it high above her head,
+and shook it recklessly.
+
+"Don't, Judy! Don't!" The flame sputtered crazily. Judy still shook the
+lantern, dancing out of reach, and laughing. "Nat--everybody--stop Judy.
+She's making the lantern explode. Oh, Ed!"
+
+Natalie heard, and then the others. They looked up at her, all of them.
+Rena and Natalie screamed. Willard started toward her. "Put it down,
+kid," he was calling.
+
+"I'll put it down.... Now boy."
+
+There he was, with Ed's arm gripping his shoulders. He did not give any
+sign that he knew she was trying to help him, or that he wanted help. He
+was not afraid of the lantern, like the others. His black eyes were
+laughing at all of them--laughing at Judith, too. He was looking
+straight at Judith.
+
+"Now, boy," she called, "now run!" and she gripped the lantern tight,
+swung it high, and dashed it to the ground.
+
+It fell at the foot of the steps with a crash of breaking glass. The
+light sputtered out. The air was full of the smell of spilled kerosene.
+In the faint radiance that was not moonlight, but a glimmering
+reflection of it, more confusing than darkness, dim figures struggled
+and shrill voices were lifted.
+
+"Get him. Hold him."
+
+"Get the lantern."
+
+"Get Judy."
+
+"Hold him, Ed."
+
+"That's me."
+
+"Get him, Rena."
+
+Judith laughed, and out of the dark he had come from, the dark of
+May-night, lit by a wishing moon, that grants your secret wish for
+better or for worse, irrevocably, a far-away laugh answered Judith's.
+The boy was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+
+Miss Judith Devereux Randall was getting into her first evening gown.
+
+The Green River High School football team was giving its annual
+September concert and ball in Odd Fellows' Hall to-night. The occasion
+was as important to the school as a coming-out party. The new junior
+class, just graduated from seclusion upstairs to the big assembly room
+where the seniors were, made its first public appearance in society
+there. Judith was a junior now.
+
+Her first dance, and her first evening gown; it was a memorable scene,
+fit to immortalize with the first love-letter and the first proposal, in
+a series of pictures of great moments in a girl's life--chosen by some
+masculine illustrator, touchingly confident that he knows what the great
+moments of a girl's life are. Judith seemed to be taking this moment too
+calmly for one.
+
+The dress lay ready on the bed, fluffy and light and sheer, a white
+dream of a dress, with two unopened florist's boxes beside it, but there
+was no picturesque disarray of excited toilet-making in her big,
+brightly lighted room, and no dream-promoting candlelight. And there
+were no pennants or football trophies disfiguring the daintily flowered
+wall paper, and no pictures or programs in the mirror of the dainty
+dressing-table; there was no other young girl's room in town where they
+were prohibited, but there was no other room so charming as Judith's,
+all blue-flowered chintz and bird's-eye maple and white fur rugs, and
+whiter covers and curtains.
+
+Judith was the most charming and immaculate thing in the room, as she
+stood before the cheval-glass, bare armed and slim and straight in
+beruffled, beribboned white, pinning the soft, pale braids tight around
+her small, high-poised head. Quite the most charming thing, and Norah,
+fingering the dress on the bed disapprovingly, and giving her keen,
+sidelong glances, was aware of it, but did not believe in compliments,
+even to the creature she loved best in the world.
+
+Her mouth was set and her brown eyes were bright with the effort of
+repressing them. Judith, seeing her face in the glass, turned suddenly
+and slipped her arms round the formidable old creature's neck, and
+laughed at her.
+
+"Don't you think I'm perfectly beautiful?" she demanded. "If you really
+love me, why not tell me so?"
+
+"Your colour's good." Judith pressed a delicately flushed cheek to
+Norah's, and attempted a butterfly kiss, which she evaded grimly. "Good
+enough--healthy and natural."
+
+"Oh, no. I made it. Oh, with hot water and then cold, I mean. Nana,
+don't begin about rouge. Don't be silly. That red stuff in the box on
+mother's dresser is only nail paste, truly."
+
+"Who sent the flowers?"
+
+"Look and see."
+
+"Much you care, if you'll let me look."
+
+"Do you want me to care?"
+
+"Much you care about the flowers or the party."
+
+Judith had caught up the alluring dress without a second glance, and
+slipped it expertly over her head, and was jerking capably at the
+fastenings.
+
+"With the spoiled airs of you, and Willard Nash sending to Wells for
+flowers, when his father clerked in a drygoods store at his age----"
+
+"Oh, carnations are cheap--or he wouldn't get them."
+
+"These aren't cheap, then."
+
+The smaller box was full of white violets.
+
+"Give them to me. No, you can't see the card. You don't deserve to.
+You're too cross, and besides you wouldn't like it. Do my two top hooks.
+Now, am I perfectly beautiful?"
+
+Under her capable hands a pretty miracle had been going on, common
+enough, but always new. Ruffle above ruffle, the soft, shapeless mass of
+white had shaken itself into its proper lines and contours, lightly,
+like a bird's plumage settling itself, and with it the change that comes
+when a woman with the inborn, unteachable trick of wearing clothes puts
+on a perfect gown, had come to her slight girl's figure. It looked
+softer, rounder, and more lightly poised. Her throat looked whiter above
+the encircling folds of white. Her shy half smile was sweeter. The white
+violets, caught to her high girdle, were sweeter, too.
+
+Norah surrendered, her voice husky and reluctant.
+
+"You're too good for them."
+
+"For the G. H. S. dance? For Willard?" Judith pretended great humility:
+"Nana!"
+
+"There's others you're more than too good for. Others----"
+
+"Nana, don't."
+
+"Come here." Norah put two heavy hands on her shoulders and regarded her
+grimly. It was the kind of look that Judith used to associate with
+second sight, and dread. It was quite formidable still. But Judith met
+it steadily, with something mature and assured about her look that had
+nothing to do with the softness and sweetness of her in her fluffy
+draperies, something that had no place in the heart of a child;
+something that Norah saw.
+
+"Too good for them, and you know it," pronounced Norah. "You know it too
+well. You know too many things. A heart of gold you've got, but your
+head will rule your heart."
+
+"Nonsense." Norah permitted herself to be kissed, still looking
+forbidding, but holding Judith tight.
+
+"Little white lamb, may you find what's good enough for you," she
+conceded, unexpectedly, "and may you know it when you find it."
+
+"You're an old dear, and you're good enough for me."
+
+Downstairs there was a more critical audience to face. Judith saw it in
+the library door, and stood still on the stair landing, looking down.
+She held her head high, and coloured faintly. She looked very slender
+and white against the dark woodwork of the hall. The Randall house had
+been renovated the year before--becoming ten years older in the process,
+early Colonial instead of a comfortable mixture of late Colonial and
+mid-Victorian. The hall was particularly Colonial, and a becoming
+background for Judith, but the dark-haired lady in the door had no more
+faith in compliments than Norah, and there was a worried wrinkle in her
+low forehead to-night, as if her mind were on other things.
+
+"Will I do, mother?"
+
+"It's a good little gown, but there's something wrong with the neck
+line. You're really going then?"
+
+"I thought I would."
+
+"Be back by half-past ten. We're going to have some cards here. The
+Colonel likes you to pass things."
+
+"I thought father's head ached."
+
+"He's sleeping it off."
+
+"I--wanted him to see how I looked."
+
+"I can't see why you go."
+
+"I thought I would. I'll go outside now, and wait for Willard."
+
+Judith closed the early Colonial door softly behind her, and settled
+down on the steps. She arranged her coat, not the one her mother lent
+her for state occasions, but a white polo coat of her own, with due
+regard for her ruffles and her violets. The violets were from Colonel
+Everard. Norah, with her tiresome prejudice against the Everards, and
+mother, who thought and talked so much about them that she was almost
+tiresome, too, were both wrong about this party. She did want to go.
+
+The church clock was striking nine. There was nothing deep toned or
+solemn about the chime; it was rather tinny, but she liked it. It
+sounded wide awake, as if things were going to happen. Nine, and the
+party was under way. The concert was almost over. The concert was only
+for chaperones and girls who were afraid of not getting their dance
+orders filled. The truly elect arrived just in time to dance. Some of
+them were passing the house already. Judith saw girls with
+light-coloured gowns showing under dark coats, and swathing veils that
+preserved elaborate coiffures. Bits of conversation, monosyllabic and
+formal, to fit the clothes, drifted across the lawn to her.
+
+She had not been allowed to help decorate the hall, but she had driven
+with Willard to Nashes' Corners for goldenrod, and when they carried it
+in, big, glowing bundles of it, she had seen fascinating things:
+Japanese lanterns, cheesecloth in yellow and white, the school colours,
+still in the piece, and full of unguessable possibilities, and a rough
+board table, the foundation of the elaborately decorated counter where
+Rena and other girls would serve the fruit punch. All the time she
+dressed she had been listening for the music of Dugan's orchestra, and
+caught only tantalizing strains of tunes that she could not identify.
+There was a sameness about the repertoire. Most of the tunes sounded
+unduly sentimental and resigned. But now they were playing their star
+number, a dramatic piece of program music called "A Day on the
+Battlefield."
+
+The day began with bird notes and bugle calls, but was soon enlivened by
+cavalry charges and cannonades. The drum, and an occasional blank
+cartridge, very telling in effect, were producing them now. Judith
+listened eagerly.
+
+She needed friends of her own age for the next two years, but she must
+not identify herself with them too closely, because she would have wider
+social opportunities by and by; that was what her mother said, and she
+did not contest it; by and by, but this party was to-night.
+
+Willard was coming for her now, half an hour ahead of time, as usual. He
+crossed the lawn, and sat heavily down on the steps.
+
+"Hello. Don't talk," said Judith.
+
+Willard was silent only long enough to turn this remark over in his
+mind, and decide that she could not mean it, but that was five minutes,
+for all his mental processes were slow. Down in the hall the last of the
+heroes was dying, and Dugan's orchestra rendered Taps sepulchrally.
+Judith drew a long breath of shivering content.
+
+"Cold?" inquired Willard.
+
+"No."
+
+"You're looking great to-night."
+
+"In the dark? In an old polo coat?"
+
+"You always look great."
+
+Judith was aware of an ominous stir beside her, and changed her
+position.
+
+"Oh, Judy."
+
+"When you know I won't let you hold my hand, what makes you try?"
+
+"If I didn't try, how would I know?" said Willard neatly.
+
+"Oh, if you don't know without trying," Judith sighed. The cannonade in
+the hall was over, and the night was empty without it.
+
+"They took in thirteen dollars and fifty-two cents selling tickets for
+to-night." Willard, checked upon sentimental subjects, proceeded to
+facts. He had so many at command that he could not be checked.
+
+"Who did?"
+
+"The team. They divide it. Only this year they've got to let the
+sub-team in on it, the faculty made them, and they're sore. And there's
+a sub on the reception committee."
+
+"I don't care."
+
+"You ought to. A sub, and a roughneck. The sub-team is a bunch of
+roughnecks, but he's the worst. On the reception committee! But they'll
+take it out of him."
+
+"Who? The reception committee?"
+
+"No, the girls. They won't dance with him. He won't get a decent name on
+his card. Roughneck, keeping Ed off the team. He's an Irish boy."
+
+"An Irish boy?" Something, vague as an unforgotten dream that comes back
+at night, though you are too busy to recall it in waking hours, urged
+Judith to protest. "So is the senior president Irish."
+
+"No, the vice-president." There was a wide distinction between the two
+offices. "Besides"--this was a wider distinction--"Murph lives at the
+Falls."
+
+Living at the Falls, the little settlement at the head of the river, and
+lunching at noon, in the empty schoolhouse, out of tin boxes, with a
+forlorn assembly of half a dozen or so, was a handicap that few could
+live down.
+
+"Murph?"
+
+"The team calls him Murphy. I don't know why. They're crazy about him.
+He lives a half mile north of the Falls. Walking five miles a day to
+learn Latin! He's a fool and a roughneck, but he can play ball.
+Yesterday on Brown's field----"
+
+Willard started happily upon technicalities of football formations.
+Judith stopped listening. He could talk on unaided, pausing only for an
+occasional yes or no.
+
+Brown's field! It was a tree-fringed stretch of level grass set high at
+the edge of the woods, on the other side of the river, with glimpses of
+the river showing through the trees far below. Here, on long autumn
+afternoons, sparkling and cool, but golden at the heart, ending
+gloriously in red, sudden sunsets, football practice went on every day;
+shifting here and there, mysteriously, over the field, the arbitrary
+evolutions that were football, the shuffling, and shouting, and panting
+silence; on rugs and sweaters under the trees, an audience of girls,
+shivering delightfully, or holding some hero's sweater, too proud to be
+cold.
+
+Judith had seen all this through Willard's eyes, or from a passing
+carriage, but now she would go herself, go perhaps every day. Her mother
+would let her. She would not understand, but she would let her, just as
+she had to-night. Judith could be part of the close-knit life of the
+school in the last two years there--the years that counted. The party
+was a test and her mother had met it favourably. That was why she was
+glad to go, as nearly as she understood. She did not know quite what she
+wanted of the party, only how very much she wanted to go.
+
+Willard was asking a question insistently: "Didn't he do pretty work?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Why, the fellow I'm telling you about--the roughneck."
+
+"Roughneck," said Judith dreamily. The word had a fine, strong sound.
+Willard was holding her hand again, and she felt too comfortable and
+content to stop him.
+
+The orchestra down the street was playing the number that usually ended
+its programs, a medley of plantation melodies. They were never such a
+strain on the resources of a hard-working but only five-piece orchestra
+as the ambitious, martial selections, and here, heard across the dark,
+they were beautiful: plaintive and thrillingly sweet. "Old Kentucky
+Home," was the sweetest of all, lonely and sad as youth, and insistent
+as youth, claiming its own against an alien world.
+
+"Oh, Willard!" breathed Judith. Then, in quite another tone, "Oh,
+Willard!"
+
+Encouraged by her silence, he was reaching for her other hand, and
+slipping an arm round her waist.
+
+"You feel so soft," objected Judith frankly, getting up. "I do hope I'll
+never fall in love with a fat man. Come on, let's go!"
+
+She waited for him politely on the sidewalk, and permitted her arm to
+be duly grasped. Willard, sulky and silent, but preserving appearances,
+piloted her dutifully down the street. Willard's silences were rare, and
+Judith usually made the most of them, but she did not permit this one to
+last. She did not want any one, even Willard, to be unhappy to-night.
+
+"Willard."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Don't take such long steps, or I can't keep up with you. You're so
+tall."
+
+"Do you want to be late?"
+
+"Oh, no! Are we?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But there's only one couple behind us, and the music's stopped."
+
+"It takes half an hour to get the chairs moved out."
+
+"Willard."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Is the first dance a grand march and circle?"
+
+"No, that's gone out. They have contras instead, but the first is a
+waltz."
+
+"Willard, mother said I mustn't dance contras, but I shall--with you."
+
+"Well!"
+
+"Don't you want me to?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Willard, are you cross with me?"
+
+"No." They were in front of the Odd Fellows' Building now. The door was
+open. The pair behind them crowded past and clattered hurriedly up the
+bare, polished stairs. The orchestra could be heard tuning industriously
+above. They were almost late, but Willard drew her into a corner of the
+entrance hall, and pressed her hand ardently.
+
+"Judy, I couldn't be cross with you."
+
+"Don't be too sure!" Judith laughed, and ran upstairs ahead of him.
+
+"There's the ladies' dressing-room. I'll get the dance orders and meet
+you outside."
+
+There was a whispering, giggling crowd in the dressing-room, mostly
+seniors, girls she did not know, but they seemed to know her, and she
+was conscious of curious looks at her hair and dress. It was the
+simplest dress in the room, and her mother would not have approved of
+the other dresses, but Judith did. There was something festive about the
+bright colours, too bright most of them: sharp pinks, and cold, hard
+blues. There was a yellow dress on a brunette, who was cheapened by the
+crude colour, and a scarlet dress too bright for any one to wear
+successfully on a big, pretty blond girl, who almost could. Judith
+smelled three distinct kinds of cheap talcum powder, and preferred them
+all to her own unscented French variety. She had a moment of sudden
+loneliness. Was she so glad to be here, after all?
+
+It was only a moment. The tuning of instruments outside broke off, and
+the first bars of a waltz droned invitingly out: "If you really love
+me," the song that had been in her ears all the evening, a flimsy ballad
+of the year, hauntingly sweet, as only such short-lived songs can be.
+Moving to the tune of it, Judith crowded with the other girls out of the
+dressing-room.
+
+The hall was transformed. It was not the room she had dreamed of, a
+great room, dimly lit, peopled with low-talking dancers, circling
+through the dimness. The place looked smaller decorated, and the
+decorations themselves seemed to have shrunk since she saw them. The
+lanterns had been hung only where nails were already driven, and under
+the supervision of the janitor, who would not permit them to be lighted.
+The cheesecloth was conspicuous nowhere except around the little stage,
+which it draped in tight, mathematically measured festoons. Beneath,
+under the misleading legend, "G. H. S.," painted in yellow on a
+suspended football, Dugan's orchestra performed its duties faithfully,
+with handkerchiefs guarding wilted collars.
+
+The goldenrod, tortured and wired into a screen to hide the footlights,
+was drooping away already and showing the supporting wires. The benches
+were stacked against the wall, all but an ill-omened row designed for
+wall-flowers, and the floor was cleared and waxed. But little patches of
+wax that were not rubbed in lurked for unwary feet, and there were
+clouds of dust in the air. In one corner of the hall most of the
+prominent guests of the evening were attempting to obtain dance orders
+at once, or to push their way back with them to the young ladies they
+were escorting.
+
+These ladies, and other ladies without escorts, were crowding each other
+against the stacked benches and maneuvering for positions where their
+dance orders would fill promptly. The atmosphere was one of strife and
+stress. But Judith found no fault with it. She was not aware of it.
+
+In a corner near the stage, by the closed door of the refreshment-room,
+a boy was standing alone. He was tearing up his dance order. It was
+empty, and he was making no further attempts to fill it. He tore it
+quite unostentatiously so that no young lady disposed to be amused by
+his defeat could see anything worth staring at in his performance, and
+he was forgotten in his corner. But Judith stared.
+
+She had remembered him tall, but he was only a little taller than
+herself. His black suit was shiny, and a size too small for him, but it
+was carefully brushed, and he wore it with an air. His hair was darker
+than she remembered, a pale, soft brown. It was too long, and it curled
+at the temples. He stood squarely, facing the room, as if he did not
+care what anybody did to him, but there was a look about his mouth as if
+he cared. He raised his eyes. They were darker than she remembered,
+darker and stranger than any eyes in the world. They looked hurt, but
+there was a laugh in them, too, and across the hall they were looking
+straight at Judith.
+
+"Here you are. I've got myself down for all your contras. Just in time."
+
+Willard, mopping his brow, slipping on a patch of wax, and saving
+himself with a skating motion, brought up triumphantly beside her,
+waving two dance orders. Judith pushed them away, and said
+something--she hardly knew what.
+
+"What, Judy? What's that? You're engaged for this? You can't dance it
+with me?"
+
+"No. No, I can't."
+
+Judith slipped past him, and started across the floor. The music was
+louder now, as if you were really meant to dance, and dance with the
+person you wanted to most. The floor was filling now with dancers
+stepping forward awkwardly, but turning into different creatures when
+they danced, caught by the light, sure swing of the music, whirling and
+gliding. The words sang themselves to Judith, the silly, beautiful
+words:
+
+    Please don't keep me waiting.
+      Won't you let me know
+    That you really love me?
+      Tell--me--so.
+
+A girl in red was dancing in a quick, darting sort of way, in and out,
+among the others, and her dress was beautiful, too, like a flower. The
+boy in the corner was watching it. He did not see Judith come.
+
+"I thought you couldn't be real. When I never saw you again I thought I
+had dreamed you."
+
+Judith said it softly and breathlessly, and he did not hear. She put her
+hand on his arm, and he turned and looked at her.
+
+"Don't you remember me?" Judith was too happy to be hurt even by this.
+The light, sweet music called to her. "Don't you remember? Never mind!
+Come and dance with me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+
+Willard stood still and stared after Judith for one bewildered minute;
+that was as long as he could stand still. Odd Fellows' Hall had ceased
+to afford standing-room.
+
+The floor was filling and more than filling with determined young
+persons who were there to dance, and looked as if they had never had any
+aim but to dance. The enthralled silence, which was more general than
+conversation, advertised it. Even acknowledged belles, like the girl in
+red, coquetted incidentally, with significant but brief confidences and
+briefer upward glances. There was an alarming concentration, intent as
+youth itself, to be read in their unsmiling faces and eager eyes.
+
+They danced quite wonderfully, most of them, as only country-bred young
+people can, with free-limbed young bodies, more used to adventuring in
+the open air than to dancing, but attuned to the rhythm of the dance by
+right of their youth. The old-fashioned waltz, that our grandmothers
+lost their hearts to the time of, still prevailed in Green River; not
+the jerkier performance that was already opening the way for the
+one-step and the dance craze in larger centres, but the old waltz, with
+the first beat of each measure heavily emphasized--a slow swinging,
+beautiful dance, and they danced it with all their hearts.
+
+In and out among them, two slender, quick-turning figures were making an
+intricate way. The girl danced delicately and surely, a faint, half
+smile parting her lips, her small, smooth head erect, the silvery gold
+hair that crowned it shimmering and pale in the uncompromising light of
+the newly installed electric chandeliers, her eyes intent on the boy.
+
+His performance was not expert, but it had a charm all its own. He put a
+great deal of strength into it, and made it evident that he possessed
+still more; strength enough to master the art of dancing once and for
+all, by the sheer force of it, if he cared to exert it, and a laughing
+light in his eyes, as if dancing was not important enough for that, and
+nothing else was.
+
+An ambitious pair, experimenting with the dip waltz, just introduced
+that year, and pausing on the most awkward spots in the crowded floor,
+blocked his path, and he swung heavily out of their way just in time,
+squaring his chin and holding his head a shade higher. The girl in red
+was whirled toward him in double-quick time, and he dodged,
+miscalculated his distance, but met the shock of her squarely, whisking
+Judith out of her way.
+
+"Good try, Murph," her partner called.
+
+Willard regarded the encounter disapprovingly from the door of the
+gentlemen's dressing-room, to which he had edged his way. His was not an
+expressive countenance, and that was a protection to him just now. He
+was bewildered and deeply hurt, but he merely looked fat and slightly
+puzzled, as usual.
+
+"Judy turn you down?" inquired his friend Mr. Ward, also watching from
+the dressing-room door, with the few other gentlemen who were without
+partners for this dance. It was the most important dance of the evening,
+for you danced it with the lady of your choice, or with nobody. It
+cemented new intimacies or foreshadowed the breaking of old; settled
+anew the continually agitated question of "who was going with who."
+
+"Judy turn you down?" said Mr. Ward, but he meant it as a pleasantry.
+Mr. Willard Nash was not often turned down, even at this early age. He
+was too eligible.
+
+"Rena turn you down, Ed?"
+
+"Yes." Mr. Ward became suddenly confidential, and lowered his voice.
+"Mad. She wanted me to get her a shinguard to mount tintypes
+on--tintypes of the team."
+
+"Buy it or steal it?" inquired Willard sarcastically.
+
+"I offered to buy it," his friend confessed, "buy her a new pair, but
+she wants one that's been used."
+
+"You spoil Rena. You can't spoil a girl." They laughed wisely. "It don't
+pay."
+
+"Mad with Judy?"
+
+"Well--no," said Willard magnanimously. He thought quite rapidly, as his
+brain, not overworked at other times, could do in emergencies. "My feet
+hurt. Pumps slip at the heel. I've been stuffing them out. Judy came
+with me, but I had to be excused for this dance."
+
+"Good thing for him."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"For Murph--for Neil Donovan. They'll all dance with him if she does;
+though Judy don't know that. She's not stuck on herself, and never will
+be. I didn't know she knew Murph."
+
+"Well, you know it now," said Willard shortly, his man-of-the-world
+composure failing him. Judith was circling nearer now, slender and
+desirable. He hesitated between an angry glare and a forgiving smile,
+but she did not look to see which he chose. She whirled quickly by.
+
+"Smooth little dancer, and she's no snob. Judy's all right," said Ed.
+"Watch Murph! He's catching on--never danced till last night. Some of
+the fellows taught him. He never danced with a girl before."
+
+"If my feet hurt," remarked Mr. Nash irrelevantly, and without the close
+attention from his friend which this important announcement called for,
+"I may not dance at all to-night."
+
+Willard stopped abruptly. "What do you know about that"; a voice was
+saying, in the rear of the dressing-room; he stiffly refrained from
+turning to see whose, "Judith is dancing the first dance with Neil
+Donovan!"
+
+Judith was dancing the first dance with Neil Donovan. It was social
+history already, accepted as such, and not further discussed, even by
+Willard. But many epoch-making events are not even so much discussed,
+they look so simple on the face of them. We cross a room, and change the
+course of our lives by crossing it, and few people even observe that we
+have crossed the room.
+
+If Judith had affected the course of her life materially by crossing the
+room to the strange boy, she did not seem to be thinking of it just now.
+She was not thinking at all. She was only dancing, following her
+partner's erratic course quite faithfully, and quite intent on doing so;
+feeling every beat of the music, and showing it, pink-cheeked and
+sparkling eyed, and pleasantly excited, but nothing more.
+
+The wistful and dreamy look was gone from her eyes, and her half-formed
+desire for something to happen this evening, something that had never
+happened before, was gone from her, too. She felt content with whatever
+was going to happen, and deeply interested in it, and particularly
+interested in dancing.
+
+They had danced almost in silence, rather a grim silence at first, but
+now that the boy could let the music carry him with it, and was
+beginning to trust it, too, the silence was comfortable. But the few
+words he managed to say were worth listening to and answering, not to be
+dreamed through and ignored, like Willard's. His voice was not as she
+remembered it, and that was interesting, too, deeply significant, though
+she could not have said why. Everything seemed unaccountably interesting
+to-night.
+
+"I thought it was louder," she said, "or higher--or something."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Your voice."
+
+It was quite husky and low, and he pronounced a word here and there with
+a brogue like Norah's, only pleasanter, with a kind of singing sound.
+It was never the word you expected. You had to watch for it. She could
+hear it now.
+
+"Won't you please tell me who you are?"
+
+"I know who you are, and I know where you live."
+
+"Where do I?"
+
+"At the Falls, and I know when you moved there--five years ago, or six."
+
+"Six. How do you know?"
+
+"Oh, I know."
+
+As you grew older, and learned to call more boys and girls in the school
+by name, and more of the clerks in the shops, you discovered new people
+in the town where you thought you knew everybody, and it made the town
+infinitely large. But this boy had not been so near her, or she would
+have seen him. He could not have been in school with her. He must have
+worked on a farm and studied by himself with the grammar-school teacher
+at the Falls, and taken special examinations to enter the Junior class
+this year, as Willard said that some boy at the Falls was doing. He must
+be that boy or Judith would surely have seen him.
+
+She nodded her head wisely. "I know."
+
+"You know a lot." In his soft brogue this sounded like the most
+complimentary thing that could be said.
+
+"But you don't remember me." This had troubled her at first. Now it
+seemed like the most delicious of jokes, and they laughed at it
+together.
+
+"That was the first thing you said to me."
+
+"Isn't it queer"--Judith's eyes widened and darkened as if it were
+something more than queer, something far worse--"so queer! I can't think
+what the first thing was that you said to me."
+
+They confronted this problem in silence, staring at each other with
+wide-open eyes. Though they were circling smoothly at last, carried on
+by the slow, sweet music, so that they hardly seemed to be moving at
+all, and though he did not really move his head, the boy's eyes seemed
+to Judith to be coming nearer to hers, nearer all the time. They were
+beautiful eyes, deep brown, and very clear. His brown hair grew in a
+squarish line across his forehead, and waved softly at the temples. It
+looked as if he had brushed it hard there to brush the curl out, but it
+was curliest there.
+
+"You've got the brownest eyes," said Judith.
+
+"You've got the biggest eyes. Won't you tell me your name?"
+
+Judith did not answer. She looked away from the disconcerting brown eyes
+and down at her hand, against his shoulder, her own little hand, with
+the careful manicure and the dull polish that was all her mother
+permitted; bare of rings, though Norah had given her a beautiful garnet
+ring for Christmas. How shiny his coat-sleeve was, and her hand looked
+unfamiliar to her--not like her own at all. She pressed tighter against
+his shoulder to steady herself.
+
+The music was growing quicker and louder, working up gradually but
+surely into a breathless crescendo that meant the end of the dance. It
+whirled them dizzily about. The sleepy spell of the dance broke in this
+final crash of noise, and as it broke a sudden panic caught Judith.
+
+What had she been saying to this boy? She had never talked like this to
+a boy before. And why was she dancing with him? She ought to be dancing
+with Willard--Willard, waiting there in the dressing-room door with her
+dance order in his hand, with the patient and puzzled look in his eyes,
+with brick-red colour in his cheeks from the affront she had subjected
+him to. What would Willard think of her? What would her mother think?
+And who was this boy? Just what the children had called him in taunting
+screams, on that long-ago May night, and she would have liked to scream
+it now--a paddy.
+
+Instead, she lifted her head, no longer afraid of the boy's brown eyes,
+and said it, as cruelly as she could, in her soft and clear little
+voice:
+
+"Paddy," she said; "a paddy from Paddy Lane."
+
+She looked defiantly into his eyes, but they did not grow angry. They
+only grew very soft and kind, and they laughed at her. She wanted to
+look away from the laughter in them, but she could not look away from
+the kindness. Now she was not angry with him any more, but glad she was
+dancing with him. She knew she never wanted to stop dancing.
+
+"Paddy?" He thought she had said it to remind him of that May night; he
+was remembering it now. "Are you that little girl?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The little girl who broke the lantern?"
+
+"Yes," said Judith proudly.
+
+"And had such long black legs, and went scuttling across the lawn, and
+screaming out to me--that funny little girl?"
+
+"But I did break the lantern," said Judith.
+
+All the bravest stories that she had made up in the dark to put herself
+to sleep with at night, all the perilous adventures of land and sea,
+camp fire or pirate ship, began with the breaking of that lantern, and
+the boy she rescued had been her companion upon them, her brushwood boy,
+her own boy. She had found him at last, and he was laughing--laughing at
+her.
+
+"Sure you did. As if I couldn't have broken away from a bunch of fool
+kids, without being doped with the smell of kerosene, and yelled at by
+another fool kid. Sure you broke the lantern. How mad I was."
+
+"You didn't remember." It was not a joke any longer now, but a tragedy,
+and Judith felt overwhelmed by it, alone in the world. "You forgot, and
+I--remembered."
+
+The brown eyes and the gray met in one last long look and when the brown
+eyes saw the hurt in Judith's, the laughter died out of them. Again they
+seemed to be growing nearer and nearer to hers, but this time Judith was
+not afraid, she was glad.
+
+"If you didn't save my life then, you did to-night." It came in a husky
+burst of confidence, straight from his shy boy's heart, very rare and
+very precious. Judith caught her breath.
+
+"Oh, did I? Did I?"
+
+"Yes. This crowd here had me mad--crazy mad. I was going home. I was
+going to get off the team. I wasn't going to school next week, and I've
+worked my hands off to get there. Maybe you remembered and I forgot,
+but--I won't forget again. You were that little girl." It was not a
+slight to the little girl she used to be, but a tribute to the girl she
+was; that was what looked out of his brown eyes at Judith, and sang
+through the brogue in his voice.
+
+"You were that little girl--you!"
+
+"Yes," breathed Judith; "yes!"
+
+They whirled faster and faster. This was really the end of the dance,
+and this dance could never come again. Judith held tight to his shiny
+shoulder, breathless, hurrying to part with her secret and strip herself
+bare of mystery generously in a breath. All sorts of barriers might come
+between them, she might put them there herself, and she was quite aware
+of it, but not yet, not until the music stopped.
+
+"My name's Judith--Judith Randall. Call me Judy."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+
+Colonel Everard sat at the head of his dinner table. A little dinner for
+twelve was well under way at the Birches. Mrs. Everard was confined to
+her tower suite to-night with one of the sudden headaches which unkind
+critics held were likely to come when the Colonel entertained. Randolph
+Sebastian, his secretary, had superintended the arrangements for the
+dinner.
+
+Pink roses, rather too many of them, were massed on the big, round
+table. Rather too much polished silver was to be seen on it; the most
+ornate candlesticks in the Everard collection, and a too complete array
+of small, scattered objects, each with a possible but not an essential
+function, littering a cloth already complicated by elaborate inserts of
+lace. But the brilliantly lighted, over-decorated table was effective
+enough in the big, darkly wainscoted room, a little island of light and
+colour.
+
+The room was characterless, but finely and generously proportioned, and
+not so blatantly new as the rest of the colonel's house still looked.
+Against the dark walls the pale-coloured gowns around the table were
+charming. Indeed, most of the gowns were designed for this setting.
+
+For there were no outsiders among the Colonel's guests to-night.
+Sometimes there were distinguished outsiders, politicians and other big
+men, diverted from triumphant tours through larger centres by the
+Colonel's influence, and by his courtesy exhibited to Green River after
+they had dined, or bigger men still, whose comings and goings the public
+press was not permitted to chronicle. Sometimes, too, there were
+outsiders on probation, the outer fringe of Green River society,
+admitted to formal functions, and hoping in vain to penetrate to
+intimate ones; ladies flustered and flattered, gentlemen sulky but
+flattered, conscious that each appearance here might be their last, and
+trying to seem indifferent to the fact.
+
+But this was the Colonel's inner circle, gathered by telephone at
+twenty-four hours' notice, as they so often were. No course that the
+chef had contributed to the rather too elaborate menu was new to them.
+The Pol Roger which the big English butler was just starting on his
+second round was of the vintage year usually to be found on the
+Colonel's wine list, and on most intelligently supervised wine lists. A
+dinner for twelve, like plenty of little dinners elsewhere, no more
+correct and no less, but it had this to distinguish it; it was being
+served in Green River.
+
+Served complete from hors-d'oeuvres to liqueurs, in a New England town
+where high tea had been the fashion not ten years ago, and church
+suppers were still important occasions--where you were rich on five
+thousand a year, and there were not a dozen capitalists secure of so
+much, where a second maid was an object of pride, and there was no
+butler except the Colonel's. And he had imported this butler and his
+chef and his wines, but not his guests; they were quite as impressive,
+quite able to appreciate his hospitality, if not to return it in kind,
+and they were all but one native products of Green River.
+
+The youngest guest was eating mushrooms _sous cloche_ in contented
+silence at the Colonel's left. The scene was not new to her. She could
+not remember her first party here; she was probably the only person in
+Green River who could pass over that momentous occasion so lightly. She
+had grown up as the only child in the inner circle. She had been
+privileged to excuse herself, when the formal succession of courses at
+some holiday function was too much for her, and read fairy tales on a
+cushion by the library fire, out of the fat, purple edition de luxe of
+the "Arabian Nights" that was always waiting for her there. Though her
+white ruffled skirts had grown long now, and her silvery gold braids
+were pinned up, and she was allowed to fill an empty place at the
+Colonel's table whenever he asked her, if not quite on his regular
+dinner list yet, Judith was not much changed from that wide-eyed child,
+and to-night her eyes looked sleepy and soft, as if she had serious
+thoughts of the cushion by the fire and the fairy book still.
+
+The scene was not new, but it kept a fascination for her, like a
+transformation scene in a pantomime. Mr. J. Cleveland Kent, the manager
+of the shoe factory, who had taken her in to dinner, had been leaning
+out of a factory window in his shirt-sleeves, his black hair tumbled,
+and badly in need of a shave, when she passed on her way home from
+school. He looked mysterious and interesting in a dinner coat, like her
+idea of an Italian nobleman.
+
+When Judith knocked at the kitchen door to deliver a note, Mrs. Theodore
+Burr, in a pink cooking apron, corsetless, and with her beautiful yellow
+hair in patent curlers, had been blackening the kitchen stove, and
+quarrelling with the furnace man about an overcharge of fifty cents on
+his monthly bill. The Burrs had no maid. Theodore Burr had been
+assisting Judge Saxon ever since he passed his bar examinations, but he
+was not admitted to partnership yet. This was beginning to make gossip,
+for he worked hard. He had broken his dinner engagement to-night, as he
+often did, to stay at home and work. Randolph Sebastian, the secretary,
+with the queer, hybrid foreign name, and thin face and ingratiating
+brown eyes, had his place at the table.
+
+Mrs. Burr, stately and slender now in jetted black, the lowest cut gown
+in the room, her yellow hair fluffing and flaring into an unbelievable
+number of well-filled-out puffs, was chattering to the Colonel in a low
+voice, so that Judith could not understand, and breaking into French at
+intervals--Green River High School French, but she spoke it with an air,
+narrowing her blue-gray eyes after an alluring fashion she had and
+laughing her full-toned laugh. She was a full-blown, emphatic creature,
+though she had been married only three years, and was Lil Gaynor still
+to half the town.
+
+Auburn-haired little Mrs. Kent had been lying down all the afternoon, as
+her disapproving domestic had informed any one who inquired at the door
+in a shrill voice that did not promote repose. She was very piquant and
+enticing now, with her bright, slanting hazel eyes, and a contagious
+laugh, but her dinner partner, Judith's father, was tired and hard to
+amuse. He looked very boyish when he was tired; his blue eyes looked
+large and pathetic.
+
+The other two young women and Judith's mother, whose dark, low-browed
+Madonna beauty was gracious and fresh to-night, set off by her
+clear-blue gown, with a gardenia caught in her sheer, white scarf,
+deserved the Honourable Joseph Grant's flowery name for them, the Three
+Graces.
+
+Before the Colonel's time and Judith's the Honourable Joe had been the
+most important man in Green River, and in evening things, and after a
+properly concocted cocktail he still looked it, florid and portly and
+well set-up, with a big voice that could still sound hearty though it
+rang rather empty and hollow sometimes. He looked ten years younger than
+his old friend, Judge Saxon. The Judge's coat was getting shiny at the
+seams, and--this appeared even more unfortunate to Judith--he was in the
+habit of pointing out that it was shiny, and without embarrassment. Mrs.
+Saxon's pearl-gray satin was of excellent quality, but of last year's
+cut, and the modest neck was filled in with the net guimpe which she
+affected at informal dinners. The Saxons were not quite in the picture,
+but they were always very kind to Judith.
+
+And if they were not in the picture, Mrs. Joseph Grant, certainly not
+the youngest woman in the room, though she was not the oldest, occupied
+the centre of it.
+
+She was like the picture of the beautiful princess on the hill of glass,
+in a book of Judith's, and besides, she had once been a real débutante,
+of the kind that Judith liked to read about in novels, before the
+Honourable Joe brought her from Boston to Green River. Judith liked to
+look at her better than any one here except Colonel Everard.
+
+"Cosmopolitan--ten years ahead of Wells, or any town in your state; real
+give and take in the table talk; really pretty women; the same little
+group of people rubbing wits against each other day after day and
+getting them sharpened instead of dulled by it; a concentrated, pocket
+edition of a social life, but complete--nothing provincial about it," a
+very distinguished outsider had said after his last week-end with the
+Colonel.
+
+But he was fresh from a visit to the state capital, the most provincial
+city in the state when the legislature was not in session; also he had a
+known weakness for pretty women. Green River did not admire the
+Colonel's circle so unreservedly, but Green River was jealous. Whatever
+you thought of it, it was made of fixed and unpromising material, and
+making it was no mean achievement, and the man at the head of the table
+looked capable of it, and of bigger things.
+
+The Colonel was a big man and a public character, and as with many
+bigger men, you could divide the facts of his life into two classes:
+what everybody knew and what nobody knew. If the known facts were not
+the most dramatic ones, they were dramatic enough. He was sixty now. At
+fifteen he had been a student in a small theological seminary, working
+for his board on his uncle's farm, and engaged to the teacher of the
+district school, who helped him with his Greek at night. He gave up the
+ministry for the law, used his law practice as a stepping-stone into
+state politics, climbed gradually into national politics, built up a
+fortune somehow--these were the days of big graft--married for money and
+got an assured position in Washington society thrown in, and soon after
+his marriage chose Green River as a basis of operations, spending a
+winter month in Washington which later lengthened to three, ostensibly
+for the sake of his wife's health. The title of Colonel came from
+serving on the Governor's staff in an uneventful year. He had held no
+very important office, but his importance to his party in state and
+national politics was not to be measured by that.
+
+White haired, slightly built, managing with perfectly apparent tricks
+of carriage and dress to look taller than he was, he was the effective
+figure in this rather unusually good-looking group of people. Just now
+he was lighting a fresh cigarette for Mrs. Burr so gracefully that even
+Judge Saxon must enjoy watching, so Judith thought, though there was a
+tradition that he did not like women to smoke. Shocking the Judge was
+one of their favourite games here. It was only a game. Of course they
+could never shock anybody. They were quite harmless people, too grown up
+to be very interesting, but almost always kind, and always gay.
+
+The Colonel's profile was really beautiful through the curling, bluish
+smoke, and Judith liked his quick, flashing smile. He turned now and
+smiled at Judith. Her own smile was charming, a faint, half smile, that
+never knew whether to turn into a real smile or to go away and not come
+again, but was always just on the point of deciding.
+
+"Is our débutante bored?"
+
+"Oh, no; I was just thinking. No."
+
+"She's blushing. Look at her."
+
+"Yes, look at a real one. Do you good, Lil," agreed the Judge, and Mrs.
+Burr rubbed a pink cheek with her table napkin, exhibited it daintily,
+and laughed.
+
+"Rose-white youth! But she doth protest too much." The Honourable Joe
+was fond of quotations, and often tried to make his remarks sound like
+them, when he could not recall appropriate ones, raising a solemn fat
+finger to emphasize them: "The thoughts of youth are long, long
+thoughts."
+
+"Wrong, wrong thoughts," supplied Randolph Sebastian, so gravely that
+the Honourable Joe accepted the amendment, and looked worried, as only
+the thought of losing his grip on Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations" could
+worry him at the end of a perfect meal.
+
+"Wrong thought?" he repeated, in a puzzled voice.
+
+"Thinking's barred here. What's the penalty, Judge?"
+
+"You aren't likely to get it inflicted on you, so I won't tell you,
+Lil."
+
+"No, I don't think; I act," Mrs. Burr admitted cheerfully. She always
+became a shade more cheerful just when you expected her to lose her
+temper.
+
+"How true that is," observed Mr. Sebastian gently.
+
+"Ranny!"
+
+"Didn't you play auction with me last night? We're out just----"
+
+"Don't tell me. I can't think in anything beyond three figures. Ted's
+doing higher mathematics over it. That's why he's home, really. I'll
+play with you again to-night, for your sins."
+
+"For my sins!" He made melancholy eyes, as if he were really confessing
+them. Mr. Sebastian always pretended a deep devotion to Mrs. Burr.
+Judith thought it was one of the silliest of their games.
+
+"But what was Judy thinking about?" demanded Mrs. Grant, in the sweet,
+indifferent voice that always made itself heard.
+
+"She met a fairy prince at the ball last night. They are still to be
+met--at balls."
+
+"You'd meet one anywhere he made a date, wouldn't you, Edith Kent?" said
+the Judge rudely. "Give Miss Judy a penny for her thoughts, if you want
+them, Everard. You've got to pay sometimes, you know--even you."
+
+"Don't commercialize her too young," said Mr. Sebastian smoothly.
+"Though, on the whole--can you commercialize them too young?"
+
+"Judith, what were you thinking about?" the Colonel interrupted, rather
+quickly, turning every one's eyes upon her at once, as he could with a
+word.
+
+Judith met them confidently--amused, curious eyes, but all friendly and
+gay. They talked a great deal of nonsense here, but it did not irritate
+her, as it did her friend Judge Saxon, though she was not always amused,
+and could not always understand. They never tried to shock her. She was
+sorry for the Judge. He was not at home with these gay and good-natured
+people, and it was so easy to be.
+
+She tipped her head backward in deliberate imitation of Edith Kent, whom
+she admired, half closed her eyes, like Lillian Burr, whom she admired
+still more, gazed up at the Colonel, and said, in her clear little
+voice:
+
+"I was thinking about you."
+
+"That's the answer," said Mr. Kent, and rewarded it with a lump of sugar
+dipped in his apricot brandy.
+
+"For an ingénue?" said Mrs. Burr, very sweetly indeed.
+
+"'She's getting older every day,'" hummed Mrs. Kent, in her charming,
+throaty contralto.
+
+But Judge Saxon pushed back his chair and rose abruptly.
+
+"I've had dinner enough," he said, "and so have you, Miss Judy."
+
+"We all have, Hugh," said the Colonel quickly, and rose, too, and
+slipped an intimate hand through his arm. "Run along, children! Hugh,
+about that Brady matter----"
+
+Judge Saxon submitted sulkily, but was laughing companionably with the
+Colonel by the time they all reached the library.
+
+Judith never admired the Colonel more than when he was managing Judge
+Saxon in a sulky mood. And she never admired the Colonel and his friends
+more than she did in the lazy intimate hour here before the cards began.
+
+The room was long and high, and too narrow; unfriendly, as only a room
+that is both badly proportioned and unusually large can be, but you
+forgot this in the softening glow of candles and rose-shaded lights. You
+forgot, too, that you were an exile from your own generation, among
+elders who bored you, though you were subtly flattered to be among them.
+Safe on a high window-bench in the most remote window, entirely your
+own, since the architect had not designed it to be sat on, and nobody
+else took the trouble to climb up, it was so much pleasanter to watch
+these people than to talk to them; they had such pretty clothes, and
+wore them so well, and made such effective, changing pictures of
+themselves in the big room.
+
+Sometimes they amused themselves with the parlour tricks that they had
+so many of, and sometimes they drifted in and out in groups of two and
+three, to more intimate parts of the house: the smoking-room, or Mrs.
+Everard's suite, if she was well, or out through the French windows,
+across the broad, glassed-in veranda that ran the length of the room and
+darkened it unpleasantly by day, into the Colonel's rose garden. It was
+warm enough for that to-night, and a yellow, September moon showed
+invitingly through the windows. Mrs. Grant, who liked to be alone, as
+Judith could quite understand, since she had to listen to the Honourable
+Joe's big voice so much of the time, was slipping out through a window
+now, taking the coat that Mr. Sebastian brought her, but refusing to let
+him go with her.
+
+He went to the piano, ran his thin, flexible brown fingers over the
+keys, struck into a Spanish serenade, and sang a verse of it in his
+brilliant but tricky tenor, with his languishing eyes upon Mrs. Burr.
+
+"Ranny, do you want to tell the whole world of our love? You terrify
+me," she said, and took refuge on one arm of the Colonel's chair.
+Judith's mother, protesting that she needed a chaperon, promptly took
+possession of the other arm, disposing her blue, trailing skirts
+demurely, and looking more Madonna-like than ever through the cloudy
+smoke of a belated cigarette. The others made themselves equally
+comfortable, all but Judge Saxon, who had ceased to advertise the fact
+that he was not.
+
+"Smile at me," Mrs. Kent begged, hovering over his chair; "I'm going to
+sing by and by, and I need it. Do smile! If you don't, I'm going to kiss
+you, Judge."
+
+"Go as far as you like, but be sure how far you like to go, Edith," said
+the Judge quietly. She flushed, and turned away abruptly, playing with a
+pile of songs.
+
+"I'm looking for a lullaby. Our youngest seems to need it."
+
+"Not in your line, are they?" said Sebastian, and began to improvise
+one, while Judith, in her corner, closed her eyes contentedly. Whether
+there was any truth or not in the report that he had been playing a
+ramshackle piano in an East Side restaurant in New York when the Colonel
+picked him up, Sebastian could do charming things with quite simple
+little tunes, if you did not inquire into problems of harmony and
+counterpoint too closely. He was doing them now, weaving odds and ends
+of familiar tunes, rather scapegrace and thin, into a lovely, reassuring
+whole, that made you feel rested and safe. Judith, making herself
+comfortable against a stiff and unwieldy Arts and Crafts sort of
+cushion, as long experience had taught her to, listened, smiling.
+
+She had no idea what a unique position she was occupying there. Judge
+Saxon grumbled and scolded, but he was part of the group in the room.
+He had grown into it, and belonged to them, as he might have belonged to
+an uncongenial family. The Colonel's distinguished guests saw them only
+on their best behaviour. Their local critics never penetrated here at
+all. Judith was the only outsider who did, and she had besides the
+irrevocable right of youth to pronounce judgment upon those who have
+prepared the world for it to occupy. She was their only licensed critic.
+What did she think of them? Her blond head drooped sleepily. She did not
+look disposed to say.
+
+Sebastian played on, drifting into something sophisticated, with a
+suggestion of waltz rhythms running through it. There was a stir of
+movement in the room, and the sound of windows opening and shutting,
+once, and then again. Judith did not turn her head to see who had gone
+out. She was too comfortable. It was strange that he could make you so
+comfortable with his music, when he made you so uncomfortable if you
+talked to him, watching you so closely with his queer, bright eyes.
+
+He stopped abruptly, with a big, crashing discord, and Judith rubbed her
+eyes and sat up. Mrs. Kent was going to sing now. She tossed some music
+to him.
+
+"That's over your head," she said; "over all your heads; better put me
+up there, too, Cleve. Besides, I want to dance. That table will do."
+She cleared it unceremoniously, with her husband's help, and established
+herself there, poised motionless, through the introductory bars of the
+song, her sleepy eyes wide awake now, and a red rose from a bowl on the
+table caught between her teeth.
+
+Quietly, always careful to avoid the reputation of being shocked, like
+the Judge, Judith slipped down from her perch, and across the room, and
+out through the window.
+
+    "Please keep my folks from kickin';
+    Grab me while I'm a chicken,
+    I'm getting older every day."
+
+Mrs. Kent's fresh voice was urging, as Judith tiptoed across the
+veranda.
+
+The rowdy words of her little songs and the demure plaintiveness of Mrs.
+Kent's voice made an effective contrast. It amused Judith as much as any
+one, and she liked to laugh, but she liked better to cry, and if you
+could not hear the words, Mrs. Kent's voice made you cry; big, luxurious
+tears, that stood in your eyes and did not fall. As she found her way
+across the lawn, among the elaborate flower-beds, the voice followed
+her, mellow and sweet. It had never sounded so sweet before. Everything
+sweet in the world was sweeter to-night.
+
+At the edge of the lawn Judith paused. Ahead of her three marble steps,
+flanked by urns filled with ivy, glaring things in the daytime but
+glimmering shadowy white and alluring now, led up the terrace to the
+rose garden; a fairy place, far from the world, so hedged in and
+shadowed by trees that it was dark even by moonlight, entered through an
+old-fashioned trellised arbour, that was so mysterious and dark, she
+liked it almost as well now when the rambler roses were not in flower.
+
+When she left the room her mother had been sitting in Colonel Everard's
+chair, she seemed to remember, and the Colonel and Mrs. Burr were
+nowhere to be seen. The whole room looked emptier, though she did not
+know who else was missing. But there were two people now in the rose
+arbour. She could just hear their voices, low, with long silences
+between.
+
+She wanted the place to herself. She stood still, hoping that they would
+go. There was a path into the woods on the other side of the little
+garden: the Colonel's bare, semicultivated woods, combed clean of
+underbrush, but you did not miss it at night. The woods were full of
+adventure, but the garden was better to dream in, and Judith had a great
+deal to dream about.
+
+The lighted house looked quite small and far away across the wide,
+moonlit lawn. They had stopped singing, and the laughter that followed
+the song did not sound so clear as the music; you could just hear it.
+Presently you could hear nothing, and it was quiet in the rose arbour,
+too. She waited until she was sure, standing quite still at the edge of
+the dark enclosure, not a ruffle of her white dress fluttering, very
+slender and small against the dark of the leaves. Then she slipped into
+the arbour.
+
+Through a fringe of drooping vine that half hid the picture, she could
+see the garden, empty and dimly moonlit, with the marble benches faintly
+white. She hurried through, pushed a trailing vine aside, then dropped
+it and shrank back under the trellis.
+
+The garden was empty. But across it, just at the entrance of the wood
+path, she saw a man and a woman. At first she took the two figures for
+one, they were standing so closely embraced. She could not see their
+faces, only the two dark figures standing there like one. They stood
+still a long time. They might have been lovers in a picture, only you
+could not paint pictures of darkly clothed, ungraceful, shapeless
+people. Finally they moved, the man turning suddenly, slipping an arm
+higher around the woman's shoulders, and putting his face down to hers.
+
+Then he drew her into the wood path, and they passed down it out of
+sight. Judith did not know who the woman was, but the man was Colonel
+Everard. And they had kissed each other.
+
+Now they were gone. Judith drew a deep breath of relief and stepped out
+into the enclosure, pacing across it with slow steps, possessing it for
+her own and dismissing alien presences. There was a high-backed marble
+erection between the benches, which looked like a memorial to the dear
+departed, but was designed for a chair. She seated herself there
+deliberately, leaning back, at ease somehow in the unfriendly depths of
+it, a slender, uncompromising creature, like a young princess sitting in
+judgment on her throne.
+
+They had kissed each other. She knew they did things like this, but now
+she had seen it, which was different, and not very pleasant. But they
+were all so old. Did it really matter whether they kissed each other or
+not?
+
+"Stupid old things," said Colonel Everard's only authorized critic, "I
+don't care what they do."
+
+Here in the quiet of the garden you were free to think about more
+interesting things than the Everards or even fairy princes.
+
+"Stupid," repeated Judith absently, and forgot the Everards. The moon,
+far away but very clear, shone down at her in an unwinking,
+concentrated way, as if it were shining into the Colonel's garden and
+nowhere else, and at nobody but Judith. She did not look disconcerted by
+the attention, but stared back at it with eyes that were not sleepy now,
+but very big and bright--wondering, but not afraid.
+
+On still nights like this you could just hear the church clock strike
+from the garden, but you could not count all the strokes. Judith
+listened for the sound. It was early, and out here, in the cool, still
+air, it felt early, though the time had passed so slowly in the
+Colonel's sleepy rooms. She could hear no music from the house. They
+would soon begin to put out the bridge tables. There was always a chance
+that they would need her to complete a table, but if they did not, the
+Colonel's car was to take her home at nine.
+
+And the Colonel's youngest guest had further plans for the evening.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+
+"That will be all, Miss?"
+
+"Yes," said Judith, with unnecessary emphasis. "Oh, yes, indeed!"
+
+The Everards' car turned and flashed out of the drive and up the street.
+Judith stood still on the steps and watched it, if a young lady with her
+breath coming fast and her eyes shining bright in the dark, and her
+heart beating unaccountably hard can be said to be standing still. One
+light burned forlornly over the entrance of the inn. Light was Judge
+Saxon's one extravagance, and plenty of it was waiting for him in the
+house next door, though it would be two before any one left the
+Everards' but Judith.
+
+The house before her was dark, and the dimly lighted street was
+profoundly still, with the heavy and brooding stillness that comes upon
+village streets after nine and is to be found nowhere else in the world.
+Judith did not seem depressed by it. Somewhere on a side street solitary
+footsteps echoed hollow through the silence, and she listened intently,
+but they came no nearer, and presently died away. She fumbled excitedly
+with her key, threw open the door, and groped her way across the
+unlighted hall. She encountered the telephone table prematurely,
+clutched it, and laughed a high-keyed, strange little laugh.
+
+"Who's there?" demanded a voice from the stairs, disconcertingly close.
+The lights, switched suddenly on, flashed into Judith's eyes, and Norah
+confronted her, peculiarly forbidding in a discarded cape of Judith's
+and her own beflowered best hat.
+
+"Oh, it's you," she said.
+
+"Who did you expect? Anybody else? Did--anybody come?"
+
+"I expected you a half hour ago."
+
+"What made you wait for me?"
+
+"Didn't you want me to?"
+
+"Nana, of course, but if your sister is sick and needs you----"
+
+Norah listened to this irreproachable sentiment suspiciously. "It's late
+to go," she said.
+
+"I'll walk up with you if you're frightened."
+
+"You! Can you unhook that dress?"
+
+"Yes. I'm going to bed pretty soon. I'm awfully sleepy."
+
+"There's some ginger ale on the ice."
+
+"I can get it open myself. Did anybody come?"
+
+"A boy you know."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"You're too anxious to know, and too anxious to get rid of me.
+And you're acting nervous."
+
+"I'm not. I'm just sleepy."
+
+Norah, her grimmest self, as she always was just before relenting, began
+to fumble with her hat-pins.
+
+"Let me help, if you really want to take off your hat. You'll spoil your
+beautiful roses. Darling, you look like your niece, the lovely Miss
+Maggie Brady, in that hat. Don't take it off. You're cross because you
+know where I've been. Well, they didn't eat me. I'm all here. It was
+Willard who came, and I don't care whether you tell me or not. And I
+don't want to get rid of you. And I love you and you love me, and you're
+not cross now."
+
+"If I love you, you've got need of it, then." Norah struggled
+perfunctorily, and permitted herself to be kissed. "Alone here till all
+hours of the night, and Mollie at the dance at the Falls, and your own
+mother----"
+
+"But you won't worry about me? And you'll go? And you'll go now, before
+it gets later, so you won't be frightened. You'll go this minute?
+And--oh, Nana----"
+
+Norah, departing by the front door because the back one was secured by
+an elaborate system of locks of her own invention, and operated only by
+herself, turned to give Judith a farewell glance of grim adoration.
+
+"Nana, was it Willard that came?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And not--anybody else?"
+
+"No."
+
+Norah, winding herself tightly into the cape in a way that converted
+that traditionally graceful garment into a kind of armour, disappeared
+up the street. When she was out of sight, and not until then, Judith
+slammed the door shut, laughing her tense, excited laugh again.
+
+Then, for a sleepy young woman, she began to display surprising
+activity. First she turned off all the lights in the hall but one, in an
+opalescent globe, over the front door, looked at the faintly lighted
+vestibule with a calculating eye, and turned that out also. She looked
+critically in at the library, close curtained for the night, and dimly
+lit by the embers of the wood fire, raked apart, but not dead. She
+pushed them together expertly, and added a stick, a little one, which
+would soon burn down to picturesque embers, like the rest. She pulled an
+armchair closer to the fire, pushed it away again, and dropped two
+cushions on the hearth with a discreet space between.
+
+The remains of Willard's last half-dozen carnations and a box of the
+eighty-cent-a-pound candy which only Mr. Edward Ward was extravagant
+enough to prefer to the generally popular fifty-cent Belle Isle, were
+conspicuous on the table, and Judith carried them into the next room,
+out of sight. Just then the telephone rang.
+
+Judith started, dropped the candy, ran into the hall, and stood looking
+down at the small instrument resentfully, as if it were personally to
+blame because she could not see who was calling her without answering
+and committing herself. Once she picked it up doubtfully, but finally
+put it down, still ringing intermittently, and hurried into the kitchen.
+She put a second bottle of ginger ale on the ice, brought a hammered
+brass tray and two glasses from the butler's pantry, then substituted a
+less ostentatious bamboo tray, hesitated, and then put them all away
+again.
+
+Now she went to her own room, turned on an unbecoming but searchingly
+clear toplight, and frowned at herself in the mirror, jerked out her
+hairpins, shook out her soft hair, and brushed and pulled at it with
+unsteady hands. In spite of them, the pale gold braids, rearranged,
+looked almost as well as before, if no better, and the heightened colour
+in her cheeks was charming. From a corner of her glove-case she produced
+the two cosmetics then in favour with the younger set in Green River,
+burnt matches, and a bit of scarlet ribbon, which made an excellent
+substitute for rouge if you moistened it. The ribbon was an unhealthy
+red, and looked peculiarly so to-night. Judith dropped it impulsively
+into her wastebasket, but experimented with the matches.
+
+She made both her delicately shaded eyebrows an even splotchy black,
+admired the result, then suddenly rubbed it off, turned away from the
+mirror without a backward glance, and ran down into the hall. The clock
+was just striking ten.
+
+Judith paused for one breathless minute at the library door, pressing
+both hands against her heart, then she went into the firelit room and
+made the last and most important of her preparations. She switched on
+the lights, toplights and sidelights and reading-lamp, all of them, went
+to the middle one of the three front windows, crushed the curtains back,
+and raised both shades high to the top, so that the light in the room
+looked out at the street from this window from sill to ceiling. Judith
+slipped quickly out of range of the window, dropped down on one of the
+cushions by the fire, and waited.
+
+She had fluttered through her little hurry of preparation excitedly, but
+now there was evidence of deeper excitement about the tense quiet of
+her, huddled on her cushion, small hands clasping silken knees, and
+brooding eyes on the fire. There was a dignity about her, too, in spite
+of her childish pose and a drooping grace that was almost a woman's.
+
+What she was waiting for was slow to come, but she did not seem
+disturbed by that. The hands of the clock above her seemed to move with
+the unbelievable quickness characteristic of clock hands when there is
+no other activity in the room, and she observed them calmly. Soon they
+pointed to the quarter hour, they passed it. She looked faintly worried
+then. The telephone rang again; she pressed her hands over her ears and
+shut her eyes tight, and did not answer. The stick on the fire burned
+low and she did not replace it. It parted and fell from the andirons
+with a dull noise that echoed loudly through the empty room. Judith
+started and jumped up, her eyes hard and bright, her hands tightly
+clenched.
+
+She eyed the clock threateningly, as if it were personally responsible
+for whatever disappointment she might be feeling, and she were daring it
+not to strike. It struck half-past ten in spite of her. Judith's mouth
+trembled childishly, and tears started to her eyes. They did not fall.
+Footsteps sounded outside. They turned into the drive. Judith stood on
+tiptoe and peeped at herself in the mantel mirror--her flushed cheeks,
+tumbled hair, and sparkling eyes. The steps crossed the porch, and she
+ran to the door and threw it open--the length of the chain, and no
+wider. She did not unbar the chain. On the threshold, with a substantial
+box of Belle Isle under his arm, stood Mr. Willard Nash.
+
+Judith regarded Mr. Nash and his Belle Isle with disfavour.
+
+"You can't come in," she said.
+
+Mr. Nash, who had been stooping to flick some dust from his boots,
+straightened guiltily. "Why?"
+
+"It's too late."
+
+"I've got to see you."
+
+"You do see me." A white dress, a face almost as white, and big, dark
+eyes were all he could see, but it seemed to be enough. He inserted a
+square-toed boot cautiously in the opening of the door.
+
+"I want to see you _about_ something."
+
+"What?"
+
+"A new comic song for the quartette. They won't let us do 'Amos Moss' at
+the Lyceum concert. That part about the red shirt is vulgar. The new
+one's close harmony. It will show off Murph's voice."
+
+"It's too late now. Go home, Willard."
+
+"But I brought you this."
+
+"Go home and eat it," suggested Judith.
+
+Willard turned scarlet, swung round, then changed his mind and inserted
+his foot in the crack of the door again, this time with a purposeful
+air. He was to develop into the type of man to whom an unpropitious time
+and place are an irresistible temptation to demand a show-down. It is a
+type that goes far, though it is not essentially popular. Judith sighed,
+then resigned herself.
+
+"Judy, I don't make you out."
+
+"You don't have to."
+
+"I do." Willard's voice was impressive, as even a fat boy's can be when
+he is in the grip of fate and conscious of it. "I do."
+
+"I'm sorry, Willard, dear," murmured Judith, with disarming sweetness,
+but he was not to be turned from his purpose.
+
+"Judy, are you going with me or not?"
+
+"Going with you?"
+
+"Don't be a snob. What else can I call it but going with me? I don't
+know any other way to say it."
+
+"Then don't say it."
+
+"You've got my class pin and I've got yours. I know there isn't anybody
+else. You let me call and take you places, but you won't let me----"
+
+"What?"
+
+Willard looked sheepishly down at his boots, then bravely up at Judith.
+"Put my arm round you at picnics. Kiss you good-night."
+
+Judith cut short this catalogue crisply.
+
+"Spoon?"
+
+This word was forbidden in the upper circles of the Green River younger
+set, and Willard looked pained, but collected himself.
+
+"We are the same as engaged," he insisted sturdily.
+
+He had forced an issue at last, but Judith evaded it, laughing softly in
+the dark.
+
+"Oh, are we?"
+
+"Aren't we?"
+
+"How do you know there isn't anybody else?"
+
+"Well, you won't look at Ed, and Murph don't count." Willard made this
+pronouncement lightly, though the adamantine rules and impassable
+barriers of a whole social order were embodied in it. "Murph that you're
+so thick with, all of a sudden. He's a bully fellow, all right, next
+captain of the team, probably. Good thing he's broken into the crowd a
+little way. Too bad he's Irish. Murph don't count."
+
+"No--no!" A sudden and poignant sweetness thrilled in Judith's voice.
+The tenor of the Green River High School quartette, not ordinarily
+sensitive to variations of tone in the voices of others, could not
+ignore it. The change had disturbed him vaguely. It seemed to call for
+some comment.
+
+"Judy, you look great to-night.... I'd do anything for you."
+
+"Then go home, Willard."
+
+"You haven't answered my question."
+
+"What question?"
+
+"Don't tease."
+
+"I honestly don't know."
+
+"You don't hear one word I'm saying to you."
+
+Judith laughed guiltily. "Then what makes you talk to me?"
+
+"Judith--are we the same as engaged?"
+
+Judith hesitated. "Kissing each other good-night--and all that--is
+silly. I don't want to. Only sometimes I want to, and then afterward I'm
+ashamed, and can't understand why. Willard, I don't want to grow up. I
+don't ever want to. I want things to stay just the way they are. They
+are--lovely. Oh, Willard----"
+
+She stopped, with tears in her eyes. There had been a real appeal in his
+earnest young voice, and she had done her best to answer it, painfully
+thinking out loud, with her heart in her words, making him an authentic
+confidence. But the confidence was off the point, and he ignored it,
+pursuing his subject with the concentration which will keep his sex the
+stronger one, votes for women or no votes for women.
+
+"Are you the same as engaged to me?"
+
+"Will you go home if I say I am?"
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"There isn't any such thing as being the same as engaged."
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Willard, forgetting himself in the heat of debate, had withdrawn his
+foot from the door. Judith, narrowly on the watch for this moment, now
+seized it, shutting him and his Belle Isle outside, and slamming the
+door in his face. He had gained his point, and would not linger. She
+heard him ring the bell once or twice in perfunctory protest, then put
+down his candy on the steps.
+
+"Good-night," he called cheerfully, through the flimsy barrier of the
+pseudo-Colonial door.
+
+"Good-night, Willard--dear!"
+
+Judith's voice was sweet, but indifferent, and her manner was
+indifferent, for a young lady who would have seemed, to a literal-minded
+person, to have materially affected her whole future life by this
+conversation. She did not watch Willard go. She turned and stood in the
+library door, smiling absently and humming a little snatch of a waltz
+tune. It was eleven now, but the hour had ceased to concern her, as if
+she had been watching the clock for Willard. Presently, as if she
+really had, she tossed the cushions back on the couch, drew the shades
+over the window, turned off the lights, and disappeared upstairs.
+Muffled sounds of a methodical but unhurried preparation for bed drifted
+faintly down, one last ripple of song, and then it was silent there.
+
+It was very still in the library. The stillness of the whole empty house
+and the moonless night outside seemed to centre there. The dying fire
+threw out little spurts of flame and made wavering shadows on the hearth
+as if Judith were still crouching there. The embers glowed as red as
+when she had been fire-gazing, but they did not show what it was she had
+seen in the fire. They kept her secrets as safely as she kept them
+herself; as youth must keep its secrets, inarticulate, dumb, because it
+sees into the heart of the world so deeply that if it were granted
+speech it would make the world too wise. What Judith had seen in the
+fire, what had really been in her heart when she talked to Willard in
+the groping and pitiful language of youth, the only language she had,
+the fire could not tell, and perhaps Judith did not know.
+
+It was still, and the tiniest sounds were exaggerated: a board creaking
+at the head of the stairs, and creaking again, the stair-rail creaking,
+the ghost of a faint little sigh; tiny and intermittent sounds, but the
+silence became a listening hush because of them: listening harder and
+harder. At last a sound broke it: the doorbell, rung three times, one
+long peal and two short.
+
+It was rung faintly, but loud enough. There was a soft hurry of
+slippered feet down the stairs, and a slender figure, tall in
+straight-falling draperies, slipped cautiously down and across the hall
+to the door, stopped and stood leaning with one ear pressed against it,
+silent and motionless, hardly breathing. The faint signal was repeated.
+Judith did not move.
+
+There was one more ring, a soft tapping, and then silence. Judith
+listened for a minute, then whistled softly, a clear little signal, one
+long and two short, like the signal ring. There was no answer. She
+pulled frantically at the chain, got it loose, and threw open the door.
+
+A boy was standing on the steps, a stolid, unmoving figure, looming
+deceptively tall in the dark. He did not step forward or greet her.
+Judith put out a groping hand and caught at his shoulder.
+
+"Is it you? Oh, I thought you had gone," she said. "I was watching for
+you upstairs."
+
+"I am going. I can't come in so late."
+
+"No, of course not."
+
+"Then what made you watch for me?"
+
+"I wanted to see if you came."
+
+"Well, I did come, and now I'm going."
+
+"You walked past the house five times."
+
+"Eight." The boy laughed shortly, and Judith's soft laugh echoed his.
+"Oh, what's the use? I'm going."
+
+"Don't you want to come in?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then what made you walk past the house?"
+
+"You know well enough."
+
+"I want you to tell me.... You can come in just five minutes if you want
+to."
+
+"I--you----"
+
+Judith caught her trailing draperies tighter round her, conscious that
+they were under observation. "It's not a kimono, it's a negligee. And
+you've seen my hair in braids before, when I played basket-ball. But you
+needn't come in unless you want to."
+
+"I don't."
+
+"You're not very nice to me. Willard tried to break in. Rena's been
+trying to get me by 'phone, to stay all night with me. You're not nice
+to me at all."
+
+His only reply was a kind of tortured groan, but she seemed content with
+it. Her voice grew compellingly sweet.
+
+"I want to talk to you."
+
+"Go on and talk."
+
+She huddled her draperies closer. "I'm too cold."
+
+"Go to bed then."
+
+"I won't. If you don't come in I shall stand here till mother comes.
+I'll probably get pneumonia."
+
+This threat evoked no reply.
+
+"Neil," the name was said as only names are said that are new and
+dear--not often used yet, but often dreamed over, but there was still no
+answer.
+
+"Neil, I'm awfully cold."
+
+"I don't care."
+
+"Oh, don't you?"
+
+"You know I do. You know---- Oh, Judith, won't you please let me go? I
+don't want to come in, I tell you."
+
+"But you're coming?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Yielding abruptly, he stepped into the hall beside her. Judith, suddenly
+silent, concerned herself conscientiously with the chain.
+
+"Don't stand there like that. I can't fasten this if you do," she said
+breathlessly.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Go into the library, and don't light the lights, if you're afraid of
+pigtails."
+
+"I'm not afraid of--anything."
+
+"Well--I'm not." With a reckless laugh, which made this comprehensive
+challenge to the world still more comprehensive, she followed him into
+the firelit room. Slender and straight in soft-falling white, her face
+flushed and sweet, framed between silvery gold braids, her eyes wide and
+challenging, she stood looking at him across the hearth.
+
+He faced her awkwardly but bravely, tall in the shadowy room, his face
+very white, his dark eyes catching the last rays of light from the dying
+fire. The two did not move or speak till he gave a sudden, shaken laugh.
+
+"You wanted to talk to me--talk." He smiled a quick flashing smile.
+Judith drew away from him and he followed. "Now you've got me here,
+can't you shake hands with me?"
+
+"Neil, be careful."
+
+"I'm doing the best I can," he said in a choked voice. "You shouldn't
+get me here. You shouldn't get me to a house by night that's not open to
+me by day."
+
+"But it is. Only they'll never let me see you alone, and I like to. I
+like to talk to you. It makes me feel--comfortable. Isn't it comfortable
+here?" Judith paused, overcome by an unaccountable difficulty with her
+breathing, but mastered it. "Comfortable and cozy? Aren't you glad you
+came in?"
+
+"Comfortable!" He laughed, came two steps nearer to her, and
+stopped stiffly. Judith, disposing her soft, silky draperies daintily,
+observed him in silence from a big chair which she had taken possession
+of rather abruptly, faintly smiling.
+
+"Don't look at me like that," he commanded.
+
+"Like what? Sit down--over there, Neil. Isn't it cozy? Willard's got a
+new song that----"
+
+"Willard!"
+
+"Don't be cross. We--haven't very much time."
+
+"Judith, where is this getting us? We're not children. Won't you talk
+straight to me? You ought to leave me alone, or talk straight."
+
+"Please don't be cross."
+
+"Cross!" He came across the hearth and stood close before her, awkward
+no longer, but splendid with youth in the firelight, his dark eyes
+shining.
+
+"You knew I'd come, no matter how hard I tried not to?"
+
+"Yes," Judith breathed.
+
+"And you meant to let me in?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"And you know, if I come, if you let me, I can't help--can't help----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Oh, Judith!" He dropped on his knees beside her and hid his face.
+Judith did not touch the dark head that she could see dimly in the
+shadowy room, outlined against her cloudy white, but she leaned closer
+to it, her lips parting softly, her eyes wide and strange.
+
+"I don't want you to help it," she breathed.
+
+"But where will it get us?" pleaded a muffled voice.
+
+"I don't care." Her hand hovered over the dark hair, touching it with
+the wonderful, blended awkwardness and adroitness of first caresses.
+
+He brushed the butterfly touch away and raised his head and looked long
+at her, slipping both arms round her waist and holding her tight.
+
+"Will you always say that?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Oh, Judith!" Her sweet, flushed face was close above him now, eyes
+drooping, lips faintly apart, drawn down to his as gently and inevitably
+as tired eyes close into sleep. "Judith, some day you'll have to care."
+
+"Not yet. Neil, don't talk any more."
+
+"I--can't."
+
+"Then kiss me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+
+It was winter in Green River.
+
+The town, attracting Colonel Everard to it sixteen years before, newly
+prosperous, outgrowing its old lumbering days, with the ship-building
+industry already a thing of the past, with the power in the little river
+awaiting development, money in the small but thriving bank, and a new
+spirit everywhere, beyond the control of old leaders, too progressive
+for a provincial magnate's direction, had been in the interesting and
+dangerous condition of a woman ready for her next love affair; if the
+right man comes, she may live happy ever after, but even if the wrong
+man comes, a flirtation is due. Like a woman again, the town showed the
+strength of his hold on her in his absence; in winter, when the big,
+unfriendly house was shuttered and closed, the ladies of the inner
+circle wore out their summer evening gowns at mild winter gayeties,
+church socials, Village Improvement Society bridge parties, and the
+old-fashioned supper parties which the Nashes and Larribees and Saxons
+still ventured to give.
+
+Humble festivities which he would not have honoured with his presence
+lacked allurement because he was not in town and staying away from them.
+Great matters and small hung fire to await his deciding vote, from the
+list of books to be bought for the library to the chairmanship of the
+school board. Marking time and waiting for the Colonel to come home;
+that was what winter meant to most of Green River, but not to Judith
+Randall. Winter was a charmed time to her; the time when her mother did
+not care what she did. Freedom was always sweet, but this winter it was
+sweeter than ever before to Judith.
+
+She was never lonely now. Whispering groups in the dingy corridor of the
+old schoolhouse, or in that sacred spot, the senior's corner, a cluster
+of seats in the northwest corner of the assembly-room devoted by
+tradition to secret conclaves, though not distinguishable from the rest
+of the seats in the room to uninitiated eyes, drew her in without
+question, slipping intimate arms round her waist.
+
+Attempts at informal gatherings in the Randall drawing-room were
+failures, chilled by brief but devastating invasions of Mrs. Randall
+with a too polite manner and disapproving eyes. But wherever the crowd
+drifted after school hours, Judith drifted, too, or was summoned by
+telephone, by imperative messages, vague, and of infinite
+possibilities:
+
+"Judy, this is Ed. There'll be something doing to-night at our house.
+Bring your new dance records." Or, as the outer fringe of the younger
+set, jealously on the watch for snobbishness, but disarmed at last,
+claimed her diffidently but eagerly, new names at which her mother
+raised her eyebrows appeared on her dance orders: Joe Garland, whose
+father kept the fish market, and Abie Stern, Junior, the tailor's son.
+"Is this Judith Randall? Well, Judith, this is Joe; Joe Garland. I'm
+getting up a crowd to go skating to-night, and have a rarebit afterward.
+Would you care to come?"
+
+She was one of the crowd. Natalie, little, sparkling-eyed, and
+black-haired, with the freshest and readiest of laughs, was more
+popular, filling her dance orders first and playing the lead in
+theatricals, and Rena Drew was more prominent, president of the class
+and the debating society, and the proud owner of the strongest voice in
+the school quartette, a fine big contralto which wrapped itself round
+Judith's small, clear soprano at public appearances and nearly
+extinguished it. Willard, the most eligible of the boys, was Judith's
+unquestioned property, otherwise nothing distinguished her. She was one
+of the crowd, and accepted the fact demurely, as if it were a matter of
+course, not a dream come true. Just as discreetly she conducted her
+affair with Neil Donovan, captain-elect of the team, literary editor of
+the school paper, star debater, and in his way a creditable conquest, if
+she had cared to claim him openly.
+
+"Neil danced three dances with me," confided Natalie, in the hushed
+whisper appropriate to the confidences that were part of the ceremony of
+spending the night together after a party, though Natalie's room, with
+the old-fashioned feather bed, where the two were cuddling together, was
+on the third story of the rambling white house, and safe out of hearing.
+
+"Neil?"
+
+"Judy, it's too bad to call him Murph and make fun of him. The day he
+came into the store to solicit ads for the _Record_ father said that boy
+would go far, if he had half a chance, but no boy had a chance in this
+town, the way it is run, and no Irish boy ever did have a chance. Well,
+an Irish boy is just as good as anybody, if they only thought so."
+
+"But they don't."
+
+"Judy, you are horrid about Neil. You always are about any boy I get
+crushed on. Neil has perfectly beautiful eyes, and he is so sensitive.
+He kept looking at you all through that last schottische as if you had
+hurt his feelings. He must have gone home soon after that. I didn't see
+him again. You didn't dance with him once."
+
+"No."
+
+"Poor boy. And he's up there in the schoolhouse with you, hour after
+hour, practising quartette stuff, and Willard so crazy about you he
+can't see, and Rena crazy about Willard----"
+
+"Rena can have Willard."
+
+Miss Ward was not to be diverted. "Neil's father did keep a saloon, but
+he died when Neil was a baby. His uncle that he lives with keeps a store
+at the Falls, and that's all right. His aunt took in washing, but his
+mother never did. Charles Brady does get drunk, but Maggie drives him to
+it. She's getting awfully wild. She's a perfect beauty, though, and I
+wish I had her hair. But Charlie's only Neil's second cousin. And Neil
+is so quiet and pleasant, not like that Brady boy that was in my sister
+Lutie's crowd; just as fascinating, but Neil doesn't take liberties."
+
+"I'm getting sleepy, Nat."
+
+"Judy, the way I feel about Neil, about Irish boys, is this: we can't go
+with them afterward, but while they're in school with us, they are just
+as good as we are, and we ought to give them just as good a time as we
+can. If you know what I mean."
+
+"I don't. I'm sleepy."
+
+"I'm not. I shan't shut my eyes." But Miss Ward did shut them. "Judy."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Judy, Abraham Lincoln split rails."
+
+"Cheer up. The Warren Worth Comedy Company is going to play at the Hall
+next week, and Warren Worth has perfectly beautiful eyes, too."
+
+"Not like Neil's."
+
+"Go to sleep, Nat."
+
+But Judith did not go to sleep until after an hour of staring wide-eyed
+into the dark, and she did not confide to Natalie or any one what had
+happened in the intermission after the schottische.
+
+"You act restless," Willard complained to her then. "You hardly looked
+at me all through the encore."
+
+"I'll look at you now, but get me some water first," she directed, and
+having disposed of him, slipped out alone into the dim and draughty
+corridor. Odd Fellows' Building, the centre of various business
+activities by day, looked deserted and forlorn at night, when the suites
+of offices were dark and closed, and the hall where they danced, gayly
+lighted and tenanted, was a little island of brightness in the
+surrounding dark.
+
+"Neil," Judith called softly, "Neil, where are you? I saw you come out
+here. I know you're here." The corridor was empty, but several office
+doors opened on it, and on one of them she saw Charlie Brady's name. She
+knocked at it. "You're in there. I know you are. Let me in." She tried
+the door, found it unlocked, and opened it. The room was dark, faintly
+lighted by the street lamps outside the one uncurtained window, where he
+sat with his head in his hands, huddled in a discouraged heap over
+Charlie Brady's desk. Judith came and perched on it triumphantly.
+
+"Running away?" she said.
+
+"It's all I'm good for."
+
+"Look at me."
+
+"I thought you hadn't any dances free."
+
+"I haven't. This is Willard's."
+
+"Go back to Willard.... What did you come here for?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Don't you?" He looked up now, with magic in his eyes and voice, the
+strange magic that came and went, and when it left him Judith could
+never believe it would come again. But it was here. With a little sigh
+she slipped off the desk and into the arms he held out for her, closing
+her eyes.
+
+"I didn't want to dance with you," she whispered; "not with all those
+lights, and before those people."
+
+"No, dear."
+
+"I can't stay very long. They'd miss me."
+
+"I'll let you go when you want to."
+
+"I don't want to. I feel so comfortable--all sleepy, but so wide-awake.
+I never want to go."
+
+Judith, remembering this moment until she carried it into her dreams
+with her, could not have shared it with Natalie. It was a dream already,
+to be wondered at and forgotten by daylight, as she stared across the
+schoolroom at Neil, not a romantic figure at all with his ill-fitting
+suit and his tumbled hair; forgotten until the next moment like it
+came--next in a lengthening series of dream pictures, of moonlight and
+candlelight and faintly heard music, a secret too sweet to share, a
+hidden treasure of dreams.
+
+Certain pictures stood out clearest. In one, she was skating with Neil.
+Willard was giving a chowder party at the Hiawatha Club. This imposing
+name belonged to a rough one-room camp with a kitchen in a lean-to and a
+row of bunks in the loft above, and a giant chimney, with a crackling
+blaze of fire to combat the bleakness of the view through the
+uncurtained windows--Mirror Lake. It was a failure as a mirror that
+day, veiled with snow, and the white birches fringing it showed bare and
+cold among the warm green of spruce and pine.
+
+The camp was built and owned and the canoes and iceboats kept in repair
+in the boathouse, and the cook maintained and replaced when he left from
+loneliness, all by a syndicate with Judge Saxon as president. Forming it
+was one of the last independent social activities of the town before the
+Colonel took charge.
+
+It was bad ice-boating to-day. The wind was fitful, and the boat, a
+graceful and winged thing in full flight, dragged heavily along, looking
+the clumsy makeshift box of unpainted boards that it was. It was a day
+to be towed along on your skates with one hand on the boat. Judith and
+Neil had tired of this and fallen behind.
+
+Close together, but not taking hands, they swung slowly through the
+unpeopled emptiness, leaving a tiny scattering of tracks behind, the
+blue-white ice firm under their feet through a light film of snow. The
+ice-boat was out of sight, the sprightly and unexpurgated ballad of
+"Amos Moss," rendered in the closest of close harmony, could be heard no
+longer, and a heavy silence hung over the lake. The camp lay far behind
+them, a vanishing speck.
+
+"Neil, take me back," Judith directed suddenly.
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Please. I want some pop-corn.... Neil, I don't like you. You won't
+talk. You're queer to-day."
+
+He did not answer. They cut through the ice in silence. It was rougher
+here. They were near the north end of the lake. There was open water
+there to-day, black water into which a boat might crash and go down; it
+made the water under them seem nearer to Judith, black water with only
+the floor of ice between. She shivered, and Neil broke the silence
+abruptly, his eyes still straight ahead.
+
+"Judith."
+
+"Oh, you can talk then?"
+
+"Judith--do you love me?"
+
+"Don't be silly." Judith spoke sharply. Days at the camp were always a
+trial to her. The crowd, bunched together in a big hay-rack mounted on
+runners, started out noisy and gay, like a party of children, singing,
+groping for apples in the straw, and playing children's games. But at
+night, slipping home under the moon to a tinkle of sleigh-bells, covered
+with rugs two by two, a change would take place: arms would slip around
+waists that yielded after perfunctory protest; in the dark of the woods
+there would be significant whispering and more significant silences;
+Willard would be unmanageable. Judith saw this with alien eyes because
+of Neil, and dreaded it. This that was between them was so much more
+beautiful, not love-making, not real love, only a strange, white dream.
+
+"You don't, then? You don't love me?"
+
+"We're too young."
+
+He did not argue the point. His silence had made her lonely before, now
+it frightened her. She slipped a hand into his, warm through its clumsy
+glove.
+
+"Cross hands. Don't you want to?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But I want to. I'm tired. How limp your hand feels. Hold my hands
+tighter. Neil----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"You don't mind--what I said just now?"
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"That about not loving you."
+
+"That?" He laughed a bitter, lonely sort of laugh, as if she were
+talking about something that happened a long time ago. "You had to say
+it. It's true. I knew it well enough. I just thought I'd ask you."
+
+"Do you want me to very much--want me to love you?"
+
+"Don't talk any more about it."
+
+"Neil, suppose I should marry Willard?"
+
+"I suppose you will."
+
+"You won't mind too much?"
+
+"What call would I have to mind? Who am I? What am I?"
+
+He laughed again, the same hard and bitter laugh, and struck out faster,
+gripping her hands hard, so that it hurt, but looking away from her
+across the dead, even white of the trackless snow. There was a pain not
+to be comforted or reached in his beautiful eyes. It had nothing to do
+with her.
+
+"Neil, wouldn't you care at all?" she said jealously.
+
+"Care?"
+
+"If I married Willard?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"Neil, do you love me?"
+
+He did not answer or seem to hear, and now Judith gave up asking
+questions. Carried along at his side in silence, she listened to the
+muffled creak of the skates on the snow-covered ice, hushed by the
+steady and sleepy sound of it, half closing her eyes. His left arm was
+behind her shoulders now, to support her, and she could feel it there,
+warm and strong. Breathing when he breathed, her heart beating in time
+with his, swinging far to right and left, tense with the stroke or
+yielding deliciously in the recovery, caught in the rhythm of it as if
+some force outside them both were carrying them on like one, and not
+two, and would never let them go, Judith yet felt far away from him.
+
+She was alone in the heart of a snow-covered world, but she was growing
+content to be alone. She looked up at his white, set face with wide and
+fearless eyes, while the lure of unexplored and unseen ice invited them
+all around, and the gray and brooding sky shut them in closer and
+closer.
+
+"Neil," she said softly, not caring now whether he answered or heard, "I
+wish we needn't ever go back. I love to-day."
+
+Not long after this Judith and Neil went snow-shoeing one Saturday
+afternoon by special appointment, an epoch-making event for them. Judith
+did not often walk with him or take him driving when the sleigh was
+entrusted to her. She was not often seen with him. With quartette
+practice and committee work for the dramatic club and other official
+pretexts for the time they spent together, Willard was not jealous yet,
+though the winter was almost over, and the treasury of dreams was
+filling fast.
+
+But this time she made an engagement with Neil as openly as if he were
+Willard, while Natalie listened jealously. She started with him openly
+from the front door, with her mother's disapproving eyes upon them from
+the library window, and Neil proudly carrying her snowshoes, all
+unconscious of the critical eyes. The afternoon began well, but no
+afternoon with Neil could be counted upon to go as it began. Two hours
+later, when they emerged from the Everard woods into the Colonel's
+snow-covered rose garden, they had quarrelled about half a dozen
+unrelated subjects, all equally unimportant in themselves, but suddenly
+important to Neil, who now found further matter for debate.
+
+"What did you bring me in here for?"
+
+"Didn't you know I was?"
+
+"How should I know? I'm no friend of Everard's. I don't know my way
+through his grounds."
+
+"What makes you call him Everard, without any Colonel or Mr.? It sounds
+so--common."
+
+"It's good enough for me. Here, I don't want to go near his house. I
+hate the sight of it."
+
+"But you can't go back by the path. It's too broken up." Judith plunged
+into the dismantled rose arbour. "Come on, if you don't want to see the
+house, take my hand and shut your eyes."
+
+"That's what Green River does," Neil muttered darkly, "shuts its eyes."
+But he followed her.
+
+"The Red Etin's castle," Judith announced; "you know, in the fairy tale:
+
+    "The Red Etin of Ireland,
+        He lived in Ballygan.
+    He stole King Malcolm's daughter,
+        The pride of fair Scotlan'.
+    'Tis said there's one predestinate
+        To be his mortal foe----
+
+Well, you talk as if the Colonel were the Red Etin, poor dear. Oh, Neil,
+look!"
+
+Sinister enough, looming turreted and tall against a background of
+winter woods, its windows, unshuttered still, since the last of the
+Colonel's week-end parties, and curtainless, catching the slanting rays
+of the afternoon sun and glaring malignantly, the house confronted them
+across the drifted lawn.
+
+In the woods that circled the house, denuded of undergrowth, seeming
+always to be edging forlornly closer to the upstanding edifice for
+comfort because it was barren and unfriendly, too, the new-fallen snow
+lay shadowy and soft, clothing the barrenness with grace. Giant pine and
+spruce that had survived his invasion stood up proud and green under the
+crown of snow that lay lightly upon them, as it had lain long ago,
+before the Colonel came. And between woods and house, erasing all trace
+of tortuous landscape gardening, flower-bed and border and path, as if
+it had never been, lay a splendid, softly shining sweep of blue-white
+snow. The Colonel's unbidden guests forgot their quarrel and plunged
+eagerly across the white expanse.
+
+"Catch me," Judith called, but it was Neil, snatching off her toboggan
+cap by its impudent tassel, who had to be caught. It was heavy and
+breath-taking work on the broad, old-fashioned snowshoes which she
+managed with clumsy grace. Judith, short-skirted and trim in fleecy
+white sweater, collar rolled high to the tips of small, pink ears, blond
+curls blowing in the wind, pursued ardently. Neil evaded her like a lean
+and darting shadow, hands deep in the pockets of his old gray sweater,
+cap low over his brooding eyes.
+
+Under the unrelenting glare of the Colonel's windows, and across the
+deserted grandeur of his lawn, the two small and dishevelled figures
+dodged and doubled and retreated, only to grapple and trip each other up
+at last at the foot of the veranda steps, and collapse there, breathless
+and laughing. But their laughter died quickly, and Judith, pulling the
+recovered cap over her wind-tossed curls, watched the brooding gloom
+come back into Neil's eyes as he settled into a sulky heap on the step
+below her.
+
+Her quarrels with Neil were as strange as her beautiful hours with him,
+fed by black undercurrents of feeling that swept and surprised her,
+flaming up suddenly like banked fires. She was hotly angry with him now.
+
+"Neil, I heard what you said about Green River shutting its eyes. It was
+foolish."
+
+"I'd say it to his face." Neil flashed a black look at the bland and
+elegant drawing-room windows, as if he could talk to the Colonel through
+them. "I've got worse than that to say to Everard."
+
+"Then say it to me. Don't hint. I'm tired of hearing you. You're as bad
+as Norah."
+
+"You wouldn't understand."
+
+That is the irresistible challenge to any woman. Judith's eyes kindled.
+Neil slouched lower on the steps, dropping his head in his hands.
+"Everard," he threw out presently, "has bought the Hiawatha Club Camp."
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+"The club was in debt. That's a bad thing for a club or a man to be, if
+the Colonel knows it. And it's a worse thing for a woman."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+He did not explain or raise his head. "I've got a job for the summer
+vacation," he said presently.
+
+"Already? Fine."
+
+"Oh, fine. In the fish market--tend store, drive the cart. And I'm fired
+from the _Record_, Judith."
+
+"Fired?"
+
+"They're going to take on one more man, and pay him real money."
+
+"But you've got the Green River Jottings to do for the Wells _Clarion_."
+
+"And I may get two dollars a month out of it."
+
+"Did you see Judge Saxon again?"
+
+"Last week."
+
+"Why didn't you tell me what he said?"
+
+"I told you what he would say."
+
+"Oh, Neil!"
+
+"The Judge hates to say no, that's why he took time to think it over.
+He'd be a bigger man if he didn't hate to say no. He was right to say no
+to me."
+
+"Then I wouldn't admit it."
+
+"What's it worth to read law in a country law office? The time for
+that's past. He's right. And suppose he took me on, what would it do for
+me? Look at Charlie. Doing hack work and dirty work to pay the rent of a
+place to drink himself to death in. He's got brains enough. He knows law
+enough. He's slaved and starved and got ready for his chance, and his
+chance don't come. Why? Because he's Charlie Brady. Well I'm Neil
+Donovan. I'm Irish, too, what they called me the first time I saw you--a
+paddy."
+
+"That's not the Colonel's fault."
+
+"Who do you think gets the _Record_ job?"
+
+Judith shook her blond head, disdaining to answer, a gathering storm in
+her eyes.
+
+"Chet Gaynor--Mr. J. Chester Gaynor. Lil Burr's brother. Her prize
+brother, the one that's been fired from three prep schools. Everard got
+him a scholarship at the last one."
+
+"Why not? He ought to help his friends. He's a kind man and lots of fun.
+It's not his fault if you don't get on. It's your own fault. You don't
+have to work in a fish market if you don't want to, or sit there and
+sneer at a man who doesn't care what you think of him. Abraham Lincoln
+split rails----"
+
+Judith stopped, amazed. Quite abruptly Neil had ceased to sit on the
+steps and sneer. He was on his feet, hands clenched, thin body tense and
+dangerous, face dead white and eyes blazing, as Judith had never seen
+him before, or only once before, too angry for words, but not needing
+them.
+
+"Neil, do you really hate him? Hate him like that? I never thought you
+meant it. But why--what has he done?"
+
+"Care what I think? If I was any one else--your fool of a Willard--any
+one in this town but me, I'd make him care."
+
+"He's done nothing wrong. Neil, don't. Your eyes look all queer. You're
+frightening me."
+
+"No, he's done nothing wrong, nothing you could get him for. He's too
+careful. He plays favourites. He fools women. He locks the door to every
+chance to get on in this town and he sells the keys. He's got his hand
+on the neck of the town, and he's shutting it tighter and tighter.
+That's all he does. That's all Everard does."
+
+"You can't prove it."
+
+"He takes good care I can't."
+
+"You can't prove a word of it."
+
+"Your father could."
+
+"He's kind to father. He's kind to me."
+
+"You talk like a child."
+
+"Well, you talk like my mother's cook.... Oh, Neil, I didn't mean to say
+that. Forgive me. Where are you going? I didn't mean to say it."
+
+"Let me go."
+
+"You're hurting me."
+
+"I hate you! You're one of them--one of the Everard crowd. I hate you,
+too!"
+
+"What are you going to do?" Her short, panting struggle with him over,
+her wrists smarting from the backward twist that had broken her hold on
+him, she leaned against the veranda rail breathless and stared with
+fascinated eyes. When this quarrel had gone the way of their other
+quarrels, atoned for by inarticulate words of infinite meaning,
+justified by the keen delight of reconciling kisses, Judith was to keep
+one picture from it: Neil as she saw him then, standing over her
+white-faced and angry, ragged and splendid, Neil as she had seen him
+once before.
+
+"May-night!" she cried. "You look the way you did that May-night. I'm
+afraid of you."
+
+"Everard!" He turned from her, and looking at the windows again as if
+the Colonel were behind him, swung back his arm, and sent it crashing
+through the glass of the nearest one--once and a second time. "Oh, you
+don't want me to call him Everard. Colonel Everard!"
+
+"Neil, I'm afraid."
+
+He looked at the fragments of broken glass and at Judith scornfully, but
+the angry light was fading out of his eyes already, the magic light;
+against her will she was sorry to see it go.
+
+"Are you hurt? Did you hurt your hand?"
+
+"What do you care if I did? Don't be afraid, Judy. He can pay for a pane
+of glass or two. He wouldn't care if I burned his house down. Nobody
+cares what I do. I'm a paddy."
+
+Awkward, suddenly conscious of his snowshoes, he shuffled across the
+matched boards of the Colonel's veranda and down the steps, turning
+there for a farewell word:
+
+"I'm going. Don't cry. I'm not worth it. I'm a paddy, from Paddy Lane."
+
+Dream pictures, pleasant or sad, making her cheeks burn in the dark, or
+little secret smiles come when Judith recalled them. Some lived in her
+heart and some faded. Judith did not choose or reject them deliberately.
+They chose or rejected themselves, arranging themselves into an
+intricate pattern of growing clearness. She did not watch it grow. It
+was only when it was quite complete that she would see it, but it was
+growing fast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+
+"You'll find the coffee pot on the back of the stove. I'm washing out a
+few things," said Mrs. Donovan.
+
+Though she kept her five little nephews and nieces in dark-patterned
+dresses or shirts, as the case might be, and encouraged her brother
+Michael to wear flannel shirts, and even limited her eldest niece,
+Maggie Brady, clerking in the Green River Dry Goods Emporium now,
+instead of helping her father in his little store at the Falls, to three
+white waists a week, she was usually washing out a few things.
+
+The contending odours of damp clothes and rank coffee were as much a
+part of the Brady kitchen as the dishes stacked in the sink for Neil to
+wash, or the broken-legged, beautifully grained mahogany card table in
+the warm corner near the stove, where his school books were piled, a
+relic of his dead father's prosperous saloon-keeping days, or the view
+of Larribee's Marsh through the curtainless windows with their torn
+green shades.
+
+The swampy field was the most improvident part of an improvident
+purchase--a brown, tumbledown house, wind swept and cold,
+inconveniently far from the settlement at the Falls and the larger town,
+heavily mortgaged, and not paid for yet, but early on sunny spring
+mornings like this the field was beautiful; level and empty and green,
+the only monotonous thing in that restless stretch of New England
+country, billowy with little hills, and rugged with clumps of trees. A
+boy could people the sunlit emptiness of the field with airy creatures
+of folk-lore, eagerly gleaned in a busy mother's rare story-telling
+moments, or with Cæsar's cohorts marching across it, splendid in the
+sun, if he had eyes for them. The only boy who ever had regarded the
+familiar, glinting green of the field with unkindled eyes to-day as he
+sat finishing his lukewarm breakfast. Yet it was Saturday morning, that
+magic time, the last Saturday of his last spring vacation, and he had
+only one more term of school before him.
+
+On this Saturday morning he had an unpleasant errand to do, and he was
+carefully dressed for it, just as he had been dressed for the Lyceum
+declamation contest and ball the night before, but not so effectively,
+for his best black suit showed threadbare in the morning sun, and the
+shine on his shoes was painstakingly applied, and a heavy, even, blue
+black, but they needed tapping. His brown eyes had a big, rather hungry
+look that was unquestionably picturesque, and Miss Natalie Ward would
+have approved of it, if his mother did not, watching him as she trailed
+in and out of the room.
+
+"Making out all right? Don't hurry," she said.
+
+"I'm in no hurry to get there," agreed her son.
+
+"He won't say no to you. He never has yet, and he likes you."
+
+"Oh, he won't say no. Nothing new will happen to me in this town; not
+even that."
+
+Neil's mother paused, balancing her clothes basket against one hip, and
+deftly favouring the string-mended handle, then put it heavily down, and
+leaned on the table and looked at him--a small, tired, pretty woman,
+with gray, far-away eyes that were like no other eyes in Green River,
+and a smile like Neil's.
+
+"Tired?" she said.
+
+"Dog tired."
+
+"Well, you were out till three."
+
+"One. That was Maggie you heard at three. Where was she?"
+
+"That's her business."
+
+"It's Charlie's, if he's going to marry her."
+
+"It's not yours, then. Never mind Maggie. Your uncle and I had a talk
+about you last night."
+
+"Why don't you ask to see my dance order?" He made a defensive clutch
+at his pocket as if she had, and quick colour swept into his cheeks. She
+watched it, and watched it fade, leaving his face tired and sullen, and
+too old for its years. "Uncle!"
+
+"He's been like a father to you."
+
+"I've been two sons to him, then. He's worked me like two. If he grudges
+the time I take off, I can make it up to him. There's been little enough
+of it, and there'll be little more, and there's been little enough
+enjoyment in it, and I'm not ashamed of it. Why don't he spy on his own
+daughter, if he's curious? Why----" This outburst ended as suddenly as
+it began, in a short, sullen laugh as he pushed his empty cup away. "Dan
+thinks he can land something for me with the telephone company. I
+couldn't send money home at first, but I'd be off your hands. Tell that
+to Uncle."
+
+"Would you be with Dan, in Wells?"
+
+"Somewhere outside Wells. It won't be too gay. You needn't be afraid
+I'll go to too many dances."
+
+"Don't glare at me. I'm not your uncle."
+
+"Sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me."
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+He flushed, laughed, and ignored the question, producing a small box and
+offering it. "I got that last night. Don't wipe your hands. They're good
+enough to handle it wet." A gold medal glittered in her hand. He
+observed it without enthusiasm, and noticing that, his mother shut the
+box abruptly.
+
+"Neil, that's the first prize."
+
+"Looks like it. I spoke the Gettysburg address, and they always fall for
+that. Good-bye, I'm off."
+
+"Neil, come back here."
+
+He swung round with his cap doubled under his arm, and stood before her,
+helpless and sullen, hedged about with that sudden dignity which no
+woman creature can break through, but seeming to derive no comfort from
+it. Painful colour mounted to her cheeks, as if the effort of keeping
+him there was all she could manage without the effort of opening
+delicate subjects.
+
+"Neil, I'm worried about you."
+
+"Why? Are you afraid I'll marry beneath me? I won't marry without your
+consent. It's not being done."
+
+"You got three dollars from the _Clarion_ last week."
+
+"Are you afraid I'll try to support a wife on it?"
+
+"It's the most you've made from them. Why weren't you proud of it? Why
+aren't you proud of this prize? A year ago you'd have had me up at one
+to speak your piece to me. There's no life in you, and no pride, and I
+know why."
+
+"Me with so much to be proud of."
+
+"You're good enough for any girl, but----"
+
+"Do you think I don't know my place, with the whole town teaching it to
+me going on eighteen years? I've got no false hopes, and I shan't lose
+my head over any girl. Let me be."
+
+"It's not the town that's taught you your place, it's----"
+
+"Don't you say her name."
+
+"--empty headed and overdressed."
+
+"Go on. Judith Randall don't care what you think of her."
+
+"Can't you even get up enough spirit to stand up for her? You that
+thought you had your fortune all but made when you got the chickens paid
+for, and followed me round the house, telling me how you'd run the town?
+You that could tell what was wrong with the _Record_ editorials, if you
+couldn't pay for a year's subscription to the paper? You----"
+
+"Yes, I come from one of the five lines in Ireland what have a right to
+the O', but you never tell me that unless you've got something else to
+tell me that you're afraid to tell. What is it this time?"
+
+"You come of Irish kings."
+
+"What did Uncle say last night?"
+
+"Well, he's getting to be an old man."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+His mother did not reply. She avoided his eyes, and made no further
+criticism of him, or of a young lady who was no doubt as indifferent to
+her criticisms as Neil said, since she did not recognize Mrs. Donovan on
+the street.
+
+"Uncle," Neil decided deliberately, "wants me to help in the store. I
+can't go to Wells."
+
+"He can't get on alone now Maggie's gone. We need your board money to
+run the house at all. Dan was wild to get away from Green River, but in
+two years he's got no farther than Wells, and ten dollars a week. I know
+we ought to leave you free to start yourself, if we can't give you a
+start, but----"
+
+"Is that all you want to tell me?"
+
+She put out an unaccustomed arm and pulled him awkwardly close. He came
+obediently, and patted her shoulder stiffly but did not kiss her. "I
+know what this means," she asserted, and showed a rapidly forming
+intention of crying on his shoulder. "It hurts me like it does you."
+
+[Illustration: "'_I know what this means,' she asserted_'"]
+
+"It don't hurt me. I ought to have seen it myself. I ought not to have
+planned to go. It's all right, mother. Is that all?"
+
+"All? It's enough. I was awake half the night planning to break it to
+you."
+
+"You broke it all right. I'll be going." He shook out his crushed
+cap, and adjusted it with dignity, looking at her calmly out of
+impenetrable eyes, like a young prince ending an audience, with more
+power behind him than he knew, kissed her gravely on the cheek with cool
+young lips, and opened the door, and walked off into the sunshine.
+
+"It's the girl," said his mother, but not until the door had closed
+behind him. "No girl is good enough to do what she's done to you." Then
+she selected the frilliest of Maggie's blouses, which had dried while
+she talked, and spread it on the ironing table to sprinkle again.
+
+Neil did not look like a young man crossed in love, or a young man with
+his future wrecked by a word. He did not give a backward glance to the
+little brown house with the sun on its many-paned windows, or seem to
+hear the children's voices from the old barn behind the house--the
+favourite refuge of the little Bradys when they were banished from the
+kitchen--that echoed after him in the clear morning air, shrill and then
+fainter as he left the place behind.
+
+He had settled into his usual pace for this familiar walk--a steady
+stride that you could fit the unmanageable parts of a Latin verb to the
+rhythm of, or the refractory words of a song; but it was not a usual
+day. It was the first warm day of that April, warmer already, with the
+goading urge of spring in the softening air that frets and troubles with
+new desires and a sense of unfitness for them at once, and will not let
+you be. The road, fringed with scattering trees, and wind-swept and
+bleak on winter days, was golden with new sunlight, spongy underfoot,
+but drying under your eyes in the morning sun. The boy's brooding face
+did not change as he walked, but his shoulders straightened themselves,
+and lost their patient look, and his lean young body gave itself more
+gayly to the swing of his pace and looked strong and free, alive with
+the unconscious strength of youth that must be caught and harnessed to
+make the wheels of the world go round before it can be taught what its
+purpose is.
+
+Whether it troubled him or not--his face did not tell--all that his
+mother had hinted was wrong with his world, and more. No outsider had
+ever won a place like Neil's in Green River High School society so far
+as the unwritten history of it recorded. Charlie Brady in his time, and
+Dan after him, had been extra men at big dances, hard worked and
+patronized in school entertainments, more intimate with the boys than
+the girls. Charlie, deep in a secret love affair with Lil Gaynor, had
+still called her Miss in public, and treated her as respectfully as he
+did now that the affair was forgotten and she was Mrs. Burr and one of
+the Everard circle. Charlie and Dan had only looked over impassable
+barriers. Neil had been really inside--included in small, intimate
+parties, like week-ends at Camp Hiawatha, openly favoured by Natalie, if
+not Judith--inside and he would soon be shut out.
+
+There were new signs of it every day. The long, friendly winter, when he
+had been safe in that intimate fellowship, was over. The girls were
+planning their gowns for college commencement dances. Willard came back
+from a week-end at the state university pledged to a fraternity there
+and refusing to discuss minor subjects. God-like creatures in amazing
+neckties condescended to visit him, and Natalie was beginning to collect
+fraternity pins. Rena and Ed were engaged, and under the impression that
+it was a secret, and a place was being made for Ed in the bank. In one
+way or another, the world was opening to all of them, and closing to
+Neil.
+
+And with the spring, the Everards had come back to Green River. The big,
+over-decorated house had not been open a week, but already they pervaded
+the town. Their cars whirled through the splashing spring streets, and
+ladies not upon Mrs. Everard's calling list peered at the passengers to
+see who was in her favour. The Colonel was turning the Hiawatha Club
+into a private camp, and closing it to the town, but nobody protested
+much. He was ordering a complete set of slip covers from the furniture
+department of Ward's Emporium, and the daring group of prominent
+business men who ventured to assail the Colonel's political views and
+private morals sometimes in the little room at the rear of the store
+lacked support from Ward. Neil had the run of the store and hung about
+and listened, but never contributed. Whether these criticisms were
+justified or not, the Everards were back again.
+
+Judith had given up the Lyceum dance for the first of the Everard
+dinners the night before. It was three days since Neil had seen her, and
+he was to see her to-day, but he was showing no impatience for the
+meeting. The end of the world, not the beginning of it, that was what
+spring would mean to him, and that is a graver catastrophe at eighteen
+than at eighty. The boy who was facing it had passed the outlying
+straggle of houses, and had come to the edge of the town, and to the end
+of the long, hilly street that led down past the court-house, straight
+into Post Office Square, the heart of the town. It was still empty of
+traffic at ten, and looked sunny and empty and clean, wide-awake for the
+day. He took his hands out of his pockets, stopped whistling "Amos
+Moss," and hurried down Court-house Hill, stepping in time to the tune
+of it.
+
+A mud-splashed Ford clattered down Main Street, and drew up in front of
+the post-office as Neil reached it with a flourish that would have done
+credit to a more elegant equipage than this second-hand one of the
+Nashes. Two elegant young gentlemen, week-end guests of Willard's and
+duly presented to Neil the night before, ignored his existence, perusing
+a gaudily covered series of topical songs with exaggerated attention on
+the rear seat of the car, but Willard greeted him exuberantly:
+
+"Ah, there, Murph. You don't look like the morning after. Sorry I
+haven't got room for you. We've got other plans. We love the ladies."
+
+"I'm tied up, anyway. So long."
+
+Willard's tone was too patronizing, but he was not to blame, for the
+days when they would exchange intimate greetings at all were numbered.
+As Neil left them one of the elegant guests demanded audibly:
+
+"Who's your friend?"
+
+Neil flushed but did not look back. He had an errand to do in the few
+minutes before his appointment with Judge Saxon. He crossed the street
+to Ward's store.
+
+Ward's Dry Goods Emporium, three stores in one, and literally three
+stores bought out one by one, and joined by connecting doors, though
+they could never be united in their style of architecture, was rather
+dark and chaotic inside, though a brave showing of plate glass across
+the front advertised its prosperity. Luther Ward himself, in his shirt
+sleeves, was looking over a tray of soiled, pale-coloured spats,
+assisted by a tall, full-bodied girl with a sweet, sulky mouth, and a
+towering mass of blue-black hair.
+
+"Hello, Donovan, what's new?" he said, with only a shade more
+condescension than Willard, and distinctly more friendliness.
+
+"Nothing, sir," said Neil with conviction.
+
+"You want to talk to Maggie, here. I won't intrude on a family quarrel,"
+said Mr. Ward, and chuckling heartily at his own mild joke, as he
+generally did, and few others did, disappeared into the furniture
+department, the central one of the three stores, and his favourite. The
+two cousins regarded each other across the tray of spats as if the
+family quarrel were not a joke, but an unpleasant reality.
+
+"You can't come here and take up my time," stated Miss Brady.
+
+"Your time is pretty full--evenings, too. Do you know where Charlie was
+last night?"
+
+"I don't care."
+
+"You ought. He's your second cousin, and goes by the same name as you,
+if you're not in love with him. He was in Halloran's billiard hall."
+
+"If he can't keep himself out of the gutter, I can't keep him out,"
+stated Miss Brady logically.
+
+"Well, don't push him in," her cousin advised, but the light of battle
+had died out of his eyes, leaving them listless. "It's nothing to me. I
+only came to bring you this."
+
+He produced something from an inner pocket and tossed it on the counter,
+something wrapped in a twist of newspaper, which parted as the girl bent
+eagerly over it, something which shone and twinkled alluringly, as she
+straightened it out with caressing fingers and held it up to the
+light--a little necklace of rather ornate design and startling colours,
+crimson stones and green and blue, the gayest of toys.
+
+"Seems to be yours all right."
+
+His cousin, who seemed to have forgotten his existence for one rapt
+moment, remembered it with a start. "Did you show this to your mother?"
+she asked sharply.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, she don't like to have me spend my money on imitation jewellery."
+Miss Brady delivered this very natural explanation haltingly.
+
+"Do you?"
+
+One of the sudden, vivid blushes which had helped to establish her
+reputation as a beauty overspread Miss Brady's cheek. "I missed it this
+morning and didn't have time to hunt for it, and I was worried. I don't
+want to show it to her. It cost a good deal."
+
+"It must have. They say a ruby's the only stone you can't imitate."
+
+"What do you mean?" Miss Brady's cheeks grew still redder. "Why don't
+you save your big talk for Saxon? You may need it. Why don't you mind
+your own affairs, and leave mine alone?"
+
+"Leave that on the kitchen floor for mother to find and sweep up in a
+broken dust-pan, or one of the kids to show to your father?"
+
+"Why not? Haven't I got a right to do what I want with my own money?
+Haven't I got a right to do what I want with myself? Who are you to
+dictate to me, with the Randall girl making a fool of you? Why----"
+
+"That will be all." Though Miss Brady's voice had been threatening to
+make itself heard throughout all the three stores in one, she stopped
+obediently, looking defiant but frightened, but when her cousin spoke
+again the ring of authority which had shocked her was gone from his
+voice.
+
+"Don't be scared. It's nothing to me what you do, and I shan't talk too
+much. You know me, Mag."
+
+"No, I don't, not lately. You act doped, not half there. I can't make
+you out. If you think--if you suspect----"
+
+"I don't. It's nothing to me. I'm due at Saxon's. Put your glass beads
+away before Ward sees them. Good luck to you."
+
+Miss Brady, standing quite still in one of her carefully cultivated,
+statuesque poses, watched her cousin cross the street and disappear into
+a narrow and shabbily painted doorway there. Then she took his advice,
+and producing a red morocco wrist bag from under the counter, shut the
+necklace into it with a vicious snap, as if she did not derive so much
+pleasure as before from handling it now.
+
+Her cousin climbed the three flights of stairs to Judge Saxon's office.
+The stairs were dingy and looked unswept, and a pane of glass in the
+door of the untenanted suite across the landing from the Judge's was
+broken. Nothing about the Judge's quarters indicated that he was Colonel
+Everard's attorney, a big man in the town before the Everard régime, and
+under it--an unusual combination. His office was shabby outside and in.
+The lettering on the door, Saxon and Burr, Attorneys-at-Law, looked
+newer than it was by contrast, and it was still only six months old.
+Theodore Burr had his delayed junior partnership at last.
+
+The Judge's young client did not pause to collect himself on the worn
+door-mat, as he had done when he first came here on errands like this.
+They were an old story to him now, and so were scenes like the one with
+Maggie, which he had just come through so creditably. He looked quite
+unruffled by it, calm as people are when they have no troubles to
+bear--or when they have borne all they can, and are about to find relief
+in establishing the fact. He knocked and stepped inside.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+
+
+A fire in the air-tight stove in the corner had taken the early morning
+chill from the room and been permitted to burn out, now that the morning
+sun came in warm through the dusty windows, but the room was still close
+and cloudy with wood smoke. At a battered, roll-topped desk in the
+sunniest window Mr. Theodore Burr was struggling with the eccentricities
+of an ancient Remington, and looking superior to it and to all his
+surroundings, but the Judge was nowhere to be seen.
+
+Mr. Burr was a very large, very pink young man, with blond hair which
+would have looked too good to be true on a woman, and near-set,
+green-blue eyes which managed to look vacant and aggressive at the same
+time. He was wearing a turquoise-blue tie which accentuated their
+effectiveness, and he occupied himself ostentatiously with the Remington
+for quite three minutes before he turned his most vacant and aggressive
+look upon his client.
+
+"Well, Donovan?" he said.
+
+Mr. Burr's manner was as patronizing as Mr. Ward's with the
+friendliness left out, but his client was not chilled by it.
+
+"Theodore, where's the Judge?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Burr." The pink young man turned two shades pinker as he made the
+correction. "The Judge is engaged."
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+Mr. Burr laughed unpleasantly and held up his hand. From the other side
+of a door labelled private--misleadingly, for the Judge's little
+sanctum, where half the town had the privilege of crowding in and
+tipping back chairs and smoking, was the nearest approach to a clubroom
+that the town afforded, now that the Hiawatha Club was no more--muffled
+voices were faintly audible.
+
+"You can talk to me," said Mr. Burr.
+
+"I can, and I can go away and come back when he's not engaged. He said
+he'd see me."
+
+"He's changed his mind. He don't want to see you. I know all about your
+case."
+
+"You've learned a lot in six months."
+
+"Talk like that won't get you anything, Donovan, here or anywhere else,"
+remarked Mr. Burr, reasonably, if somewhat offensively. Admitting it,
+his client dropped into one of the Judge's big office chairs, and sat
+there, fingering his cap as he talked, and looking suddenly beaten and
+tired.
+
+"You're right, Theodore. Well, what's all this you know about my case?"
+
+"Mike Brady sends you here begging when he's ashamed to come himself.
+It's hard on you, Neil."
+
+"My uncle's too busy to come. Is that all you know?"
+
+"I know what you want to-day, and you can't have it."
+
+"What do I want?"
+
+Mr. Burr's manner had become alarmingly official, but his client
+continued to smile at him, and to fold and unfold his cap methodically.
+
+"An extension of time on your uncle's mortgage. The principal is due the
+first of next month. You've kept the Judge waiting twice for the
+interest, the security is insufficient, the bank holds a first mortgage
+on the house, and for fourteen months your uncle has made no payment to
+the Judge whatever."
+
+"Don't rub it in, Theodore."
+
+"This is no laughing matter. Business is business," stated the junior
+partner importantly.
+
+"More like charity, with the Judge, but Uncle isn't holding him up for
+much this time. Uncle's getting on his feet. The Judge never expected
+him to, and I didn't, but the automobiles help. Maggie served tea before
+she went to Ward's, and he's going on with it. His luck has turned.
+He's got the money to pay this year's interest and half the back
+interest that's due, but he wants to keep it and put it into
+repairs--the roof wants shingling, and if we could fix up the storeroom
+for a place to serve tea and ice-cream we could double trade. Then, next
+year----"
+
+"We've heard too much about next year, Donovan."
+
+"Don't get tragic, Theodore. This is a new proposition. I'll go into
+figures with the Judge and prove it to him--don't want to waste them on
+you. But he won't be sending good money after bad this time, like he's
+done too many times. I'm as glad for him as I am for Uncle."
+
+"It can't be done."
+
+"Nonsense, Theodore. I won't wait to see the Judge now, but you tell
+him----"
+
+"It don't make any difference what I tell him. The Judge has made up his
+mind, and he won't change it. You can take it from me as well as him.
+You won't get another dollar of his money, and you won't get another
+month's extension of time. We're done with you."
+
+"I almost believe you mean that, Theodore."
+
+"As I said, the house is insufficient security, but for the sake of the
+dignity of the firm we must protect ourselves----"
+
+"I believe you mean it, and the Judge gave you authority to say it."
+
+"We must go through the form of protecting ourselves and----"
+
+His client laughed. "You don't mean the Judge wants to take over the
+house. That's 'Way Down East stuff. If money's tight with him, we'll pay
+the interest and manage some way, though I don't see how. But the house
+would be no good to him if he took it, and he wouldn't take it if it
+was. I know the Judge. Don't let your imagination get away with you,
+Theodore."
+
+"I'm sorry for you, Donovan."
+
+"You think he's going to take it?"
+
+"I know he is."
+
+"You mean that," his client decided slowly, "and you've got the Judge's
+authority for it, too."
+
+"Take it quietly. It's the best way," urged the junior partner
+helpfully.
+
+"I understand that's your motto, Theodore," said his client, and
+proceeded to take his advice, sitting quite still in the Judge's big
+chair, and fixing a clear-seeing but unappreciative gaze upon the
+immaculate folds of Mr. Burr's turquoise-blue tie. He took the advice
+too literally. The silence grew oppressive and sinister, and as if he
+found it so, Mr. Burr broke into a monologue, disjointed, but made up
+of irreproachable sentiments.
+
+"This is hard on your uncle, Neil, and it's hard on you, but it may be
+the best thing in the end. He's been hiding behind you too long. A
+business that can't stand on its own feet deserves to fail. He can start
+new and start clean. The Judge has been a good friend to you----"
+
+"Don't explain him to me. You don't own him, whoever else does,"
+interrupted the Judge's protégé softly.
+
+"What do you mean? If you don't think you're getting a square deal, say
+so."
+
+"Do you want me to weep on your shoulder, Theodore?"
+
+"The Judge is your friend, and," Mr. Burr added handsomely, "I'm your
+friend, too."
+
+His client arose briskly, as if encouraged by this. "Theodore, you don't
+want to tell me what's back of your turning me down?" he asked. "No, I
+thought not. Well----"
+
+"I'm your friend," repeated Mr. Burr, generously if irrelevantly, and
+this time without effect. His client had crossed the room without
+another glance at him, and had his hand on the knob of the Judge's
+office door. His manner still had the composure which Mr. Burr had
+advocated, but his face was very pale, ominously pale, and his brown
+eyes were changed and bright, dangerously bright. To imaginative eyes
+like Mr. Burr's he must have looked suddenly taller.
+
+Mr. Burr was facing an unmistakable crisis, with no time to wonder how
+long it had been forming, or why. He hurried after the boy and caught
+him fiercely if ineffectively by the arm.
+
+"You can't go in there," stated Mr. Burr arbitrarily, all logic
+deserting him. "You can't. You don't know----"
+
+"Oh, I'm not going to knife the Judge," his client explained kindly.
+"I'm only going to find out what's back of this."
+
+"Take it quietly," was the ill-chosen sentiment which suggested itself
+to Mr. Burr. Neil Donovan swung round angrily, and paused to reply to
+it, with fires which the somewhat negative though offensive personality
+of the pink young man could never have kindled alight in his brown eyes.
+
+"Quietly? There's been too much of that in this town. I'm sick of it.
+The only friend I've got who hasn't got one foot in the gutter goes back
+on me for no reason at all, the first time I ask a favour of him that
+don't amount to picking his pockets. The only big man in this rotten
+town who's halfway straight since Everard turned the town rotten begins
+to act like he wasn't straight. What's back of it? I'm going to know.
+Get out of my way, Theodore."
+
+"You don't know who's in there."
+
+"I don't care. I'm going to know." Disposing of the hovering and anxious
+intervention of Mr. Burr, and throwing the door open, he slammed it in
+the pink young man's perturbed face, and stepped alone out of the
+sunshine into the Judge's dim little inner office.
+
+The Judge's friendly littered little room was not so inviting in working
+hours as it was in the hospitable hours of late afternoon. It was like a
+woman seen in evening dress by daylight. But the boy who had invaded it
+so hotly unmasked no conspiracy here. The men at the table near the one
+window, with a pile of official but entirely innocent looking papers
+between them, had every right to be there. They were the Judge and
+Colonel Everard.
+
+The great man looked quite undisturbed by the boy's invasion, glancing
+up at him indifferently from the papers that he was turning over with
+his finely moulded, delicately used hands; he even looked mildly amused,
+but the boy turned to him first instinctively, and not to the Judge, who
+was peering at him with troubled and kindly eyes over the top of his
+glasses.
+
+"I've got to speak to the Judge. I'm sorry."
+
+He stammered out his half-apology awkwardly enough, but the smouldering
+fires were still alight in his brown eyes, tragic fires of cowed and
+rebellious youth. The great man regarded him indifferently for a minute
+and then turned rather ostentatiously to his papers again.
+
+"Judge, I've got to speak to you alone."
+
+"You can't just now, son."
+
+"I've got to."
+
+"Why?"
+
+The Judge's kind, drawling voice was not quite as usual, and his blue,
+near-sighted eyes were not; they were wistful and deprecating, and
+rather tired, a beaten man's eyes, eyes with an irresistible appeal to
+the race that is vowed to lost causes, this boy's race. The boy stepped
+instinctively closer.
+
+"I don't blame you, sir, but I've got to understand this and know what's
+behind it."
+
+"Better go home before you say anything you'll be sorry for, Neil."
+
+"Why did you go back on me?"
+
+"You're taking a sentimental attitude about a business matter. It's
+natural enough that you should. I'm sorry for you, son."
+
+"Why----"
+
+The Judge drew himself up a shade straighter in his chair, and met the
+boy's insistent challenge with sudden dignity, kindly but judicial,
+peculiarly his own, but his flashes of it were not very frequent now.
+
+"Neil," he said deliberately, "I've got nothing to say to you alone.
+I've got nothing to say to you at all that Mr. Burr hasn't said. Is that
+quite clear to you?"
+
+It was entirely clear. The Judge had left no room for uncertainty or
+argument, and the boy did not attempt to argue or even to answer. He
+stood looking uncertainly down at the Judge, as if for the moment he
+could not see anything in the room quite distinctly, the Judge's face,
+with its near-sighted blue eyes and red-gold beard and thinning hair, or
+Colonel Everard's clear-cut profile.
+
+"Better go," said the Judge gently.
+
+"I'd better go," the boy repeated mechanically, but he did not move.
+
+Colonel Everard put down his papers deliberately, and favoured him with
+a glance, amused and surprised, as if he had not expected to find him
+still in the room, and was prepared to forget at once that he was there;
+a disconcerting sort of glance, but the boy's brown eyes met it
+gallantly, and cleared as they looked. They grew bright and defiant
+again, with a little laugh in the depths of them. The ghost of a laugh,
+too, lurked in the boy's low voice somewhere.
+
+"You're right, Judge. I'll go. I'm wasting my time here," he said,
+"asking you who's back of what you've done to me--when I know. I won't
+ask you again, but I'll ask you, I'll ask you both, who's back of
+everything that's crooked or wrong in this town? Little or big, he's
+back of it all; straight back of it, or well back of it, hiding his face
+and pulling the wires. He's to blame for it all, for he's made the town
+what it is.
+
+"He's got his hand on the neck of the town, and got hold of it tighter,
+gradual, so nobody saw it and knocked it off; tighter and tighter,
+squeezing the life out. He never made a gift to the town with one hand
+that he didn't take it back with the other. What the town gets without
+him giving it, he won't let it keep. The whole town's got his stamp on
+it, grafting and lying and putting up a front. The whole town's afraid
+of him. The Judge here, that's the best man in town, don't dare call his
+soul his own. Me, I'm afraid of him, too, and the only reason I dare
+stand up and say to his face what's said behind his back is because I've
+got nothing to lose. It's him, there----"
+
+"Don't, son," muttered the Judge tardily, unregarded, but Colonel
+Everard listened courteously, with a faint, amused smile growing rather
+stiff on his thin lips.
+
+"Him, that's too good to speak to me or look at me, sitting there
+grinning, and reading fine print, making out not to care, he's back of
+it all--him, Everard."
+
+The two men, who had heard him out, did not interrupt him now. It was
+only a passionate jumble of boyish words they had listened to, but
+behind it, vibrating in his tense voice, was something bigger than he
+could frame words to express, something that commanded silence; pain
+forcing its way into speech, long repression broken at last. The dignity
+of it was about him still, though his brown eyes flashed no more
+defiance, and he was only a shabby and hopeless boy walking uncertainly
+to the office door, and fumbling with the handle.
+
+"I'll go out this way," he said. "I've had enough of Theodore. And I've
+had enough of this place. I'll say good morning, gentlemen."
+
+In a prosaic and too often unsatisfactory world, which is not the stage,
+no curtain drops to relieve you of the embarrassment of thinking what to
+say next after a record speech; you have to step out of the limelight,
+and walk somewhere else. Neil Donovan, emerging from the ancient
+building which contained Judge Saxon's office into Post-office Square
+after a brief interval of struggling successfully for self-control in a
+dusty corridor little suited to such struggles, and not even ensuring
+the privacy which is wrongly believed to be necessary for them, had one
+more appointment to keep. He was late for it already. He glanced at the
+town clock and started off hurriedly to keep it.
+
+Back of Court-house Hill another street, starting parallel to Court
+Street, rapidly loses its sense of direction and its original character
+of a business street, wavers to right and left, past a scatter of
+discouraged looking houses, and finally slants off in the general
+direction of the woods at the edge of the town, and the abortive,
+sparsely wooded hill known to generations of picnickers--not the élite
+of the town, but humbler, more rowdy picnickers--as Mountain Rock.
+
+The street never reaches it, but loses itself in a grubby tangle of
+smaller streets, thickly set with small houses, densely and untidily
+populated, the section known at first derisively and later in good faith
+as Paddy Lane. Through the intricate geography of this quarter Colonel
+Everard's only openly declared enemy might have been seen making a hasty
+and expert way ten minutes later; quickly and directly as it permitted
+him to, he approached the base of the hill.
+
+Disregarding more public and usual ways of ascent, he struck straight
+across a stubbly field that lay behind a row of peculiarly forlorn and
+tumbledown houses into a path so narrow that it was hard to see until
+you were actually looking down it, between the twin birches that marked
+the entrance. He followed it to the base of the cliff itself. The belt
+of stunted birches and dusty-looking alders that skirted the cliff was
+broken by an occasional scraggly pine. The boy stopped under one of
+them, leaned against the decaying trunk, produced a letter, and read it.
+
+It was only a pencilled scrawl of a letter, on the roughest of copy
+paper, and so crumpled that he must have been quite familiar with it,
+but he read it intently.
+
+     "Neil," it ran, "I'll meet you Saturday, on top of Mountain Rock,
+     same time and place. I shan't see you till then. I don't want to.
+     You frightened me last night. I don't like you lately. Be nice to
+     me Saturday. JUDITH."
+
+Only a pencilled scrawl, but he knew every word of it by heart, and of
+the burst of excited speech in the Judge's office nothing remained in
+his mind but the general impression that he had made a fool of himself
+there. Perhaps he was too familiar with Judith's letter, for the sting
+he had found there at first was gone from the words. He looked at them
+dully.
+
+"I can't stand much more," he said aloud.
+
+He said it lifelessly, and with no defiance in his eyes, stating only a
+wearisome fact. He had seen the Colonel's face through a kind of red
+mist in the Judge's office, and felt reckless and strong. He did not
+feel like a hero now. He was tired.
+
+He would hardly have cared just now if you had told him that back in
+Judge Saxon's office two men who had not moved from their chairs since
+he left them, and who would not move until several vital points were
+settled, were discussing something he would not have believed them
+capable of discussing at such length and with so much feeling--the
+fortunes of the Donovan family.
+
+He did not care just now for the little sights and sounds of spring that
+were all around him, the cluster of arbutus leaves at his feet, the
+faint, nestling bird noises, sweeter than song, and the stir and rustle
+of tiny, unclassified sounds that were signs of the pulse of spring
+beating everywhere, of change and growth going on whether human beings
+perceived or denied it.
+
+"I can't stand any more," said the boy.
+
+Up the cliff to his right, strewn with pine needles that were brown-gold
+in the sun, a steep and tiny trail led the way to the top of the hill
+and his rendezvous. Now the boy crushed Judith's letter into his pocket,
+turned to the trail with a sigh, and began to climb.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+
+
+"They won't like it, Judith," said Mrs. Randall for the last time, as
+she slipped into her evening coat.
+
+"They? If you mean the Colonel----"
+
+"I do."
+
+Judith, looking up at her mother from the chaise-longue, could not have
+seen the radiant vision that she had adored as a child, when the spring
+and the Everards and the habit of evening dress all returned at once to
+Green River. Mrs. Randall's blue gown was the creation of a Wells
+dressmaker, but lacked the charm of earlier evening frocks, anxiously
+contrived with the help of a local seamstress, when the clear blue that
+was still her favourite colour had been her best colour, when there was
+a touch more pink in the warm white of her complexion, and before the
+tiny, worried line in her broad, low forehead was there to stay. But
+there was no reflection of these changes in her daughter's big, watching
+eyes.
+
+"It will do him good not to like it," said Judith sweetly.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, nothing, Mamma. Is that the carriage? Don't be
+late."
+
+Minna Randall looked down at her daughter in puzzled silence a moment,
+with the little line in her forehead deepening, then slipped to her
+knees beside her with a disregard for her new gown which was unusual,
+and put a caressing hand on her forehead, a demonstration which was more
+unusual still.
+
+"Your head does feel hot," she said, "but to stay away from a dance at
+your age, just for a headache----"
+
+"I went to one last night."
+
+"A high school dance!"
+
+"There won't be any more of them. You needn't grudge it to me." Judith
+buried her face in the cushions, and lay very still.
+
+"But the Colonel really arranged this for you. Dancing bores him. He
+said you ought to be amused."
+
+"He didn't say so to me."
+
+"Are you laughing? I thought you were crying a minute ago." Judith gave
+no further signs of either laughing or crying. "Judith, what does he say
+to you? When you went with him to look at that night-blooming flower
+with the queer name, last week, and were gone so long, what did he talk
+to you about? You heard me. Please answer."
+
+"He's a stupid old thing."
+
+"What did he talk about?"
+
+"I don't remember."
+
+"Judith," Judith's mother stood plucking ineffectively at her long
+gloves, and looking at the motionless white figure, very slender and
+childish against the chintz of the cushions, soft, tumbled hair, and
+hidden face, with a growing trouble in her eyes, "I ought to talk to
+you--I ought to tell you--you're old enough now--old enough----"
+
+Judith turned with a soft, nestling movement, and opened her eyes again,
+deep, watchful eyes that asked endless questions, and made it impossible
+to answer them, eyes that knew no language but their own, the secret and
+alien language of youth. Her mother sighed.
+
+"You're the strangest child. Sometimes you seem a hundred years old, and
+sometimes--you don't feel too badly to stay alone? Mollie would have
+stayed in with you, or Norah."
+
+"No. I would have gone, if I'd known you cared so much, but it won't do
+any good to make yourself late, Mamma. Father's calling," said Judith
+gravely. Still grave and unrelaxed, she returned her mother's rare
+good-night kiss, and watched her sweep out of the room, turning the
+rose-shaded night lamp low as she passed.
+
+There was a hurry of preparation downstairs, her mother's low, fretful
+voice and her father's high and strained one joined in a heated
+argument, and they started still deep in it, for her father did not call
+a good-night to Judith. The street door shut, and she was alone in the
+house. Carriage wheels creaked out of the yard and there was no
+returning sound of them in search of some forgotten thing; a long enough
+interval passed so that it was safe to infer that there would not be,
+but Judith lay as her mother had left her, as still as if her headache
+were really authentic, her questioning eyes on the rose-shaded light.
+
+There was much that might have increased her mother's concern for her in
+her face, if you could interpret it fully; sometimes the eyes suggested
+a fair proportion of the hundred years her mother had credited her with,
+sometimes there was dawning fear in them, and sometimes an inconsequent,
+gipsy light; sometimes her soft lips trembled pitifully, and sometimes
+they smiled. Always it was a lovely face, rose flushed and eager in the
+rosy light, and always something was evident which was enough to account
+for her mother's concern and for more concern than her mother was
+capable of feeling; Miss Judith Devereux Randall was growing up.
+
+Whatever questions occupied her answered themselves in a satisfactory
+way at last, even an amusing way, for her smile had come to stay and
+her eyes were dancing, when she jumped up from the chaise-longue at
+last, turned on more lights, opened closets and bureau drawers all at
+once, dropped various hastily chosen and ill-assorted articles on the
+immaculate counterpane of her bed, and began to dress.
+
+She dressed without a glance into the mirror, and without need of it, it
+appeared, when she stood before it at last, pulling a left-over winter
+tam over rebellious curls which she had made no attempt to subdue. She
+had buttoned herself hastily into the dress she had taken off last, a
+tumbled organdy, and thrown a disreputable polo coat over it, white like
+the cap, but of more prehistoric date, but on her slender person these
+incongruous garments had acquired a harmony of their own, and become a
+costume somehow. It might not have withstood a long or critical
+inspection, but it was not subjected to one. Youth, in its divinely
+suited garb of white, regarded itself with grave eyes for one breathless
+minute, flushed and coquetted with itself for another, and then was gone
+from the mirror. Judith turned off the lights and stole out of the room,
+and downstairs.
+
+There was nothing in the dark and empty house to frighten her. It must
+have been fear of whatever was before her that made her slip so softly
+across the hall, and tremble and stand still when the door chain
+rattled. The door was open at last. With a soft, inarticulate gasp of
+excitement, she stepped out into the May night.
+
+Colonel Everard had an ideal night for the little dance in his garden,
+warm, but with a quiver of new life in the air. The May moon was in its
+last quarter, but lanterns were to supplement it. But the Colonel's
+guest of honour, pausing at the corner of Main Street and looking
+sharply to left and right, and then turning quickly off it, found very
+little light on the narrow and tree-fringed cross-street through which
+she was hurrying now but the moon.
+
+It hung slender and pale and low above the ragged row of little houses,
+and seemed to go with her through the dark, but she took no notice of
+its companionship. The street was deserted, and the tap of her little
+heels sounded disconcertingly loud in the emptiness of it as she hurried
+on, turning from the narrow street into a narrower one.
+
+This street had only one real end; pending the appropriation needed to
+carry it straight through, witheld by agencies which could only be
+connected by guess with Colonel Everard, it led feebly past a few houses
+which were nearly all untenanted and looked peculiarly so to-night, to a
+clump of alders at the edge of an unpenetrated wood lot, where it had
+paused. Just in front of it the girl paused, too.
+
+Her small, white-coated figure was only dimly to be seen in the dark of
+the street; the group in the shadow of the trees was harder to see, but
+it moved; a horse pawed the ground impatiently, the boy in the buggy
+leaned forward and spoke to him. Then Judith started uncertainly toward
+him, and spoke softly, in the arrogant phrasing of lovers, to whom there
+is only one "you" in the world:
+
+"Is that you?"
+
+"Is it you?" the boy's voice came hoarse through the dark. "I thought
+you weren't coming. I waited an hour for you yesterday on the Rock."
+
+"I couldn't help it. I oughn't to be here now, and I almost didn't come,
+but I thought we'd have to-night. Neil, you hurt my hand. Be nice to
+me."
+
+She was standing close beside him now, and they could see each other's
+faces, white and strange in the dark, but the boy's looked whiter, and
+his breath came oddly, in irregular gasps. He held both her hands in
+his, but he did not bend down to her, nor kiss her.
+
+"What makes you look so queer? I don't like you. Be nice to me." There
+was something terribly wrong with the smug little phrases, or with any
+words at all just then, there in the heart of the silent dark, and
+facing the strangeness of the boy's eyes; words failed her suddenly, and
+she pulled her hands away, and hid her face in them. "I won't go with
+you--I'll go home, if you aren't nice to me--if----"
+
+"You can't go home now." There was something in the boy's voice that was
+like the fierce clasp of his hands, something from which it was not so
+easy to escape. "It might be better if you hadn't come, better for both
+of us, but you can't go back now. It's too late. Yes, we'll have
+to-night. Get in, Judith."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN
+
+
+"Get in, Judith."
+
+"I won't go. You can't make me."
+
+The boy did not answer or move. Boy and buggy and horse--Charlie Brady's
+ancient chestnut mare, not such a dignified creature by daylight, but
+high shouldered and mysterious now against the dark of the grove--might
+all have been part of the surrounding dark, they were so still, and
+Judith's little white figure was motionless, too.
+
+Judith stood looking up at the boy for one long, silent minute. Such
+minutes are really longer than other minutes, if you measure them by
+heartbeats, and how else are you to measure them? Strange, breathless
+minutes, that settle grave questions irrevocably by the mere fact of
+their passing, whether you watch them pass with open eyes or are
+helpless and young and vaguely afraid before them; helpless, but full of
+the untaught strength of youth, which works miracles without knowing how
+or why.
+
+"Get in," said the boy, very softly this time, so that his voice just
+made itself heard through the dark; it was like part of the dark,
+caressing and hushed and secret, and not to be denied. With a soft
+little laugh that was attuned to it, Judith yielded suddenly, and
+slipped into the carriage beside him, drawing the robe tight round her,
+and settling into her corner, all with one quick, nestling motion, like
+a bird perching.
+
+"Where are we going?" she said rather breathlessly, "Hurry. Let's go a
+long, long way."
+
+"All right. Don't be frightened, Judith."
+
+"Frightened?"
+
+He did not answer. Charlie's horse, debarred from its destined career by
+bad driving, that broke its wind in its first race, but of sporting
+ancestry and unable to forget it, especially when Charlie's adventures
+in the Green River under-world cheated it of exercise too long, was
+remembering it now, and bolting down the hilly little street, settled at
+last into a jerky and tentative gait with the air of accepting their
+guidance until it could arrange further plans, but remembering its
+ancestry still.
+
+"Splendid," Judith breathed. "Keep off Main Street."
+
+"Yes."
+
+The ancient vehicle, well oiled, but rattling faintly still, swung
+alarmingly close to one street corner lamp-post and then another. Judith
+nestled almost out of sight in her corner. Neil leaned forward,
+gripping the reins with an ungloved hand that whitened at the knuckles,
+his dark eyes looking straight ahead. His brooding eyes and quiet mouth,
+and even the whiteness of his face had something unfamiliar about them,
+something that did not all come from the unhealthy light of the street
+lamps, something strange but unaccountably charming, too. Judith had no
+eyes for it just then.
+
+"This is silly. I ought not to have come. Who's that?"
+
+"Nobody. Just a tree. Sit still. We'll go under the railroad bridge and
+out over Grant's Hill. There won't be any more lights."
+
+"It looked like some one."
+
+"What do you care?"
+
+"It looked like your cousin Maggie."
+
+"She's at home in bed. She was tired to-night."
+
+"Oh. Well, it looked like her. It was silly to come. I never shall come
+again."
+
+As if this were not a new threat, or had for some reason lost it terrors
+to-night, the boy did not contradict her. They had left track and
+railroad bridge behind now, darker blots against the surrounding dark,
+with the lights of the station showing faintly far down the track. They
+were passing the last of the houses that straggled along the
+unfashionable quarter above the railroad track. Most of the houses here
+were dark now. In the Nashs' windows the last light puffed suddenly out
+as they went by.
+
+Down in the town behind them other sleepy little lights were burning
+faintly, or going out, but ahead of them the faintly moonlit road looked
+wide-awake. It was an alluring road. It dipped into wooded hollows, it
+broke suddenly into arbitrary curves and windings but found its way out
+again, and kept on somehow, and gradually lifted itself higher and
+higher toward the crest of the hill five miles away that you reached
+without ever seeming to climb it, to be confronted all at once with the
+only real view between Wells and Green River.
+
+"I used to think Grant's Hill was the end of the world," said Judith
+softly. "Maybe it is. It's funny I can say things like that to you, when
+you only laugh and won't answer. Listen. Isn't it still, so still it
+almost makes a noise."
+
+It was very still. You could feel the pulse of the night here. There was
+a whisper and stir of life in the rustling trees when the road crossed
+some belt of woods; there was a look of blind, creeping life about the
+clustering shadows in stretches of moonlight, and the low-hanging moon
+above the dark fields they passed was a living thing, too, the most
+alive of all. Judith stirred in her corner, and turned and looked at
+it.
+
+"It's sweet," she said. "And it's ours. It's still May. But we can't
+wish on the moon now; it's too late. And I don't want to wish, I'm so
+comfortable. Aren't you? Well, you needn't answer, then, and you needn't
+hold my hand." She had felt for a hand that avoided hers. With a sleepy,
+satisfied laugh, like a petted kitten purring, she settled herself
+again, with her head against an unresponsive shoulder, and pulled an
+unresponsive arm round her waist.
+
+"You aren't as soft as the cushions--not nearly. You're pretty hard, but
+I like you. I was afraid to come, but now----"
+
+"Now what?"
+
+"There's nothing to be afraid of. I'm so happy. There's nobody in the
+world but you and me. Neil, I'm going to sleep."
+
+"All right. Shut your eyes, then, and don't keep staring at me. What
+makes your eyes so bright?"
+
+[Illustration: "'_Shut your eyes_'"]
+
+"You."
+
+"Shut your eyes."
+
+"All right. Nobody but you and me."
+
+They were really alone in the world now, alone in the heart of the
+night. Their little murmur of talk, so low that they could just hear it
+themselves, had been such a tiny trickle of sound that it did not quite
+break the silence, and now it had died away. Asleep or awake, the
+girl was quite still, with her cheek pressed against the boy's shoulder,
+and her long-lashed eyes tight shut. The horse carried them over the
+moonlit road at a rate of speed that did not seem possible from its
+strange, loping gait. The effect of it was uncanny.
+
+Boy and girl and queer, high-shouldered horse, darkly silhouetted in the
+moonlight, lost to sight in the shadows of tall trees that looked taller
+in the dark, and then coming silently into view again, were like dim,
+flitting shadows in the night; like peculiarly helpless and
+insignificant shadows, restless and purposeless. The moon, soft and far
+away and still, seemed more alive than they did, and more competent to
+adjust their affairs.
+
+They required adjusting. That was in the watching brightness of the
+girl's eyes, fluttering open once or twice, only to close quickly again,
+in the tenseness of the boy's arm around her, in the set of his
+shoulders and lift of his stubborn young chin, in the very air that he
+breathed uneasily, the soft, disturbing air of the May night. It was not
+a boy and girl quarrel that was before them: it was something more. It
+was the strangest hour that had come to them in their secret treasury of
+strange hours that were touched with the glamour of black magic and
+swayed by laws they did not know. It might be the darkest hour. It was
+the test hour.
+
+There is no sure and easy way through such hours. If they faced theirs
+unprepared and afraid, so must the rest of the world, the part that is
+older and counted wiser. But this could have been no comfort just then
+to the boy and girl in the antiquated buggy, under the untroubled gaze
+of the wishing moon.
+
+They were almost on the crest of the hill now. One long, upward slant of
+road led straight to it, bare of trees, and silvery in the moonlight. At
+the foot, and just at the edge of a thick belt of woods, the boy pulled
+up as if to rest his horse for the gradual ascent. At his left, hardly
+visible at all to-night unless you stopped your horse to look for it, a
+narrow and overgrown road led off through the trees. Tightening the arm
+that held her cautiously, the boy looked down at the face against his
+shoulder, the faint, half-smile on the lips, and the lightly closed
+eyes.
+
+The girl did not move. Her cap had slipped off, and one small, bare hand
+clutched the fuzzy white thing tight, as a sleeping child's hand might
+have closed on some favourite toy. Her hair showed silvery blond and
+soft against his dark coat. With a quick, hungry motion, the boy dropped
+his head and kissed it lightly. Then, gripping the reins with a
+firmness that no present activity of the animal called for, he left
+Green River's only noteworthy view without a backward glance, and turned
+his horse into the road through the woods.
+
+For the next few minutes he had no attention to spare for Judith,
+suspiciously quiet in his arms. He could not see her face. It was black
+dark under the trees, dark as if it had never been light. The track was
+wider than it looked, but also rougher. The trees grew close. Branches
+that he brushed aside sprinkled dew into his face. The buggy creaked out
+vain protests and useless warnings. Finally moonlight showed at the end
+of the black tunnel, and the horse, which had been encountering its
+difficulties in resourceful silence, made a faint, snorting comment
+which sounded relieved, and presently, with unexpected jauntiness, swung
+into the road again.
+
+It was technically a road, and it was the wreck of a very good road, but
+it was not in much better shape than the track they had reached it by.
+Aspiring amateurs had sketched it and camera fiends haunted it in their
+day. It was Colonel Everard's favourite bridle path, which naturally
+prevented repairs upon it. But before the railroad went through it had
+been Green River's only link with a wider world. Now a better built but
+more circuitous road had replaced it, designed for motoring. No motors
+ever penetrated here, and few carriages. It was left to the ghosts of
+ancient traffic, if they ventured here. The glancing moonlight under the
+close-growing trees might have been full of them to-night.
+
+But the boy was not looking for ghosts or interested in the history of
+the road or its charm, as he hurried his high-shouldered horse along it,
+still responding jauntily. He squared his chin more stubbornly than
+ever, and muttered encouragingly to the horse, and reached for his
+battered whip. Round this corner, beyond this milestone, the stage
+drivers used to make up time when the mail was late. A generous mile of
+almost level road curved ahead of Neil into the moonlight, a fairly
+clean bit of going even now. Judith and Neil were on the old coaching
+road to Wells.
+
+Neil reached for his whip, but did not take it out of the socket. A
+small hand closed over his. The head on his shoulder did not move, but
+dark eyes, watchful and deliberate, opened and looked up at him quietly.
+
+"Now," said a cool little voice, "you can take me home."
+
+"You're awake?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Then why----"
+
+"I waited to see where you were going, and what you were going to do,"
+explained Judith simply. They were covering the banner stretch of road
+at a rate the old stage drivers had never emulated. Judith pushed Neil's
+arm away, and sat straight and looked at him. Her cheeks were gloriously
+flushed with the quick motion, and her soft, tumbled hair had broken
+into baby curls round her forehead, but her eyes were a woman's dark,
+unforgiving eyes. Neil gave her one furtive glance, and looked away.
+
+"I told you to take me home," she said.
+
+He made a muttered reply, inarticulate, so that it would have been hard
+to tell whether it was really addressed to Judith or the horse, and bent
+forward over the reins.
+
+The colour deepened in Judith's cheeks, her soft lips tightened into a
+straight line that was like her mother's mouth. Her cool, unhurried
+voice was like her mother's, too: "I knew when we started out I'd have
+trouble with you. Now I don't intend to have any more. I don't want to
+have to tell you again. Take me home."
+
+She had adopted the tone which Green River's self-made gentlewomen like
+Mrs. Theodore Burr mistakenly believed to be effective with servants.
+The boy beside her gave no sign that it was effective with him. He spoke
+softly to the horse again, and flicked at it coaxingly with the whip.
+
+"Neil, I am sorry for you," Judith stated presently, with no sympathy
+whatever in her judicial young voice. "I have been awfully good to you."
+
+"Good!"
+
+"Yes, good. I--had to be. Because I knew we didn't have much time. I
+knew--this--would have to stop some day. I knew it and you knew it, too.
+You always knew it. Well, I've been trying to tell you for a long time
+that it had got to stop. I tried, but you wouldn't let me. We're both
+getting older, too old for this, and I'm going away next year. And some
+things have happened to me, just lately--last week--that made me think.
+I've got to be careful. I've got to take care of myself. This has got to
+stop now--to-night. I wanted to tell you so. That's why I came;
+because----"
+
+"I know why you came."
+
+"Don't be cross. Be good, and turn round now, and take me home. Neil,
+I'm not sorry, you know, for--anything. Ever since that first night at
+the dance you've been so sweet to me. I'm not sorry. Are you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"How funny your voice sounds. Why don't you turn round?"
+
+He had no explanation to offer. The buggy plunged faster through the
+dark, and Judith braced herself in her corner.
+
+"Neil, turn round. Don't you hear me?"
+
+He gave no sign of hearing. The horse swung gallantly into a bit of road
+where the stage drivers had never been in the habit of hurrying, a
+tricky bit of road, with overhanging rocks jutting out just where you
+might graze them at sudden turns, and with abrupt dips into precipitous
+hollows. One stretched dark ahead of them now. Judith caught her breath
+as they plunged into it, and clutched Neil's arm. He laughed shortly,
+and did not shake off her hand. She pulled at his wrist and shook it.
+
+"Upset us if you want to. We'd go together," he urged, with a logic not
+to be questioned. "Together, and that suits me, Judy."
+
+"Neil, turn round. Neil!" Judith's voice was shrill with sudden terror
+repressed too long, but she struggled to make it steady and cold again,
+in one last effort at control.
+
+"Who do you think you are, Neil Donovan? I tell you to take me home."
+
+He did not even turn to look at her. He was getting the horse down the
+rocky slant of dimly lit road with a patience and concentration which
+there was nobody to appreciate just then. Judith collapsed into her
+corner. There was a faint sound of helpless crying from her, then
+silence as she choked back the tears; silence, and an erect, stubborn
+figure showing oppressively big and dark between Judith and the moon.
+
+"Neil, I'm sorry.... Neil, I can't stand this," came a muffled voice.
+"Please speak to me."
+
+They were on level ground again, and the horse was disposed to make the
+most of it. The boy pulled her into a jolting walk which was not the
+most successful of her gaits, but represented a triumph for him just
+now, and then he turned abruptly to Judith, gathering both her hands
+into his free hand and gripping them tight.
+
+"I'll talk to you now," he said. "It's time I told you. Judith, you and
+I are not going back."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE
+
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"We're not going back," he repeated deliberately.
+
+"We are!" flashed Judith.
+
+"We're not going back. We're never going back."
+
+Judith drew back and stared at him, her hands still in his, and the boy
+stared back with a look that matched her own in his big, deeply lit,
+dark eyes. White faces, with angry, dark eyes, were all that they could
+see clearly, though they were crossing a patch of road where a ragged
+gap in the trees let some of the moonlight through; white faces like
+strangers' faces.
+
+They were only a boy and girl jolting through the woods in the night in
+a rattletrap buggy behind a caricature of a horse, but what looked out
+of their angry eyes and spoke in their tense young voices was greater
+than the immediate issue of their quarrel, and older and wiser than they
+were; as old as the world. Ancient enemies were at war once more. A man
+and a woman were making their age-old fight for mastery over themselves
+and each other.
+
+"Never, Judy."
+
+"Where are we going, then?"
+
+"What difference does it make?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"To Wells. We can make it by morning. I've got the mortgage money with
+me."
+
+"Your uncle's?"
+
+"Yes. What difference does that make? That, or anything? We'd go if we
+hadn't any money at all. We'd have to. Oh, Judith----"
+
+"You don't know what you're saying. Take me home. What are you laughing
+at?"
+
+"You. You sounded just like them, then, giving me orders--just like your
+whole rotten crowd, but you're through with them now, and you're through
+ordering me about and making a fool of me. I've been afraid to say my
+soul was my own. It wasn't, I guess. But we're all through with that.
+We're through, Judith."
+
+"Yes, of course. Of course we're through. It's all right. Everything's
+all right, Neil dear."
+
+"Everything's all wrong, and I know whose fault it is now: it's your
+fault. Maybe I only had one chance in a hundred to get on, but one
+chance is enough, and I was taking it. You made me ashamed to take it. I
+was ashamed to do the work that was all I could get to do, and I had my
+head so full of you I couldn't do any work. Maggie's better than I am.
+She don't sit around with her hands folded and wait for Everard to get
+tired of her. And the whole town don't laugh at her. The whole town
+don't know----"
+
+"Neil, I said I was sorry. Please don't."
+
+"You've got the smooth ways of them all, but it's too late for that
+between us, Judy. Smooth, lying ways."
+
+"We can't go to Wells, Neil dear. What could we do there? Think."
+
+"I'm sick of thinking. I'd get work maybe. I don't know. I don't care.
+Judith----"
+
+"We can't. Not to-night, Neil. Wait."
+
+"I'm sick of waiting. I've got nothing to gain by it. I've done all the
+waiting I could. I've stood all I could. You're the only thing I want in
+the world, and I couldn't wait for you any longer if I could get you
+that way--and I wouldn't get you. I'd lose you."
+
+"Not to-night. To-morrow, if you really want me to go. To-morrow,
+truly."
+
+"You're lying to me, and I'm tired of it."
+
+"No, Neil--Neil dear."
+
+"You're lying."
+
+"How dare you say that! I hate you!"
+
+"That's right. We'll talk straight now. It's time."
+
+"I hate you. Don't touch me. You're going to take me home--you
+must--and I'm never going to speak to you again. I think you're crazy.
+But I'm not afraid of you--I'm not afraid."
+
+The low-keyed, hurrying voices broke off abruptly. There was no sound in
+the buggy but Judith's rapid breathing, more and more like sobs, but no
+tears came. The two faces that confronted each other were alike in the
+gloom, white and angry and very young; alike as the faces of enemies are
+when they measure each other's strength in silence. It was a cruel,
+tense little silence, but the sound that broke it was more cruel. It was
+dry and hard and had nothing to do with his own conquering laugh, that
+the girl knew, but it came from the boy.
+
+"How dare you laugh at me. I hate you!" Judith's voice came hoarse and
+unrecognizable.
+
+A hand caught blindly at the reins; another hand closed over it. Then
+there was silence again in the buggy, broken by panting sounds and
+little sobs. At the end of it Judith, forced back into her corner and
+held there, was really crying now, with hysterical sobs that hurt, and
+hot tears that hurt, too.
+
+"Let me go," she panted. "I hate you! You've got to let me go."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"I'm going home. I'm going to get out and walk home."
+
+"Ten miles?"
+
+"I'd walk a hundred miles to get away from you."
+
+"You'd have to walk farther to do that." The dry little laugh cut
+through the dark again, and Judith struck furiously at the arm that held
+her.
+
+"I hate you!" she sobbed.
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, I do--I do----"
+
+"I don't care." The boy's voice sounded light and dry, like his laugh.
+"I don't care. Kiss me."
+
+"I won't! I won't! I'll never speak to you again. I'll never forgive
+you."
+
+"Lying to me--fooling me; taking me up and dropping me like Everard does
+to women.... You're no better than he is. You're one of his crowd, but
+you're through with them.... Lying to me, when you do care. You do."
+
+"I hate you!"
+
+"Ah, no, you don't."
+
+Little bursts of confused speech, all they had breath for and more,
+disconnected, not always understood, not always articulate, but always
+angry, came from them, with intervals of silent, panting struggle
+between. The two young creatures in the buggy were struggling in earnest
+now. The struggle was clumsy, like most really significant ones; sudden
+and clumsy and blind. The two figures swayed aimlessly back and forth.
+The boy and girl were both on their feet now. The boy had dropped the
+reins. Both arms held the girl. Her pinioned arms fought to free
+themselves.
+
+"Judith, you don't hate me. Say it--say it."
+
+[Illustration: "'_Judith, you don't hate me? Say it--say it_'"]
+
+The two shadowy figures were like one now, but the girl's arms were
+free, pushing the boy away, striking at him impotently.
+
+"You needn't say it. I know. You had to come to-night. You couldn't stay
+away. You don't hate me. You never will. You couldn't. I'm crazy about
+you. You're the only thing that matters, if we should die the next
+minute. Everything's all wrong, and it's not my fault or yours.
+Everything's wrong, and this is wrong, too, but I don't care and you
+don't. Do you? Do you?"
+
+"Neil, let me go. I can't breathe."
+
+"I love you."
+
+"Let me go."
+
+The shadow figures swayed and then were still. The girl's arms dropped.
+The little, one-sided struggle was over. There was a long, tired sigh,
+and then silence; silence, and one shadow face bending hungrily over the
+other shadow face. "Judith," the boy whispered breathlessly, "do you
+hate me now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you want me to let you go? Do you want me to take you home?"
+
+"Yes," came the same answering whisper, the faintest and most uncertain
+of whispers, but two arms, gently freeing themselves, found their way to
+his shoulders, two hands locked behind his head and drew it gently down,
+until the two shadow faces were close once more, and lips that were not
+shadow lips met and clung together; not shadow lips, but hungry and warm
+and alive--untaught but unafraid young lips, ready for kisses that are
+no two alike and can never come again--wonderful kisses that blot
+everything out of the changing world but themselves.
+
+"Judith"--the boy lifted his head at last, and looked down at the face
+against his shoulder, pale and small, but with all the colour and light
+and life that night had taken from the world and hidden, burning
+undimmed in the awakening eyes--"you don't want me to take you home? You
+don't--care what happens?"
+
+"No."
+
+He could hardly hear her low whisper, but her face was answer enough,
+even for a boy who could not know what had touched it with new beauty,
+but had to guess, as his own heart and the night might teach him.
+
+"No, I don't care. I don't care."
+
+"Judith, you do love me?"
+
+"Yes. Oh, yes."
+
+"You're so sweet," he whispered, "I feel as if I'd never kissed you
+before--or seen you before. I love you, Judith."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I love you and I don't want to hurt you. You know that, don't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But nothing's going to take you away from me now."
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"I don't want to hurt you."
+
+"I tell you, I don't care what happens. I--don't--care."
+
+"Judith!"
+
+Once more her hands drew him close; shy hands, groping uncertainly in
+the dark, and shy lips kissed him. It was the coolest and lightest of
+kisses, but it was worth all the others, if the boy knew how much it
+promised--more than all her broken speech had promised, more than any
+spoken words.
+
+Judith herself did not know, but some instinct older than she was made
+her whisper: "Be good to me. Will you be good to me?"
+
+"Yes, Judith."
+
+The boy answered her small, shaken whisper solemnly, as if he were
+taking a formal and irrevocable vow, but there was no one to listen to
+it here, and bear witness to it as irrevocable. The girl did not answer
+him. Suddenly shy, breathing quickly, and trying to laugh, she slipped
+out of his arms.
+
+The boy let her go. Some time before the trailing reins had been caught
+up and twisted twice round the whip socket. He had done this
+instinctively, he could not have told just when. He bent down and
+untwisted them now, rather slowly and awkwardly, not looking at Judith.
+Then he sat down stiffly beside her.
+
+"You're tired," he said, with new gentleness in his voice. He put an arm
+loosely round her waist in the manner of an affectionate but
+inexperienced parent, and her head dropped on his shoulder. "Very
+tired?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Judith, I'm sorry."
+
+"No, I'm sorry. How could I be so horrid? What made me? Did I hurt you,
+dear, with my hands?"
+
+"You couldn't hurt me."
+
+"Neil, you know what you said just now?"
+
+"Never mind what I said."
+
+"You said you didn't want anything to take me away from you. Well, if it
+did, if anything did take me away from you--now, I'd----"
+
+"What, dear?"
+
+"I'd never forgive you. I couldn't. I'd despise you." This warning came
+in a low, uncertain voice, wasted, as countless warnings have been
+wasted on wiser masculine ears than the boy's. "Look at our moon up
+there. It's glad, I guess--glad about you and me. Why don't you listen
+to me?"
+
+"I'm thinking, Judith. I've got to think."
+
+"You look very nice when you think. Your eyes look so big and still. You
+look--beautiful. I could really sleep now, I guess."
+
+"All right, dear."
+
+"But I don't want to. I'm too happy. How late is it?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Well, it's late. We couldn't get home now before awfully late--two or
+something. And the road's so narrow here, we couldn't turn round. We
+couldn't go home if we wanted to. Could we?"
+
+"Not very well, dear."
+
+"I'm glad.... Neil."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Are you thinking now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You do look beautiful. I don't know just why. I never saw you look just
+like this before; kind, but years older than I am, and miles away.
+Neil----"
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"Neil, don't think any more. Just love me.... I love you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN
+
+
+Colonel Everard's little party was quite successful enough without the
+guest of honour. At least, it would have seemed so to Judith, if she
+could have looked in upon it just before midnight. A distinguished guest
+of the Colonel's had made an ungrateful criticism of the inner circle,
+on parade for his benefit only the week before at Camp Hiawatha, which
+was elaborately rebuilt now, and rechristened Camp Everard. He
+complained that the Colonel's parties were too successful.
+
+"Too many pretty women," he said, "or they work too hard at it--dress
+too well, or talk too well--don't dare to let down. You need more
+background, more men like Grant. You need to be bored. You can't have
+cream without milk. You can't take the essentials of a society and make
+a whole society out of them without adulterating them. It won't last.
+That's why Adam and Eve didn't stay in the garden. They couldn't--too
+much tension there. They needed casual acquaintances, and you need
+background. You can't get on without it."
+
+"We do," said his host.
+
+The distinguished critic was far away from the Colonel's town to-night,
+but the Colonel's party was all that he had complained of; the thing he
+had felt and tried to account for and explain was here, as it was at all
+the Colonel's parties, though a discreet selection of outsiders had been
+admitted to-night; the same sense of effort and tension, of working too
+hard, of a gayety brilliant but forced--artificial, but justifying the
+elaborate processes that created it by its charm, like some rare
+hothouse flower.
+
+You saw it in quick glimpses of passing faces thrown into strong relief
+by the light of the swinging lanterns, and then dancing out of sight;
+you heard it in strained, sweet laughter, and felt it in the beat of the
+music, and in the whole picture the party made of itself in the garden,
+the restless, changing picture, but this was not all--it was in the air.
+You could close your eyes and breathe it and feel it. It was unusually
+keen to-night, real, like a thing you could actually touch and see.
+
+You lost the keen sense of it if you looked too closely for signs of it.
+If you overheard bits of talk, they were not always clever at all, or
+even entirely gay. Worried lines showed under elaborate makeup in the
+women's faces, as if Cinderella had put on white gloves to hide smutty
+fingers; indeed, though they were trained to forget it and make you
+forget it, they were only so many Cinderellas, after all. Seen too
+closely, there was a look of strain about some of the men's faces.
+
+There was a reason for this look to-night, besides the set of reasons
+which the gentlemen of the Colonel's circle always had for looking
+worried; living beyond their incomes, living in uncertainty of any
+income at all, and other private reasons, different in each case, but
+all quite compelling; there was a reason, and the Colonel's guest of the
+week before was connected with it. Others would follow him soon, secret
+conferences would take place unrecorded, the Colonel's private telephone
+wire would be busy, and the telegrams he received would be
+frequent and not intelligible to the casual reader. These were the
+months before election, when the things that were going to happen began
+to happen. Their beginnings were obscure. The man in the street talked
+politics, but the man with his hands in the game kept still. Even when
+they slipped away to the smoking-room, or gathered at the edge of the
+lawn in groups of two and three that scattered as their host approached,
+the Colonel's guests were not discussing politics to-night.
+
+No tired lines were permitted to show in Mrs. Randall's face. Her fresh,
+cool prettiness was of the valuable kind that shows off best at the
+height of the evening, when other women look tired. If she was aware of
+the fact and made the most of it, overworking her charming smile and
+wide-open, tranquil eyes, you could not blame her. It was not the time
+or place to overlook any weapons you might have. Whatever duties or
+privileges belonged to the Colonel's inner circle, you had to take care
+of yourself if you were part of it, and you learned to; that was evident
+from her manner. It seemed easy for her to-night. Just now she was
+sharing a bench and an evening cloak with Mrs. Burr, smooth, dark head
+close to her fluffy, blond one, and smiling into her face confidingly,
+as if all that lady's purring, disconnected remarks were equally
+agreeable to her.
+
+"We miss Judy so much," she said sweetly.
+
+"I can see just how much, dear," said Judith's mother more sweetly
+still.
+
+"And it's so long since she's been here."
+
+"She has her school work to do. She's just a child. She's not well
+to-night."
+
+"But I got the idea he meant this to be her evening."
+
+"He did."
+
+"There he is." The third person singular, unqualified, could mean only
+one gentleman to the ladies of the Colonel's circle, and that gentleman
+was passing close to them now, though he seemed unconscious of the
+fact. He was guiding Mrs. Kent through an old-fashioned waltz with
+elaborate precision. His concentration upon the performance increased as
+he passed them, and he did not look away from his partner's face, though
+it was not absorbingly attractive just now. The piquant profile had a
+blurred look, and the cheeks were flushed under the daintily calculated
+touch of rouge. Mrs. Burr turned to her friend with a faint but
+relentless light of amusement in her narrowed eyes.
+
+"Edie's had just one cocktail too many."
+
+"Yes." They ignored the more obvious fact that the Colonel had. The
+evening had reached the stage when he always had.
+
+"He hasn't danced with you many times, Minna dear."
+
+"I'm tired of dancing, but don't let me keep you here, Lil."
+
+"I haven't seen him dance with you at all."
+
+"He hasn't yet."
+
+"No?" said Mrs. Burr, very casually.
+
+"No. Lil, I think Ranny wants you. He's wandering about, looking vague."
+
+"Don't you want me, dear? Well, Ranny always wants me."
+
+Mr. Randolph Sebastian, discovering her suddenly, gave exaggerated proof
+of this as he carried her off. If the Colonel's secretary had really
+been recruited from a dance hall, he had profited by what he saw there,
+and showed it in every quick, graceful turn he made. His partner was the
+type of woman that dancing might have been invented to show off; it gave
+her lazy, graciously built body a reason for being, and put a flicker of
+meaning into her shallow eyes so that she was not floridly pretty any
+longer, but beautiful. This was peculiarly apparent when she danced with
+Mr. Sebastian. She seemed to have been created for the purpose of
+dancing with him; it could not have been more apparent if their
+elaborate game of devotion to each other had been real, and they were
+really lovers.
+
+Mrs. Clifford Kent, suddenly appearing alone, slipped into Mrs. Burr's
+empty place. Her dance with the Colonel was over. "My Lord's in fine
+form to-night," she confided without preliminary. "We're going to play
+blind-man's buff after the duchess goes home." The duchess was Mrs.
+Grant, the Honourable Joe's wife, still the first lady of Green River,
+but the younger women were beginning to make fun of her discreetly
+behind her back. "He told me the tiger story." This represented a
+triumph. Getting the Colonel's smoking-room stories at first hand
+instead of second hand, from their husbands, was the only form of
+rivalry about which these ladies were frank with each other. "I got it
+out of Cliff first, anyway. He said he couldn't tell me, but he did. I
+made him. Where was Harry last night?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Cliff had a crowd of men locked into his den until two, talking. Didn't
+Harry know about it?"
+
+"What were they doing?"
+
+"Just talking. The Colonel and I don't know who else. I heard two
+strange voices, and I didn't hear Harry's voice. Didn't Harry know?"
+
+"I suppose so. What did they talk about?"
+
+"Campaign stuff--prohibition or something. Cliff wouldn't tell me."
+
+"Was Teddy Burr there?"
+
+"I didn't hear him. What do you care?"
+
+"I don't care."
+
+"If Harry didn't know, I ought not to have told you, but I can't help it
+now."
+
+"Edith, don't go. Wait."
+
+"I can't. I have this next with my Lord, too. I'm going to sit it out in
+the library and meet him inside. The duchess is getting jealous.
+Besides, there comes the dragon." Judge Saxon, looking shabby and old
+and tired, was making a circuitous way toward them. "Let me go. Oh,
+darling--" she put her small, flushed face suddenly close to her
+friend's to ask the question, and after it, fluttered away without
+waiting for the answer, leaving the echo of her pretty, empty laugh
+behind--"why didn't Judith come? What's the real reason? Has anybody
+been making trouble for her here? Never mind. You needn't tell me.
+Good-bye."
+
+Mrs. Randall closed her eyes and pressed two fingers against her temples
+for a moment, and then looked up with almost her usual welcoming smile
+at Judge Saxon, who had come close to her, and stood looking down at her
+keenly with his kind, near-sighted, blue eyes.
+
+"Hiding?" he said. "Tired?"
+
+"Not hiding from you. Take care of me."
+
+"Minna," he decided, "you little girls aren't so nice to me unless
+you're in wrong somehow and feel sorry for yourselves. What's the
+matter? Where's Harry?"
+
+"Inside somewhere. Don't ask me any more questions. I've answered all I
+can to-night."
+
+"All right. I'll just sit here and enjoy the view and keep the other
+boys away."
+
+The view was hardly one to promote unmixed enjoyment. The two settled
+into a friendly silence in their corner, broken by an occasional quiet
+word in the Judge's intimate, drawling voice. Around them the temper of
+the party was changing, and a series of little signs marked the general
+change. More men crowded into the smoking-room between dances, and they
+stayed longer. Mrs. Grant left first according to her established
+privilege, and a scattering of other guests followed her. Nobody seemed
+to miss them or to be conspicuously happier without them. There was a
+heavy, dull look about the passing faces, a heaviness and staleness now
+about the whole atmosphere of the party, and this, like the unnatural
+excitement which it followed, and like the light, endless fire of
+inconsequent, malicious chatter, always the same, whether it meant
+nothing or meant real trouble brewing, was an essential part of all the
+Colonel's parties, too.
+
+The Judge regarded the change with faraway eyes, as he talked on in the
+wistful voice that goes with talking your own private language openly to
+people who cannot answer you in it.
+
+"Don't need the moon, do we, with those lanterns? But it was here first,
+and will be a long time after, and it's a good moon, too; quite
+decorative for a moon."
+
+"I hate it," said Mrs. Randall, with a personal vindictiveness not
+usually directed against natural phenomena. The Judge took no immediate
+notice of it. More guests had gone. In a cleared circle in the heart of
+the lanternlight Mrs. Kent was performing one of the more expurgated
+and perfunctory of her dances for the benefit of the select audience
+that remained, to scattered, perfunctory applause. The motif of it was
+faintly Spanish.
+
+"Paper doll," commented the Judge, "that's all that girl is. You and
+Harry are the best of them, Minna. They're a faky lot, all of
+them--about as real as a house of cards. It looks big, but it will all
+tumble down if you pull one card out--only one card. The devil of it is
+to know which card to take hold of, and who's to pull it out if you
+haven't got the nerve? I haven't. I'm too old. But it's a comfort to
+think of it. Don't you agree with me?"
+
+"I didn't really hear you."
+
+"Minna, I've known you since you were two. Can't you tell me what's the
+matter? You're frightened."
+
+She looked at him for a minute as if she could, turning a paling face to
+him, with the mask off and the eyes miserable, then she tried to laugh.
+
+"Nothing's the matter. Nothing new."
+
+"Well, there's enough wrong here without anything new," said the Judge,
+rebuffed but still gentle. "I won't trouble you any longer, my dear.
+There comes Harry."
+
+Mrs. Randall's husband, an unmistakable figure even with the garden and
+the broad, unlighted lawn between, stood in the rectangle of light that
+one of the veranda windows made, slender and boyish still in spite of
+the slight stoop of his shoulders, and then started across the lawn
+toward the garden.
+
+His wife got rather stiffly to her feet and waited, looking away from
+the lighted enclosure, over the low hedge, at the lawn. Her eyes were
+dizzy from the flickering lights. She could not see him clearly, and the
+figure that followed him across the lawn was harder to see.
+
+It was a man's figure, slightly taller than her husband's. The man had
+not come from the veranda windows, or from the house at all, he had
+slipped round one corner of the house, stood still in the shelter of it,
+seeming to hesitate there, and then plunged suddenly across the lawn at
+a queer little staggering run. Twice she saw him stand still, so still
+that she lost sight of him under the trees, as if he had slipped away
+through the dark.
+
+In the garden Mrs. Kent's performance was over, and the game of
+blind-man's buff was beginning. It was a novelty, and acclaimed even at
+this stage of the evening. Lillian Burr's shrill laugh and Edith Kent's
+pretty, childish one could be heard through the other sounds. They were
+trying to blindfold the Colonel, who struggled but laughed, too, looking
+somehow vacuous and old, with his longish, white hair straggling across
+his forehead. No one in the garden but Minna Randall had attention to
+spare for an arriving guest, expected or unexpected.
+
+Which was he? He was out of sight again, but this time she had seen him
+reach the edge of the lighted enclosure. Was he gone, or waiting
+outside, or had he stepped under the trellis of the rose arbour, to
+appear suddenly at the end of it and among them? Instinctively she kept
+her eyes upon it, though her husband had already passed through. She was
+watching for the figure that it might frame next.
+
+"Harry," she said to her husband, who had seen her and elbowed his way
+to her, and stood beside her, looking pale and tired like herself in the
+lanternlight and not boyish at all, "who was that man? Who was it
+following you?"
+
+He paid no attention to her question. He did not seem to hear it. He put
+a hand on her arm, and she could feel that it trembled.
+
+"Oh, Harry, what is it?" she said. "I've had such a horrible evening.
+I'm so afraid."
+
+"Don't be afraid, Minna," he said very gently, "but you must come to the
+telephone. Norah's calling you. She's just come home. She wants to tell
+you something about Judith."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN
+
+
+"Judith?" Mrs. Randall took her husband's news quietly, with something
+that was almost relief in her face, the relief that comes when a
+gathering storm breaks at last, and you learn what it is you have been
+afraid of, though you must go on being afraid. "What is it? Is she ill,
+Harry?"
+
+"Come and talk to Norah."
+
+"No, we'll go straight home."
+
+"But she's not there, Minna. That's all Norah'll say to me, but she's
+got some idea where she is, and says she'll tell you. Judith isn't
+there."
+
+"It must be nearly morning."
+
+"It's two."
+
+"It was after nine when we started."
+
+"Minna, didn't you hear what I said?"
+
+Mrs. Randall's face had not changed as she heard; it looked
+unchangeable, like some fixed but charming mask that she wore. The lips
+still smiled though they had stiffened slightly, and she watched the two
+women's attempts to blindfold the Colonel--unaided now, but hilariously
+applauded by the circle around her--with the same mild, interested eyes,
+wide-set and Madonna calm.
+
+"I tell you, Judith's not there. What does Norah know? Why don't you do
+something? Where is she?... My God, look at them. What are they doing
+now? Look at Everard."
+
+Mrs. Burr had drawn the knot suddenly tight in the white scarf she was
+manipulating, and slipped out of the Colonel's arms and out of reach. He
+followed, and then swung round and stumbled awkwardly after Edith Kent,
+who had brushed past him, leaving a light, challenging kiss on his
+forehead, and was further guiding him with her pretty, empty laugh. The
+game of blind-man's buff was under way.
+
+Crowding the garden enclosure, swaying this way and that and threatening
+to overflow it, a pushing, struggling mass of people kept rather
+laboriously out of one another's way and the Colonel's, not so much
+amused by the effort as they were pretending to be; people with heavy
+and stupid faces who had never looked more irrevocably removed from
+childhood than now that they were playing a children's game.
+
+In the heart of the crowd, now plunging ahead of it, now lost in it, the
+first gentleman of Green River disported himself. His white head was
+easy to follow through the crowd, and the thing that made you follow it
+was evident even now--much of his old dignity, and the charm that was
+peculiarly his; you saw it in an occasional stubborn shake of his
+beautifully shaped head, in the grace of the hand that caught at some
+flying skirt and missed it. He was the first gentleman of Green River
+still, but he was something else.
+
+His white hair straggled across his forehead moist and dishevelled, and
+his face showed flushed and perspiring against the white of the scarf.
+The trailing ends of the scarf flapped grotesquely about his head, and
+the high, splendidly modelled forehead was obscured and the keen eyes
+were hidden. The beauty of the face was lost, and the mouth showed thin
+lipped and sensual. The Colonel was really a stumbling, red-faced old
+man.
+
+"Look at him. That's what she's seen. This was Judith's party. That's
+what we've hung on in this town for till it's too late to break loose.
+We never can get away now. We can't----"
+
+"Keep still, Harry. Do you want to be heard? Did any one hear you at the
+telephone? Keep still and come home."
+
+"You're right. You're wonderful. You don't lose your nerve."
+
+"I can't afford to, and neither can you. Come---- Oh, Harry, look. I saw
+him following you. What does he want? What's the matter? What is he
+going to do?"
+
+Mrs. Randall had adjusted her cloak deliberately, and turned to pilot
+her husband out of the garden, slipping a firm little hand through his
+arm. Now she clung to him and stood still, silent after her little fire
+of excited questions. The entrance to the garden was blocked. An
+uninvited and unexpected guest was standing there.
+
+His entrance had been unheralded, and his welcome was slow to come. The
+crowd had closed in round the Colonel, with Edith Kent caught suddenly
+in his arms, and giving a creditable imitation of attempting to escape.
+Interested silence and bursts of laughter indicated the progress of it
+clearly, though the two were entirely out of sight. Nobody saw the
+newcomer except the Randalls.
+
+He stood in the entrance to the rose arbour, clutching at the trellis
+with one unsteady hand, and managing to keep fairly erect, a slightly
+built, swaying figure, black-haired and hatless. He kept one hand behind
+him, awkwardly, as a shy boy guards a favourite plaything. He was
+staring into the crowd in the garden as if he could see through into the
+heart of it, but had not the intellect just then to understand what he
+saw there.
+
+It was the man Mrs. Randall had seen lurking in the shadow of the trees,
+but he was no mysterious stranger, though here in the light of the
+lanterns she hardly recognized him as she looked at his pale, excited
+face; it showed an excitement quite unaccounted for by the perfectly
+obvious fact that he was drunk, and entirely unconnected with that fact.
+Here and there on the outskirts of the crowd some one turned and saw
+him, too, and stared at him. They all knew him. He was Neil Donovan's
+cousin, the discredited young lawyer, Charlie Brady.
+
+He did not speak or move. He only stood still and looked at them with
+vague, puzzled eyes, and lips that twitched as if he wanted to speak,
+but standing so, he had the centre of the stage. He could not command
+it, he had pushed his way into it doggedly, uncertain what to do first,
+but he was there. One by one his audience had become conscious of it,
+and were confronting him startled and uncertain, too. Young Chester
+Gaynor elbowed his way to the front, but stopped there, grinning at the
+invader, restrained perhaps by a lady's voice, which was to be heard
+admonishing him excitedly.
+
+"Don't you get hurt, dear."
+
+"How did he get here? Why can't somebody get him out?" other excited
+ladies inquired.
+
+"Get Judge Saxon," directed Mr. J. Cleveland Kent's calm and
+authoritative voice.
+
+"Get Sebastian. Where is the fellow? Is he afraid?" demanded the
+Honourable Joe from the extreme rear. Some one laughed hysterically. It
+was Mrs. Burr. The laugh was quickly hushed, but the new guest had heard
+it, though no other sound seemed to have impressed him. He laughed, too,
+a dry, broken ghost of a laugh, as cracked and strange as his voice,
+which he now found abruptly.
+
+"Lillie," he called. "Hello, Lillie dear."
+
+Mrs. Burr was not heard to reply to this affectionate greeting, but he
+hardly paused for a reply. His light, high, curiously detached sounding
+voice talked on with a kind of uncanny fluency.
+
+"Lillie," he urged cordially, "I heard you. I know you're there. Come
+out and let's have a look at you. I don't see anything of you lately.
+You're too grand for me. I don't care. I'm in love with a prettier girl.
+But you used to treat me all right, Lillie dear, and I treated you
+right, too. I never told. A gentleman don't tell. And you were straight
+with me. You never double-crossed me, like you and the dago Sebastian do
+to Everard. Everard! That's who I want to talk to. Where is he?"
+
+At the mention of the name his wavering gaze had steadied and
+concentrated suddenly on the centre of the group in the garden, and now,
+while he looked, the crowd parted. Pushing his way through, the Colonel
+faced his uninvited guest.
+
+The great man was not at his best. His most ardent admirer could hardly
+have claimed it. He had pulled the muffling scarf down from his eyes,
+but was still tearing at the knot impatiently. Mrs. Kent had come
+fluttering ineffectively after him, catching at his arm. He struck her
+hands away, and pushed her back, addressing her with a lack of ceremony
+which outsiders were not often permitted to hear him employ toward a
+member of his favoured circle.
+
+"Keep out of this, Edith, and you keep quiet, Lil. You girls make me
+sick," he snapped. "Half the trouble in this town comes because you
+can't learn to hold your tongues. You'd better learn. You're going to
+pay for it if you don't, and don't you lose sight of that. Well, Brady,
+what does this mean? What can I do for you?"
+
+The ring of authority was in his voice again, as if he had called it
+back by sheer will power. He had stepped forward alone, and stood
+looking up at his guest, still framed in the sheltering trellis, and his
+blurred eyes cleared and grew keen as he looked, regarding him
+indifferently, like some refractory but mildly amusing animal. His
+guest's defiant eyes avoided his, and the ineffective, swaying figure
+seemed to shrink and droop and grow smaller, but it was a dignified
+figure still and a dangerous one. There was the snarling menace of
+impotent but inevitable rebellion about it, of men who fight on with
+their backs against the wall; a menace that was not new born to-night,
+but the gradual growth of years, just the number of years that the
+Colonel had spent in Green River.
+
+"I'm sorry, sir," stammered his guest.
+
+"Then apologize and get out."
+
+"I can't."
+
+"I think you'll find you can, Brady."
+
+"I can't. I've got to ask you a few questions."
+
+They seemed to be slow in framing themselves. There was a little pause,
+the kind of pause that for no apparent reason deprives you for the
+moment of any desire to move or speak. The unassuming figure of the
+young man under the trellis stood still, swaying only slightly from side
+to side. A deprecating smile appeared on his lips, as if his errand were
+distasteful to him and he wished to apologize for it. Gradually the
+smile faded and the eyes grew steady again and unnaturally bright. He
+held himself stiffly erect where he stood for a moment, took a few
+lurching steps forward, paused, and then plunged suddenly across the
+garden toward Colonel Everard.
+
+It would have been hard to tell which came first, the little, stumbling
+run forward, the Colonel's instinctive move to check it, the stampede
+of the devotees of the time-honoured game of blind-man's buff, acting
+now with a promptness and spontaneity which they had not displayed in
+that game, Lillian Burr's hysterical scream, the snarling words from the
+Colonel that silenced it, or the quick flash of metal. It had all
+happened at once. But now, in an amphitheatre of scared faces, as far
+behind as the limits of the garden enclosure would allow, Mr. Brady and
+his host stood facing each other alone, and the Colonel, now entirely
+himself, with the high colour fading out of his cheeks, was looking with
+cool and unwavering eyes straight into the barrel of Mr. Brady's
+revolver.
+
+It was a clumsy, old-fashioned little weapon. Brady's thin hand grasped
+it firmly, as if some stronger hand than his own were steadying his. He
+laughed an ineffective laugh, like a boastful boy's, but there was a
+threat in it, too.
+
+"What have you got to say for yourself? I'll give you a chance to say
+it," he stated magnanimously, "but you shan't say a word against her.
+She was always a good girl. She is a good girl. What have you done with
+her? Where is she?"
+
+"You don't make yourself altogether clear, Brady," said the Colonel
+smoothly.
+
+"Where's Maggie?"
+
+"Maggie?" The Colonel's eyes swept the circle of his guests
+deliberately, as if to assure himself that no lady of that name was
+among them.
+
+"Maggie. You know the name well enough." The sound of it seemed to give
+the lady's champion new courage; it flamed in his eyes, hot, and quick
+to burn itself out, but while it lasted, even a gentleman who had
+learned to face drawn revolvers as indifferently as the Colonel might do
+well to be afraid of him. "Maggie's missing. I'm going to find her.
+That's all I want of you. I won't ask you who's worked on her and made a
+fool of her. I won't ask you how far she's been going. But I want her
+back before the whole town knows. I want to find her and find her quick.
+She's a good girl and a decent girl. She's going to keep her good name.
+She's coming home."
+
+"Commendable," said the Colonel, not quite smoothly enough. His guest
+was past listening to him.
+
+"Maggie. That's all I want. You're getting off easy. Luck's with you.
+I've stood a lot from you, the same as the town has. It will stand a lot
+more, and I will. Get Maggie back. Get her back and give her to me and
+leave her alone, and I'll eat out of your hand and starve when you don't
+feed me, the same as the rest"--he came two wavering steps nearer, and
+dropped his voice to a dry quaver meant to be confidential, a grotesque
+and sinister parody of a confidence--"the rest, that don't know what I
+know."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I won't tell. Don't be afraid. A gentleman don't tell, and there's
+nobody that can but me. Young Neil don't know. The luck's with you, sir,
+just the same as it always was."
+
+"I've had enough of this. Get home, Brady," cried the Colonel, in a
+voice that was suddenly wavering and high, like an old man's, but his
+guest only smiled and nodded wisely, beginning to sway as he stood, but
+still gripping the clumsy revolver tight.
+
+"Just the same as it was when old Neil Donovan died."
+
+"Get home," shrilled the Colonel again, but his guest pursued the tenor
+of his thoughts untroubled, still with the look of an amiably disposed
+fellow-conspirator on his weak face, a maddening look, even if his words
+conveyed no sting of their own.
+
+"Neil Donovan," he crooned, "my father's own half-brother, and a good
+uncle to me, and a gentleman, too. He sold rum over a counter, but he
+was a gentleman, for he didn't talk too much. A gentleman don't tell."
+
+But the catalogue of his uncle's perfections, whether in place here or
+not, was to proceed no further. The audience pressed closer, as eager
+to look on at a fight as it was to keep out of one. There was a new and
+surprising development in this one. The two men had closed with each
+other, and it was not the half-crazed boy who had made the attack, but
+the Colonel himself.
+
+It was a sudden and awkward attack, and there was something stranger
+about it still. The Colonel was angry. He had tried to knock the weapon
+out of the boy's hand, failed, and tried instinctively, still, to get
+possession of it, but he was not making an adequate and necessary
+attempt to disarm him, he was no longer adequate or calm. He was angry,
+suddenly angry with the poor specimen of humanity that was making its
+futile attempt at protest and rebellion, as if it were an equal and an
+enemy. His face was distorted and his eyes were dull and unseeing. His
+breath came in panting gasps, and he made inarticulate little sounds in
+his throat. He struck furious and badly directed blows.
+
+It was a curious thing to see, in the heart of the great man's admiring
+circle, at the climax of his most successful party of the year. It did
+not last long. The two struggling figures broke away from each other,
+and the boy staggered backward and stood with the revolver still in his
+hand. He was a little sobered by the struggle, and a little weakened by
+it, pale and dangerous, with a fanatic light in his eyes. Some one who
+had an eye for danger signals, if the Colonel had not, had made his
+unobtrusive way forward, and joined him now. He was not the most
+formidable looking of allies, but he stood beside them as if he had a
+right to be there, and the Colonel turned to him as if he recognized it.
+
+"Hugh, you heard what he said?" he appealed; "you heard?"
+
+"Judge, you keep out of this," Brady called, "keep out, sir."
+
+Judge Saxon, keeping a casual hand on his most prominent client's arm,
+stood regarding Mr. Brady with mild and friendly blue eyes. He had quite
+his usual air of being detached from his surroundings, but benevolently
+interested in them.
+
+"Charlie," he said, as if he were recognizing Mr. Brady for the first
+time at this critical moment, and deriving pleasure from it. "Why,
+Charlie," his voice became gently reproachful, but remained friendly,
+too. "Everard, this boy don't mean a word he says," he went on, with
+conviction, "he's excited and you're excited, too. This is a pretty poor
+time for you to get excited, Everard."
+
+"You're right, Hugh," muttered the Judge's most prominent client
+thickly; "you're right. Get him away. Get him home."
+
+"He's a good boy," pronounced the Judge.
+
+It was not the obvious description of Mr. Brady just at that moment.
+There was only friendly amusement in the Judge's drawling voice and
+shrewd eyes, but back of it, unmistakably there, was something that made
+every careless word worth listening to. Mr. Brady was resisting it. His
+face worked pitifully.
+
+"Judge, I told you to keep out. I don't want to hurt you."
+
+"Thanks, Charlie."
+
+"Every word I say is God's truth, Judge."
+
+The Judge did not contradict this sweeping statement. He was studying
+Mr. Brady's weapon with some interest. "Your uncle's," he commented,
+pleased. "Why, I didn't know you still owned that thing, Charlie."
+
+"I want Maggie. I want----"
+
+"I'll tell you what you want," offered the Judge, amicably, "you want to
+hand that thing to me, and go home."
+
+Mr. Brady received this suggestion in silence, a silence which left his
+audience uncertain how deeply he resented it. Indeed, they were
+painfully uncertain, and showed it. Bits of advice reached the Judge's
+ears, contradictory, though much of it sound, but he took no notice of
+it. He only smiled his patient and wistful smile and waited, like a man
+who knew what would happen next.
+
+"Hand it to me," he repeated gently.
+
+"I won't, Judge." Mr. Brady's weapon wavered, and then steadied itself.
+His thin body trembled. The fanatic light in his eyes blazed bright. The
+excitement which had gripped him, too keen to last long, reached its
+climax now in one last burst of hysterical speech.
+
+"He's a liar and a thief," he asserted, uncontradicted. He was not to be
+contradicted. There was a dignity of its own about the hysterical
+indictment, grotesque as it was, an unforgettable suggestion of truth.
+"He's a thief and a murderer, too. I don't have to tell what I know.
+Everybody knows. You all know, all of you, and you don't dare to tell.
+He's murdering the town."
+
+The high, screaming voice broke off abruptly. Mr. Brady, still with the
+echo of his big words in his ears and apparently dazed by it, stood
+looking blankly into the Judge's steady and friendly eyes.
+
+"I can't--I won't----" he stammered.
+
+"Hand it to me," said the Judge, as if no interruption had occurred. For
+a moment the boy before him looked too dull and dazed to obey or to
+hear. Then, as suddenly as if some unseen hand had struck it out of his,
+the revolver dropped to the ground, and he collapsed, sobbing
+heartbrokenly, into the Judge's arms.
+
+He was a heroic figure no longer. The alien forces that made him one
+had deserted him abruptly, and he looked unworthy of their support
+already, only an inconsiderable creature of jangled nerves and
+hysterical speech, which would be discredited if you looked at him, even
+if it still echoed in your ears. The Judge, holding him and quieting
+him, looked allied with him, humble and discredited, too. The relieved
+audience hung back for a moment, taking in the full force of the
+picture, before it broke ranks to crowd round the Colonel and offer him
+belated support. The Colonel said a few inaudible words to Judge Saxon,
+and then turned from him and his protégé with the air of washing his
+hands of the whole affair. He looked surprisingly unruffled by it, even
+stimulated by it. The interruption to his party was over.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It ended as it had begun, the most successful party of the year. Mr.
+Brady's invasion was not the first unscheduled event which had enlivened
+a party at the Birches. There was more open and general speculation
+about the fact that the Randalls left immediately after, did not linger
+over their good-nights, and were obviously not permitted by their host
+to do so.
+
+Mrs. Randall, leaning back in her corner with her hand tight in Harry's,
+and her long-lashed eyes, that were like Judith's, tightly shut, showed
+the full strain of the evening in her pale face. She was a woman who did
+not look tired easily, but she was also a woman who could not afford to
+look tired.
+
+There was no appeal or charm about her pale face now, only a naked look
+of hardness and strain. Her husband, staring straight ahead of him with
+troubled eyes, and his weak, boyish mouth set in a hard, worried line,
+spoke rapidly and disconnectedly not of Judith, or the Colonel's ominous
+coldness to him, but of Mr. Brady.
+
+"Maggie's a bad lot," he was explaining for approximately the fifth time
+as they whirled into the drive and under their own dark windows. "She
+always was. Everard isn't making away with the belle of Paddy Lane. Not
+yet. He's not that far down. But that dope about old Neil Donovan----"
+
+"Oh, Harry, hush," his wife said, "here we are. What do you care about
+Brady?"
+
+"Nothing," he whispered, his arm tightening round her as he lifted her
+down. "I don't care about anything in the world but Judith."
+
+"Neither do I. Not really," she said in a hurried, shaken voice that was
+not like her own, "you believe that, don't you, Harry?"
+
+He did not answer. Gathering up her skirts, she followed him silently to
+the front of the house, single file along the narrow boardwalk, not yet
+taken up for the summer, creaking loudly under their feet.
+
+"Look," she whispered, catching at his arm. The front of the house was
+dark except for two lights, a flickering lamp that was being carried
+nearer to them through the hall, and a soft, shaded light that showed at
+a bedroom window. The window was Judith's. He fumbled for his key, but
+the door opened before them. Norah, her forbidding face more militant
+than ever in the flickering light of the kerosene hand-lamp she held,
+her white pompadour belligerently erect, and her brown eyes maliciously
+alight, peered at them across the door chain, and then gingerly admitted
+them.
+
+"It's a sweet time of night to be coming home to the only child you've
+got," she commented, "why do you take the trouble to come home at all?"
+
+It was a characteristic greeting from her. If it had not been, Mrs.
+Randall would not have resented it now. She clutched at the old woman's
+unresponsive shoulder.
+
+"Where is she?" she demanded breathlessly.
+
+"Judith is it you mean?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"How should I know how she spends her evenings? At some of the girls'
+to-night. Rena Drew's maybe. I don't know. It's a new thing for you to
+care. She was late in, and it's no wonder I was worried. She's like my
+own to me. But she needs her sleep now. You'd better go softly
+upstairs."
+
+"Do you mean she's here?"
+
+"What is it to you?" Norah, one bony hand clutching the newel post as if
+it were a negotiable weapon of defense, and her brown eyes flashing as
+if she were capable of using any weapon for Judith, barred the way up
+the stairs.
+
+"I tell you, she needs her sleep, poor lamb--poor lamb," she said, "and
+you're not to go near her to-night. You're to promise me that. But she's
+here fast enough. My lamb is safe at home in her own bed."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN
+
+
+On an afternoon in June a year later than the interrupted party at the
+Everards' a young man sat at Mr. Theodore Burr's desk in Judge Saxon's
+outer office. It was still technically Mr. Burr's desk, but the young
+man looked entirely at home there. A litter of papers which that
+fastidious gentleman would never have permitted himself now covered it,
+and the air was faintly scented with the smoke of a cigarette widely
+popular in Green River, but not with devotees of twenty-five-cent
+cigars, like Mr. Burr. The bulky volume open on the desk was thumbed and
+used as Mr. Burr had never used any book that looked or was so heavy.
+The book was Thayer on Constitutional Law, and the young man dividing
+his attention between it and Main Street under his window flooded with
+June sunshine was Neil Donovan.
+
+He divided his attention unequally, as Main Street late on that sunny
+afternoon might persuade the most studious of young men to do. The
+square was crowded--crowded, it is true, much as a busy street on the
+stage is crowded, where the same overworked set of supers pass and
+repass. The group of bareheaded girls now pacing slowly by arm in arm
+under the window were returning from what was approximately their fourth
+visit that afternoon to the post-office, the ice-cream parlours, the new
+gift shop and tea-room, or some kindred attraction. The Nashes' new
+touring car, driven by the prettiest girl in Willard's June house party,
+under the devoted instruction of Willard himself, was whirling through
+the shopping district for at least the third time.
+
+However, it was an imposing pageant enough, though the boy at the window
+did not appear to find it so, regarding it with approving but grave
+eyes, and returning Mr. Nash's flourishing salute unsmilingly--a brave
+pageant of gay and flimsy gowns, of youth returning to the town, and
+movement and colour, and June fairly begun.
+
+June so far was like other Junes in Green River. Colonel Everard and the
+season of social and political intrigues were here. Rallies in the town
+hall would soon begin. Men with big names in state politics would make
+speeches there, while the Colonel presided with his usual self-effacing
+charm, which did not advertise the known fact that he was a bigger power
+in the state than any of them. The good old question of prohibition was
+the chief issue, as usual; discreet representatives of the people
+would, according to a catch phrase at the capital, vote for prohibition,
+and then go round to the best hotel and get drunk; and discreet
+politicians, like the Colonel, would make money out of both these facts
+in their own way.
+
+Behind the closed door of Judge Saxon's office low-keyed, monotonous
+voices were talking, and a secret conference was going on. Troubled
+times were here again for those deep in the Colonel's councils. They
+were never sure of a permanent place there, but always on the watch for
+one of his sudden changes of front, which threatened not only his
+enemies but his friends. But he had recovered and held their confidence
+before, and he could this year.
+
+All scandals of the year before were decently hidden. Maggie Brady was
+missing and continued to be missing. By this time it was the general
+verdict that she had always been bound to come to a bad end, and Charlie
+Brady to drink himself to death. Nobody interrupted his attempts to do
+so. His drunken outburst of speech had echoed a growing sentiment in the
+town, but it grew slowly, for under its thin veneer of sophistication
+Green River was only a New England town still, conservative and slow to
+change.
+
+Green River had not changed much in a year, but Neil Donovan's fortunes
+had. Nobody knew the full history of the change except Neil, but others
+could have thrown sidelights upon it, among them Mrs. Randall's second
+maid, Mollie. On the morning after that same party of the Colonel's,
+which Mr. Brady attended so unexpectedly, and Judith did not attend,
+Mollie opened the Randalls' door to an early caller.
+
+Even in curl papers, she was usually too much for the young man now on
+the doorstep. He was in the habit of looking at his boots and addressing
+them instead of her, and Mollie quite understood that, for they were
+shabby boots. They looked shabbier than ever to-day, and so did his
+shiny coat, but his eyes were steady and clear, and there was clear
+colour in his cheeks, as if he had had the only restful and well-earned
+sleep in Green River.
+
+"Miss Judith," he said.
+
+"Not at home," said Mollie, in a manner successfully copied from French
+maids in the ten, twenty, thirties.
+
+"Nonsense. Her curtains aren't up," replied the young man who was
+usually made speechless by it.
+
+"She's asleep," conceded Mollie, in a manner more colloquial but also
+more forbidding. "She don't want to see you."
+
+Mollie was incapable of interpreting Judith's wishes, but the young man
+was not; his smile conveyed this, though it was friendly enough. "When
+Miss Judith gets up, tell her----"
+
+"I tell you she don't want to see you," snapped Mollie in a tone any
+French maid would have deplored. "She don't want to see anybody."
+
+"Tell her that I'll call again at three this afternoon," directed the
+young man calmly, and completed his disturbing effect upon Mollie by
+turning and walking briskly away without a backward glance, and without
+his usual air of self-consciousness when her eyes were upon him. He
+carried his shabby coat with an air, and held his head high, and swung
+out of sight down the sleepy little street as if he were the only
+wide-awake thing in the whole sunny, sleepy town.
+
+It was a disconcerting moment for Mollie or any lady properly conscious
+of her power, and sorry to see a sign of it disappear, even the humblest
+of signs. It would still have been disconcerting, if she could have
+foreseen that Judith would not receive this young man alone, either at
+three that afternoon, or for many afternoons. The young man was not
+overawed by Mollie. That was established once and for all. He would
+never be overawed by her again. She slammed the door rather viciously.
+
+"Keep quiet there," said Norah, appearing inopportunely, as her habit
+was, with a heavily laden breakfast tray. "She needs her rest. But
+she's awake. She rang. You can take this up and leave it outside her
+door. Who was talking to you?"
+
+"Well, I don't know what's come to him," Mollie complained. "Who does he
+think he is? Did anybody leave him a fortune over night? It was the
+Donovan boy."
+
+A few minutes after Neil's encounter with Mollie, when Mr. Theodore Burr
+admitted him listlessly after his third knock at Judge Saxon's door, he
+could see no evidence that any one had left the Donovan boy a fortune
+over night, but did note a change in him. There was something
+appealingly grave and sedate about his face, as if a part of its youth,
+the freakish, unconquerable laughter of it, that had defied and
+antagonized Mr. Burr, were gone forever, burned away, somehow, in a
+night. It was a look Mr. Burr was to grow well used to in the next few
+months. Perhaps the unaccountable affection he was to feel for the boy
+in the course of them was born then and there.
+
+Neil emerged from the Judge's private office after a briefer talk than
+usual, and the Judge did not escort him to the door in his accustomed,
+friendly fashion. Mr. Burr did, and made him clumsy and unwonted
+confidences there.
+
+"The old man's not quite fit to-day," he said. "I ought to have told
+you. It's a poor time to get anything out of him. Been shut up there by
+himself doping out something. Won't say two words to me."
+
+"Then he must be in a bad way, Theodore," said the boy, with the ghost
+of his old, mocking smile, which Mr. Burr somehow did not find annoying
+at all.
+
+"Look here, Neil," he surprised himself by saying, "I like you. I always
+did. You deserve a square deal. You're too good for the Brady gang.
+You're too good for the town. If there was anything I could do for
+you----"
+
+"Maybe there is, Theodore," the boy turned in the corridor to say.
+"Cheer up. You'll have a chance to see. I'm coming to work for the
+Judge, I start in next week."
+
+"But the Judge turned you down." Mr. Burr's brain struggled with the
+problem, thinking out loud for the sake of greater clearness, but too
+evidently not achieving it. "The Judge likes you, too, but he couldn't
+take you in if he wanted to. He talked of it, but gave it up. He'd be
+afraid to. Everard----"
+
+"I start in next week," repeated Mr. Donovan.
+
+"But what did you say to him?" demanded Mr. Burr. "What did he say to
+you? How did you dare to ask him again?"
+
+"I didn't ask him. Don't worry, Theodore. I haven't been trying any
+black magic on the Judge. I don't know any. Maybe I'll learn some. I'm
+going to learn a good deal. I've got to. Nobody knows how much. Even the
+Judge don't know. I'm coming to work for the Judge, that's all, but I
+didn't ask him." Mr. Burr, listening incredulously, did not know that
+this was a faithful if condensed account of his talk with the Judge and
+more, the key to much that was to happen to this pale and determined
+young man, the secret of all his success. He gave it away openly, and
+without pride:
+
+"I just told him so."
+
+Neil started in the next week. If Mr. Burr watched his young associate
+somewhat jealously at first in the natural belief that a boy who had
+changed the course of his life in a five-minute interview would do
+something equally spectacular next, and if the Judge, who had said to
+him at last, "Well, it's my bad morning, son, and your good morning, so
+you get your way, but you're climbing on a sinking ship, and remember I
+told you so. And I'll tell you something else. It will be poor pickings
+here for all of us, and I'm sorry, but I'm the sorriest for you," was
+inclined to follow him furtively over the top of his spectacles with a
+look that held all the pathetic apology of age to youth in his kind,
+near-sighted eyes, this was only at first.
+
+Colonel Everard, returning a few weeks later from one of his sudden,
+unexplained absences from town, and making an early morning visit to his
+attorney, was admitted by a young man whom he recognized, but pretended
+not to.
+
+"Who are you?" he inquired, "the office boy?"
+
+"Just about that, sir," the young man admitted, as if he had no higher
+ambition, but the Judge, entering the room with more evidence of
+beginning the day with the strength that the day required, than he had
+been showing lately in his carriage and look, put a casual hand on the
+boy's shoulder, and kept it there.
+
+"The last time we discussed enlarging my office force, you didn't
+advocate it, Everard," he said rather formally.
+
+"So you aren't discussing it with me now?"
+
+"Do you think you'd better discuss it?"
+
+"Do you?"
+
+"I think you are in no position to discuss it. You've been recently
+furnished with much more important material to discuss. I haven't seen
+you since your garden party, have I?"
+
+"No." Both men seemed to have forgotten the boy's existence, but now the
+Colonel recalled it, and apparently without annoyance, and flashed a
+disarming smile at him, giving up gracefully, as he always did if he was
+forced to give up at all. "Well, you're right, Hugh. You're always
+right. Do as you please. But this boy's got a temper of his own
+and--quite a flow of speech. Runs in his family, evidently. Properly
+handled, these are assets, but----"
+
+"I'm sorry, sir," Neil found himself stammering. "I shouldn't have
+spoken to you as I did that day. I'm sorry."
+
+"Next time be sure of your facts." The voice was friendly, almost
+paternal, but it held an insidious challenge, too, and for one betraying
+moment all the native antagonism that was really there flashed in the
+Colonel's eyes. Few enemies of his had been permitted to see it so
+clearly. It was a triumph for Neil, if a barren one. "Be very sure."
+
+"I will, sir," said Neil deliberately, but very courteously. Then the
+Colonel disappeared into the private office with his arm about his
+trusted attorney's shoulders, and the young man for whose sake his
+attorney had openly defied him for the first time in years began to
+empty the office waste-baskets.
+
+The winter weeks in the Judge's office passed without even moments of
+repressed drama like this. There was little to prove that they were the
+most important weeks of his life to Neil. At first they were lonely
+weeks. Mr. Burr, unusually prompt, reached the office one crisp
+September morning in time to find him staring out of the window at a
+straggling procession passing on its way up the hill to the schoolhouse,
+hurrying on foot in excited groups, or crowded into equipages of varying
+sizes and degrees of elegance, properly theirs or pressed into service.
+
+"First day of school," said Neil, and did not need to explain further,
+even to Mr. Burr. From to-day on new faces would look out of the
+many-paned windows of the old, white-painted building. New voices would
+sing in the night on their way home from barge rides and dances. There
+were to be new occupants of the seats of the mighty; a new crowd would
+own the town. The door of the country of the young was shut in this
+boy's face from to-day, and that is always a hard day, but it was
+peculiarly hard in Green River, where the country of the young was the
+only unspoiled and safe place to live. And there were signs of a private
+and more personal hurt in the boy's faraway eyes.
+
+"What's that letter?" said Mr. Burr.
+
+"Seed catalogue."
+
+"Don't she write to you every day?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Is she too proud, or did she forget all about you? She'll have
+time to, away half the summer, and not coming home for vacations. She
+won't see you till next June."
+
+"If you mean Judith Randall," her late class-mate replied in a carefully
+expressionless voice, "why should she write to me, and why shouldn't she
+forget all about me?" There was a faint, reminiscent light in his eyes,
+as if he were not seriously threatened with the prospect, but it died
+away quickly, and his face grew very grave.
+
+"I'm a business man now, Theodore."
+
+"You are," said his newest friend, "and we couldn't keep house without
+you now. You're in a class by yourself."
+
+This was true. Neil did not take his big chance at life as other boys
+equally in need of it would have done. He did not lose his head. He
+showed no pride in it. Green River, soon seeing this, rewarded him in
+various ways, each significant in its own fashion. Nondescript groups
+round the stove in his uncle's little store ceased to look for signs
+that he felt superior to them, and welcomed him as before, restoring to
+him his privilege of listening to talk that was more important than it
+seemed, public sentiment uncoloured and without reserve, the real voice
+of the town. Mrs. Saxon, of the old aristocracy of the town, with
+inborn social prejudices stronger than any acquired from the Everards,
+broke all her rules and invited him to Sunday-night supper.
+
+"The boy's not spoiled," his old friend Luther Ward said to the Judge
+approvingly. "He knows his place."
+
+"That's the surest way to climb out of it," said Judge Saxon, advisedly,
+for it was the Judge who had the closest and most discerning eyes upon
+Neil Donovan's career. Listlessly at first, because he had looked on at
+too many uphill and losing fights against the world, but later with
+interest, forced from him almost against his will, he watched it grow.
+
+To a casual observer the boy would have seemed to be fitting himself not
+for an ornament to the legal profession, but for the office boy Colonel
+Everard had called him, but he would have seemed a willing office boy.
+He spent hours uncomplainingly looking up obscure points of law for some
+purpose nobody explained to him. He devoted long, sunny afternoons to
+looking up titles connected with some mortgage loan which nobody gave
+him the details of, and he seemed satisfied with his occupation, and
+equally satisfied to devote a morning to plodding through new-fallen
+snow delivering invitations to some party of Mrs. Saxon's.
+
+When he was actually studying, he lost himself in the Judge's
+out-of-date reference books, as if they contained some secret as vital
+as the elixir of youth, and might yield it at any moment. Mr. Burr, at
+first ridiculing pupil and course of instruction alike, and with some
+show of reason, began shamefacedly and afterward openly to give him what
+benefit he could from the more modern education which had been wasted
+upon him. Between his two teachers the boy arrived at conclusions of his
+own. Neil was studying law by the old method which evolved so many
+different men of letters and keen-witted lawyers, a method obsolete as
+the Judge's clothes, but Neil gave allegiance to it ardently, as if it
+had been invented for him.
+
+"What do you get out of this?" the Judge demanded, coming upon Neil late
+one afternoon, poring over the uninspired pages of Mr. Thayer by the
+fading light. "What do you hope to get?"
+
+"All there is in it," said the boy simply, and without oratorical
+intent.
+
+"Suppose you do pass your bar examinations. What then? What will you do
+with it?"
+
+"I'll wait and see then. I had to begin somewhere."
+
+"Why?" said the Judge, and as he asked the question, the answer to it,
+which he had once known so well and forgotten, looked at him in the
+boy's pale face and glowing eyes, the great answer not to be silenced,
+youth, and the wonderful, wasteful urge of youth. "Don't you know this
+town's sick?" he demanded abruptly. "It's dirty. You can't clean it up.
+Don't you ever try. Don't you stir things up. Don't you dig in too deep.
+I suppose you know the town's got no room for you?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I know."
+
+"Where do you expect to end?" the Judge began irritably, "in the
+poorhouse? You're so damn young," he grumbled. "It's a good thing I
+didn't know you when I was young. I'd have listened to you then."
+
+"You will now, sir," said the boy, and the Judge did not contradict him,
+but instead, under shy pretence of groping for the switch of the desk
+lamp, found the boy's hand and gripped it.
+
+"You're a good boy," he remarked irrelevantly. "Mind what I said, and
+don't dig in too deep."
+
+The Judge did not explain whose secrets he hoped to protect by this
+vague warning. Probably he could not have explained. It was one of those
+instinctive pronouncements which shape themselves in rare moments when
+two people are close and mean more than either of them know. Certainly
+if the key to any secret was to be found within the Judge's dingily
+decorated walls or in his battered safe, or learned from his partner,
+the boy had exceptional opportunities to unearth it. Theodore Burr's
+intimacy with Neil developed rapidly. He stuck to it obstinately, in
+spite of his wife, showing more independence about it than he had in
+years. The two had tramped and snow-shoed together through long winter
+hours of intimate talk and more intimate silence, and they found the
+first Mayflowers of the year together. Only the week before he had
+committed the crowning indiscretion of giving up a poker game at the
+Everards' to go shooting with Neil.
+
+The Judge, in the strenuous days of Colonel Everard's summer campaign,
+had no time to observe the growth of this intimacy or to think much
+about Neil, but he might have been interested in a snatch of talk in the
+Brady kitchen one evening, if he could have overheard it, more
+interested than Mrs. Donovan, who did not remember it long.
+
+Her son was an hour late for supper, but she was used to that, for now
+that he was on his feet the house revolved around him. She served him,
+and then sat watching him with her hands folded, and the new dignity
+that had come with his first bit of success straightening her tired
+shoulders, and the look of age and pain that had been growing there
+since Maggie disappeared widening her soft, deep eyes. He had dropped
+wearily into his chair, and he ate almost in silence, but she was used
+to that, too.
+
+Outside the short, June twilight was over, and a pattering summer rain
+had begun to fall. Neil's dark hair was damp with it and clung to his
+forehead in close curls. Once, passing his chair, she smoothed it with a
+hand that was work hardened but finely made and could touch him lightly
+and shyly still. Her son pulled her suddenly close, and hid his face
+against her.
+
+"What is it?" she asked, softly and not too soon as she stood still and
+held him. "What's wrong, then? Where have you been?"
+
+"Nothing's wrong. Nothing new. I went round to Theodore Burr's, but I
+left there at five. I didn't mean to be late home or make work. But I
+had a hunch to look in at Halloran's. I thought I'd find Charlie there.
+I did, and I had to get him home."
+
+"Taking your strength," said Mr. Brady's aunt, unfeelingly but
+truthfully, "a good-for-nothing----"
+
+"That's not the worst thing he does."
+
+"What is, then?"
+
+"Talking."
+
+"He don't mean anything by that."
+
+"Sometimes he does. Sometimes he tells you things that you never
+suspected and you don't believe him at first, but you find they're true;
+things that have been locked up in his addled brain so long that they're
+out of date, and you don't know how to profit by them or handle them,
+but they're true--all true."
+
+"Neil, you don't half know what you're saying. You're tired."
+
+Mrs. Donovan released herself abruptly to get the tea-pot from the
+stove. Her son, who had been talking in a low, monotonous voice, more to
+himself than her, watched her with dazed eyes that slowly cleared.
+
+"I guess you're right," he said. "I didn't mean to frighten you. Charlie
+was no more loose mouthed to-day than he always is. I got hold of
+nothing new, but I have hold of more than I can handle, and I'm tired
+and I'm scared, and there's only one of me."
+
+But Mrs. Donovan preferred her own interpretation of the situation, as
+most ladies would have. She made it tactfully, keeping her eyes away
+from him, busy with the tea-pot. "You're young, and it's June. Neil, the
+children walked round with the Sullivan girl to take home the wash to
+the Randalls'. They had some talk with Norah there. Judith will be home
+this week."
+
+She had mentioned the much-debated name in a voice which she kept
+indifferent, but she flashed a quick, apprehensive glance at him. She
+was quite unprepared for its effect upon him. He only laughed, and then
+his face sobered quickly, and his eyes grew lonely and tired again.
+
+"Judith," he said, "you think that's my trouble, mother. Well, I'm not
+so young as I was last June." Then he began with considerable relish to
+drink his tea.
+
+"You're contrary and close mouthed, but you're only a boy like all other
+boys," said Mrs. Donovan, sticking to her point, "and you're a good son
+to me."
+
+The boy who had made this rare and abortive attempt at confidences only
+the night before showed no need of repeating it as he gazed out of the
+Judge's window. He looked quite competent to bear all his own troubles
+alone, and a generous share of other people's, though somewhat saddened
+by them. Perhaps his mother's diagnosis of him was correct. He leaned
+his chin on his hands and stared out of the window like any dreaming
+boy, as if it was. But the winter that had passed so lightly over Green
+River had left traces of its own upon him. His profile had a clearer,
+more sharply outlined look. The lines at the corners of his mouth were
+firmer though they were no deeper, and the mouth was still a boy's
+mouth, red-lipped and lightly closed. But the dreaming eyes were a
+man's, dreaming still, but alert, and ready to banish dreams.
+
+The afternoon light was fading fast. It was not so easy now to read the
+fine print of Mr. Thayer's notes, and the boy made no further pretence
+of trying to. He let Mr. Thayer slip to the floor, and stretched himself
+in his chair with a sigh of relief. The sounds of talk in the Judge's
+room had grown fainter and more intermittent and finally ceased. The
+Judge, still deep in conference with them, had left with his guests by
+the private door. The boy was alone in the office.
+
+Gradually, as he sat there, the bright pageant of the busy little street
+had dimmed. It made a softer and mellower picture, a blend of delicate
+colours in the slant mellow light, and it was not so busy now. There
+were fewer passers-by, and they hurried and did not loiter past. It was
+almost supper-time. Willard Nash, not joy riding now, but dispatched
+reluctantly alone on some emergency errand, flashed by in his car, and
+disappeared up Main Street.
+
+Beyond the double row of shops the upper section of the street was
+empty. The maples, in full leaf now and delicately green, shadowed the
+upward slant of smooth road alluringly. Touched with golden afternoon
+light, and half hidden by the spreading green, the old, solidly built
+houses planted so heavily in the midst of their well-kept lawns had new
+and unguessed possibilities. Any one of them just then might have
+sheltered a fairy princess. The one that did was just within range of
+the boy's grave, patient eyes, a protruding porch, disproportionately
+enlarged and ugly, a sweep of vividly green lawn stripped bare of the
+graceful, dishevelled growth of lilac and syringa bushes that had graced
+it before Mrs. Randall's day.
+
+Not from that house, but from somewhere beyond it, a car flashed into
+view and cut smoothly and quickly down through the street, almost
+deserted now. The boy followed it idly with his eyes. The low-built,
+graceful lines of it held them. It approached, and slowed down directly
+under the windows, and the boy leaned forward and looked.
+
+It was stopping there. It was one of the Everard cars, as the trim lines
+and perfection of detail would have shown without the English
+chauffeur's familiar, supercilious face. The car had only one occupant,
+a slender young person in white. She slipped quickly out, and
+disappeared into the dingy entrance hall below.
+
+She had not seen the boy at the window. He stood still now in his
+corner, and waited. The tap of her feet was light even on the old
+creaking stairs, but he heard. She knocked once and a second time, and
+then threw open the door impatiently, saw who was there, and stopped
+just inside the door, and looked at him.
+
+Her white dress and big, beflowered hat looked as cool and as new as
+June itself. They did not make the dingy room look dingier, they made
+you forget it was dingy. Her soft, befrilled skirts fluffed and flared
+in the brave and bewildering mode of the moment. Skirts, small shoes
+that were built to dance, not to walk, the futuristic blend of flowers
+in her hat, and the girdle, unrelentingly high and futuristic of colour,
+too, that gave her waist an unbelievably slender look, were all in the
+dainty and sophisticated taste of a sophisticated young lady, and under
+the elaborate hat there was a sophisticated young face. It looked
+smaller and more faintly pink. The small chin was more prominent. But
+she still had the wide, reproachful eyes of a child. They regarded the
+boy unwinkingly. One hand went behind her, found the knob of the door,
+and closed it mechanically, but the eyes did not leave his face.
+
+He stepped uncertainly forward, and stopped.
+
+"Well, Judith," he said, in a voice that held all the authority Judge
+Saxon's assistant had acquired in the long year of his service and more,
+"Well?" and then, in a voice that held no authority at all, but was
+suddenly husky and small: "Oh, Judith, won't you speak to me?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN
+
+
+"Judith," Neil said.
+
+Neil's visitor flashed a quick glance round the dim office, empty except
+for the lean young figure that confronted her. It was a hunted glance,
+as if she really meant to turn without speaking and pick up her
+beruffled skirts, and run away down the dusty stairs, but she did not
+run away. Suddenly quite herself, recovering by tapping some emergency
+reserve of strength as only ladies can, but as most of them can, even
+the most amateurish and beruffled of ladies, she crossed the room to
+him.
+
+She came deliberately, with an impressive flutter of hidden silk. She
+was smiling a faint half-smile, sweet but indefinably teasing, and
+holding out a daintily gloved hand. It touched Neil's lightly and
+impersonally, not like a girl's warm hand at all, but like the hand of a
+society forever beyond his reach, held out patronizingly to this boy
+beyond its pale, only to emphasize the distance between them.
+
+"How do you do?" she murmured, formally but sweetly.
+
+"How do you do?" the boy stammered. "Judith, oh, Judith, I----"
+
+He broke off, staring helplessly into her eyes. They were dark and
+accusing and grave, and a heartache shadowed the depths of them, the
+lonely and infinite heartache of youth, when you cannot measure your
+pain or argue it away, but must suffer and suffer instead. But the boy
+was too miserable just then to read it there.
+
+"Judith," he began, "don't you care any more? Why wouldn't you read my
+letters? Why wouldn't you let me explain? Won't you let me now? I can,
+Judith."
+
+Still smiling, not taking the trouble to interrupt him, she waited for
+him to finish, and as she waited and smiled, he had suddenly nothing
+more to say. Judith was so slender and white and still as she stood
+there. All the outraged dignity of an offended schoolgirl was helping to
+make this overwhelming little effect of hers, and every trick of poise
+and carriage that she had acquired in a year, and something else,
+something that shamed and silenced the boy as no tricks could have done,
+and made her pathetic little show of injured dignity real. A woman's shy
+soul was reaching out for every defence it had to protect itself; a
+woman's new-born, bewildered soul looked out of Judith's beautiful,
+grieved eyes.
+
+It was very still in the office. Outside an automobile horn sounded
+aggressively, once and again, and Judith gave the boy an amused,
+apologetic glance.
+
+"Parks is in a hurry," she said. "He ought not to do that. The Colonel
+wouldn't like it. But I won't keep him waiting. I'm going out to the
+Camp for supper. Father and mother are there already. I stopped for the
+Judge, but he doesn't seem to be here. He is walking out to the Camp, I
+suppose. I'm--glad to have seen you." Her voice choked perilously over
+this irreproachable sentiment, then steadied and modulated itself
+according to the instructions of the highly accredited elocution teacher
+of which she had enjoyed the benefit for a year. "Good-night."
+
+Again she put out her cool little hand, but this time the boy's hand
+closed on it tight.
+
+"Judith," he began, his words coming fast, the contact seeming to
+release all that had been storing itself up in his lonely heart for a
+year. Once released, it came tumbling out incoherently, with the lilting
+brogue of the ragged little boy that he used to be singing through it,
+and the breathless catch in his voice that is the supremest eloquence
+for the kind of words that he had to say. But Judith gave no sign of
+being moved by it, and while she listened, a hard look, too unrelenting
+for any eloquence to reach, was growing in her eyes.
+
+"Judith, you're so sweet, so sweet; sweeter than you were last
+year--sweeter than you ever were before. I didn't know anybody could be
+sweeter, even you. I was so lonely. I wanted you so, and now you've
+come. Everything will be all right, now you've come. And you came
+straight here. You knew I was here, and you came because you knew. You
+came straight to me."
+
+"I came for the Judge," she corrected him gravely.
+
+"But you knew I was here."
+
+"I knew you were working for the Judge, but I didn't think you'd be here
+so late in the afternoon. I didn't come to see you. I didn't want to.
+Why should I? But I'm glad you are doing so well. Good-night, Neil."
+
+"Good-night," he muttered mechanically, checked once more in spite of
+himself.
+
+But as he spoke, he felt her hands, both in his now, and held tight,
+tremble and try softly at first, and then in sudden panic, to pull
+themselves away. Her voice, that had been so grave and cool, with no
+echo of the excitement that was in his, failed her now, though she kept
+her wide-open eyes bravely upon him. She was afraid of him, this young
+lady who was making such elaborate attempts to hide it, this young lady
+not of his world, and so anxious to prove it to him, this calm stranger
+with Judith's eyes. She was very much afraid, and she could not hide it
+any longer.
+
+"Let me go," she tried to say.
+
+"Judith," he dropped her hands obediently, but his arms reached out for
+her and caught her and held her close, "you didn't come for the Judge.
+You came to see me."
+
+"No. No."
+
+Her face was hidden against his shoulder. Her voice came muffled and
+soft. Neil paid no further attention to it. "No," it insisted faintly.
+"Let me go." Then it insisted no more, and the boy laughed a soft,
+triumphant little laugh.
+
+"You did come to see me, and you love me. You love me and I love you.
+You were angry, of course. Of course you sent back my letters. But
+you're going to listen to me now. You're going to let me explain. I
+couldn't that night. I couldn't talk any more. I didn't dare. I had to
+keep hold of myself. I had to get you home. And I did, dear. I turned
+round and took you home, and I got you home--safe. You're going to
+listen? And not be angry any more? You won't, will you? You
+won't--dear?"
+
+Her face was still out of sight, and her white figure was motionless in
+his arms. She did not relax there, but she did not struggle. She looked
+very slender and helpless so. Her futuristic hat had slipped from its
+daring and effective adjustment, and fallen to the Judge's dusty floor,
+where it lay unregarded. The silvery blond head against his shoulder was
+changed like the rest of her, a mass of delicately adjusted puffs and
+curls, but in the fast-fading light he saw only the soft, pale colour of
+her hair and the tender curve of her throat. He kissed it reverently and
+lightly, once only, and then his arms let her go.
+
+"You're so sweet," he whispered; "too sweet for me. But you're mine,
+aren't you? Tell me you are. And you forgive me for--everything? Tell
+me, Judith."
+
+She seemed in no hurry to tell him. She faced him silently, her white
+dress whiter than ever in the fading light, and her face big eyed and
+expressionless. He waited reverently for her answer, and quite
+confidently, picking up the elaborate hat mechanically, and then
+smoothing the ribbons tenderly, and pulling at the flowers, as he
+realized what he held.
+
+"Poor little hat," he said softly, with the brogue coaxing insinuatingly
+in his voice. "Poor little girl. I didn't mean to frighten you. And I
+didn't mean to--that night.... Judith!"
+
+It was undoubtedly Judith who confronted him, and no strange lady now.
+It was as if she had been waiting for some cue from him, and heard it,
+and sprung into life again, not the strange lady, not even the girl of
+the year before, but a long-ago Judith, the child who had come to his
+rescue on a forgotten May night, the child of the moonlit woods, with
+her shrill voice and flashing eyes. She was that Judith again, but grown
+to a woman, and now she was not his ally, but his enemy. She snatched
+the beflowered hat away, and swung it upon her head with the same
+reckless hand that had swept the lantern to the ground in her childish
+defence of him. Her eyes defied him.
+
+"That night," she stormed, "that night. Don't you ever speak of that
+night to me again. I never want to hear you speak again. I never want to
+see you again. I'll never forgive you as long as I live. I hate you!"
+
+"Judith, listen to me," begged the boy. "Listen. You must."
+
+But the girl who swept past him and turned to confront him at the door
+was past listening to him. Words that she hardly heard herself, and
+would not remember, came to her, and she flung them at him in a
+breathless little burst of speech that hurt and was meant to hurt. The
+boy took it silently, not trying to interrupt, slow colour reddening his
+cheeks, his eyes growing angry then sullen. The words that Judith used
+hardly mattered. They were futile and childish words, but because of the
+blaze of anger behind them, that had been gathering long and would go on
+after they were forgotten, they were splendid, too.
+
+"I hate you! I don't belong to you. I don't belong to anybody. I'm not
+like anybody else. Nobody cares what I do, and I don't care. I don't
+care. Nobody ever takes care of me or knows when I need it. Well, I can
+take care of myself. I'm going to now. I never want to belong to
+anybody. If I did, it wouldn't be you."
+
+"Judith, stop! You'll be sorry for this."
+
+"If I am, it's no business of yours. It's nobody's business but mine."
+
+"You'll be sorry," the boy muttered again, and this time the girl did
+not contradict him or answer. Her shrill little burst of defiance was
+over, and with it the sullen resentment that had crimsoned the boy's
+face as he listened began to die away. He was rebuffed and thrown back
+upon himself. His heart would not open so easily again. It would be a
+long time before it opened at all. But he did not resent this. He only
+looked baffled and puzzled and miserable, and the girl staring mutely at
+him from the doorway with big, starved eyes, looked miserable, too. She
+would be angry again. All the hurt pride and anger that had been
+gathering in her heart for a year was not to be relieved by an
+unrehearsed burst of speech. It had been sleeping in her heart. It was
+all awake now, and she would be angrier with the boy and the world than
+ever before, angrier and more reckless. But just now her anger was
+blotted out and she was only miserable. In the gloom of the office there
+was something curiously alike about the two tragic young faces.
+
+The two were alone together there, but they had never been farther
+apart. There was a whole world between them, a lonely world, where
+people all speak different languages, and understand each other only by
+a miracle, and most of them are so used to being alone that they forget
+they once had a moment of first realizing it. But when it was upon them,
+it was a bitter moment. These two young creatures were both living
+through it now. They looked at each other blankly, all antagonism gone.
+
+"You won't listen?" said the boy wonderingly, admitting defeat. "You
+won't forgive me?"
+
+"No," said Judith pitifully. "I can't."
+
+Neil looked at her forlornly, but did not contest this. He came meekly
+forward, not trying to touch her again, and opened the door for her.
+
+"Well, good-night," he said. "Good-night, dear."
+
+"Good-bye," Judith said. "Good-bye, Neil."
+
+Then, jerking her flaunting hat into adjustment with trembling fingers,
+and shaking out her befrilled skirts with a poor little imitation of her
+earlier airs and graces, she slipped out into the corridor, groped for
+the dusty stair rail, and clutched at it with a new disregard for her
+immaculate whiteness, and disappeared down the stairs.
+
+In the street below the last of the afternoon light still lingered,
+reflected from the polished windows of the bank building, and faintly
+illuminating the half-deserted square, but the sun was just going down
+behind the court-house roof, a big, crimson ball of vanishing light.
+Judith, appearing below in the doorway, stood regarding it deliberately
+for a minute, ignoring the chauffeur's discreet manifestations of
+impatience, and then made herself comfortable deliberately in the
+Colonel's car.
+
+She sat there proudly erect, a dainty, aloof little lady. She seemed to
+have recovered her high estate upon entering it, and become a princess
+beyond Neil's reach once more. Watching her gravely from the Judge's
+window, he could not see the angry tears in her eyes or the reckless
+light in them.
+
+Little preliminary pants and puffs came from the car, discreetly
+impatient, as if they voiced all the feelings that the correct Parks
+repressed. He relieved them with one blatant flourish of sound from the
+horn, and swung the car grandly across the square, round the corner, and
+out of sight. Judith was gone, and she had not once looked up at the boy
+in the window.
+
+She had not even seen another cavalier, who dashed out of a shop and
+tried to intercept and speak to her, but was just too late; Mr. Willard
+Nash, thrilled by his first sight of her, ready to return to his old
+allegiance at a word, and advertising the fact in every line of his
+forlorn fat figure as he stood alone on the sidewalk gazing wistfully
+after the vanished car.
+
+The boy at the window did not waste his time in this way. Judith was
+gone, and with her the spell that had held him mute and helpless, and he
+was a man of affairs once more. He was not a very cheerful man of
+affairs to-night. He was not singing or whistling to himself, as he
+usually did, but he moved competently enough about the room, entering
+the Judge's private office with its smell of stale tobacco smoke and
+group of chairs, so confidentially close that they looked capable of
+carrying on the conference their late occupants had begun without help
+from them. He rearranged this room, giving just the straightening
+touches to the jumble of papers on the desk that the Judge permitted,
+and no more, and putting the outer office in order, too.
+
+By his own desk he paused, fingering Mr. Thayer's thumbed pages
+absently. He had no attention to spare for them just then, or for the
+graver questions that had absorbed him just before Judith came. They
+would soon claim him again. They awaited him now, but out in the
+gathering dark that he watched from the darkening office something else
+waited, too.
+
+His heart ached with it, but it beat harder and stronger for it, and new
+strength to meet old issues came pulsing from it, as if he were awake
+again after a year of sleep. He was grieved and miserable, but he was
+awake. For his mother was right: he was only a boy like other boys; he
+was young and it was June, and whether she was kind or unkind, Judith
+Randall was back in Green River.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Judith, whirled along the fast-darkening road between close-growing
+pines, dulling from green to black, and birches, silver against them,
+looked for the welcoming lights of Camp Everard through a mist of angry
+tears.
+
+She shed them decorously, even under cover of the dark; she was still a
+dainty and proud little lady, with nothing about her to advertise
+conspicuously that she was crying, or why. But her little gloved hands
+were closing and unclosing themselves, her lips were trembling in spite
+of her, and there was a hunted look in her eyes as she turned them
+toward the dark woods, as if her quarrel with Neil were not her only
+trouble. The tears that she controlled so gallantly were a protest
+against a world only half understood and full of enemies whose alien
+presence she was just beginning to feel.
+
+But Neil, as she had just seen him, was enough to occupy the mind of
+such a young lady, or a much older one. The look in his eyes as he stood
+holding open the Judge's door for her was a highly irritating one for
+any lady to meet. He was older and wiser than she was, no matter what
+she could say or do to hurt him; he was stronger than she was, and
+patiently waiting to prove it to her; that was what Neil's eyes were
+saying.
+
+They said it first when he left her at her own door without a good-night
+on that strange May night a year ago; when she stood looking up at him
+changed and alien and silent, with the May moon behind him, that had
+brought her bad fortune instead of good, still dim and alluring with
+false promises above the shadowy elms in the little street, and they
+looked down at her just so--Neil's grave, unforgettable, conquering
+eyes. They were eyes that followed you to-night, when you tried to
+forget them and look at the dark woods and fields; eyes that looked at
+you still when you closed your own.
+
+But Judith would not look at them. The eyes were lying to her. Neil was
+not really wise or kind. He was cruel. He had hurt her and slighted her,
+and she was through with him.
+
+"Parks, can't you go faster?" she said suddenly, in her clear little
+voice. "It's so late, and I'm hungry and cold."
+
+"It's bad going through here, Miss," the chauffeur said.
+
+They were turning into a narrow mile or so of road that sloped gradually
+down through a series of arbitrary curves and bends to the lake and the
+camp, a changed and elaborate structure now, overweighted with verandas
+and uncompromisingly lit with new electric lights. But the road was one
+of the things that the Colonel did not improve when he changed the
+public camp into a private one. It was unchanged and unspoiled, a
+mysterious wood road still, alluring now in the gloom.
+
+Judith's own people were waiting for her there at the end of that road.
+They were all the people she had. Willard and schooltime and playtime
+were more than a year behind her; they were behind her forever. She
+could never go back to them. She had never really been part of them. She
+had forced herself into a place there, but she had lost it now, and it
+could never be hers again.
+
+These were her people. They were strange to her still, but she had grown
+up breathing the feverish air that they breathed, and with little
+whispers of hidden scandal about her. Judith was alone between two
+worlds: one was closed to her, and she was before the door of another,
+where she did not know her way. She was really alone, as she had told
+Neil, more alone than she knew; a lonely and tragic figure, white and
+small in the corner of the big car.
+
+But she was not crying now. She dabbed expertly at her eyes with an
+overscented scrap of handkerchief and sat up, looking eagerly down the
+dark road. She could catch far echoes of a song through the still night
+air, faint echoes only, but it was a song that she knew, a gay little
+song, and it came from a place where people were always kind and gay. It
+was like a hand stretched out to her through the dark, a warm hand, to
+beckon her nearer, and then draw her close. She leaned forward and
+listened and looked.
+
+There was the camp, the first glimpse of it, though soon a dip of the
+road would hide it again. It was an enchanting glimpse, a far,
+low-lying flicker of light. And there, just by the big, upstanding
+boulder where the road turned abruptly, she saw something else. She saw
+it before Parks did, as if she had been watching for it. It was a man's
+figure that started forward, came to the edge of the road, and waited.
+The man looked more than his slender height in the shadow, but his
+light, quick walk was unmistakable. It was Colonel Everard.
+
+"Stop, Parks," Judith said, with new authority in her voice.
+
+He stood waiting for her silently, without any greeting at all, and she
+slipped her hand into his and stepped out and stood beside him.
+
+"Go on," he said to the chauffeur. "It's too rough here for the car.
+It's easier on foot. Miss Randall will walk with me."
+
+The car, skilfully manipulated along the steep, zigzag road, but a
+clumsy thing at best here in the woods, and an artificial and ugly
+thing, lumbered away, breaking through outreaching branches. Judith
+watched it out of sight. Then and not till then she turned to her host.
+
+"Aren't you going to speak to me?" the great man inquired respectfully,
+as if her intentions deserved the most serious consideration.
+
+"Yes," said Judith serenely, unflattered by it.
+
+"What are you going to say?"
+
+"What do you want me to say?"
+
+"I want you to shake hands with me."
+
+A hand touched his lightly. It drew quickly away, but it was a confiding
+little hand.
+
+"You don't seem surprised to see me."
+
+"I'm not," said Judith.
+
+"But you're glad to see me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It's stuffy inside, and they've got a fire in the billiard room and
+won't leave it. I wanted----"
+
+Judith laughed and let him draw her hand through his arm as they began
+to grope their way down the road. "You wanted to meet me."
+
+She made the correction triumphantly and confidently, as she would have
+made it to Willard. All this was coquetry, as she and Willard understood
+it, and it was an old game to her, and a childish game, but there was
+something strangely exciting about the fact that the Colonel understood
+it, too, and condescended to play at it. It was more exciting than usual
+to-night.
+
+"Why should I want to meet you?" he said.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Why weren't you downstairs last night when I came to see your father?"
+
+"I was tired."
+
+"You weren't running away from me?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And you won't ever run away from me?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You're afraid of me."
+
+"Am I?"
+
+"Aren't you?"
+
+"I don't know," said Judith. "Look, there's the moon."
+
+It was low above the trees, rising solemn and round and slow. It looked
+reproachful and grave, like Neil's eyes. It was looking straight at
+Judith. Judith turned her eyes sternly away. What was the Colonel
+saying? Something that did not sound like Willard at all, or like the
+Colonel, either. Nobody had ever spoken to her in just that voice
+before. It was a choked, queer voice. But Judith smiled up at him and
+listened, tightening the clasp of her hand on his arm.
+
+"Don't be afraid of me. Don't ever be afraid.... You're so sweet
+to-night."
+
+"No, I won't," said Judith defiantly, straight to the round, accusing
+moon. "I won't be afraid."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
+
+
+"I don't like the look of you," said Mrs. Donovan.
+
+"Then you're hard to please." Neil turned at the foot of the steps to
+say, trying to smile as he said it. "Harder than I am. I do like the
+look of you."
+
+The Donovans, mother and son, were both quite sufficiently attractive to
+the eye at that moment. This was the second day of September, and also
+the second day of the county fair in Madison, five miles away--the big
+day of the fair, and Neil's uncle had been up at dawn to escort the
+younger Bradys there in a borrowed rig, and in the company of at least
+half Green River in equipages of varied style and state of repair. Neil
+had slept late, breakfasted sketchily, and dined elaborately alone with
+his mother. Now the long, still, sunny afternoon was half over, and she
+stood in the kitchen door, watching him start for town.
+
+The kitchen, newly painted this year, looked empty and unnaturally neat
+behind her, but friendly and lived in, too, with the old, creaking
+rocker pulled to an inviting angle at the window overlooking the marsh,
+and a sofa under the other window, its worn upholstery covered freshly
+with turkey-red; one splash of clear colour, sketched in boldly, just in
+the corner where it satisfied the eye. Her neighbours did not take this
+humble fabric seriously for decorative purposes; indeed, they would not
+have permitted a sofa in the kitchen at all, but her neighbours were not
+of her gracious race. They could not wear a plain and necessary white
+apron like the completing touch to a correct toilette assumed
+deliberately. Mrs. Donovan could, and she did to-day. Also her brown
+hair, dulled to a softer, more indefinite brown by its sprinkling of
+white, rippled softly about her low forehead, and her dress was faded to
+a tender, vague blue like the blue of her eyes. Her eyes, almost on a
+level with Neil's as she stood on the step above him, had the charm that
+was peculiarly their own to-day, cloudy as they were with the faraway
+look of a race that believes in fairies, but warm and human, too, with
+an intimate mother look of concern for Neil.
+
+Neil met it steadily, not a sullen boy as he would have been under that
+questioning a year ago, not resenting it at all, but keeping his secrets
+deliberately. It had always been hard for her to make him answer
+questions. It was not even easy for her to ask them now.
+
+"You don't sleep," she began.
+
+"Neither do you, if you've been catching me at it," reasoned her son
+correctly.
+
+"You work too hard." She had made an accusation that he could not deny,
+so he only smiled his quick, flashing smile. "You won't even take a day
+to yourself."
+
+"I'll have the office and most of the town to myself this afternoon.
+I'll have to go. I've got something special to look into."
+
+"Where's Charlie?" she demanded at once.
+
+"Oh, he's not troubling me to-day. He's safe at Madison with his new
+mare. He'll break loose there, then come home and repent and stay
+straight for weeks and make no trouble for me. He's due to break loose.
+He's been good too long--too good to be true. He was in fine form last
+night." Mr. Charlie Brady's cousin grinned reminiscently.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"He gave me quite a little side talk on good form in dress and diction.
+Charlie claims I won't make an orator, and he don't like my taste in
+ties."
+
+"Who does he think he is?" flashed Mr. Brady's aunt indignantly.
+
+"Who do you think he is?" her son inquired unexpectedly. "For whatever
+you think, that's me. I'm no better than Charlie."
+
+"Charlie?" Mrs. Donovan gasped, and then plunged into an indignant
+defence of her son, not pausing to take breath.
+
+"You?" she began. "You that's planted firm on the ladder and right-hand
+to the Judge already, and him getting older every day, and Theodore Burr
+just kept on in the office because Everard's after Burr's wife. So he
+is, and the town knows it, and Theodore'll wake up to it soon. A fine
+partner Theodore is for the Judge, poor boy, but he's a good boy, too,
+though none too strong in the head; Lil Burr is a good girl, too, and
+she'd make a good wife to Theodore if she could be left to herself.
+She'd make it up with Theodore, as many a girl has done that's got more
+for her husband to forgive than Lil.
+
+"Poor Lil. Her head's high above me now, but the time was she cried on
+my shoulder; crying for Charlie, she was, before ever Charlie took up
+with Maggie and Lil with Theodore; when the four of them were all young
+together, and the one as good as the other. Young they were, and the
+hearts of them young--wild, doubtful hearts. Many's the time Lil would
+come to me then, here in this same kitchen, and go down on her knees,
+her that was tall and a fine figure of a girl, and cling onto me, crying
+her heart out; crying she was for all the world like--like----"
+
+Mrs. Donovan checked herself abruptly with shrewd eyes upon her son.
+
+"Like young things do cry, and tell you their troubles in tears, not
+words." She ended somewhat vaguely, and came quickly back to her main
+subject again.
+
+"You that can walk into the big rally next week and sit with the men
+that count, and whisper and talk to them, and hold your head high, with
+nothing against you, and will be sitting up on the platform soon, with
+the best of them, and be mayor yet, like Everard's going to be, or
+governor, maybe--you to compare yourself with Charlie, if he is my
+half-sister's own son. He's a drunken good-for-nothing. He's got no
+spirit in him if he'll stay here at all, where he's ashamed himself and
+make a show of himself. How is it he's able to stay? Where does he get
+the money he spends? This town don't pay it to him. Who does?"
+
+"What put that into your head?" her son asked sharply.
+
+"There's talk enough of it, and there'll be more. The whole town will be
+asking soon."
+
+"The town asks a lot of questions it don't dare hear the answers to,"
+said Neil softly, unregarded. His mother returned to her grievance:
+
+"You to be likening yourself to Charlie."
+
+"When Charlie was twenty-five," Neil began slowly, "he was where I will
+be then, or better. The Judge was a friend to him, too, and the Judge
+was a better friend then to have. Charlie was setting up for himself,
+well thought of. My own father trusted him. When I was a boy and not
+grown, Charlie was a son to him, and more. He was a better spoken lawyer
+than I'll ever make, quick and smooth with his tongue, and he was fine
+appearing, and put up a better front than I do. I've gone part of the
+road that Charlie went. What will stop me from going the whole road?
+What's beat Charlie is strong enough to beat me.... Don't look so
+scared, mother. I don't want to scare you. I only want you to be fair to
+Charlie."
+
+"His heart's broke," she conceded, melting. "He's nothing with Maggie
+gone."
+
+"His heart's broke, but that's not what beat him," her son stated with
+authority. "He was beat before."
+
+"When?"
+
+"He was beat," Neil stated deliberately, "when Everard moved to Green
+River."
+
+This was a sweeping statement, but Neil did not qualify it. He dropped
+the subject and stood silent, turning absent eyes upon the green expanse
+of marshy field that had been the starting-place of all his dreams when
+he was a dream-struck, gazing boy. His mother's eyes followed his,
+growing cloudier and soft as if even now she could read them there.
+
+"Rests your eyes," Neil said, after a minute; "looks pretty, too, in the
+sun. It's a pretty green. We'll drain it, perhaps, by the time I'm mayor
+or governor. It might pay. I'll be going now."
+
+"Neil, when did you see her last?" asked his mother suddenly.
+
+"See who?" he muttered, and then flushed, and straightened himself, and
+met her eyes bravely.
+
+"I saw Judith yesterday," he said, "on Main Street, and--she cut me."
+
+"Did she walk past you?"
+
+"No, she wouldn't do that. She pretended not to see me, but she saw me,
+all right. She passed me in an automobile."
+
+"Whose?"
+
+"One of Everard's."
+
+"Was he with her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Neil," his mother began a little breathlessly, "I want to tell you
+something. I've said hard things to you, and they weren't deserved. I
+know it now, and I'm sorry. I want to take them all back. I've said hard
+things about Judith Randall."
+
+She hurried on, afraid of being stopped, but he made no move to stop
+her. He listened courteously, his face not changing.
+
+"Neil, she's not what I thought. There's no harm in her. There's no
+pride in her. She's just lonesome. She's just a young, young girl. She's
+sweet-spoken and sweet-faced. Neil, from all I hear----"
+
+"You didn't hear all this direct from--Judith, then?"
+
+"Judith?" she hesitated, flashing a questioning glance at him. "Is it
+likely? How would I get the chance? But from all I hear, she's too good
+for Everard and the like. And she's not safe with them. She needs----"
+
+"What?" interrupted her son gravely, with the air of seeking information
+on a subject quite strange to him and rather distasteful. But she tried
+to go on.
+
+"--Judith needs--any one that's fond of her, any one that she's fond of,
+to be good to her now. I've seen her, and it's in the eyes of her. No
+man ever knows just what a woman is grieving for, but that's all one if
+he'll comfort her when she's grieving. She needs----"
+
+Neil's eyes were expressionless. She sighed and put her two hands on his
+shoulders. "Have it your own way," she said. "I'll say no more."
+
+Neil caught at one of the hands on his shoulders and kissed it.
+
+"For one thing," he said, "Judith or any girl needs a mother with a
+heart in her--like I've got, but you're the one in the world. I'm
+going."
+
+But he did not go at once. Standing beside her, suddenly awkward and
+shy, he first gave her the confidence that she could not force from him,
+all in one generous breathless burst of words.
+
+"Mother, Charlie's not the only one with his heart broke. But
+heart-break isn't the worst thing I've got to bear. There's something
+else. I can't tell you. I'd rather bear it alone. I've got to.
+Good-bye."
+
+Then he left her standing still in the door, shading her cloudy blue
+eyes with one small hand and looking after him. He swung into the dusty
+road and, keeping his head high and his eyes straight ahead, undazzled
+by the sharp sunlight of mid-afternoon on the long stretch of unshaded
+way, passed out of sight toward Green River.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
+
+
+Neil turned into Post-office Square just on the stroke of four. The
+square was as empty and strange to the eye as his mother's kitchen,
+though this was the rush hour of the day in that business centre upon
+ordinary days, when the fair had not emptied the town.
+
+A solitary Ford of prehistoric make stood before the post-office, and
+even that was just cranking up. It lurched dispiritedly off, leaving a
+cloud of dust behind. A dejected-looking group of children hung about
+the door of the ice-cream parlour, and appeared to lack the initiative
+to enter in. Half the shops were shut. In the big show-window of the
+central section of Ward's Emporium Luther Ward, usually on parade and
+magnificently in charge of his shop and his staff of employees at this
+time of day, stood in his shirt sleeves, embracing an abnormally slender
+lady in a mauve velveteen tailored suit.
+
+At first glance he seemed to be instructing her in the latest dance
+steps, but on a nearer view the visible part of her proved to be wax,
+and the suit was ticketed nineteen-fifty. He jerked her into place,
+turned and saw Neil, and hailed him cheerfully, waving him round to the
+main entrance door, where he joined him, still wiping his brow.
+
+"If you want a thing well done, do it yourself," he said, explaining his
+late exertions with the air of believing the explanation was original
+with him and did credit to his intellect. "What are you here for,
+brother? Isn't Madison good enough for you?"
+
+"No," Neil said. "Not with the big race called off."
+
+"Called off? How's that?"
+
+"Because you weren't there, Luther."
+
+Mr. Ward gave a gratified laugh at this graceful compliment, and
+descended to facts.
+
+"I'm too old for horse racing. It's my boy's turn. He went over with
+Willard Nash's crowd to-day. Why didn't you?" Mr. Ward demanded
+severely.
+
+"Oh, Willard asked me all right. He's quite strong for me now." Mr. Ward
+had doubted this, being on the watch for slights to Neil and resenting
+them, though he never made an effort to prevent them. This was the usual
+attitude of Neil's more influential friends.
+
+"Willard's a shrimp," said Mr. Ward gruffly. "And I like you," he added
+in a burst of frankness. "I always did like you, Neil. You've pulled
+yourself up by your boot-straps, and I hope you hang on to them tight.
+There's nobody better pleased than I am. Oh, I got a rig and sent all
+the help from the store over to the fair to-day," he added, turning
+quickly to impersonal subjects.
+
+"You always do treat them right."
+
+"Well, this wasn't my idea. I got it from the Colonel." A look of
+harmless but plainly evident pride came into Mr. Ward's open and ruddy
+countenance as he mentioned the great man's name. It was only the week
+before that he had received his first dinner invitation from the
+Everards. It came at the eleventh hour and did not include his wife, but
+he was dazzled by it still. "You know what he's doing? Closing his
+house, practically, for all three days of the fair, and sending all the
+help on the place over there--two touring cars full. It's a fine thing
+for them. They're high-class help and don't have it any too interesting
+down here. Anybody that says he's not democratic don't know the Colonel.
+This town don't half know him yet."
+
+"You're right," Neil put in softly.
+
+"Democratic," declaimed Mr. Ward, "and public spirited. Look at the
+fountain he's going to put up in the square. Look at the old Grant house
+going to be fitted up for a library. Look at him running for mayor, when
+he's been turning down chances at bigger offices for years--willing to
+stay here and serve for the good of the town. There's talk against him
+more than ever this year. I know that. It amounts to an indignation
+meeting when the boys get together at Halloran's. Well, failures hate a
+successful man, and their talk don't count. It will die down. But I hate
+to hear of it. For the Colonel's put this town on the map. He's not
+perfect, but who is? And suppose he does have a good time his own way?
+We've got a right to--all of us. It's a free country."
+
+Mr. Ward delivered this last sentiment with touching faith in its force
+and freshness, and waved a plump hand of invitation toward the little
+private office back of the main section of his store, where he had
+developed his unfailing eloquence of speech upon subjects of public
+interest, and liked best to practise it. But Neil, himself listened to
+with growing deference by the groups that forgathered there, was not to
+be lured to that sanctum to-day. Speaking hastily and vaguely of work to
+be done, he escaped from his good friend and across the street to Judge
+Saxon's office.
+
+He climbed the stairs heavily, and did not linger before the door to
+picture the sign changed to "Saxon, Burr, and Donovan," as he had done
+more times than he cared to admit. The office was not a thing to be
+proud of as a step up in life for him to-day; it was a place to be alone
+in, as men feel alone and safe in the place that is their own because
+they have worked there.
+
+Showing this in every move, Neil locked the door, threw off his cap, and
+dropped into the broken-springed chair at the desk that was nominally
+Theodore Burr's, but really his. He groped mechanically for the handle
+of the drawer where he usually rested his feet, found it hard to open,
+gave up the attempt and, leaning back without its support, stared at Mr.
+Burr's ornate, brass-mounted blotter with unseeing eyes.
+
+Sitting there, he was no longer the boy who had the privilege of
+intimate talk with prominent citizens like Mr. Ward and valued it; or
+the boy who had laughed at his mother's anxiety so bravely. He was not
+even the boy that he used to be, sullen, but rebellious, too. To-day for
+the first time he was something worse, a defeated boy. The long minutes
+dragged like hours, and he sat through them as he would have sat through
+hours, silent and motionless, losing run of time and acknowledging
+defeat.
+
+For there was something that this boy wanted, and had always wanted, as
+he could never want other things, even success or love, as a boy or a
+man can want one thing only in one lifetime. It was a remote and
+preposterous dream that he had, a dream that nobody else in Green River
+was foolhardy enough to cherish long, but this boy belonged to the race
+of poets and dreamers, the race that must sometimes dream true, because
+it always dreams. His dream had taken different forms: sometimes he saw
+himself doing desperate things, setting fire to a house that he knew and
+hated, striking a blow in the dark for which nobody thanked him, but the
+issue was always the same, and the dream never left him. He was to find
+Green River a new master. He was to save the town. That was his dream.
+It had never left him till now.
+
+He was only a lean, tense boy, crouched over a battered desk and staring
+out of the window at a country street with absent, beautiful eyes, but
+he was living through a tragic hour; the terrible hour that poets and
+dreamers know when they lose hold upon their dreams. Measured by
+minutes, this hour was not long. Neil passed a hand across his forehead
+and sat up, reaching for his cap in a dazed way, for he was not to be
+permitted to hide longer from his trouble here. The plump and personable
+figure of Mr. Theodore Burr was crossing the square and disappearing
+into the door below. His unhurried step climbed the stairs. Neil opened
+the door to him.
+
+"Hello, stranger. Why aren't you at Madison?" Neil said.
+
+"I didn't go," said Mr. Burr lucidly. "Where are you going? I don't want
+to drive you away from here."
+
+"Oh, just out. I was going anyway."
+
+"You don't invite me. I don't blame you. I'm poor company, and I've got
+business to attend to here."
+
+"No!"
+
+"Why shouldn't I have business here?" snapped Mr. Burr.
+
+"You should, you should, Theodore. Say"--the question had been troubling
+Neil subconsciously all the time he sat at the desk--"what's wrong with
+that lower drawer? I can't open it."
+
+"It's locked."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"That," said Mr. Burr with dignity, "is my private drawer--for private
+papers."
+
+"Papers!" Mr. Burr's private papers were known to consist chiefly of a
+file of receipted bills and a larger file of unreceipted bills, both
+kept with his usual fastidious neatness. "What papers?"
+
+"That's my business. I've got some rights here, if I am a figurehead.
+I've got some privileges."
+
+"Sure. Don't you feel right to-day, Theodore?"
+
+"That," said Mr. Burr, "is my business, too."
+
+Neil stared at his friend. Mr. Burr was faultlessly groomed, as always,
+his tie was of the vivid and unique blue that he affected so often, and
+a very recent close shave had acted upon him as usual, giving him a pink
+and new-born appearance, but his eyes looked old and tired, as if he had
+not slept for weeks and had no immediate prospect of sleeping, and there
+were lines of strain about his weak mouth. He was not himself. Even a
+boy preoccupied with his own troubles could not ignore it.
+
+"Don't you feel right?" Neil said. "Don't you want me to do something,
+Theodore?"
+
+"Yes. Get out of here. Leave me alone," Mr. Burr snapped angrily.
+
+"Sure," said Neil soothingly.
+
+Suddenly Mr. Burr gripped Neil's reluctant, shy, boy's hand, kept it in
+his for a minute in silence, and then abruptly let it go, pushing Neil
+toward the door.
+
+"Don't begrudge me one locked drawer when you'll own the whole place
+some day," he said, with all the dignity that his fretful burst of
+irritation had lacked. "I'd like to see that day. You're a good boy,
+Donovan."
+
+"You're not right. You've got a grouch. Come with me and walk it off,"
+Neil said uneasily, but he did not press the invitation, and his friend
+had little more to say. His silence was perhaps the most unusual thing
+about his behaviour, which was all out of key to-day. Neil remembered
+afterward that just as he closed the door upon Mr. Burr and his
+vagaries, shutting them at the same time out of his mind, Mr. Burr,
+sitting rather heavily down in the broken-springed desk chair, was
+bending and stretching out a faultlessly manicured, slightly unsteady
+hand toward the locked drawer of the desk.
+
+Neil stepped out into the street with a cautious eye upon the Emporium
+across the way, but no portly form was in sight there now, and no hearty
+voice hailed him. He crossed the square and turned north, walking
+quickly, soon leaving the larger houses behind, and then the smaller
+houses above the railroad track, always climbing gradually as he walked.
+Finally, at the entrance to an overgrown road that led off to his left,
+and at the highest point of his long and slow ascent, he turned and
+looked back at the town.
+
+The town that Colonel Everard had put on the map hardly deserved the
+honour, seen so in a glitter of afternoon light, with the long, sloping
+hill leading down to it, and the white tower of the church pointing high
+above it, a cozy huddle of houses at the foot of the hill. It looked
+unassuming and sheltered and safe, only a group of homes to make a
+simple and sheltered home in. The boy looked long at it, then turned
+abruptly and plunged into the road before him.
+
+It led straight across a shallow belt of fields and deep into the woods.
+Only a cart-track at first, it soon lost itself here in a path, and the
+path in turn grew fainter and became a brown, alluring ghost of a path.
+It was hard to trace, but this was ground that Neil knew, a favourite
+haunt of his, though few other boys ventured to trespass here. The woods
+were part of the Everard estate.
+
+Neil had found his first May flowers here on the first spring that he
+was privileged to give them to Judith. Last year she had helped him look
+for them here. His errand here was not so pleasant to-day. The brown
+path did not really lead to the heart of the woods as it seemed to. It
+was not so long as it looked. It was a fairly direct short cut to the
+Everard house.
+
+The boy followed it quickly, with no eyes for the dim lure of the woods
+to-day.
+
+"You've beat me," he muttered once to himself; "I'll have a look at
+you."
+
+Soon the woods were not so thick. They fell away around him, carelessly
+thinned at first, littered with fallen trees and stumps, but nearer the
+house combed out accurately by the relentless processes of landscape
+gardening, and looking orderly and empty. The little path vanished
+entirely here. Ahead of Neil, through a thin fringe of trees, was the
+Colonel's rose garden; beyond it, the broad stretch of lawn and the
+house, bulky and towered and tall.
+
+Neil broke through the trees and stood and looked at it, straight ahead,
+seen through the frame of the trellised entrance to the garden,
+upstanding and ugly and arrogant.
+
+"You've beat me," he said to the Colonel's house. "You've beat me; you
+and him. I hate you!"
+
+His voice had a hollow sound in the empty garden. Garden and lawn and
+house had the same look that the whole deserted town had caught to-day;
+the look of suddenly empty rooms where much life has been, a breathless
+strangeness that holds echoes of what has happened there, and even hints
+of what is to happen; haunted rooms. It is not best to linger there.
+Neil turned uneasily toward the path again.
+
+He turned, then he turned back, stood for a tense minute listening, then
+broke through the rose garden and began to run across the lawn. Very
+faint and small, so that he could not tell whether it was in a man's
+voice or a woman's, but echoing clearly across the deserted garden, he
+had heard a scream from the house.
+
+It came from the house somewhere, though as Neil ran toward it the house
+still looked tenantless. The veranda was without its usual gay litter of
+cushions and books and serving trays. At the long windows that opened on
+it all the curtains were close drawn--or at all but one.
+
+As Neil reached the house he saw that the middle window was thrown high
+and the long, pale-coloured curtain was dragged from its rod and
+dangling over the sill. Just then he heard a second scream from the
+house. It was so choked and faint that he barely heard it. Neil ran up
+the steps and slipped through the open window into the Everards'
+library.
+
+Little light came through the curtained windows. The green room,
+sparsely scattered with furniture in summer covers of light chintz that
+glimmered pale and forbidding, looked twice its unfriendly length in the
+gloom. There was a heavy, dead scent of too many flowers in the air. On
+a table across the room a bowl of hothouse hyacinths, just overturned,
+crushed the flowers with its weight and dripped water into the sodden
+rug.
+
+Neil, at the window looking uncertainly into the half-dark room, saw the
+bowl and the white mass of crushed flowers, and then something else,
+something that shifted and stirred in a far corner of the room. He saw
+it dimly at first, a dark, struggling group. There were two men in it.
+
+One was a man who had screamed, but he was not screaming now. It would
+hardly have been convenient for him to scream, for the other, the
+smaller and slighter man of the two, was clutching him by the throat,
+gripping it with a hand that he could not shake off as the two figures
+swayed back and forth.
+
+"Who's there?" Neil cried.
+
+Nobody answered him. Nobody needed to, for just then the two men who
+seemed to be fighting swung into the narrow strip of light before the
+uncurtained window and he could see their faces. He could see, too, that
+they were not fighting now, though they had seemed to be. The bigger man
+was choked into submission already. No sound came from him and he hung
+limp and still in the little man's hold. Just in the centre of the strip
+of light the little man relaxed his grip, and let him fall. He dropped
+to the floor in a limp, untidy looking heap, and lay still there, with
+the light full on his face, closed eyes and grinning mouth. The man was
+Colonel Everard, the man who stood over him was Charlie Brady.
+
+As Neil looked Brady dropped on his knees beside the Colonel, felt for
+his heart, and found it. He knelt there, motionless, holding his hand
+pressed over it and peering intently into his face. Presently he got to
+his feet deliberately, gave a deep sigh of entire content with himself,
+and looked about him. Then and not until then he saw Neil. He saw him
+without surprise, if without much pleasure, it appeared.
+
+"You're late," he remarked.
+
+"You drunken fool," Neil began furiously, then stopped, staring at his
+cousin. Whatever the meaning of this exhibition was, Charlie was not
+drunk. The excitement that possessed him was excitement of some other
+kind. It possessed him entirely, though it was under control for the
+moment. His muscles twitched with it. His shoulders shifted restlessly.
+His hands closed and unclosed. His eyes were strangely lit, and there
+was an absent, exalted look about them. Whatever the excitement, it was
+strong--stronger than Charlie. Neil, his eyes now used to the
+half-light, could see no weapon in the room, dropped on the floor or
+discarded. Mr. Brady, normally a coward in his cups and out of them, had
+attacked his enemy with his bare hands.
+
+"Charlie, what's got you?" Neil said. "What's come to you?"
+
+"What's come to him, there?" Charlie said, in a voice that was changed,
+too, and was as remote and as strange as his eyes, a low voice, with the
+deceptive, terrible calm of gathering hysteria about it.
+
+"Look what's come to him," the voice went on. "Don't he deserve it, and
+worse? How did I find him to-day when I broke in through the window
+there? At his old tricks again. There was a woman with him in the
+library there, when he came out to me. He locked the door. She's there
+now. Neil, you'd better get away from here. I don't know what you're
+doing here, but you'd better go, and go quick."
+
+He had given this advice indifferently. He made his next observation
+indifferently, too, with his furtive, absent eyes on the library door.
+
+"I've killed him."
+
+"What's got you? Are you crazy?"
+
+"No--not now. You'd better go. I want to take a look in there first. The
+key's in the door."
+
+"Charlie, come back here."
+
+The note of command that he was used to responding to in his young
+cousin's voice reached and controlled Mr. Brady even now; he obeyed and
+swung round and stood still, looking at Neil. Neil's dark eyes, just
+above the level of his own, and so like them, were unrecognizable now.
+They were dull with anger, and they were angry with him.
+
+"What's the matter?" he quavered. "What's the matter, Neil?"
+
+Between the two cousins, as they stood facing each other, the Colonel
+lay ominously still. The cruel eyes did not open, and the distorted
+mouth did not change.
+
+"Look! You can see for yourself. Feel his heart," Mr. Brady offered, but
+his cousin's dark, disconcerting eyes did not leave his face. "What's
+the matter, Neil? What are you going to do?"
+
+"I'm going to make you talk out to me," Neil said. "You'll tell me
+what's got you, and why you did this, which will be the ruin of you and
+me, too, but first you'll tell me something else. You'll tell me what
+you've hid from me for a year, you who can tell me the truth when you're
+drunk and lie out of it when you're sober, till you've worn me out and
+I'm sick of trying to get the truth from you. I'll be getting it now too
+late, but I'll get it. Have you or have you not been living on this
+man's money?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Was it hush money?"
+
+"Yes," Mr. Brady said. "Neil, I'll tell you everything. You've guessed
+most of it, but I'll tell you the rest. I can prove it. I can prove
+everything I know. I did take hush money. It was dirty money, but I
+didn't care. I didn't care what happened. I didn't care till to-day."
+
+"To-day?"
+
+"I got--a letter."
+
+"Go on," Neil said.
+
+As he spoke Mr. Brady's face began suddenly to change, lighting again
+with that strange excitement which had gripped him, revived, and burning
+through its thin veneer of control. His eyes blazed with it, and his
+voice shook with it. He waved a trembling hand toward the library door.
+A sound had come from the library, the faintest of sounds, a low,
+frightened cry. It was like the ghost of a cry, but he heard. Neil heard
+it, too, and was at the door before him, trying to unlock it, fumbling
+with the key.
+
+"She's there yet," Mr. Brady cried; "whoever she is. Well, she'll be the
+last of them. I had a letter, I tell you, a letter from Maggie. She's
+coming home, what's left of her--what he's left of her--Everard. I never
+thought he was to blame. I said he was, but I was talked out of it. If
+I'd thought so, if I'd suspected it, would I have touched a penny of his
+dirty money? But she's coming home. Maggie's coming home."
+
+For the moment Neil was not concerned with the fact. Graver revelations
+might have passed over him unheeded. The key had turned at last. Then
+Neil felt the door being pushed open from inside. He stepped back and
+waited. The door opened cautiously for an inch or two, then swung
+suddenly wide. Standing motionless, framed in the library door, was
+Judith.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINETEEN
+
+
+The two cousins, Mr. Brady shocked into sudden silence, stood with
+Colonel Everard's unconscious body behind them, unregarded, like any
+other bulky and motionless shape in the dim room, and stared at the girl
+who had come from the locked library.
+
+"Not you," Neil's voice said dully. "Not here."
+
+But the girl was Judith.
+
+Bare-headed, slender in soft-falling white, she stood in the library
+door with both hands behind her, clasping her big, limp hat by its
+flaring brim. Her lightly poised, blond head was fluffy with small,
+escaping curls, her clear-coloured cheeks were warmly flushed, and
+between her red, slightly parted lips her breath came too quickly, but
+softly, still. A sheer, torn ruffle trailed from her skirt. One
+rose-coloured bow hung from her girdle awry and crushed, and looked the
+softer for that, like a crumpled flower.
+
+About her dress and her whole small self there was a drooping and
+crumpled look. It was the look of a child that has played too hard.
+Surely the most incongruous and pathetic little figure that had ever
+appeared from a room where a distressed or designing lady was suspected
+of hiding, she stood and returned Neil's look, but there was blank panic
+in her eyes.
+
+They turned from Neil to Mr. Brady, wild eyed and pale beside him, to
+the disordered room, and back to Neil again, with no change of
+expression at all. They were wide and dilated and dark, intent still on
+some picture that they held and could not let go. Judith came an
+uncertain step or two forward into the room, stiffly, as if she were
+walking in her sleep, and stood still.
+
+"Neil, what did you come here for?" she said. "I'm glad you came."
+
+Her voice was sweet and expressionless, like her eyes, and though she
+had called Neil by name, she looked at him as if she had never seen him
+before. One small hand reached out uncertainly, pulled at his sleeve,
+and then, as he made no move to take it, dropped again, and began to
+finger the big hat that she held, and pluck at the flowers on it, but
+her eyes did not leave his face.
+
+"Will they stand for this?" Mr. Brady was demanding incoherently behind
+them, "as young as this? Will the town stand it? No. And they won't
+blame me now. They can't. It was coming to you--you----"
+
+He was in the grip of his own troubles again, and breaking into little
+mutterings of hysterical speech, which he now addressed directly to
+Colonel Everard, standing over him and not seeming to feel the need of
+an answer. It was an uncanny proceeding. The girl and boy did not watch
+it. They were seeing only each other.
+
+"Judith," Neil began stumblingly, "what were you doing there? What's
+frightened you so? What you heard out here? That's all that frightened
+you, isn't it? Isn't it? But what made you come here alone like this?
+Didn't you know---- Oh, Judith----"
+
+He stopped and looked down at her, saying nothing, but his eyes were
+troubled and dark with questions that he did not dare to ask. There was
+no answer to them in Judith's eyes, only blank fear. As Neil looked, the
+fear in Judith's eyes was reflected in his, creeping into them and
+taking possession there.
+
+"Oh, Judith," he whispered miserably. "Oh, Judith."
+
+Judith seemed to have heard what he said to her from far away, and to be
+only faintly puzzled by it, not interested or touched. Her eyes kept
+their secrets under his questioning eyes. They defied him. She was not
+like his little lost sweet-heart found again, but a stranger and an
+enemy, one of the people he hated, people who intrigued and lied, but
+were out of his reach and above him, and were all his enemies.
+
+The boy's world was upsetting. Nothing that had happened to him in that
+room or ever had happened to him before had shaken it like that minute
+of doubt that he lived through in silence, with the strain of it showing
+in his pale face, and Charlie's voice echoing half heard in his ears. He
+drew back from Judith slightly as they stood. He was trembling. Judith's
+face was a blur of white before his eyes, then he could not see it--and
+then, as suddenly as it had come, his black minute was over.
+
+"Take me away. I don't want to stay where he is any more. Is he dead?"
+Judith said, and she slipped her hand into Neil's.
+
+Judith's voice was as lifeless and strange as before, and the hand in
+his was cold, but it was Judith's own little clinging hand, and the
+boy's hand closed on it tight. He stood still, feeling it in his, and
+holding it as if the poor little cold hand could give him back all his
+strength again. He looked round him at the dim room and its motionless
+owner and Charlie as if he were seeing them clearly for the first time.
+He was not angry with Charlie any longer. He was not angry at all. He
+drew a deep, sobbing breath of relief, dropped his dark head suddenly
+and awkwardly toward Judith's unresponsive hand and kissed it, and then
+very gently let it go.
+
+"Judith, you're you," he said, "just you, no matter what happens, and
+nothing else matters; nothing in the world, as long as you are you."
+
+Judith only smiled her faint half smile at him, as if she guessed that
+some crisis had come and passed, but did not greatly care.
+
+"Take me away," she repeated patiently. "I thought there'd be other
+people here. He said so. But I've come here alone before, only he was
+different to-day. He was different."
+
+"Don't tell me. I don't want to know. I won't ever ask you again. I
+never ought to have asked you. It's all right, dear. It's all right."
+
+"I didn't know people were like that--anybody, ever. I just didn't
+know----"
+
+"Don't, dear," said Neil sharply. The small, bewildered voice that held
+more wonder and pain than her words broke off, but her bewildered eyes
+still wondered and grieved. Neil's arms went out to her suddenly and
+drew her close, holding her gently, and hiding her small, pathetic face
+against his shoulder.
+
+"Don't," he whispered. "I'll take care of you. I'm going to take care of
+you. Nobody's going to hurt you any more."
+
+"Neil, I just didn't know. I didn't know."
+
+"It's all right. I'm going to take you away. Just wait, dear. I'm going
+to take care of you."
+
+He spoke to her softly, saying the same thing over and over, as if he
+were quieting a frightened child. She was quiet in his arms like a
+frightened and tired child in any arms held out to it. One arm had
+slipped round his neck and clung to him. She drew long choking breaths
+as if she were too tired to cry. Gradually they stopped, but the arm
+round his neck only clung tighter.
+
+"Don't leave me," she whispered.
+
+"No, I'm not going to. I'm going to take care of you. You know that,
+don't you, Judith?"
+
+"Yes. Neil?"
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"Neil." Still in his arms, because she felt safe and protected there,
+Judith lifted her head and looked at him, and into her sweet, dazed
+eyes, full of a terror that she could not understand, came a faint flash
+of anger. This boy who held her so safe and comforted was her enemy,
+too. Long before the ugly accident of what had happened behind the
+library doors he had been her enemy, and he was her enemy now, though
+she needed his protection and took it. Their quarrel was not over.
+"Neil, I don't forgive you. I'm never going to forgive you."
+
+"All right, dear."
+
+"And I hate you. You know that, don't you? I hate you."
+
+"Yes, dear, I know it. We aren't going to talk about that now. Let me
+go."
+
+Both arms were round him now. Judith let him draw them gently apart and
+down, and drew back from him. The anger was gone from her eyes. She
+watched him wide eyed and still, as children watch the incomprehensible
+activities of grownups, or devoted but jealous dogs watch them.
+
+"Don't leave me," she said. "You're sweet to me." Then she gave a sharp,
+startled little cry.
+
+"Neil," she begged, "don't touch him. I don't want you to touch him.
+What are you going to do?"
+
+The light had not had time to dim or shift perceptibly in Colonel
+Everard's big room while so much was settling itself for Neil and
+Judith. The Colonel still lay with the pale shaft of afternoon light on
+his unconscious face. Now the boy was kneeling beside him. He slipped a
+strong, careful arm under his shoulders, and bent over him, touching him
+with quick, sure hands. He ignored Mr. Brady, who stood crying out
+incoherent protests beside him, and finally put a shaking hand on his
+shoulder.
+
+Neil shook it off, and rose and stood facing his cousin.
+
+"I thought so," he said, with a short laugh. "You had me going at first,
+Charlie, when I came in here and saw what a pretty picture you made. I
+believed you. I thought you had killed him. I might have known things
+like that don't happen in Green River."
+
+Neil put both hands on his cousin's shoulders and looked at him. Mr.
+Brady was not an attractive sight at that moment. The excitement that
+had held and swayed him was leaving him now, and he looked shaken and
+weak. An unhealthy colour purpled his cheeks, and his sullen eyes glared
+vindictively, but could not meet Neil's eyes.
+
+"Don't laugh at me," he muttered. "Don't you dare to laugh at me."
+
+"Going to beat me up, too?" his cousin inquired. "Poor old Charlie!
+Let's hope your friend there will laugh at you when he talks this over
+with you. He'll come out of this all right, but he'll be in a better
+temper if he has a doctor here. I'll 'phone for one."
+
+"What do you mean? I've killed him. I'm glad I killed him."
+
+His cousin laughed again. "Killed him? The man's no more dead than you
+are. You've knocked him out, that's all. But you didn't kill him. Is
+that the 'phone over there?"
+
+A desk telephone on a big Louis Quinze table at one end of the room, the
+instrument masked by the frilly skirts of a French mannequin, perhaps
+the only lady who had ever been permitted to be insipid in that room and
+to stay there long, answered Neil's question by ringing faintly, once
+and again. Neil started toward it, but did not reach it. Mr. Brady had
+flung himself suddenly upon him in a last burst of feverish strength,
+which he dissipated recklessly by shrieking out incoherent things, and
+striking misdirected blows.
+
+Neil parried them easily, caught his thin arms and held them at his
+sides. Keeping them so, he forced him against the edge of the flimsy
+table and held him there and looked at him.
+
+"You shan't answer that 'phone," Mr. Brady cried, in a last futile burst
+of defiance. "You shan't stop me. You shan't interfere. I'll kill him, I
+tell you, and you shan't answer that 'phone. You shan't----"
+
+Mr. Brady's voice died away, and he was silent under his cousin's eyes.
+
+"Through?" said Neil presently.
+
+"Yes," he muttered.
+
+"Do you mean it?"
+
+Mr. Brady nodded sullenly.
+
+"You've made a fool of yourself?"
+
+Mr. Brady nodded again.
+
+"Neil," he got out presently, "I can make it up to you. I haven't been
+square with you, but I can. I will. You don't know----"
+
+"You've done talking enough. Will you go now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You'll quiet down and go to mother's and stay there till I come?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Neil let him go.
+
+"Maybe I'll finish up your friend for you myself, Charlie, after you
+leave here," he offered. "I've thought of it often enough. Now I come
+here and fight for him instead of fighting against him. I fight with
+you. Poor old Charlie. Murder and sudden death! I tell you, things like
+that don't happen in Green River."
+
+Neil stopped talking suddenly. The telephone at his elbow had rung
+again, this time with a sharp, sudden peal, peremptory as an impatient
+voice speaking. Neil caught it up, jerked off the simpering lady by her
+audacious hat, and answered.
+
+At once, strangely intimate and near in that room where the three had
+been shut in for the last half hour alone and away from the rest of the
+world while it went on as usual or faster, a man's voice spoke to him.
+It was almost unrecognizable, so excited and hoarse, but it was Luther
+Ward's.
+
+"Hello," Neil said. "Hello. Yes, this is Everards'. No, he can't come to
+the 'phone. He--what? What's that?"
+
+Neil stopped and listened breathlessly. Mr. Brady, slinking head down
+from the room, turned curiously to stare at him, and Judith, slipping
+across the room like a little white ghost, drew close to him and felt
+for his hand. Neil took her hand, this time with no response of heart or
+nerves. He had put down the telephone, replacing the receiver
+mechanically, but Luther Ward's voice still echoed in his ears.
+
+It had spoken to an uncanny accompaniment of half-heard voices, rattling
+unintelligibly in the room where Ward was, the prosaic, tobacco-scented
+room that Neil knew so well.
+
+"Tell Everard to come," Ward's voice had said. "He's to come down here,
+to Saxon's office. I'm there now. Theodore Burr has shot himself. Yes,
+shot himself. He won't live through the night. Who's this talking to me?
+Neil Donovan, it's you. What are you doing at Everard's? Never mind.
+Come down here yourself. Come straight down. Theodore's conscious, and
+talking, and he's been asking for you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY
+
+
+Green River was getting ready for the rally in Odd Fellows' Hall. It was
+six o'clock on the evening of the seventeenth of September, and "Grand
+rally, Odd Fellows' Hall, September Seventeenth at eight-thirty," had
+been featured for weeks in the Green River _Record_, on the list that
+with a somewhat arrogant suggestion of prophetic powers possessed by the
+_Record_ was headed "Coming Events." It was always a scanty list,
+especially in the fall, when ten, twenty, thirty companies began to play
+larger centres, and church lawn parties and circuses could no longer
+appear on it. Sometimes not more than six events were to come in a gray
+and workaday world. But six were enough to announce. Even a true prophet
+is not expected to see all the future, only to see clearly all that he
+sees, and the _Record_ did that.
+
+This rally was important enough to be listed all by itself, and it did
+not need the adjective grand. It was The Rally.
+
+It was Green River's own--a local, almost a family, affair. No
+out-of-town celebrities were to be imported this time, to be listened
+to with awe and then wined and dined by the Colonel safe from the
+curious eyes of the town. This time old Joe Grant was to preside, as he
+had done as a matter of course on all such occasions when he was the
+acknowledged head of the town in political and financial matters, in the
+old days of high-sounding oratory and simpler politics that were gone
+forever, but were not very long ago. Judge Saxon, an old timer, too, and
+better loved than the Honourable Joe, had declined the honour of
+presiding, but had the authentic offer of it, his first distinction of
+the kind for years.
+
+It was a local but very important occasion. It was Colonel Everard's
+first official appearance as candidate for mayor. It was to be a very
+modest appearance. No more time was allotted for his speech than for
+Luther Ward's. He was putting himself on a level with Luther and the
+Judge and the Honourable Joe and identifying himself at last with local
+politics. The evening emphasized the great man's condescension in
+accepting this humble office and honouring Green River. Even with the
+scandal of Theodore Burr's suicide unexplained still and only two weeks
+old, interest centred on the rally. It was a triumph for the town.
+
+Green River was almost ready. Dugan's orchestra was engaged for the
+evening, instead of a rival organization from Wells, which the Colonel
+often imported upon private and public occasions. Jerry Dugan was
+getting old, too, like the Judge and the Honourable Joe. He had not lost
+the peculiar wail and lilt from his fiddling, but he had made few recent
+additions to his repertoire. Just now the band concert in front of Odd
+Fellows' Hall was winding up with his old favourite: "A Day on the
+Battlefield."
+
+It had the old swing still, contagious as ever. Loafers in front of the
+hall shuffled their feet in time to it. Moon-struck young persons
+hanging two by two over the railings of the bridge to gaze at the water
+straightened themselves and listened. An ambitious soloist lounging
+against the court-house fence across the square began to whistle it with
+elaborate variations, at the inspiring moment when "morning in the
+forest" had bird-called and syncopated itself into silence, and actual
+fighting, and the martial music of the charge began.
+
+High and lilting and shrill, it hung in the still night air, alive for
+the hour, challenging the echoes of dead tunes that lingered about the
+square, only to die away and be one with them at last; band music,
+old-fashioned band music, blatant and empty and splendid, clear through
+the still night air, attuned to the night and the town.
+
+"Good old tune. Gets into your feet," Judge Saxon said, while his wife
+adjusted his tie before the black walnut mirror in their bedroom, but
+his unusual tribute to the tune was perfunctory to-night, and his wife
+ignored it, wisely taking this moment of helpfulness to plunge him
+suddenly and briskly into a series of questions which she had been
+trying in vain for some time to get the correct answers to.
+
+"Hugh," she said, "why wouldn't you take the chair to-night?"
+
+"You were the only thing I ever tried to take away from Joe Grant and
+got away with it, Millie," the Judge explained gallantly.
+
+"Don't you think this rally is like old times? Don't you want to see the
+town stand on its own feet again, instead of being run from outside?"
+
+"I do, Millie."
+
+Mrs. Saxon made her next point triumphantly, connecting it with the
+point before by some obscure logic known only to ladies.
+
+"Hugh, a father could not do more for Lillian Burr than the Colonel has
+since poor Theodore went. The house full of flowers, calling there
+himself every day and twice a day, though she won't see him; but Lillian
+won't see any one. The Colonel's been ailing himself, too, but he
+wouldn't put off the rally and disappoint the town. And the new library
+will open this fall, and there's talk that he's giving an organ to the
+church. Hugh, don't you think Theodore's death may have sobered him?
+Don't you think this may be the beginning of better things? Don't you
+think----"
+
+"I think you're making a butterfly bow. I don't like them," said the
+Judge, with the ingenuous smile that somehow closed a subject. She
+sighed, but changed her attack.
+
+"Turn round now. I want to brush you. Hugh, what has happened to Neil
+Donovan?"
+
+"What do you mean, happened to him?" snapped the Judge, and then added
+soberly, "I don't know, Millie. I wish I did."
+
+"An Irish boy can get just so far and no farther."
+
+"How far, Millie?"
+
+"Don't be flippant, Hugh. There's something strange about Neil lately.
+He didn't speak three times at the table last time he came to supper
+here. He looks at me as if he didn't know who I was when I speak to him
+on the street sometimes. There's no life in him. He's like Charlie and
+all the rest of them--giving out just when things are going his way;
+that's an Irish boy every time."
+
+"When things are going his way? When his best friend has just shot
+himself?"
+
+"I didn't refer to that, Hugh," said Mrs. Saxon with dignity.
+
+"No?"
+
+"I referred to Neil's family affairs, and the fact that Colonel Everard
+has taken him up."
+
+"Maggie home and behaving herself and no questions asked, Charlie
+shipped to Wells, and Neil going shooting twice with the Colonel?"
+
+"Three times, Hugh."
+
+"And that's what you call things going his way."
+
+"Hugh, why should those two spend any time together at all? They hate
+each other, or I always thought so--that is, if a man like the Colonel
+could hate a boy like Neil. What does he want of Neil now? What does
+Neil want of him?"
+
+"They don't tell me, Millie."
+
+"But it's queer. It frightens me, Hugh. It's as queer as----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Everything," Mrs. Saxon said, goaded into an exaggeration foreign to
+her placid type, "everything, lately. You refusing to preside to-night.
+Lillian Burr shutting herself up in this uncanny way. It is uncanny,
+even if she is in trouble. Minna Randall taking to church work, and
+sewing for hours at a time, and taking long drives with her husband.
+They haven't been inside the Colonel's doors for weeks. Their second
+girl told our Mary that they have refused five invitations there in the
+last month. It's my idea that he gave that last stag dinner because he
+couldn't get Minna or Edith there, or any woman. Why should his own
+circle turn against him, just when he's doing real good to the town? And
+it's not only his own circle that's against him. I was matching curtains
+at Ward's when Sebastian came in to-day, and Luther Ward was barely
+civil to him--the Colonel's own secretary. What's wrong with the town,
+Hugh? Can't it be grateful to the Colonel, now when he really deserves
+it?"
+
+"Don't worry about what Everard deserves. He's not likely to get it,
+Millie."
+
+Again the Judge was closing the subject, and this time his wife had no
+more to say. She gave his threadbare, scrupulously pressed coat a final
+pat and jerk of adjustment, and stood off and looked at him.
+
+"You'll do," she said, "now go along. The music's stopping. It won't
+look well if you're late."
+
+She turned off the flickering gas jet above the marble-topped bureau
+abruptly, but not before the Judge had caught the gleam of tears in her
+eyes.
+
+"Why girl," he said, and came close to her and slipped an arm round her
+plump, comfortable waist. "You're really troubled."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And vexed with me for not helping you."
+
+"Yes."
+
+He had drawn her toward a front window of the big, square room. The
+Judge and his wife stood by it quietly, looking down through a triangle
+of white, starched curtains at the glimmering, sparsely lit length of
+street below, and straightening out their difficulties in darkness and
+silence, as all true lovers should, even lovers at fifty, as these two
+were fortunate enough to be.
+
+"Millie, I don't want to tease you," the Judge said. "I'll tell you
+anything you want to know."
+
+"I've been so worried," she wept comfortably against his shoulder. "I'm
+so afraid."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I feel as if something--anything might happen. I--oh, you'll only
+laugh. I can't just tell you, Hugh."
+
+"I'll tell you," said the Judge.
+
+He hesitated and then went on slowly, speaking more to himself than to
+her.
+
+"Women hate change. That makes them dread it, even when it's not coming.
+You're dreading it, but it's not coming now, dear. There's feeling
+against Everard. You're right, but you exaggerate it. It's instinctive
+and unformulated. It hasn't gone far and won't go any farther. He won't
+let it. The rally and the library and this new democracy stuff, stag
+dinners to Ward's crowd and all, are part of a campaign to stop it. The
+campaign will succeed. Everard's own crowd won't quarrel with him. They
+can't afford to. Everard has pulled through worse times than this. I've
+helped him myself, and I shall help him again.
+
+"There'll be no change, Millie. Things will go on just the way they are.
+I've lived the best years of my life believing that it was best they
+should, and if I'm wrong, I'm too old to change my mind. I've said
+somebody had to own the town, and it might as well be Everard. I've said
+the Burrs and Kents and Randalls, and old Joe Grant's young wife with
+their parties and drinks and silly little love affairs, were playing too
+hard, but doing no real harm, planting their cheap, fake smart set here
+in Green River where it don't belong. Now poor Theodore Burr's dead.
+That don't look like play. Harry Randall's so deep in debt to the bank
+for what Everard's let him borrow that he has to stay on there at three
+thousand a year, though he's been offered twice that in Wells. Everard
+won't let him go. And the best I can say about myself in the years I've
+worked for Everard is that I've kept my hands clean, if I have had to
+keep my eyes shut, but I can say that to you, Millie."
+
+"It does look like old times down there," he went on softly, after a
+minute. "The street and the lights are the same. And it sounds like old
+times. It was from a rally in the hall that I first went home with you,
+Millie. Remember? I was just a boy then, but I wish I was half the man I
+was then, to-night." He heard a murmur of protest, and laughed. "But I
+do, Millie. I--wouldn't be helping Everard."
+
+"Oh, Hugh!"
+
+"Don't worry. Everard will pull through all right. Look at the Randalls
+over there, starting for the hall. Leave your windows open, Millie, and
+you'll soon hear them all cheering for Everard. The moon won't rise till
+late, but it will be full to-night. Listen, the band's going into the
+hall now."
+
+The Judge rested his cheek for a moment against his wife's soft, smooth
+hair, the decorous, satisfying caress of a decorous generation, then he
+raised his head with a long, tired sigh.
+
+"I wish I was young," he said. "I wish I was young to-night."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I wish I was young," the Judge had said, with a thrill and hunger that
+was the soul of youth itself in his voice. At the moment when he said
+it, a boy who had the privilege that the Judge coveted, and was not
+enjoying it just then, was leaning against the court-house railing, and
+watching Green River crowd into Odd Fellows' Hall.
+
+Another boy had pushed his way across the square to his side, and was
+not heartily welcomed there, but was calmly unconscious of it.
+
+"Some night, Donovan," he remarked.
+
+"Some night, Willard," Neil agreed gravely.
+
+"Going in? Good for three hours of hot air?"
+
+"I'm not going. No."
+
+"Good boy. Say--" Mr. Willard Nash lowered his voice as he made this
+daring suggestion--"we'll go around to Halloran's, and get into a little
+game."
+
+His invitation was not accepted.
+
+"Jerry Dugan's not dead yet," observed Willard presently.
+
+Strains of a deservedly popular waltz tune, heard from inside the hall,
+gave faint but unmistakable proof of this. Willard kept time with his
+feet as he listened, paying the tune the tribute of silence, a rare one
+from him. Standing so, the two were sharply contrasted figures, though
+the flickering lamps in the square threw only faint light here, and
+showed them darkly outlined against the railing, as they leaned there
+side by side. Pose, carriage, every movement and turn of the head were
+different, as different as a bulky and overgrown child is from a boy
+turning into a man.
+
+"Some night," Willard repeated, unanswered, but unchilled by it, "and
+some crowd."
+
+The hall had been filling fast. Though the waltz still swung its faint
+challenge into the night, so much of Green River had responded to it
+already that now it was arriving only by twos and threes. But the groups
+still followed each other fast under the big globe of light at the
+entrance door, gayly shaded with red for the occasion, and up the bare,
+clattering stairs to the floor above, and the hall.
+
+Willard was right, more right than he knew. There was a crowd up there,
+a crowd as Willard did not understand the word; a crowd with a tone and
+temper of its own and a personality of its own. It was subject to laws
+of its own and could think and feel for itself, and its thoughts and
+feelings were made up of the brain stuff of every person in it, but
+different from them all. It was a newly created thing, a new factor in
+the world, and like all crowds it was born for one evening, to live for
+that evening only, and do its work and die.
+
+Upstairs behind closed doors, such a crowd was forming; getting ready to
+think its own thoughts and act and feel, and so many houses, little and
+big, had emptied themselves to contribute to it, so many family
+discussions like the Saxons' had gone on as a prelude to it, that you
+might fairly say the crowd up there was Green River.
+
+Willard, watching the late arrivals and commenting upon them to Neil,
+still an uncommunicative audience, was vaguely stirred.
+
+"This gets me," he conceded. "There's something about old Dugan's music
+that always gets me. For two cents, I'd go in. I sat through a patent
+medicine show there last week, because I didn't have the sense to stay
+away. It always gets me when there is anything doing in the hall.
+And--" he paused, heavily testing his powers of self-analysis, "it gets
+me," he brought out at length, "more to-night than it ever did before.
+It--gets me."
+
+"Look, there's Joe Grant," Willard went on. "This is his night, all
+right. Look at the bulge to that manuscript case, and the shine to his
+hair. He mixes varnish with his hair dye, all right. I said, look at
+him."
+
+"I'm looking."
+
+"Well, you don't do much else. What's eating you to-night? Say, will you
+go in if I will?"
+
+An inarticulate murmur answered him.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"No."
+
+"All right. Well, what do you know about that? Look there."
+
+"I'm looking."
+
+The latest comers were crowding hurriedly into the entrance hall by this
+time, and with them, a slender, heavily veiled figure had slipped
+quickly through the door and out of sight.
+
+"Was that Lil?" Willard said. "Lil Burr?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She wouldn't come here; I don't believe it."
+
+"I know it."
+
+"How?"
+
+"She told me."
+
+"What was she doing, talking to you? Why, she won't talk to anybody.
+She----"
+
+"You'll be late at Hallorans'."
+
+"Aren't you coming?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But you said you would. I don't want to go if you don't. I don't half
+like to leave you here, you act so queer to-night. What makes you act
+so? What's eating----"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+Willard detached himself from the railings and regarded his friend,
+suddenly breathless with surprise, and deeply grieved. Nothing. The
+word, harmless in itself, had been spoken so that it hit him like an
+actual blow, straight from the shoulder. Neil, shifting so that the
+light showed his face, was returning his look with the sudden,
+unreasoning anger that we feel toward little sounds that beat their slow
+way into our consciousness at night, to irritate us unendurably at last.
+
+"Go," he urged, "go along to Halloran's. Go anywhere."
+
+"Well, what do you know about that?" began Willard, offended, and then
+forgave him. There was a look in Neil's pale face that commanded
+forgiveness. It was pale and strained with a trouble that had nothing to
+do with Willard, and Willard was respectful and inarticulate before it.
+
+"That's all right," Willard muttered, "that will be all right. I'll go."
+
+Neil took no notice of this promise. Up in the hall the waltz had
+swelled to a high, light-hearted climax, heady and strained, like the
+sudden excitements that sweep a crowd. It came clear through the open
+windows, making one last appeal to the boy below to come up and be part
+of what was there. And just then a small closed car swept down through
+the empty square and stopped. Two men stepped out, and paused in the
+doorway under the red-shaded light.
+
+One was the Colonel's secretary, waiting on the step beyond range of
+the light, a tall, shadowy figure, and the other, who stood with the
+light on his face, was Colonel Everard.
+
+He was still pale from his week of illness, but his keen eyes and
+clear-cut profile were more effective for that. He stood listening to
+the sounds from upstairs, and he smiled as he listened. He turned at
+last and looked out across the square as if he could feel Neil's eyes
+upon him and were returning their look, and then turned away and
+disappeared up the stairs.
+
+"Neil," Willard was announcing uneasily, "I think a lot of you. I'd do a
+lot for you. If you're in wrong, any way, if----"
+
+Willard broke off, rebuffed. Neil did not even look at him. He stood
+staring at the lighted doorway where the Colonel had stood and smiled,
+as if he could still see him there. He was a creature beyond Willard's
+world, as he looked, but unaccountably fascinating to Willard. Willard
+regarded him in awed silence.
+
+Now Dugan's music had stopped. Some one above shut a window with a
+clatter that echoed disproportionately loud. Then there was silence up
+there, tense silence, and the call of the silence was harder to resist
+than the music. The boy by the court-house railing could not resist it.
+He pushed away Willard's detaining hand, and without a word to him or
+another glance at him, was across the square and through the red-lighted
+door, and running up the stairs.
+
+"What do you know about that?" Willard demanded, in vain. "What do you
+know----"
+
+Willard, certainly, knew nothing, and gave up the attempt to understand,
+with a sigh.
+
+A little later the vantage point of the court-house fence was
+unoccupied. Of the two boys who had occupied it, one was making a
+belated and rather disconsolate way toward Halloran's--the one who would
+be boasting to-morrow that he had spent the last fifteen minutes with
+Neil Donovan. The other boy stood listening outside the closed doors of
+the hall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was half an hour later and it had been an important half-hour in Odd
+Fellows' Hall, that uneventful but vital time when the newly made
+creature that is the crowd is passive, gathering its forces slowly,
+getting ready to fling the weight of them into one side of a balance
+irrevocably, if it has decisions to make; the most important half-hour
+of the evening if you were interested in the psychology of crowds. The
+Honourable Joe Grant was not. He would have said that the first speech
+dragged and the half-hour had been dull. Dull or significant, that
+half-hour was over, and Green River was waking up. In the listening
+hush of the hall the big moments of the evening, whatever they were to
+be, were creeping nearer and nearer. Now they were almost here.
+
+The Honourable Joe had just introduced Luther Ward and heavily resumed
+his seat. He sat portly and erect and entirely happy behind the
+thin-legged, inadequate looking table that held a water pitcher, his
+important looking papers, and his watch. The ornately chased gold watch
+that had measured so many epoch-making hours for Green River was in
+public life again, like the Honourable Joe. He fingered it
+affectionately, wiped his forehead delicately from time to time with a
+purple silk handkerchief, followed Mr. Ward's remarks with unwavering
+brown eyes, and smiled his benevolent, public-spirited smile. This was
+his night indeed.
+
+Behind the Honourable Joe, on the stage in a semicircular row of chairs
+were the speakers of the evening, and before him was Green River.
+
+The badly proportioned little hall was not at its best to-night. It was
+too brightly lit and the footlights threw an uncompromising glare upon
+the tiny stage. Red, white, and blue cheesecloth in crude, sharp
+colouring draped windows and stage, making gay little splashes of colour
+that emphasized the dinginess of the room. Only the Grand Army flag,
+borrowed and draped elaborately above the stage, showed faded and thin
+against the brightness of the cheesecloth, but kept its dignity and kept
+up its claim to homage still. And the ugliness of the room was a thing
+to be discounted and forgotten, like some beautiful, full-blooded
+woman's tawdry, and ill-chosen clothes, because this room held Green
+River.
+
+Green River, filling the little room to over-flowing, standing in the
+rear of the room, crowding every available inch of space on benches,
+window sills, and an emergency supply of camp chairs, impressive as that
+much sheer bulk of humanity, crowded between four walls, becomes
+impressive, and impressive in its own right, too; Green River
+represented as it was, with all the warring, unreconciled elements that
+made the town.
+
+For they were all here, Paddy Lane, and the Everard circle, and the
+intermediate stages of society, the Gaynors and other prosperous farmers
+and unprosperous farmers and their wives, from the outskirts of the
+town, and citizens a cut above them both, like the Wards, were all
+represented here. Mrs. Kent, hatless and evening coated, was elbowed by
+a lady from Paddy Lane, hatless because she had no presentable hat, and
+wearing a ragged shawl. These two were side by side, and they had the
+same look on their faces. There was something of it now on every face
+in the room. It was a look of listening and waiting.
+
+It was on every face, and it grew more intense every minute that Luther
+Ward's speech droned on, though it was only a dry, illogical rehash of
+political issues that could not have called that look into any face. It
+was as if the audience listened eagerly through it because every word of
+it was bringing them nearer to something that was to follow. What was
+it? What did Green River want? What was it waiting for? Green River
+itself did not know, but it was very near.
+
+Perhaps it was coming now. This might well be the climax of the evening.
+No more important event was scheduled. Luther Ward, looking discontented
+with his performance, but relieved to complete it, had sunk into his
+chair to a scattered echoing of applause, and the next speaker was
+Colonel Everard.
+
+The Honourable Joe was rising to introduce him. The little introductory
+speech was a masterpiece, for, though the Colonel had edited every word
+of it, it was still in the Honourable Joe's best style, flowery and
+sprinkled with quotations.
+
+"I will not say more," it concluded magnificently, "of one whose life
+and work among you can best speak for itself, and who will speak for
+himself now, in his own person. I present to you the Republican
+candidate for mayor, Colonel Everard."
+
+And now the Honourable Joe had bowed and smiled himself into his seat,
+and the great man was on his feet, and coming forward to the centre of
+the stage. The first real applause of the evening greeted him, not very
+hearty or sustained, but prompt at least. He looked like a very great
+man indeed, as he stood acknowledging it, his most effective self, a
+strong man, though so lightly built, erect and pliant of carriage, a man
+with infinite reserves of power and dignity. He was smiling, and his
+smile was the same that the boy by the court-house fence had seen, a
+tantalizing smile of assurance and charm and power, as if he were master
+of himself and the town.
+
+This was his moment, planned for and led up to for weeks, but Colonel
+Everard was slow to take advantage of it. He stood still, with his eyes
+toward the rear of the hall. As he stood so, heads here and there turned
+and looked where he was looking. Presently all Green River saw what the
+Colonel saw. A boy was pushing his way toward the front of the hall--a
+boy who had slipped quietly inside the doors unnoticed fifteen minutes
+before, and came forward now just as quietly, but held their eyes as he
+came. Now he had reached the stage, and he broke through the barrier of
+goldenrod that fenced the short flight of steps, crushing the flowers
+under his feet, and now he was on the stage confronting Colonel Everard.
+It was Neil Donovan.
+
+"Sit down," he said to the great man. "They're not going to listen to
+you. They're going to listen to me."
+
+After that he did not wait to see if the great man took his amazing
+advice. He came forward alone, and spoke to Green River. He was not an
+imposing figure as he stood there, only a lean, eager boy, with dark,
+flashing eyes, and a face that was very pale in the glare of the
+footlights. He hardly raised his tense, low-pitched voice as he spoke,
+but Green River heard.
+
+"You're going to listen to me."
+
+And it was true. Green River was going to listen. In the middle of the
+hall, where the chief delegation from Paddy Lane was massed, a ripple of
+excitement promised the boy support. It was seconded by a muttering and
+shuffling of feet on the rear benches, devoted to the youth of the town.
+From here and there in the hall there were murmurs of protest, too,
+dying out one by one, and ceasing automatically, like the whispered
+consultation that went on behind him on the stage.
+
+But the boy did not wait for support or regard interruptions. He did not
+need to. The audience was his in spite of them, and he knew it and they
+knew it. Whatever he had to say, important or not, it was what they had
+been waiting for; that was what the evening had been leading to, and it
+was here at last. Pale and intent, the boy looked across the footlights
+at Green River. The audience was his, but he had no pride in the
+triumph. He began haltingly to speak.
+
+"It will do no good to you or me, but you're going to listen. I've got a
+word to say about Everard.
+
+"He's sucked your town dry for years and you know it. He's had the pick
+of your men and used their brains and their youth, and he's had the pick
+of your women. If there are any of you here that he's got no hold on,
+it's because you're worth nothing to him. He's got the town. Now he's
+driven one of your boys to his death.
+
+"'I can't beat him.' That's what Theodore Burr said to me the night he
+died. 'They won't blame him for this. I want to die because I don't want
+to live in the world with him, but I'll do no harm to him by dying, only
+to Lily and me. They won't blame him. You can't beat Everard.'
+
+"Well, you don't blame Everard. He's got you where you don't blame him,
+whatever he does. You shut your eyes to it. He's got you. You know all
+this and you shut your eyes. Now I'll tell you some things you don't
+know. Everard's been trying for weeks to bribe me to keep my mouth shut,
+like he bribed Charlie for years. He might have saved his breath and his
+money. I can't hurt him, whether I keep my mouth shut or not. You won't
+blame him. You'll let him get away with this, too. But you're going to
+know."
+
+The boy came closer still to the footlights and leaned across them,
+pausing and deliberately choosing his words. The pause, and the look in
+his dark, intent eyes as he stood there challenged Green River and dared
+it to interrupt him. But it was too late to interrupt, too late to stop
+him now. And behind him in the place of honour in the centre of the row
+of chairs on the stage, one man at least was powerless to stop him:
+Colonel Everard, who listened with a set smile on his lips, and a set
+stare in his eyes.
+
+"He's the man that broke Maggie Brady's life to pieces," Neil's low
+voice went on. "Everard's the man. He got her away from town. He filled
+her head with him and set her wild and she had to go. When he was tired
+of her, he left her in a place he thought she'd be too proud to come
+back from. She was proud, but he's broken her pride, and she crawled
+back to us. The prettiest girl in the town, she was, and you all knew
+that, and my sister and more to me----" he broke off abruptly, and
+laughed a dry little laugh that echoed strangely in the silent room. His
+voice sounded dry and hard as he went on.
+
+"He broke Maggie's life, but what's that to you, that give him a chance
+at your women, knowing well what he is, and leave them to take care of
+themselves with him, your own women that are yours to take care of,
+daughters and wives? It's nothing to you, but you're going to know it,
+and you're going to know this. I had it straight from Theodore Burr the
+night he died.
+
+"Everard's going to sell you out at the next election, the whole of
+you--his own crowd, too. He's been planning it for months. He's worked
+prohibition for all it's worth to him; worked for it till the state went
+dry, and then he's made money for you that are in it with him, and more
+for himself, protecting places like Halloran's that sell liquor on the
+quiet, and the smuggling of liquor into the state. Well, he's made money
+enough that way, and it's getting risky, and now he sees a way to make
+more and let nobody in on it. He's going to sell out to the liquor
+interests and work against prohibition, and the big card he'll use will
+be exposing Halloran's and the secret traffic in liquor, and all the
+crowd that's been buying protection from him. There's a big campaign
+started already, and big money being spent. There'll be big money in it
+for him. There'll be arrests made here and a public scandal. He's going
+to sell the town.
+
+"Maybe that interests you some. Maybe it gets you. It won't for long.
+He'll crawl out of it and lie out of it and talk you and buy you back to
+him. Well, I know one thing more, and he can't lie or crawl out of it.
+My father could have put him behind bars any time in twenty years. He's
+a common thief.
+
+"It was when he was seventeen, and studying law first, back in a town up
+state that's not on the map or likely to get there, and he was called by
+a name there that wasn't Everard. He was seventeen, but he was the same
+then as now; he had the same will to get on and the power to, no matter
+who he trampled on to get there, and the same charm that got men and
+women both, though they didn't trust him--got them even when he was
+trampling on them and they knew it. It got him into trouble there with
+two girls at once. One was the girl that gave him his start, the chance
+to go into her uncle's office. He was the biggest man in the town. Older
+than Everard, this girl was, and teaching in the school he went to, when
+she fell in love with him and brought him home to her town and gave him
+his chance. He was tired of her, and she was where it was bound to come
+out soon how things were with them, and so was the other girl, a girl
+that he wasn't tired of, the daughter of the woman where he boarded. He
+tried to get her to go away with him. She wouldn't go and she wouldn't
+forgive him, but the town was getting too hot for him, and he had to go.
+
+"He had to go quick and make a clean getaway and he wanted a real start
+this time. He had to have money. That was a dead little town. There was
+only one place he could get money enough, in the little hotel there. It
+was the only bank they had. The keeper of it used to cash checks and
+make loans. Everard was lucky, the same then as now. There was almost
+five thousand dollars in the safe in the hotel office the night he broke
+into it, and that was enough for him. He had a fight with the hotel
+clerk, but he got away with the money, and he got away from the town.
+
+"The clerk was his best friend in town--never trusted him, but fell for
+him the same as the girls and lent him money and listened to his
+troubles--and fell for him again when he ran across him again, years
+later, here in Green River. Everard told him he'd sent the money back,
+and he kept the secret. He never took hush money for it like Charlie. He
+said Everard ought to have his chance, and was straight now. But he fell
+for Everard again, that's what happened. Everard had him, the same as
+the rest of you.
+
+"The clerk was my father."
+
+The boy's voice broke off. There was dead silence in the hall. Green
+River had been listening almost in silence, and did not break it now.
+Presently the boy sighed, shrugged his thin shoulders as if they were
+throwing off an actual weight, and spoke again, this time in a lifeless
+voice, with all the colour and drama wiped out of it, a voice that was
+very tired.
+
+"That's all," he said. "That's back of him, with his fine airs and his
+far-reaching schemes and his big name in the state. You've stood for a
+crook. Will you stand for a common criminal, a common thief? Now you
+know and it's up to you. That's all."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later a boy was hurrying through the dark along the road to the
+Falls.
+
+He was almost home. Green River lay far behind with its scattered,
+sparsely strewn lights. The flat fields around him and the unshaded road
+before him, so bleak by day, were beautiful to-night, far reaching and
+mysterious. Above them, flat looking and unreal, remote in a coldly
+clouded sky, hung the yellow September moon.
+
+"I've done for myself," the boy was saying half out loud, as if the
+faraway moon could hear. "I've lost everything now. I've done for
+myself."
+
+The boy was sure of this, but could have told little more about the
+events of the evening. He remembered listening outside the hall doors
+until he was drawn inside in spite of himself, and listening there until
+something snapped in his brain, and suddenly the long days of
+repression, of vainly wondering what to do with his hard-won knowledge,
+were over, and he was pouring it all out in one jumbled burst of speech.
+He had no plan and no hope of doing harm to his enemy by speaking. He
+had to speak.
+
+After he had spoken he remembered getting down from the stage and out of
+the hall somehow. He remembered the crushed goldenrod, slippery under
+his feet. Against a background of blurred, unrecognizable faces, he
+remembered a tall, black-garbed figure that rose to its feet swaying and
+then steadying itself. It was Lilian Burr. Less clearly he remembered a
+wave of sound from the hall that followed him as he hurried away across
+the square. It was not like applause. He did not know or care what it
+meant. After that, he remembered only the cool dark of the September
+night as he walked through it aimlessly at first, and then turned toward
+home.
+
+"I've lost everything," he had said, and it must be true. How could he
+face the Judge again? How could he go on living in Green River? This
+was what all his long-cherished dreams had come to; a scene that Charlie
+might have made, and disgrace in the eyes of the town. He had lost
+everything.
+
+Yet strangely, as he said it, he knew that it was not true. Whatever he
+had lost, he had better things left. He had those free and splendid
+minutes of speaking out his heart. They could not be taken from him. The
+freedom and relief of them was with him still. And he had the road firm
+under his feet, and the clean air blowing the fever out of his brain,
+and the strength of his own young body, clean strength, good to feel as
+he walked through the night. And along the dark road before him,
+familiar as it was, and worn so many times by discouraged feet, the
+white track of moonlight beckoned him, clean and new. It was a way that
+might lead anywhere--to fairy-land, to success, to the end of the world.
+
+Now the boy made the turn in the road that brought him within sight of
+home. Faint lights twinkling from it, intimate and warm, invited him as
+never before. Was his mother waiting up for him? Home itself, lighted
+and intimate and safe, was enough to find waiting. His heart gave a
+strange little leap that hurt, but was keen pleasure, too. Almost
+running, he covered the last bit of road, crossed the grassy front yard
+and then climbed the creaking front steps, and stood for a minute that
+was unendurably long, fumbling with the door.
+
+The door was unlocked and gave suddenly, opening wide, and he stood on
+the threshold of the kitchen. The lights he had seen were in the
+sitting-room beyond. In this room there was only moonlight. It came
+through the window that looked out on the marshy field, the fairies'
+field. Surely there must be fairies there to-night, out in the empty
+green spaces, flooded with moonlight. But the fairies were not all in
+the field, there was one in the room. Neil could see it.
+
+The old rocking chair stood in the moonlit window. It was holding two,
+his mother, and some one else--the fairy, golden haired and white robed
+and slender, and close in his mother's arms. As he stood and wondered
+and looked, a board creaked under his feet. It was the faintest of
+sounds, but a fairy's ears are keen, and the fairy heard, and stirred,
+and turned in his mother's arms.
+
+Now Neil could see her face. It was flushed and human and warm, and in
+her eyes, opening grave and deep, was a look that was the shyest but
+surest of welcomes. The welcome was all for Neil, and the fairy was
+Judith.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
+
+
+A boy and a girl sat on the doorsteps of the Randall house.
+
+It was almost a year since the night of the rally. It was an evening in
+late May--late, but it was May, and the fairies' month still. There was
+a pleasant, shivery chill in the air. A far sprinkling of stars made the
+dark of the still, windless night look darker and warmer and safer to
+whisper in. The big horse-chestnut tree at the corner of the syringa
+hedge was only a darker blot against the surrounding dark, and the slope
+of faintly lit street on the other side of the hedge looked far away,
+with the dark sweep of lawn between. It was a night for the fairies, or
+for the girl and boy, and that was quite as it should be, for it was
+their first together for months.
+
+Judith and Neil sat discreetly erect on the steps, undoing what those
+months apart had done with little bursts of shy speech, and long, shy
+silences that helped them more. In the longest and shyest silence their
+hands had groped for each other once, met as if they had never touched
+before, and clung together for a minute as if they never meant to let
+go, but Judith kept firmly to impersonal subjects still.
+
+"You did it all," she said. "Things do happen so fast when they happen.
+Just think, this time last year he was like a king!"
+
+"Everard?"
+
+"Yes. Do you remember how I used to be cross when you called him that,
+and wouldn't say Colonel? How childish that was!" Judith patronized her
+dead self, as a young lady may, with her twentieth birthday almost upon
+her.
+
+"You weren't childish."
+
+"What was I?"
+
+"Just what you are now."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Wonderful." Neil chose his one adequate word, from the tiny vocabulary
+of youth, small because few words are worthy to voice the infinite
+dreams of it. "Wonderful."
+
+"No, I'm not wonderful. You are. That dreadful old man, and every one
+knew he was dreadful and wouldn't do anything about it till you----"
+
+"Bawled him out? That's all I did, you know, really. It was a kid's
+trick. He lost out because it was coming to him anyway. Poor Theodore
+saw to that. He turned the town against Everard when he killed himself.
+It wasn't turning fast, but it was turning. I did give it a shove and
+make it turn faster, but I didn't even have sense enough to know I had
+until the day after the rally, when the Judge sent for me and told me. I
+didn't dare go near him until he sent for me, and I thought he had sent
+for me to fire me."
+
+"But you broke up the rally. They were dead still in the hall until you
+left, and then they went crazy, calling for you, and all talking at
+once, talking against you, some of them, till it really wasn't a rally
+any more, but just like a mob. Oh, I know. The Judge tells me, every
+time I go to ride with him, and when he came on to the school last
+winter and saw me there, he told me all over again. Father has never
+half told me. He hates to talk about the rally or the Colonel either,
+but I don't care, he and mother are both so sweet to me lately--just
+sweet.
+
+"So it was just like a mob, and then poor Mrs. Burr got up and tried to
+speak, and they got quiet and listened, and she said "Every word the boy
+says is true and more--more----" just like that, and then she got faint
+and had to stop, and then the Judge took hold. That's what he says he
+did, took hold, and he says it was time, because they might have tarred
+and feathered the Colonel if he hadn't. I don't suppose they would, but
+I wish I could have seen the Judge take hold. I love him."
+
+"Don't you love anybody else?"
+
+Judith ignored this frivolous interruption, as it deserved.
+
+"And so your work was done, though you didn't know it and ran away. And
+the Judge says you are a born orator, Neil. That you've got the real
+gift, the thing that makes an audience yours. I don't know just what he
+means, but I know you've got it, too. You're going to be a great man,
+Neil."
+
+"I didn't do anything."
+
+"You're the only man in town who thinks that, then, or has since that
+night. He--Everard--was done for the minute you stepped on the stage,
+the Judge says. Only they managed it decently, the Judge and the few
+that kept their heads. They announced that Colonel Everard was
+indisposed and couldn't speak, and the Judge took him home. He really
+was ill next day. There's something wrong with his horrid heart. And
+that gave him a good excuse not to run for mayor, he gave that up
+himself. And in a few days the Judge and Luther Ward went to him and
+told him what else he had to do, and he did it. He had to resign from
+everything, everything he was in charge of or was trustee of, or had
+anything to do with, and get out of town. If he'd do that, they wouldn't
+make any scandal or bother him afterward, but let him start new. And
+they gave him six months to do all that decently and save his face. Why
+did he have to do it decently? Why couldn't they tar and feather him? I
+wish they had. I wish----"
+
+"Wish something else, Judith. Something about us."
+
+"What do you mean by us?"
+
+"You and me."
+
+"Isn't it splendid the Judge is going to be president of the bank?" said
+Judith hastily.
+
+"Splendid," said a future president of the Green River Bank, who was
+occupying the step beside her.
+
+"And isn't it nice that poor Mrs. Burr is going to marry Mr. Sebastian,
+even if she does have to move away from Green River? I like people to be
+happy, don't you?"
+
+"No. No, I don't. Not other people. I don't care whether they are happy
+or not, and I don't want to talk about them, only about you and me."
+
+"If you don't like the way I talk, I'll keep still," Judith said, in a
+severe but small voice, but a small hand groping for his softened the
+threat, and a soft, sudden laugh as his arm slipped round her atoned for
+it entirely. Then there was silence on the steps, a long, whispering,
+wonderful silence. Long before Judith spoke again all the work of the
+lonely months was undone. And the low whispers that the two exchanged
+conveyed no further information about Colonel Everard.
+
+But there was no more to tell. The master of Green River was master no
+longer and the end of all the intricate planning and scheming that had
+made and kept him master was a story that Judith could tell in a few
+careless sentences and forget. If she had seen and guessed some things
+that she could not forget, in the strange little circle that had found a
+place for her, she would never see them again. That order was gone from
+the town forever, with the man who had created it, and beside her on the
+steps was the boy who could make her forget it, and see beyond the long,
+hard years between. And, as she almost could guess, in these magic
+minutes when she could dream and dream true, that boy was the future
+master of Green River.
+
+Judith sighed, and stirred in his arms.
+
+"Are you happier now?" she whispered.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But you're going to be great. You are, really."
+
+"I am if you want me to. Judith, how long does your father think you and
+I ought to wait?"
+
+"I don't know. You can ask him. He likes you better than me. He always
+wanted me to be a boy.... Neil, I want to tell you something. Keep your
+arm like that, but don't look at me."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It's about what you don't like me to talk about."
+
+"Everard?"
+
+"Yes, and it's about something dreadful, that day in his library when I
+was alone with him, and you came. He--frightened me."
+
+"Never mind, dear, now."
+
+"He frightened me but that was--all. I wasn't hurt or anything. I just
+didn't know he--anybody--could look the way he was looking, or act the
+way he was acting, and then I felt sick all over. I was afraid. But he
+was just trying to kiss me, of course, and I wasn't going to let him,
+the horrid old man. So I think now it was silly to be frightened. Was
+it?"
+
+"No, it wasn't silly, dear."
+
+"I'm glad. And Neil--I want to tell you something else. It's about--that
+night--in the buggy, on the old road to Wells, you know, when you were
+going to elope with me and changed your mind."
+
+"When I frightened you so. Oh, Judith."
+
+"You didn't--frighten me," said a very small voice indeed. "You----"
+
+"What, dear?"
+
+"Made me want you--want to go away with you. I never felt like that
+before, all waked up and different and--happy. Oh, you didn't frighten
+me. I wasn't angry because you tried to take me away. It was because you
+brought me back."
+
+"Don't you know why I brought you back?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why, because I loved you. I didn't love you till then, not really; not
+till that minute in the carriage. I know just what minute. When you let
+me kiss you, and didn't mind any more. Then I knew about--love. I never
+knew before, but I'll never forget again. It isn't just wanting people,
+it's taking care of them, and not hurting them. Waiting till you can
+have things--right. So I wanted to have you right and be fit for you,
+and after that night I went to work and I wouldn't be stopped, not by
+anything in this town or the world. Oh, Judith, why don't you speak to
+me? It isn't much use to talk. You don't understand."
+
+"I--do."
+
+"You're crying!"
+
+She was crying, and she did understand. Before this unexpected,
+beautiful proof of it, the boy was reverent and half ashamed, as if a
+woman's tears were a sacred miracle invented for him. He held her hand
+timidly and pressed it. Presently she drew it away, and suddenly she was
+not crying, but laughing, a low, full-throated laugh as wonderful to
+him as her tears.
+
+"I told you, you did it all," she said softly. "Well, you didn't. Neil,
+there's what did it all. Because, if you only go on believing in things
+and being sweet and true and not afraid, and--wishing, then everything
+will come right. It's got to, just because you want it to. So there's
+what did it all and made us so happy, you and me. I love it. Love it,
+Neil."
+
+Neil looked where Judith was looking. Above the horse-chestnut tree, so
+filmy and faint that the stars looked brighter than ever, so pale that
+it was not akin to the stars, but to the dark beyond, where adventures
+were, so friendly and sweet that it could make the wish in your heart
+come true, hung a new-risen silvery crescent of light.
+
+"But it's only the moon," Neil said.
+
+"It's--the wishing moon," said Judith.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected
+without note. Some illustrations have been relocated for
+better flow.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WISHING MOON***
+
+
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Wishing Moon, by Louise Elizabeth Dutton</title>
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Wishing Moon, by Louise Elizabeth Dutton,
+Illustrated by Everett Shinn</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Wishing Moon</p>
+<p>Author: Louise Elizabeth Dutton</p>
+<p>Release Date: January 23, 2010  [eBook #31057]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WISHING MOON***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Peter Vickers, Juliet Sutherland,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" >
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Cover" title="Cover" />
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<table summary="CONTENTS">
+<tr><td><a href="#LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"><b>List of Illustrations</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_ONE"><b>Chapter One</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_TWO"><b>Chapter Two</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_THREE"><b>Chapter Three</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_FOUR"><b>Chapter Four</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_FIVE"><b>Chapter Five</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_SIX"><b>Chapter Six</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_SEVEN"><b>Chapter Seven</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_EIGHT"><b>Chapter Eight</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_NINE"><b>Chapter Nine</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_TEN"><b>Chapter Ten</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_ELEVEN"><b>Chapter Eleven</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_TWELVE"><b>Chapter Twelve</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_THIRTEEN"><b>Chapter Thirteen</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_FOURTEEN"><b>Chapter Fourteen</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_FIFTEEN"><b>Chapter Fifteen</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_SIXTEEN"><b>Chapter Sixteen</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_SEVENTEEN"><b>Chapter Seventeen</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_EIGHTEEN"><b>Chapter Eighteen</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_NINETEEN"><b>Chapter Nineteen</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY"><b>Chapter Twenty</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#CHAPTER_TWENTY-ONE"><b>Chapter Twenty-One</b></a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h1>THE<br />
+WISHING MOON</h1>
+
+<h3>By</h3>
+<h2>LOUISE DUTTON</h2>
+
+<h4>Author of<br />
+"THE GODDESS GIRL"</h4>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/illus002.png" alt="publishers logo" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">Illustrated by<br />
+EVERETT SHINN
+<br />
+<br />
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="font-variant: small-caps">Garden City&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;New York<br />
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY<br />
+1916
+</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="center"><i>Copyright</i>, 1916, <i>by</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">Louise Dutton</span><br /><br />
+<i>All rights reserved, including that of<br />
+translation into foreign languages,<br />
+including the Scandinavian</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">COPYRIGHT, 1916, THE METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE COMPANY</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<table summary="ILLUSTRATIONS">
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><h2><a name="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS" id="LIST_OF_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#illus1">"'Oh, Judith, won't you speak to me?'"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><i>Frontispiece</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td  colspan="2" style="padding-left: 5em;"><a href="#illus1">(See page 239)</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td align="right"><small>FACING PAGE</small></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#illus2">"'I know what this means,' she asserted"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illus2">128</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#illus3">"'Shut your eyes'"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illus3">166</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#illus4">"'Judith, you don't hate me? Say it&mdash;say it'"</a></td>
+<td align="right"><a href="#illus4">180</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE WISHING MOON</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_ONE" id="CHAPTER_ONE"></a>CHAPTER ONE</h2>
+
+<p>A little girl sat on the worn front doorsteps of the Randall house. She
+sat very still and straight, with her short, white skirts fluffed
+daintily out on both sides, her hands tightly clasped over her thin
+knees, and her long, silk-stockinged legs cuddled tight together. She
+was bare-headed, and her short, soft hair showed silvery blonde in the
+fading light. Her hair was bobbed. For one miserable month it had been
+the only bobbed head in Green River. Her big, gray-green eyes had a
+fugitive, dancing light in them. The little girl had beautiful eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The little girl was Miss Judith Devereux Randall. She was eleven years
+old, and she felt happier to-night than she remembered feeling in all
+the eleven years of her life.</p>
+
+<p>The Randalls' lawn was hedged with a fringe of lilac and syringa bushes,
+with one great, spreading horse-chestnut tree at the corner. The house
+did not stand far back from the street. The little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> girl could see a
+generous section of Main Street sloping past, dark already under
+shadowing trees. The street was empty. It was half-past six, and
+supper-time in Green River, but the Randalls did not have supper, they
+dined at night, like the Everards. To-night mother and father were
+dining with the Everards, and the little girl had plans of her own.</p>
+
+<p>Father was dressed, and waiting, shut in the library. Mother was
+dressing in her big corner room upstairs, with all the electric lights
+lighted. The little girl could see them, if she turned her head, but
+mother was very far away, in spite of that, for her door was locked, and
+you could not go in. You could not watch her brush her long, wonderful
+hair, or help her into her evening gown. Mother's evening gown was black
+this summer, with shiny spangles&mdash;a fairy gown. Mother had to be alone
+while she dressed, because she was going to the Everards'.</p>
+
+<p>There were two Everards, the Colonel, who was old because his hair was
+white, and his wife, who wore even more beautiful clothes than mother.
+She had heard her father say that the Colonel had made the town, and she
+had heard Norah, the cook, say that he owned the town. She had an idea
+that these two things were not quite the same, though they sounded
+alike, for father was fond of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> the Colonel, and Norah was not. At any
+rate, he was president of the bank&mdash;father and Norah agreed about
+that&mdash;and he lived in a house at the edge of the town, in what used to
+be a part of Larribees' woods. Father used to go Mayflowering there, but
+now nobody could.</p>
+
+<p>The house was ugly, with things sticking out all over it, towers and
+balconies and cupolas, and it was the little girl's twin. She was born
+the year the Everards settled in Green River.</p>
+
+<p>"And you're marked with it," Norah said, in one of their serious talks,
+when Mollie, the second girl, was out, and the two had the kitchen to
+themselves. Norah was peeling apples for a pie, and allowing her
+unlimited ginger-snaps, straight from the jar. "Marked with it, Miss
+Judy."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"That house, and what goes on in it."</p>
+
+<p>"What does go on?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll know soon enough."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not marked with it. I've got a birthmark, but it's a strawberry, on
+my left side, like the princesses have in the fairy tales."</p>
+
+<p>"You are a kind of a princess, Miss Judy."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that a bad thing to be, Nana?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a lonesome thing."</p>
+
+<p>"My strawberry's fading. Mother says it will go away."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It won't go away. What we're born to be,
+we will be, Miss Judy&mdash;&mdash;. Bless your
+heart, you're crying, with the big eyes of you. What for, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I don't want to be a princess. I don't want to be
+lonesome. I hate the Everards."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there's many to say that now, and there'll be more to say it
+soon." Norah muttered this darkly, into her yellow bowl of apples, but
+Judith heard: "Here, eat this apple, child. You musn't hate anybody."</p>
+
+<p>"I do. I hate the Everards."</p>
+
+<p>Queer things came into your head to say when you were talking with
+Norah, who had an aunt with the second sight, and told beautiful fairy
+tales herself, and even believed in fairies; Judith did not. The
+Everards gave Judith and no other little girl in town presents at
+Christmas, and invited Judith and no other little girl to lunch. They
+had a great deal to do with her trouble, her serious trouble, which she
+would not discuss even with Norah. But she did not really hate the
+Everards&mdash;certainly not to-night. She was too happy.</p>
+
+<p>Judith was going out to hang May-baskets.</p>
+
+<p>So was every other little girl in town who wanted to, and it was a
+wonderful thing to be doing to-night. It was really May night, by the
+weather as well as the calendar&mdash;the kind of night that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> Norah's fairies
+meant should come on the first of May: warm, with a tiny chill creeping
+into the air as the dark came, a pleasant, shivery chill, as if there
+might really be fairies or ghosts about. It was still and clear. One
+star, that had just come up above the horse-chestnut tree, looked very
+small and bright and close, as if it had climbed up into the sky out of
+the dark, clustering leaves of the tree.</p>
+
+<p>This was the star that Judith usually wished on, but she could wish on
+the moon to-night; Norah had told her so; wish once instead of three
+nights running, and get her wish whether she thought of the red fox's
+tail or not. The new moon of May was a wishing moon.</p>
+
+<p>A wishing moon! The small white figure on the steps cuddled itself into
+a smaller heap. Judith sighed happily and closed her eyes. She was going
+with the others. She had her wish already.</p>
+
+<p>It was Judith's great trouble that she was not like other little girls.
+Until she was six Judith had a vague idea that she was the only child in
+the world. Then she tried to make friends with two small, dirty girls
+over the back fence, and found out that there were other children, but
+she must not play with them. One day Norah found her crying in the
+nursery because she could not think what to play, and soon after Willard
+Nash,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> the fat little boy next door, came to dinner and into her life,
+and after that, Eddie and Natalie Ward, from the white house up the
+street, and Lorena Drew, from over the river. Still other children came
+to her parties, so many that she could not remember their names. Then
+Judith's trouble began. She was not like them.</p>
+
+<p>She did not look like them; her clothes were not made by a seamstress,
+but came from city shops, and had shorter skirts, and stuck out in
+different places. She could not do what they did; Mollie called for her
+at nine at evening parties, and she usually had to go to bed half an
+hour after dinner, before it was dark. She had to do things that they
+did not do: make grown-up calls with her mother and wear gloves, and
+take lessons in fancy dancing instead of going to dancing school.</p>
+
+<p>But she had gone to school now for almost a year, a private school in
+the big billiard-room at the Larribees', but a real school, with other
+children in it. They did not make fun of her clothes, or the way she
+pronounced her words, very often now. She belonged to a secret society
+with Rena and Natalie. She had spent one night with Natalie, though she
+had to come home before breakfast. The other children did not know she
+was different, but Judith knew.</p>
+
+<p>Unexpected things might be required of her at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> a moment's notice: to be
+excused from school and pass cakes at a tea at the Everards'; to leave a
+picnic before the potatoes were roasted, because Mollie had appeared,
+inexorable; unaccountable things, but she was to be safe to-night. May
+night was not such a wonderful night for any little girl as it was for
+Judith.</p>
+
+<p>The lights were on in Nashs' parlour, and not turned off in the
+dining-room, which meant that the rest of the family were not through
+supper, but Willard was. Presently she heard three loud, unmelodious
+whistles, his private signal, and a stocky figure pushed itself through
+a gap in the hedge which looked, and was, too small for it, and Judith
+rubbed her eyes and sat up&mdash;it crossed the lawn to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, Merry Sunshine," said Willard, ironically.</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't asleep."</p>
+
+<p>"You were."</p>
+
+<p>"I heard you coming."</p>
+
+<p>"You did not."</p>
+
+<p>"I did so."</p>
+
+<p>These formalities over, she made room for him eagerly on the steps.
+Willard looked fatter to Judith after a meal, probably because she knew
+how much he ate. His clean collar looked much too clean and white in the
+dark, and he was evi<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>dently in a teasing mood, but such as he was, he
+was her best friend, and she needed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Willard, guess what I'm going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, kid." Willard's tone implied unmistakably that he did not
+want to know.</p>
+
+<p>"To-night!"</p>
+
+<p>Judith's voice thrilled. Willard stared at her. Her eyes looked wider
+than usual, and very bright. She was smiling a strange little smile, and
+a rare dimple, which he really believed she had made with a slate
+pencil, showed in her cheek. The light in her face was something new to
+him, something he did not understand, and therefore being of masculine
+mind, wished to remove.</p>
+
+<p>"You're going to miss it to-night for one thing, kid," he stated
+deliberately.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, am I?" Judith dimpled and glowed.</p>
+
+<p>"We're going to stay out until ten. Vivie's not going." Willard's big
+sister had chaperoned the expedition the year before. Now it was to go
+out unrestrained into the night.</p>
+
+<p>"That's lovely."</p>
+
+<p>Willard searched his brain for more overwhelming details.</p>
+
+<p>"We've got a dark lantern."</p>
+
+<p>"That's nice."</p>
+
+<p>"I got it. It's father's. He won't miss it. It's hidden in the Drews'
+barn. We're going to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> meet at the Drews, to fool them. They'll be
+watching the Wards'."</p>
+
+<p>"They will?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure."</p>
+
+<p>"The&mdash;paddies?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure."</p>
+
+<p>Judith drew an awed, ecstatic breath. He was touching now on the chief
+peril and charm of the expedition. Hanging May-baskets, conferring an
+elaborately-made gift upon a formal acquaintance, was not the object of
+it&mdash;nothing so philanthropic; it was the escape after you had hung them.
+You went out for adventure, to ring the bell and get away, to brave the
+dangers of the night in small, intimate companies. And the chief danger,
+which you fled from through the dark, was the paddies.</p>
+
+<p>She did not know much about them. She would not show her ignorance by
+asking questions. But there were little boys with whom a state of war
+existed. They chased you, even fought with you, made a systematic
+attempt to steal your May-baskets. They were mixed up in her mind with
+gnomes and pirates. She was deliciously afraid of them. She hardly
+thought they had human faces. She understood that they were most of them
+Irish, and that it was somehow a disgrace for them to be Irish, though
+her own Norah was Irish and proud of it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Sure!" said Willard. "Irish boys. Paddies from Paddy Lane. Ed got a
+black eye last year. We'll get back at them. It will be some evening."
+Judith did not look jealous or wistful yet. "The whole crowd's going."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know," thrilled Judith. "Oh, Willard&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Willard," he mimicked. Judith pronounced all the letters in his
+name, which was not the popular method. "Oh, Willard, what do you think
+I heard Viv say to the Gaynor girl about you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know. Willard, won't the paddies see the dark lantern?"</p>
+
+<p>"Viv said you were as pretty as a doll, but just as stiff and stuck-up,"
+pronounced Willard sternly. "And your father's only the cashier of the
+bank, and just because the Everards have taken your mother up is no
+reason for her to put on airs and get a second girl and get into
+debt&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He broke off, discouraged. Judith did not appear to hear him. After the
+masculine habit, as he could not control the situation, he rose to
+leave.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, so long, kid. I've got to go to the post-office."</p>
+
+<p>Even the mention of this desirable rendezvous, which was denied to her
+because Mollie always<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> brought home the evening mail in a black silk
+bag, did not dim the dancing light in Judith's eyes. She put a hand on
+his sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>"Willard&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, kid?"</p>
+
+<p>"Willard, don't you wish I was going to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"What for, to fight the paddies, or carry the dark lantern?"</p>
+
+<p>"I could fight," said Judith, with a little quiver in her voice, as if
+she could.</p>
+
+<p>"Fight? You couldn't even run away. They'd"&mdash;Willard hissed it
+mysteriously&mdash;"they'd get you."</p>
+
+<p>"No, they wouldn't, because"&mdash;something had happened to her eyes, so
+that they did not look tantalizing&mdash;"you'd take care of me, Willard,"
+she announced surprisingly, "wouldn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Forget it," murmured Willard, flattered.</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Willard!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;I am. Father made mother let me. I'm going with you."</p>
+
+<p>The words she had been trying to say were out at last in a hushed voice,
+because her heart was beating hard, but they sounded beautiful to her,
+like a kind of song. Perhaps Willard heard it,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> too. He really was her
+best friend, and he did not look so fat, after all, in the twilight. She
+waited breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"You are?"</p>
+
+<p>Judith nodded. She could not speak.</p>
+
+<p>"Well!" Willard's feelings were mixed, his face was not fashioned to
+express a conflict of emotions, and words failed him, too. "You're a
+queer kid. Why didn't you tell me before?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you glad, Willard?"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll get sleepy."</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you glad?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure I'm glad. But you can't run, and you are a cry-baby."</p>
+
+<p>These were known facts, not insults, but now Judith's eyes had stopped
+dancing.</p>
+
+<p>"Judy, are you mad with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"You're the queerest kid." Up the street, he caught sight of a member of
+a simpler sex than Judith's. "There's Ed coming out of the gate. I've
+got to see him about something. See you later. Don't be mad. So long!"</p>
+
+<p>The house was astir behind Judith. Father was opening and shutting
+doors, and hunting for things. Norah was helping mother into her wraps
+and scolding. Somebody was telephoning. Mother's carriage was late.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But it was turning into the yard now, a big, black hack from the Inn,
+with a white horse. Judith liked white horses best. The front door
+opened, and her father, very tall and blond, with his shirt-front
+showing white, and her mother, with something shiny in her black hair,
+swept out.</p>
+
+<p>"Look who's here," said her father, and picked her up with his hands
+under her elbows. "Going to paint the town red to-night, son?"</p>
+
+<p>"Red?" breathed Judith. How strong father was, and how beautiful mother
+was. She smelled of the perfume in the smallest bottle on the
+toilet-table. How kind they both were. "Red?"</p>
+
+<p>"Harry, you see she doesn't care a thing about going. She'd be better
+off in bed. Careful, baby! Your hair is catching on my sequins. Put her
+down, Harry. You'll spoil the shape of her shoulders some day."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you want to go, son?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;" Judith choked, "I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she's not crazy about it, is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then do send her to bed."</p>
+
+<p>"No, you can't break your promise to a child, Minna."</p>
+
+<p>"Prig," said mother sweetly, as if a prig were a pleasant thing to be.
+"All right, let her go, then. Oh, Harry, look at that horse. They've
+sent us the knock-kneed old white corpse again."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mother hurried him into the carriage, and it clattered out of the yard.
+They did not look back. They were always in a hurry, and rather cross
+when they went to the Everards. For once she was glad to see them go,
+such a dreadful crisis had come and passed. How could father think she
+did not want to go, father who used to hang May-baskets himself? Norah
+was calling her, but she did not answer. Norah was cross to-night. She
+did not know how happy Judith was.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody knew, but now Judith did not want to tell. She did not want
+sympathy. She was not lonely. This secret was too important to tell.
+And, before her eyes, a lovely and comforting thing was happening,
+silently and suddenly, as lovely things do happen. Quite still on the
+steps, a white little figure, alone in a preoccupied world, but calm in
+spite of it, Judith looked and looked.</p>
+
+<p>Above the horse-chestnut tree, so filmy and faint that the star looked
+brighter than ever, so pale that it was not akin to the stars or the
+flickering lights in the street, but to the dark beyond, where
+adventures were, so friendly and sweet that it could make the wish in
+your heart come true, whether you were clever enough to wish it out loud
+or not, hung the wishing moon.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_TWO" id="CHAPTER_TWO"></a>CHAPTER TWO</h2>
+
+<p>A small, silent procession was edging its way along Church Street,
+darkly silhouetted against a faintly starred sky. It was a long hour
+later now, and looked later still on Church Street. There were few
+lights left in the string of houses near the white church, at the lower
+end of the street, and here, at the upper end, there were no lights but
+the one street lamp near the railroad bridge that arched black overhead,
+and there were few houses. The street did not look like a street at all,
+but a country road, and a muddy one.</p>
+
+<p>The narrow board sidewalk creaked, so the procession avoided it, and
+stuck to the muddy side of the road.</p>
+
+<p>The procession looked mysterious enough, even if you were walking at the
+tail of it and carrying a heavy market basket; if you had to smell the
+lantern, swung just in front of you, but did not have the fun of
+carrying it; if a shaker cloak, hooded and picturesque, in the
+procession, hampered your activities; if you had questions to ask, and
+nobody answered you.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Willard."</p>
+
+<p>"Sh!"</p>
+
+<p>One by one, they came into sight, in the wavering light of the street
+lamp, and melted into the dark under the bridge; Ed, in his white
+sweater, captaining them, and keenly aware of it; Rena and Natalie, with
+the larger market basket between them; Willard, bulky in two sweaters,
+and tenderly shielding his lantern with a third, and Judith. Her face
+showed pale with excitement against the scarlet of her hood. One hand
+plucked vainly at Willard's sleeve; he stalked on, and would not turn.
+Only these five, but they had consulted and organized and reorganized
+for half an hour in the Drews' barn before they started, and had hung
+only three May-baskets yet. However, the adventure was under way now.</p>
+
+<p>"Willard, now it's my turn to carry the lantern."</p>
+
+<p>"Judy, you can't."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"It might explode." The feeble flame gave one dispirited upward spurt at
+this encouragement, causing excitement in front.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Ed!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ed, make him put it out."</p>
+
+<p>"Rena and Nat, you keep still. Judy's not scared, are you Judy?"</p>
+
+<p>"No! Oh, no!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The lantern's a sick looking sight, and he can carry it
+if he wants to, but we don't need it."</p>
+
+<p>"I like that. You tried to get me to let you carry it, Ed."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk so much."</p>
+
+<p>"Who started the talk?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, who's running this, anyway&mdash;you, Willard Nash?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's a dog in that house."</p>
+
+<p>"Sh!"</p>
+
+<p>"But that dog's only a cocker spaniel. He can't hurt you."</p>
+
+<p>"Judy, sh!"</p>
+
+<p>Sh! Somebody was always saying that. It was part of the ceremony, which
+had been the same all three times. The procession was halting opposite
+the Nealy house. A whispered quarrel started every time they approached
+a house, and was hushed halfway through and not taken up again. The
+quarrel and the hush were part of the ceremony, too.</p>
+
+<p>The Nealy house was small and harmless looking, and entirely dark, but
+they did not allow that to make them reckless. They stood looking warily
+across the dark street.</p>
+
+<p>"But there's nobody there. Maggie Nealy's out, too, to-night, and her
+mother&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Sh!" Willard put a hand over Judith's mouth.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> It smelled of kerosene,
+and she struggled, but did not make a noise. Just at this dramatic
+moment the Nealy's dog barked.</p>
+
+<p>Judith could hear her heart beat and feel her damp feet getting really
+wet and cold.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," Ed whispered, close to her ear and uncomfortably loud, and she
+fumbled in her basket. Willard jiggled the lantern dizzily over her
+shoulder, tissue paper tore under her fingers, and bonbons rattled.
+Hanging May-baskets was certainly hard on the May-baskets, and they were
+so pretty; pale coloured, like flowers.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't find the right one. The marks are all falling off. The candy's
+falling out."</p>
+
+<p>"We can't stand here all night. Here&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Willard, take your hands out. Not that one&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Willard and Judy stop fighting. That one will do. I'm going."</p>
+
+<p>There was dead silence now, and Ed, clutching the wreck of a sizable
+crêpe-paper creation to the bosom of his white sweater, doubled into a
+crouching, boy scout attitude, crossed the road, and approached the
+house. Nothing but his own commendable caution delayed his approach. The
+small dog's dreams within were untroubled now. There were no signs of
+life.</p>
+
+<p>He reached the front door, deposited the May-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>basket with a force that
+further demolished it, and took to his heels. After another breathless
+wait the procession formed behind him and trailed after him up the road,
+hilly here, so that the market basket grew heavier.</p>
+
+<p>"Some evening," Willard murmured to himself, not the rest of the world,
+but he sounded amiable.</p>
+
+<p>"Willard."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, kid,"</p>
+
+<p>"There wasn't anybody in that house. Ed knew it."</p>
+
+<p>"There might have been. They might have come home."</p>
+
+<p>"But they didn't ... Willard, is this all there is to it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hanging May-baskets. Throwing them down that way. I thought maybe they
+really hung them, on the doorknob&mdash;I thought&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Silly! Ed's going cross lots, and up the wood road to Larribees'. Good
+work. That will throw them off the track."</p>
+
+<p>"Throw who off the track?"</p>
+
+<p>"You scared? Want to go home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! But who? There's nobody chasing us. Nobody."</p>
+
+<p>"No. We've got them fooled. It's some evening."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Willard, where are the paddies?"</p>
+
+<p>That was the question Judith had been wanting to ask more and more, for
+an hour, but it came in a choked voice, and nobody heard. They were
+plunging into a rough and stubbly wood lot, and hushing each other
+excitedly. Twigs caught at Judith's skirt, and it was hard to see your
+way, with the moon, small and high above the trees in Larribee's woods,
+only making the trees look darker. The wood road was little used and
+overgrown.</p>
+
+<p>"If they get us in here!"</p>
+
+<p>"They won't, Willard." Judith's voice trembled.</p>
+
+<p>"Cry-baby!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am not."</p>
+
+<p>"Here, buck up. We're coming out right here, back of the carriage house.
+If Ed catches you crying he'll send you home."</p>
+
+<p>But Ed had his mind upon higher things. "You girls stay here with the
+baskets. Don't move. Willard, you go right and I'll go left, and we'll
+meet at the carriage-house steps, if the coast is clear."</p>
+
+<p>"If they get us&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>If! The boys crunched out of hearing on the gravel, awesome silence set
+in, and Rena and Natalie whispered; Judith was not to be awed.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> Four
+May-baskets hung, and nobody objecting; dark cross-streets chosen
+instead of Main Street and no danger pursuing them there. If there was
+no danger in the whole town, why should there be in one little strip of
+woods, though it was dark and strange, and full of whispering noises?
+Judith had clung to Willard's hand in terror, turning into the
+cross-streets, and nothing came of it. She was not to be fooled any
+longer. There was no danger.</p>
+
+<p>Not that she wanted to be chased. She did not know what she wanted. But
+she had come out into the dark to find something that was not there. She
+had been happier on the doorsteps thinking about it. This, then, was
+hanging May-baskets&mdash;all there was to it. But it was pleasant here in
+the dark, pleasanter than walking through mud, and quarrelling. Now Rena
+and Nat were quarrelling again.</p>
+
+<p>"Get back there! Ed said not to move."</p>
+
+<p>"They've been gone too long. Something's the matter."</p>
+
+<p>"There they come. I hear them. Get back!"</p>
+
+<p>They were coming, but something else was happening. Willard's three
+whistles sounded, then Ed's voice, and a noise of scuffling on the
+gravel&mdash;and a new boy's voice.</p>
+
+<p>Rena and Natalie, upsetting their basket as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> they started, and not
+noticing it, pushed through the trees and ran. Judith stood still and
+listened. She did not know the voice. It was shrill and clear. She could
+hear the words it said above the others' voices, all clamouring, now, at
+once. She held her breath and listened. She could not move.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want your damn May-baskets."</p>
+
+<p>"Liar! Get back of him, Rena. Come on, Nat."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll get hurt. Let me go."</p>
+
+<p>"Liar&mdash;Paddy!"</p>
+
+<p>The magic word fell unheeded. The boy was laughing, and the laugh filled
+her ears, a splendid laugh, fearless and clear.</p>
+
+<p>"Paddy!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want your damn May-baskets."</p>
+
+<p>"Paddy&mdash;Paddy!"</p>
+
+<p>This time there was no answer. Judith, tearing at the hooks of her cape,
+and throwing it off as she ran, broke through the circling trees. Then
+she stopped and looked.</p>
+
+<p>Rena stood high on the carriage-house steps and held the lantern. It
+wavered and swung in her hand, and threw a flickering circle of light
+round the group by the steps.</p>
+
+<p>The sprawled shadows at their feet seemed to have an undue number of
+arms and legs, and the children were a struggling, uncertain mass of
+mo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>tion, hard to make out, like the shadows, but they were only four:
+Willard, grunting and groaning; Natalie attacking spasmodically in the
+rear, and the strange little boy, the enemy. He was the heart of the
+struggling group, and Judith looked only at him. She could do nothing
+but look, for Judith had never seen a little boy like this.</p>
+
+<p>They were three against one, and the one was a match for them. He was
+slender and strong, holding his ground and making no noise. He was
+coatless and ragged shirted, and one sleeve of his shirt was torn, so
+that you could see how thin his shoulder was. He held his head high, and
+smiled as he fought. A shock of blond hair was tossed high above his
+forehead. He had a thin, white face, and dark jewels of flashing eyes.
+As she stood and looked, they met Judith's eyes, and Judith knew that
+she had never seen a boy like this, because there was no boy like
+this&mdash;no little boy so wild and strange and free, so ragged and brave.
+If he could come out of the dark, it was full of unguessable things,
+splendid and strange and new. Judith's heart beat hard, a hot feeling
+swept over her, and a queer mist came before her eyes. A wonderful boy;
+a fairy boy! What would they do to him? What did they do to paddies?
+There was no little boy like this in the world.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Judy!" The others had
+seen her and were calling her. "Come on. Help get him down."</p>
+
+<p>"He chased Willard round here."</p>
+
+<p>"He led the gang last year."</p>
+
+<p>"It's Neil Donovan."</p>
+
+<p>"Get him down!"</p>
+
+<p>Judith did not answer then. Her cheeks flamed red, and her eyes looked
+as big and dark as the stranger's, and her small hands clenched tight.
+It was only a minute that she stood so. The three were close to him,
+hiding him. She saw his face again, above Willard's pushing shoulder,
+and then&mdash;she could not see it.</p>
+
+<p>"Judy, what's the matter? Come on!"</p>
+
+<p>And Judith came. She plunged straight into the struggling group, and
+hammered at it indiscriminately with two small fists. She caught at a
+waving coat sleeve, and pulled it&mdash;Willard's, and it tore in her hands.
+She spotted Eds white sweater, and beat at it fiercely, with all her
+strength.</p>
+
+<p>"That's me, Judy. Cut it out!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then let him go. Three to one is no fair. Let him go!" They did not
+hear her, or care which side she was on, or take the trouble to drive
+her away. Judith drew back and stood and looked at them, breathless and
+glowing and undefeated, for one long minute.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Boy," she called then,
+softly, as if he could hear when the others could not, "wait! It's all
+right, boy. It's all right."</p>
+
+<p>Then she charged up the steps at Rena. Judy, the most demure and
+faithful of allies, confronted Rena, amazingly but unmistakably changed
+to a foe; Judy, with her immaculate and enviable frock smirched and
+torn, and her sleek hair wildly tossed, her cheeks darkly flushed, and
+her eyes strange and shining; a Judy to be reckoned with and admired and
+feared&mdash;a new Judy.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter? Are you crazy? What do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"Make them let him go. They've got to let him go."</p>
+
+<p>"He's a paddy&mdash;Neil Donovan&mdash;a paddy."</p>
+
+<p>"They've got to let him go.... Give that to me."</p>
+
+<p>"What for? Judy, don't hurt me. Judy!"</p>
+
+<p>Judith wasted no more words. She caught Rena's wrist, twisted it, and
+snatched the lantern out of her hand. She held it high above her head,
+and shook it recklessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't, Judy! Don't!" The flame sputtered crazily. Judy still shook the
+lantern, dancing out of reach, and laughing. "Nat&mdash;everybody&mdash;stop Judy.
+She's making the lantern explode. Oh, Ed!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Natalie heard, and then the others. They looked up at her, all of them.
+Rena and Natalie screamed. Willard started toward her. "Put it down,
+kid," he was calling.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll put it down.... Now boy."</p>
+
+<p>There he was, with Ed's arm gripping his shoulders. He did not give any
+sign that he knew she was trying to help him, or that he wanted help. He
+was not afraid of the lantern, like the others. His black eyes were
+laughing at all of them&mdash;laughing at Judith, too. He was looking
+straight at Judith.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, boy," she called, "now run!" and she gripped the lantern tight,
+swung it high, and dashed it to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>It fell at the foot of the steps with a crash of breaking glass. The
+light sputtered out. The air was full of the smell of spilled kerosene.
+In the faint radiance that was not moonlight, but a glimmering
+reflection of it, more confusing than darkness, dim figures struggled
+and shrill voices were lifted.</p>
+
+<p>"Get him. Hold him."</p>
+
+<p>"Get the lantern."</p>
+
+<p>"Get Judy."</p>
+
+<p>"Hold him, Ed."</p>
+
+<p>"That's me."</p>
+
+<p>"Get him, Rena."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Judith laughed, and out of the dark he had come from,
+the dark of May-night, lit by a wishing moon, that grants your secret
+wish for better or for worse, irrevocably, a far-away laugh answered
+Judith's. The boy was gone.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_THREE" id="CHAPTER_THREE"></a>CHAPTER THREE</h2>
+
+<p>Miss Judith Devereux Randall was getting into her first evening gown.</p>
+
+<p>The Green River High School football team was giving its annual
+September concert and ball in Odd Fellows' Hall to-night. The occasion
+was as important to the school as a coming-out party. The new junior
+class, just graduated from seclusion upstairs to the big assembly room
+where the seniors were, made its first public appearance in society
+there. Judith was a junior now.</p>
+
+<p>Her first dance, and her first evening gown; it was a memorable scene,
+fit to immortalize with the first love-letter and the first proposal, in
+a series of pictures of great moments in a girl's life&mdash;chosen by some
+masculine illustrator, touchingly confident that he knows what the great
+moments of a girl's life are. Judith seemed to be taking this moment too
+calmly for one.</p>
+
+<p>The dress lay ready on the bed, fluffy and light and sheer, a white
+dream of a dress, with two unopened florist's boxes beside it, but there
+was no picturesque disarray of excited toilet-making in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> her big,
+brightly lighted room, and no dream-promoting candlelight. And there
+were no pennants or football trophies disfiguring the daintily flowered
+wall paper, and no pictures or programs in the mirror of the dainty
+dressing-table; there was no other young girl's room in town where they
+were prohibited, but there was no other room so charming as Judith's,
+all blue-flowered chintz and bird's-eye maple and white fur rugs, and
+whiter covers and curtains.</p>
+
+<p>Judith was the most charming and immaculate thing in the room, as she
+stood before the cheval-glass, bare armed and slim and straight in
+beruffled, beribboned white, pinning the soft, pale braids tight around
+her small, high-poised head. Quite the most charming thing, and Norah,
+fingering the dress on the bed disapprovingly, and giving her keen,
+sidelong glances, was aware of it, but did not believe in compliments,
+even to the creature she loved best in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Her mouth was set and her brown eyes were bright with the effort of
+repressing them. Judith, seeing her face in the glass, turned suddenly
+and slipped her arms round the formidable old creature's neck, and
+laughed at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think I'm perfectly beautiful?" she demanded. "If you really
+love me, why not tell me so?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Your colour's good." Judith pressed a delicately flushed cheek to
+Norah's, and attempted a butterfly kiss, which she evaded grimly. "Good
+enough&mdash;healthy and natural."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. I made it. Oh, with hot water and then cold, I mean. Nana,
+don't begin about rouge. Don't be silly. That red stuff in the box on
+mother's dresser is only nail paste, truly."</p>
+
+<p>"Who sent the flowers?"</p>
+
+<p>"Look and see."</p>
+
+<p>"Much you care, if you'll let me look."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want me to care?"</p>
+
+<p>"Much you care about the flowers or the party."</p>
+
+<p>Judith had caught up the alluring dress without a second glance, and
+slipped it expertly over her head, and was jerking capably at the
+fastenings.</p>
+
+<p>"With the spoiled airs of you, and Willard Nash sending to Wells for
+flowers, when his father clerked in a drygoods store at his age&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, carnations are cheap&mdash;or he wouldn't get them."</p>
+
+<p>"These aren't cheap, then."</p>
+
+<p>The smaller box was full of white violets.</p>
+
+<p>"Give them to me. No, you can't see the card. You don't deserve to.
+You're too cross, and besides you wouldn't like it. Do my two top hooks.
+Now, am I perfectly beautiful?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Under her capable hands a pretty miracle had been going on, common
+enough, but always new. Ruffle above ruffle, the soft, shapeless mass of
+white had shaken itself into its proper lines and contours, lightly,
+like a bird's plumage settling itself, and with it the change that comes
+when a woman with the inborn, unteachable trick of wearing clothes puts
+on a perfect gown, had come to her slight girl's figure. It looked
+softer, rounder, and more lightly poised. Her throat looked whiter above
+the encircling folds of white. Her shy half smile was sweeter. The white
+violets, caught to her high girdle, were sweeter, too.</p>
+
+<p>Norah surrendered, her voice husky and reluctant.</p>
+
+<p>"You're too good for them."</p>
+
+<p>"For the G. H. S. dance? For Willard?" Judith pretended great humility:
+"Nana!"</p>
+
+<p>"There's others you're more than too good for. Others&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Nana, don't."</p>
+
+<p>"Come here." Norah put two heavy hands on her shoulders and regarded her
+grimly. It was the kind of look that Judith used to associate with
+second sight, and dread. It was quite formidable still. But Judith met
+it steadily, with something mature and assured about her look that had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+nothing to do with the softness and sweetness of her in her fluffy
+draperies, something that had no place in the heart of a child;
+something that Norah saw.</p>
+
+<p>"Too good for them, and you know it," pronounced Norah. "You know it too
+well. You know too many things. A heart of gold you've got, but your
+head will rule your heart."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense." Norah permitted herself to be kissed, still looking
+forbidding, but holding Judith tight.</p>
+
+<p>"Little white lamb, may you find what's good enough for you," she
+conceded, unexpectedly, "and may you know it when you find it."</p>
+
+<p>"You're an old dear, and you're good enough for me."</p>
+
+<p>Downstairs there was a more critical audience to face. Judith saw it in
+the library door, and stood still on the stair landing, looking down.
+She held her head high, and coloured faintly. She looked very slender
+and white against the dark woodwork of the hall. The Randall house had
+been renovated the year before&mdash;becoming ten years older in the process,
+early Colonial instead of a comfortable mixture of late Colonial and
+mid-Victorian. The hall was particularly Colonial, and a becoming
+background for Judith, but the dark-haired lady in the door had no more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+faith in compliments than Norah, and there was a worried wrinkle in her
+low forehead to-night, as if her mind were on other things.</p>
+
+<p>"Will I do, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a good little gown, but there's something wrong with the neck
+line. You're really going then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I would."</p>
+
+<p>"Be back by half-past ten. We're going to have some cards here. The
+Colonel likes you to pass things."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought father's head ached."</p>
+
+<p>"He's sleeping it off."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;wanted him to see how I looked."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't see why you go."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I would. I'll go outside now, and wait for Willard."</p>
+
+<p>Judith closed the early Colonial door softly behind her, and settled
+down on the steps. She arranged her coat, not the one her mother lent
+her for state occasions, but a white polo coat of her own, with due
+regard for her ruffles and her violets. The violets were from Colonel
+Everard. Norah, with her tiresome prejudice against the Everards, and
+mother, who thought and talked so much about them that she was almost
+tiresome, too, were both wrong about this party. She did want to go.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The church clock was striking nine. There was nothing deep toned or
+solemn about the chime; it was rather tinny, but she liked it. It
+sounded wide awake, as if things were going to happen. Nine, and the
+party was under way. The concert was almost over. The concert was only
+for chaperones and girls who were afraid of not getting their dance
+orders filled. The truly elect arrived just in time to dance. Some of
+them were passing the house already. Judith saw girls with
+light-coloured gowns showing under dark coats, and swathing veils that
+preserved elaborate coiffures. Bits of conversation, monosyllabic and
+formal, to fit the clothes, drifted across the lawn to her.</p>
+
+<p>She had not been allowed to help decorate the hall, but she had driven
+with Willard to Nashes' Corners for goldenrod, and when they carried it
+in, big, glowing bundles of it, she had seen fascinating things:
+Japanese lanterns, cheesecloth in yellow and white, the school colours,
+still in the piece, and full of unguessable possibilities, and a rough
+board table, the foundation of the elaborately decorated counter where
+Rena and other girls would serve the fruit punch. All the time she
+dressed she had been listening for the music of Dugan's orchestra, and
+caught only tantalizing strains of tunes that she could not identify.
+There was a sameness about the repertoire. Most of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> the tunes sounded
+unduly sentimental and resigned. But now they were playing their star
+number, a dramatic piece of program music called "A Day on the
+Battlefield."</p>
+
+<p>The day began with bird notes and bugle calls, but was soon enlivened by
+cavalry charges and cannonades. The drum, and an occasional blank
+cartridge, very telling in effect, were producing them now. Judith
+listened eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>She needed friends of her own age for the next two years, but she must
+not identify herself with them too closely, because she would have wider
+social opportunities by and by; that was what her mother said, and she
+did not contest it; by and by, but this party was to-night.</p>
+
+<p>Willard was coming for her now, half an hour ahead of time, as usual. He
+crossed the lawn, and sat heavily down on the steps.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello. Don't talk," said Judith.</p>
+
+<p>Willard was silent only long enough to turn this remark over in his
+mind, and decide that she could not mean it, but that was five minutes,
+for all his mental processes were slow. Down in the hall the last of the
+heroes was dying, and Dugan's orchestra rendered Taps sepulchrally.
+Judith drew a long breath of shivering content.</p>
+
+<p>"Cold?" inquired Willard.</p>
+
+<p>"No."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You're looking great to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"In the dark? In an old polo coat?"</p>
+
+<p>"You always look great."</p>
+
+<p>Judith was aware of an ominous stir beside her, and changed her
+position.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Judy."</p>
+
+<p>"When you know I won't let you hold my hand, what makes you try?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I didn't try, how would I know?" said Willard neatly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if you don't know without trying," Judith sighed. The cannonade in
+the hall was over, and the night was empty without it.</p>
+
+<p>"They took in thirteen dollars and fifty-two cents selling tickets for
+to-night." Willard, checked upon sentimental subjects, proceeded to
+facts. He had so many at command that he could not be checked.</p>
+
+<p>"Who did?"</p>
+
+<p>"The team. They divide it. Only this year they've got to let the
+sub-team in on it, the faculty made them, and they're sore. And there's
+a sub on the reception committee."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care."</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to. A sub, and a roughneck. The sub-team is a bunch of
+roughnecks, but he's the worst. On the reception committee! But they'll
+take it out of him."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Who? The reception committee?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, the girls. They won't dance with him. He won't get a decent name on
+his card. Roughneck, keeping Ed off the team. He's an Irish boy."</p>
+
+<p>"An Irish boy?" Something, vague as an unforgotten dream that comes back
+at night, though you are too busy to recall it in waking hours, urged
+Judith to protest. "So is the senior president Irish."</p>
+
+<p>"No, the vice-president." There was a wide distinction between the two
+offices. "Besides"&mdash;this was a wider distinction&mdash;"Murph lives at the
+Falls."</p>
+
+<p>Living at the Falls, the little settlement at the head of the river, and
+lunching at noon, in the empty schoolhouse, out of tin boxes, with a
+forlorn assembly of half a dozen or so, was a handicap that few could
+live down.</p>
+
+<p>"Murph?"</p>
+
+<p>"The team calls him Murphy. I don't know why. They're crazy about him.
+He lives a half mile north of the Falls. Walking five miles a day to
+learn Latin! He's a fool and a roughneck, but he can play ball.
+Yesterday on Brown's field&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Willard started happily upon technicalities of football formations.
+Judith stopped listening.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> He could talk on unaided, pausing only for an
+occasional yes or no.</p>
+
+<p>Brown's field! It was a tree-fringed stretch of level grass set high at
+the edge of the woods, on the other side of the river, with glimpses of
+the river showing through the trees far below. Here, on long autumn
+afternoons, sparkling and cool, but golden at the heart, ending
+gloriously in red, sudden sunsets, football practice went on every day;
+shifting here and there, mysteriously, over the field, the arbitrary
+evolutions that were football, the shuffling, and shouting, and panting
+silence; on rugs and sweaters under the trees, an audience of girls,
+shivering delightfully, or holding some hero's sweater, too proud to be
+cold.</p>
+
+<p>Judith had seen all this through Willard's eyes, or from a passing
+carriage, but now she would go herself, go perhaps every day. Her mother
+would let her. She would not understand, but she would let her, just as
+she had to-night. Judith could be part of the close-knit life of the
+school in the last two years there&mdash;the years that counted. The party
+was a test and her mother had met it favourably. That was why she was
+glad to go, as nearly as she understood. She did not know quite what she
+wanted of the party, only how very much she wanted to go.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Willard was asking a question insistently: "Didn't he do pretty work?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, the fellow I'm telling you about&mdash;the roughneck."</p>
+
+<p>"Roughneck," said Judith dreamily. The word had a fine, strong sound.
+Willard was holding her hand again, and she felt too comfortable and
+content to stop him.</p>
+
+<p>The orchestra down the street was playing the number that usually ended
+its programs, a medley of plantation melodies. They were never such a
+strain on the resources of a hard-working but only five-piece orchestra
+as the ambitious, martial selections, and here, heard across the dark,
+they were beautiful: plaintive and thrillingly sweet. "Old Kentucky
+Home," was the sweetest of all, lonely and sad as youth, and insistent
+as youth, claiming its own against an alien world.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Willard!" breathed Judith. Then, in quite another tone, "Oh,
+Willard!"</p>
+
+<p>Encouraged by her silence, he was reaching for her other hand, and
+slipping an arm round her waist.</p>
+
+<p>"You feel so soft," objected Judith frankly, getting up. "I do hope I'll
+never fall in love with a fat man. Come on, let's go!"</p>
+
+<p>She waited for him politely on the sidewalk, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> permitted her arm to
+be duly grasped. Willard, sulky and silent, but preserving appearances,
+piloted her dutifully down the street. Willard's silences were rare, and
+Judith usually made the most of them, but she did not permit this one to
+last. She did not want any one, even Willard, to be unhappy to-night.</p>
+
+<p>"Willard."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't take such long steps, or I can't keep up with you. You're so
+tall."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want to be late?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! Are we?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"But there's only one couple behind us, and the music's stopped."</p>
+
+<p>"It takes half an hour to get the chairs moved out."</p>
+
+<p>"Willard."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is the first dance a grand march and circle?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, that's gone out. They have contras instead, but the first is a
+waltz."</p>
+
+<p>"Willard, mother said I mustn't dance contras, but I shall&mdash;with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you want me to?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Willard, are you cross with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"No." They were in front of the Odd Fellows' Building now. The door was
+open. The pair behind them crowded past and clattered hurriedly up the
+bare, polished stairs. The orchestra could be heard tuning industriously
+above. They were almost late, but Willard drew her into a corner of the
+entrance hall, and pressed her hand ardently.</p>
+
+<p>"Judy, I couldn't be cross with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be too sure!" Judith laughed, and ran upstairs ahead of him.</p>
+
+<p>"There's the ladies' dressing-room. I'll get the dance orders and meet
+you outside."</p>
+
+<p>There was a whispering, giggling crowd in the dressing-room, mostly
+seniors, girls she did not know, but they seemed to know her, and she
+was conscious of curious looks at her hair and dress. It was the
+simplest dress in the room, and her mother would not have approved of
+the other dresses, but Judith did. There was something festive about the
+bright colours, too bright most of them: sharp pinks, and cold, hard
+blues. There was a yellow dress on a brunette, who was cheapened by the
+crude colour, and a scarlet dress too bright for any one to wear
+successfully on a big, pretty blond girl, who almost could. Judith
+smelled three distinct kinds of cheap talcum powder, and preferred them
+all to her own un<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>scented French variety. She had a moment of sudden
+loneliness. Was she so glad to be here, after all?</p>
+
+<p>It was only a moment. The tuning of instruments outside broke off, and
+the first bars of a waltz droned invitingly out: "If you really love
+me," the song that had been in her ears all the evening, a flimsy ballad
+of the year, hauntingly sweet, as only such short-lived songs can be.
+Moving to the tune of it, Judith crowded with the other girls out of the
+dressing-room.</p>
+
+<p>The hall was transformed. It was not the room she had dreamed of, a
+great room, dimly lit, peopled with low-talking dancers, circling
+through the dimness. The place looked smaller decorated, and the
+decorations themselves seemed to have shrunk since she saw them. The
+lanterns had been hung only where nails were already driven, and under
+the supervision of the janitor, who would not permit them to be lighted.
+The cheesecloth was conspicuous nowhere except around the little stage,
+which it draped in tight, mathematically measured festoons. Beneath,
+under the misleading legend, "G. H. S.," painted in yellow on a
+suspended football, Dugan's orchestra performed its duties faithfully,
+with handkerchiefs guarding wilted collars.</p>
+
+<p>The goldenrod, tortured and wired into a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> screen to hide the footlights,
+was drooping away already and showing the supporting wires. The benches
+were stacked against the wall, all but an ill-omened row designed for
+wall-flowers, and the floor was cleared and waxed. But little patches of
+wax that were not rubbed in lurked for unwary feet, and there were
+clouds of dust in the air. In one corner of the hall most of the
+prominent guests of the evening were attempting to obtain dance orders
+at once, or to push their way back with them to the young ladies they
+were escorting.</p>
+
+<p>These ladies, and other ladies without escorts, were crowding each other
+against the stacked benches and maneuvering for positions where their
+dance orders would fill promptly. The atmosphere was one of strife and
+stress. But Judith found no fault with it. She was not aware of it.</p>
+
+<p>In a corner near the stage, by the closed door of the refreshment-room,
+a boy was standing alone. He was tearing up his dance order. It was
+empty, and he was making no further attempts to fill it. He tore it
+quite unostentatiously so that no young lady disposed to be amused by
+his defeat could see anything worth staring at in his performance, and
+he was forgotten in his corner. But Judith stared.</p>
+
+<p>She had remembered him tall, but he was only a little taller than
+herself. His black suit was shiny,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> and a size too small for him, but it
+was carefully brushed, and he wore it with an air. His hair was darker
+than she remembered, a pale, soft brown. It was too long, and it curled
+at the temples. He stood squarely, facing the room, as if he did not
+care what anybody did to him, but there was a look about his mouth as if
+he cared. He raised his eyes. They were darker than she remembered,
+darker and stranger than any eyes in the world. They looked hurt, but
+there was a laugh in them, too, and across the hall they were looking
+straight at Judith.</p>
+
+<p>"Here you are. I've got myself down for all your contras. Just in time."</p>
+
+<p>Willard, mopping his brow, slipping on a patch of wax, and saving
+himself with a skating motion, brought up triumphantly beside her,
+waving two dance orders. Judith pushed them away, and said
+something&mdash;she hardly knew what.</p>
+
+<p>"What, Judy? What's that? You're engaged for this? You can't dance it
+with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. No, I can't."</p>
+
+<p>Judith slipped past him, and started across the floor. The music was
+louder now, as if you were really meant to dance, and dance with the
+person you wanted to most. The floor was filling now with dancers
+stepping forward awkwardly, but turning into different creatures when
+they danced,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> caught by the light, sure swing of the music, whirling and
+gliding. The words sang themselves to Judith, the silly, beautiful
+words:</p>
+
+<table summary="SONG">
+<tr><td>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Please don't keep me waiting.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Won't you let me know</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That you really love me?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Tell&mdash;me&mdash;so.</span><br />
+</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>A girl in red was dancing in a quick, darting sort of way, in and out,
+among the others, and her dress was beautiful, too, like a flower. The
+boy in the corner was watching it. He did not see Judith come.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you couldn't be real. When I never saw you again I thought I
+had dreamed you."</p>
+
+<p>Judith said it softly and breathlessly, and he did not hear. She put her
+hand on his arm, and he turned and looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you remember me?" Judith was too happy to be hurt even by this.
+The light, sweet music called to her. "Don't you remember? Never mind!
+Come and dance with me."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_FOUR" id="CHAPTER_FOUR"></a>CHAPTER FOUR</h2>
+
+<p>Willard stood still and stared after Judith for one bewildered minute;
+that was as long as he could stand still. Odd Fellows' Hall had ceased
+to afford standing-room.</p>
+
+<p>The floor was filling and more than filling with determined young
+persons who were there to dance, and looked as if they had never had any
+aim but to dance. The enthralled silence, which was more general than
+conversation, advertised it. Even acknowledged belles, like the girl in
+red, coquetted incidentally, with significant but brief confidences and
+briefer upward glances. There was an alarming concentration, intent as
+youth itself, to be read in their unsmiling faces and eager eyes.</p>
+
+<p>They danced quite wonderfully, most of them, as only country-bred young
+people can, with free-limbed young bodies, more used to adventuring in
+the open air than to dancing, but attuned to the rhythm of the dance by
+right of their youth. The old-fashioned waltz, that our grandmothers
+lost their hearts to the time of, still prevailed in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> Green River; not
+the jerkier performance that was already opening the way for the
+one-step and the dance craze in larger centres, but the old waltz, with
+the first beat of each measure heavily emphasized&mdash;a slow swinging,
+beautiful dance, and they danced it with all their hearts.</p>
+
+<p>In and out among them, two slender, quick-turning figures were making an
+intricate way. The girl danced delicately and surely, a faint, half
+smile parting her lips, her small, smooth head erect, the silvery gold
+hair that crowned it shimmering and pale in the uncompromising light of
+the newly installed electric chandeliers, her eyes intent on the boy.</p>
+
+<p>His performance was not expert, but it had a charm all its own. He put a
+great deal of strength into it, and made it evident that he possessed
+still more; strength enough to master the art of dancing once and for
+all, by the sheer force of it, if he cared to exert it, and a laughing
+light in his eyes, as if dancing was not important enough for that, and
+nothing else was.</p>
+
+<p>An ambitious pair, experimenting with the dip waltz, just introduced
+that year, and pausing on the most awkward spots in the crowded floor,
+blocked his path, and he swung heavily out of their way just in time,
+squaring his chin and holding his head a shade higher. The girl in red<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+was whirled toward him in double-quick time, and he dodged,
+miscalculated his distance, but met the shock of her squarely, whisking
+Judith out of her way.</p>
+
+<p>"Good try, Murph," her partner called.</p>
+
+<p>Willard regarded the encounter disapprovingly from the door of the
+gentlemen's dressing-room, to which he had edged his way. His was not an
+expressive countenance, and that was a protection to him just now. He
+was bewildered and deeply hurt, but he merely looked fat and slightly
+puzzled, as usual.</p>
+
+<p>"Judy turn you down?" inquired his friend Mr. Ward, also watching from
+the dressing-room door, with the few other gentlemen who were without
+partners for this dance. It was the most important dance of the evening,
+for you danced it with the lady of your choice, or with nobody. It
+cemented new intimacies or foreshadowed the breaking of old; settled
+anew the continually agitated question of "who was going with who."</p>
+
+<p>"Judy turn you down?" said Mr. Ward, but he meant it as a pleasantry.
+Mr. Willard Nash was not often turned down, even at this early age. He
+was too eligible.</p>
+
+<p>"Rena turn you down, Ed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." Mr. Ward became suddenly confidential, and lowered his voice.
+"Mad. She<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> wanted me to get her a shinguard to mount tintypes
+on&mdash;tintypes of the team."</p>
+
+<p>"Buy it or steal it?" inquired Willard sarcastically.</p>
+
+<p>"I offered to buy it," his friend confessed, "buy her a new pair, but
+she wants one that's been used."</p>
+
+<p>"You spoil Rena. You can't spoil a girl." They laughed wisely. "It don't
+pay."</p>
+
+<p>"Mad with Judy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;no," said Willard magnanimously. He thought quite rapidly, as his
+brain, not overworked at other times, could do in emergencies. "My feet
+hurt. Pumps slip at the heel. I've been stuffing them out. Judy came
+with me, but I had to be excused for this dance."</p>
+
+<p>"Good thing for him."</p>
+
+<p>"Who?"</p>
+
+<p>"For Murph&mdash;for Neil Donovan. They'll all dance with him if she does;
+though Judy don't know that. She's not stuck on herself, and never will
+be. I didn't know she knew Murph."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you know it now," said Willard shortly, his man-of-the-world
+composure failing him. Judith was circling nearer now, slender and
+desirable. He hesitated between an angry glare and a forgiving smile,
+but she did not look to see which he chose. She whirled quickly by.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Smooth little dancer, and she's no snob. Judy's all right," said Ed.
+"Watch Murph! He's catching on&mdash;never danced till last night. Some of
+the fellows taught him. He never danced with a girl before."</p>
+
+<p>"If my feet hurt," remarked Mr. Nash irrelevantly, and without the close
+attention from his friend which this important announcement called for,
+"I may not dance at all to-night."</p>
+
+<p>Willard stopped abruptly. "What do you know about that"; a voice was
+saying, in the rear of the dressing-room; he stiffly refrained from
+turning to see whose, "Judith is dancing the first dance with Neil
+Donovan!"</p>
+
+<p>Judith was dancing the first dance with Neil Donovan. It was social
+history already, accepted as such, and not further discussed, even by
+Willard. But many epoch-making events are not even so much discussed,
+they look so simple on the face of them. We cross a room, and change the
+course of our lives by crossing it, and few people even observe that we
+have crossed the room.</p>
+
+<p>If Judith had affected the course of her life materially by crossing the
+room to the strange boy, she did not seem to be thinking of it just now.
+She was not thinking at all. She was only dancing, following her
+partner's erratic course quite faithfully, and quite intent on doing so;
+feeling every<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> beat of the music, and showing it, pink-cheeked and
+sparkling eyed, and pleasantly excited, but nothing more.</p>
+
+<p>The wistful and dreamy look was gone from her eyes, and her half-formed
+desire for something to happen this evening, something that had never
+happened before, was gone from her, too. She felt content with whatever
+was going to happen, and deeply interested in it, and particularly
+interested in dancing.</p>
+
+<p>They had danced almost in silence, rather a grim silence at first, but
+now that the boy could let the music carry him with it, and was
+beginning to trust it, too, the silence was comfortable. But the few
+words he managed to say were worth listening to and answering, not to be
+dreamed through and ignored, like Willard's. His voice was not as she
+remembered it, and that was interesting, too, deeply significant, though
+she could not have said why. Everything seemed unaccountably interesting
+to-night.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought it was louder," she said, "or higher&mdash;or something."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your voice."</p>
+
+<p>It was quite husky and low, and he pronounced a word here and there with
+a brogue like Norah's, only pleasanter, with a kind of singing sound.
+It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> was never the word you expected. You had to watch for it. She could
+hear it now.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you please tell me who you are?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know who you are, and I know where you live."</p>
+
+<p>"Where do I?"</p>
+
+<p>"At the Falls, and I know when you moved there&mdash;five years ago, or six."</p>
+
+<p>"Six. How do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know."</p>
+
+<p>As you grew older, and learned to call more boys and girls in the school
+by name, and more of the clerks in the shops, you discovered new people
+in the town where you thought you knew everybody, and it made the town
+infinitely large. But this boy had not been so near her, or she would
+have seen him. He could not have been in school with her. He must have
+worked on a farm and studied by himself with the grammar-school teacher
+at the Falls, and taken special examinations to enter the Junior class
+this year, as Willard said that some boy at the Falls was doing. He must
+be that boy or Judith would surely have seen him.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded her head wisely. "I know."</p>
+
+<p>"You know a lot." In his soft brogue this sounded like the most
+complimentary thing that could be said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But you don't remember me." This had troubled her at first. Now it
+seemed like the most delicious of jokes, and they laughed at it
+together.</p>
+
+<p>"That was the first thing you said to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it queer"&mdash;Judith's eyes widened and darkened as if it were
+something more than queer, something far worse&mdash;"so queer! I can't think
+what the first thing was that you said to me."</p>
+
+<p>They confronted this problem in silence, staring at each other with
+wide-open eyes. Though they were circling smoothly at last, carried on
+by the slow, sweet music, so that they hardly seemed to be moving at
+all, and though he did not really move his head, the boy's eyes seemed
+to Judith to be coming nearer to hers, nearer all the time. They were
+beautiful eyes, deep brown, and very clear. His brown hair grew in a
+squarish line across his forehead, and waved softly at the temples. It
+looked as if he had brushed it hard there to brush the curl out, but it
+was curliest there.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got the brownest eyes," said Judith.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got the biggest eyes. Won't you tell me your name?"</p>
+
+<p>Judith did not answer. She looked away from the disconcerting brown eyes
+and down at her hand, against his shoulder, her own little hand, with
+the careful manicure and the dull polish that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> was all her mother
+permitted; bare of rings, though Norah had given her a beautiful garnet
+ring for Christmas. How shiny his coat-sleeve was, and her hand looked
+unfamiliar to her&mdash;not like her own at all. She pressed tighter against
+his shoulder to steady herself.</p>
+
+<p>The music was growing quicker and louder, working up gradually but
+surely into a breathless crescendo that meant the end of the dance. It
+whirled them dizzily about. The sleepy spell of the dance broke in this
+final crash of noise, and as it broke a sudden panic caught Judith.</p>
+
+<p>What had she been saying to this boy? She had never talked like this to
+a boy before. And why was she dancing with him? She ought to be dancing
+with Willard&mdash;Willard, waiting there in the dressing-room door with her
+dance order in his hand, with the patient and puzzled look in his eyes,
+with brick-red colour in his cheeks from the affront she had subjected
+him to. What would Willard think of her? What would her mother think?
+And who was this boy? Just what the children had called him in taunting
+screams, on that long-ago May night, and she would have liked to scream
+it now&mdash;a paddy.</p>
+
+<p>Instead, she lifted her head, no longer afraid of the boy's brown eyes,
+and said it, as cruelly as she could, in her soft and clear little
+voice:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Paddy," she said; "a paddy from Paddy Lane."</p>
+
+<p>She looked defiantly into his eyes, but they did not grow angry. They
+only grew very soft and kind, and they laughed at her. She wanted to
+look away from the laughter in them, but she could not look away from
+the kindness. Now she was not angry with him any more, but glad she was
+dancing with him. She knew she never wanted to stop dancing.</p>
+
+<p>"Paddy?" He thought she had said it to remind him of that May night; he
+was remembering it now. "Are you that little girl?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"The little girl who broke the lantern?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Judith proudly.</p>
+
+<p>"And had such long black legs, and went scuttling across the lawn, and
+screaming out to me&mdash;that funny little girl?"</p>
+
+<p>"But I did break the lantern," said Judith.</p>
+
+<p>All the bravest stories that she had made up in the dark to put herself
+to sleep with at night, all the perilous adventures of land and sea,
+camp fire or pirate ship, began with the breaking of that lantern, and
+the boy she rescued had been her companion upon them, her brushwood boy,
+her own boy. She had found him at last, and he was laughing&mdash;laughing at
+her.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Sure you did. As if I couldn't have broken away from a bunch of
+fool kids, without being doped with the smell of kerosene, and yelled at
+by another fool kid. Sure you broke the lantern. How mad I was."</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't remember." It was not a joke any longer now, but a tragedy,
+and Judith felt overwhelmed by it, alone in the world. "You forgot, and
+I&mdash;remembered."</p>
+
+<p>The brown eyes and the gray met in one last long look and when the brown
+eyes saw the hurt in Judith's, the laughter died out of them. Again they
+seemed to be growing nearer and nearer to hers, but this time Judith was
+not afraid, she was glad.</p>
+
+<p>"If you didn't save my life then, you did to-night." It came in a husky
+burst of confidence, straight from his shy boy's heart, very rare and
+very precious. Judith caught her breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, did I? Did I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. This crowd here had me mad&mdash;crazy mad. I was going home. I was
+going to get off the team. I wasn't going to school next week, and I've
+worked my hands off to get there. Maybe you remembered and I forgot,
+but&mdash;I won't forget again. You were that little girl." It was not a
+slight to the little girl she used to be, but a tribute to the girl she
+was; that was what looked out of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> brown eyes at Judith, and sang
+through the brogue in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"You were that little girl&mdash;you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," breathed Judith; "yes!"</p>
+
+<p>They whirled faster and faster. This was really the end of the dance,
+and this dance could never come again. Judith held tight to his shiny
+shoulder, breathless, hurrying to part with her secret and strip herself
+bare of mystery generously in a breath. All sorts of barriers might come
+between them, she might put them there herself, and she was quite aware
+of it, but not yet, not until the music stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"My name's Judith&mdash;Judith Randall. Call me Judy."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_FIVE" id="CHAPTER_FIVE"></a>CHAPTER FIVE</h2>
+
+<p>Colonel Everard sat at the head of his dinner table. A little dinner for
+twelve was well under way at the Birches. Mrs. Everard was confined to
+her tower suite to-night with one of the sudden headaches which unkind
+critics held were likely to come when the Colonel entertained. Randolph
+Sebastian, his secretary, had superintended the arrangements for the
+dinner.</p>
+
+<p>Pink roses, rather too many of them, were massed on the big, round
+table. Rather too much polished silver was to be seen on it; the most
+ornate candlesticks in the Everard collection, and a too complete array
+of small, scattered objects, each with a possible but not an essential
+function, littering a cloth already complicated by elaborate inserts of
+lace. But the brilliantly lighted, over-decorated table was effective
+enough in the big, darkly wainscoted room, a little island of light and
+colour.</p>
+
+<p>The room was characterless, but finely and generously proportioned, and
+not so blatantly new as the rest of the colonel's house still looked.
+Against<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> the dark walls the pale-coloured gowns around the table were
+charming. Indeed, most of the gowns were designed for this setting.</p>
+
+<p>For there were no outsiders among the Colonel's guests to-night.
+Sometimes there were distinguished outsiders, politicians and other big
+men, diverted from triumphant tours through larger centres by the
+Colonel's influence, and by his courtesy exhibited to Green River after
+they had dined, or bigger men still, whose comings and goings the public
+press was not permitted to chronicle. Sometimes, too, there were
+outsiders on probation, the outer fringe of Green River society,
+admitted to formal functions, and hoping in vain to penetrate to
+intimate ones; ladies flustered and flattered, gentlemen sulky but
+flattered, conscious that each appearance here might be their last, and
+trying to seem indifferent to the fact.</p>
+
+<p>But this was the Colonel's inner circle, gathered by telephone at
+twenty-four hours' notice, as they so often were. No course that the
+chef had contributed to the rather too elaborate menu was new to them.
+The Pol Roger which the big English butler was just starting on his
+second round was of the vintage year usually to be found on the
+Colonel's wine list, and on most intelligently supervised wine lists. A
+dinner for twelve, like plenty of little dinners elsewhere, no more
+correct<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> and no less, but it had this to distinguish it; it was being
+served in Green River.</p>
+
+<p>Served complete from hors-d'&oelig;uvres to liqueurs, in a New England town
+where high tea had been the fashion not ten years ago, and church
+suppers were still important occasions&mdash;where you were rich on five
+thousand a year, and there were not a dozen capitalists secure of so
+much, where a second maid was an object of pride, and there was no
+butler except the Colonel's. And he had imported this butler and his
+chef and his wines, but not his guests; they were quite as impressive,
+quite able to appreciate his hospitality, if not to return it in kind,
+and they were all but one native products of Green River.</p>
+
+<p>The youngest guest was eating mushrooms <i>sous cloche</i> in contented
+silence at the Colonel's left. The scene was not new to her. She could
+not remember her first party here; she was probably the only person in
+Green River who could pass over that momentous occasion so lightly. She
+had grown up as the only child in the inner circle. She had been
+privileged to excuse herself, when the formal succession of courses at
+some holiday function was too much for her, and read fairy tales on a
+cushion by the library fire, out of the fat, purple edition de luxe of
+the "Arabian Nights" that was always waiting for her there.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> Though her
+white ruffled skirts had grown long now, and her silvery gold braids
+were pinned up, and she was allowed to fill an empty place at the
+Colonel's table whenever he asked her, if not quite on his regular
+dinner list yet, Judith was not much changed from that wide-eyed child,
+and to-night her eyes looked sleepy and soft, as if she had serious
+thoughts of the cushion by the fire and the fairy book still.</p>
+
+<p>The scene was not new, but it kept a fascination for her, like a
+transformation scene in a pantomime. Mr. J. Cleveland Kent, the manager
+of the shoe factory, who had taken her in to dinner, had been leaning
+out of a factory window in his shirt-sleeves, his black hair tumbled,
+and badly in need of a shave, when she passed on her way home from
+school. He looked mysterious and interesting in a dinner coat, like her
+idea of an Italian nobleman.</p>
+
+<p>When Judith knocked at the kitchen door to deliver a note, Mrs. Theodore
+Burr, in a pink cooking apron, corsetless, and with her beautiful yellow
+hair in patent curlers, had been blackening the kitchen stove, and
+quarrelling with the furnace man about an overcharge of fifty cents on
+his monthly bill. The Burrs had no maid. Theodore Burr had been
+assisting Judge Saxon ever since he passed his bar examinations, but he
+was not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> admitted to partnership yet. This was beginning to make gossip,
+for he worked hard. He had broken his dinner engagement to-night, as he
+often did, to stay at home and work. Randolph Sebastian, the secretary,
+with the queer, hybrid foreign name, and thin face and ingratiating
+brown eyes, had his place at the table.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Burr, stately and slender now in jetted black, the lowest cut gown
+in the room, her yellow hair fluffing and flaring into an unbelievable
+number of well-filled-out puffs, was chattering to the Colonel in a low
+voice, so that Judith could not understand, and breaking into French at
+intervals&mdash;Green River High School French, but she spoke it with an air,
+narrowing her blue-gray eyes after an alluring fashion she had and
+laughing her full-toned laugh. She was a full-blown, emphatic creature,
+though she had been married only three years, and was Lil Gaynor still
+to half the town.</p>
+
+<p>Auburn-haired little Mrs. Kent had been lying down all the afternoon, as
+her disapproving domestic had informed any one who inquired at the door
+in a shrill voice that did not promote repose. She was very piquant and
+enticing now, with her bright, slanting hazel eyes, and a contagious
+laugh, but her dinner partner, Judith's father, was tired and hard to
+amuse. He looked very boy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>ish when he was tired; his blue eyes looked
+large and pathetic.</p>
+
+<p>The other two young women and Judith's mother, whose dark, low-browed
+Madonna beauty was gracious and fresh to-night, set off by her
+clear-blue gown, with a gardenia caught in her sheer, white scarf,
+deserved the Honourable Joseph Grant's flowery name for them, the Three
+Graces.</p>
+
+<p>Before the Colonel's time and Judith's the Honourable Joe had been the
+most important man in Green River, and in evening things, and after a
+properly concocted cocktail he still looked it, florid and portly and
+well set-up, with a big voice that could still sound hearty though it
+rang rather empty and hollow sometimes. He looked ten years younger than
+his old friend, Judge Saxon. The Judge's coat was getting shiny at the
+seams, and&mdash;this appeared even more unfortunate to Judith&mdash;he was in the
+habit of pointing out that it was shiny, and without embarrassment. Mrs.
+Saxon's pearl-gray satin was of excellent quality, but of last year's
+cut, and the modest neck was filled in with the net guimpe which she
+affected at informal dinners. The Saxons were not quite in the picture,
+but they were always very kind to Judith.</p>
+
+<p>And if they were not in the picture, Mrs. Joseph<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> Grant, certainly not
+the youngest woman in the room, though she was not the oldest, occupied
+the centre of it.</p>
+
+<p>She was like the picture of the beautiful princess on the hill of glass,
+in a book of Judith's, and besides, she had once been a real débutante,
+of the kind that Judith liked to read about in novels, before the
+Honourable Joe brought her from Boston to Green River. Judith liked to
+look at her better than any one here except Colonel Everard.</p>
+
+<p>"Cosmopolitan&mdash;ten years ahead of Wells, or any town in your state; real
+give and take in the table talk; really pretty women; the same little
+group of people rubbing wits against each other day after day and
+getting them sharpened instead of dulled by it; a concentrated, pocket
+edition of a social life, but complete&mdash;nothing provincial about it," a
+very distinguished outsider had said after his last week-end with the
+Colonel.</p>
+
+<p>But he was fresh from a visit to the state capital, the most provincial
+city in the state when the legislature was not in session; also he had a
+known weakness for pretty women. Green River did not admire the
+Colonel's circle so unreservedly, but Green River was jealous. Whatever
+you thought of it, it was made of fixed and unpromising material, and
+making it was no mean achieve<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>ment, and the man at the head of the table
+looked capable of it, and of bigger things.</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel was a big man and a public character, and as with many
+bigger men, you could divide the facts of his life into two classes:
+what everybody knew and what nobody knew. If the known facts were not
+the most dramatic ones, they were dramatic enough. He was sixty now. At
+fifteen he had been a student in a small theological seminary, working
+for his board on his uncle's farm, and engaged to the teacher of the
+district school, who helped him with his Greek at night. He gave up the
+ministry for the law, used his law practice as a stepping-stone into
+state politics, climbed gradually into national politics, built up a
+fortune somehow&mdash;these were the days of big graft&mdash;married for money and
+got an assured position in Washington society thrown in, and soon after
+his marriage chose Green River as a basis of operations, spending a
+winter month in Washington which later lengthened to three, ostensibly
+for the sake of his wife's health. The title of Colonel came from
+serving on the Governor's staff in an uneventful year. He had held no
+very important office, but his importance to his party in state and
+national politics was not to be measured by that.</p>
+
+<p>White haired, slightly built, managing with per<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>fectly apparent tricks
+of carriage and dress to look taller than he was, he was the effective
+figure in this rather unusually good-looking group of people. Just now
+he was lighting a fresh cigarette for Mrs. Burr so gracefully that even
+Judge Saxon must enjoy watching, so Judith thought, though there was a
+tradition that he did not like women to smoke. Shocking the Judge was
+one of their favourite games here. It was only a game. Of course they
+could never shock anybody. They were quite harmless people, too grown up
+to be very interesting, but almost always kind, and always gay.</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel's profile was really beautiful through the curling, bluish
+smoke, and Judith liked his quick, flashing smile. He turned now and
+smiled at Judith. Her own smile was charming, a faint, half smile, that
+never knew whether to turn into a real smile or to go away and not come
+again, but was always just on the point of deciding.</p>
+
+<p>"Is our débutante bored?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no; I was just thinking. No."</p>
+
+<p>"She's blushing. Look at her."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, look at a real one. Do you good, Lil," agreed the Judge, and Mrs.
+Burr rubbed a pink cheek with her table napkin, exhibited it daintily,
+and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Rose-white youth! But she doth protest too<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> much." The Honourable Joe
+was fond of quotations, and often tried to make his remarks sound like
+them, when he could not recall appropriate ones, raising a solemn fat
+finger to emphasize them: "The thoughts of youth are long, long
+thoughts."</p>
+
+<p>"Wrong, wrong thoughts," supplied Randolph Sebastian, so gravely that
+the Honourable Joe accepted the amendment, and looked worried, as only
+the thought of losing his grip on Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations" could
+worry him at the end of a perfect meal.</p>
+
+<p>"Wrong thought?" he repeated, in a puzzled voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Thinking's barred here. What's the penalty, Judge?"</p>
+
+<p>"You aren't likely to get it inflicted on you, so I won't tell you,
+Lil."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't think; I act," Mrs. Burr admitted cheerfully. She always
+became a shade more cheerful just when you expected her to lose her
+temper.</p>
+
+<p>"How true that is," observed Mr. Sebastian gently.</p>
+
+<p>"Ranny!"</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you play auction with me last night? We're out just&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't tell me. I can't think in anything<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> beyond three figures. Ted's
+doing higher mathematics over it. That's why he's home, really. I'll
+play with you again to-night, for your sins."</p>
+
+<p>"For my sins!" He made melancholy eyes, as if he were really confessing
+them. Mr. Sebastian always pretended a deep devotion to Mrs. Burr.
+Judith thought it was one of the silliest of their games.</p>
+
+<p>"But what was Judy thinking about?" demanded Mrs. Grant, in the sweet,
+indifferent voice that always made itself heard.</p>
+
+<p>"She met a fairy prince at the ball last night. They are still to be
+met&mdash;at balls."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd meet one anywhere he made a date, wouldn't you, Edith Kent?" said
+the Judge rudely. "Give Miss Judy a penny for her thoughts, if you want
+them, Everard. You've got to pay sometimes, you know&mdash;even you."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't commercialize her too young," said Mr. Sebastian smoothly.
+"Though, on the whole&mdash;can you commercialize them too young?"</p>
+
+<p>"Judith, what were you thinking about?" the Colonel interrupted, rather
+quickly, turning every one's eyes upon her at once, as he could with a
+word.</p>
+
+<p>Judith met them confidently&mdash;amused, curious eyes, but all friendly and
+gay. They talked a great deal of nonsense here, but it did not irritate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+her, as it did her friend Judge Saxon, though she was not always amused,
+and could not always understand. They never tried to shock her. She was
+sorry for the Judge. He was not at home with these gay and good-natured
+people, and it was so easy to be.</p>
+
+<p>She tipped her head backward in deliberate imitation of Edith Kent, whom
+she admired, half closed her eyes, like Lillian Burr, whom she admired
+still more, gazed up at the Colonel, and said, in her clear little
+voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking about you."</p>
+
+<p>"That's the answer," said Mr. Kent, and rewarded it with a lump of sugar
+dipped in his apricot brandy.</p>
+
+<p>"For an ingénue?" said Mrs. Burr, very sweetly indeed.</p>
+
+<p>"'She's getting older every day,'" hummed Mrs. Kent, in her charming,
+throaty contralto.</p>
+
+<p>But Judge Saxon pushed back his chair and rose abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"I've had dinner enough," he said, "and so have you, Miss Judy."</p>
+
+<p>"We all have, Hugh," said the Colonel quickly, and rose, too, and
+slipped an intimate hand through his arm. "Run along, children! Hugh,
+about that Brady matter&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Judge Saxon submitted sulkily, but was laugh<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>ing companionably with the
+Colonel by the time they all reached the library.</p>
+
+<p>Judith never admired the Colonel more than when he was managing Judge
+Saxon in a sulky mood. And she never admired the Colonel and his friends
+more than she did in the lazy intimate hour here before the cards began.</p>
+
+<p>The room was long and high, and too narrow; unfriendly, as only a room
+that is both badly proportioned and unusually large can be, but you
+forgot this in the softening glow of candles and rose-shaded lights. You
+forgot, too, that you were an exile from your own generation, among
+elders who bored you, though you were subtly flattered to be among them.
+Safe on a high window-bench in the most remote window, entirely your
+own, since the architect had not designed it to be sat on, and nobody
+else took the trouble to climb up, it was so much pleasanter to watch
+these people than to talk to them; they had such pretty clothes, and
+wore them so well, and made such effective, changing pictures of
+themselves in the big room.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes they amused themselves with the parlour tricks that they had
+so many of, and sometimes they drifted in and out in groups of two and
+three, to more intimate parts of the house: the smoking-room, or Mrs.
+Everard's suite, if she was well, or out through the French windows,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+across the broad, glassed-in veranda that ran the length of the room and
+darkened it unpleasantly by day, into the Colonel's rose garden. It was
+warm enough for that to-night, and a yellow, September moon showed
+invitingly through the windows. Mrs. Grant, who liked to be alone, as
+Judith could quite understand, since she had to listen to the Honourable
+Joe's big voice so much of the time, was slipping out through a window
+now, taking the coat that Mr. Sebastian brought her, but refusing to let
+him go with her.</p>
+
+<p>He went to the piano, ran his thin, flexible brown fingers over the
+keys, struck into a Spanish serenade, and sang a verse of it in his
+brilliant but tricky tenor, with his languishing eyes upon Mrs. Burr.</p>
+
+<p>"Ranny, do you want to tell the whole world of our love? You terrify
+me," she said, and took refuge on one arm of the Colonel's chair.
+Judith's mother, protesting that she needed a chaperon, promptly took
+possession of the other arm, disposing her blue, trailing skirts
+demurely, and looking more Madonna-like than ever through the cloudy
+smoke of a belated cigarette. The others made themselves equally
+comfortable, all but Judge Saxon, who had ceased to advertise the fact
+that he was not.</p>
+
+<p>"Smile at me," Mrs. Kent begged, hovering<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> over his chair; "I'm going to
+sing by and by, and I need it. Do smile! If you don't, I'm going to kiss
+you, Judge."</p>
+
+<p>"Go as far as you like, but be sure how far you like to go, Edith," said
+the Judge quietly. She flushed, and turned away abruptly, playing with a
+pile of songs.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm looking for a lullaby. Our youngest seems to need it."</p>
+
+<p>"Not in your line, are they?" said Sebastian, and began to improvise
+one, while Judith, in her corner, closed her eyes contentedly. Whether
+there was any truth or not in the report that he had been playing a
+ramshackle piano in an East Side restaurant in New York when the Colonel
+picked him up, Sebastian could do charming things with quite simple
+little tunes, if you did not inquire into problems of harmony and
+counterpoint too closely. He was doing them now, weaving odds and ends
+of familiar tunes, rather scapegrace and thin, into a lovely, reassuring
+whole, that made you feel rested and safe. Judith, making herself
+comfortable against a stiff and unwieldy Arts and Crafts sort of
+cushion, as long experience had taught her to, listened, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>She had no idea what a unique position she was occupying there. Judge
+Saxon grumbled and scolded, but he was part of the group in the room.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+He had grown into it, and belonged to them, as he might have belonged to
+an uncongenial family. The Colonel's distinguished guests saw them only
+on their best behaviour. Their local critics never penetrated here at
+all. Judith was the only outsider who did, and she had besides the
+irrevocable right of youth to pronounce judgment upon those who have
+prepared the world for it to occupy. She was their only licensed critic.
+What did she think of them? Her blond head drooped sleepily. She did not
+look disposed to say.</p>
+
+<p>Sebastian played on, drifting into something sophisticated, with a
+suggestion of waltz rhythms running through it. There was a stir of
+movement in the room, and the sound of windows opening and shutting,
+once, and then again. Judith did not turn her head to see who had gone
+out. She was too comfortable. It was strange that he could make you so
+comfortable with his music, when he made you so uncomfortable if you
+talked to him, watching you so closely with his queer, bright eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped abruptly, with a big, crashing discord, and Judith rubbed her
+eyes and sat up. Mrs. Kent was going to sing now. She tossed some music
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>"That's over your head," she said; "over all your heads; better put me
+up there, too, Cleve.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> Besides, I want to dance. That table will do."
+She cleared it unceremoniously, with her husband's help, and established
+herself there, poised motionless, through the introductory bars of the
+song, her sleepy eyes wide awake now, and a red rose from a bowl on the
+table caught between her teeth.</p>
+
+<p>Quietly, always careful to avoid the reputation of being shocked, like
+the Judge, Judith slipped down from her perch, and across the room, and
+out through the window.</p>
+
+<table summary="SONG">
+<tr><td>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"Please keep my folks from kickin';</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Grab me while I'm a chicken,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">I'm getting older every day."</span><br />
+</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Mrs. Kent's fresh voice was urging, as Judith tiptoed across the
+veranda.</p>
+
+<p>The rowdy words of her little songs and the demure plaintiveness of Mrs.
+Kent's voice made an effective contrast. It amused Judith as much as any
+one, and she liked to laugh, but she liked better to cry, and if you
+could not hear the words, Mrs. Kent's voice made you cry; big, luxurious
+tears, that stood in your eyes and did not fall. As she found her way
+across the lawn, among the elaborate flower-beds, the voice followed
+her, mellow and sweet. It had never sounded so sweet before. Everything
+sweet in the world was sweeter to-night.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At the edge of the lawn Judith paused. Ahead of her three marble steps,
+flanked by urns filled with ivy, glaring things in the daytime but
+glimmering shadowy white and alluring now, led up the terrace to the
+rose garden; a fairy place, far from the world, so hedged in and
+shadowed by trees that it was dark even by moonlight, entered through an
+old-fashioned trellised arbour, that was so mysterious and dark, she
+liked it almost as well now when the rambler roses were not in flower.</p>
+
+<p>When she left the room her mother had been sitting in Colonel Everard's
+chair, she seemed to remember, and the Colonel and Mrs. Burr were
+nowhere to be seen. The whole room looked emptier, though she did not
+know who else was missing. But there were two people now in the rose
+arbour. She could just hear their voices, low, with long silences
+between.</p>
+
+<p>She wanted the place to herself. She stood still, hoping that they would
+go. There was a path into the woods on the other side of the little
+garden: the Colonel's bare, semicultivated woods, combed clean of
+underbrush, but you did not miss it at night. The woods were full of
+adventure, but the garden was better to dream in, and Judith had a great
+deal to dream about.</p>
+
+<p>The lighted house looked quite small and far<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> away across the wide,
+moonlit lawn. They had stopped singing, and the laughter that followed
+the song did not sound so clear as the music; you could just hear it.
+Presently you could hear nothing, and it was quiet in the rose arbour,
+too. She waited until she was sure, standing quite still at the edge of
+the dark enclosure, not a ruffle of her white dress fluttering, very
+slender and small against the dark of the leaves. Then she slipped into
+the arbour.</p>
+
+<p>Through a fringe of drooping vine that half hid the picture, she could
+see the garden, empty and dimly moonlit, with the marble benches faintly
+white. She hurried through, pushed a trailing vine aside, then dropped
+it and shrank back under the trellis.</p>
+
+<p>The garden was empty. But across it, just at the entrance of the wood
+path, she saw a man and a woman. At first she took the two figures for
+one, they were standing so closely embraced. She could not see their
+faces, only the two dark figures standing there like one. They stood
+still a long time. They might have been lovers in a picture, only you
+could not paint pictures of darkly clothed, ungraceful, shapeless
+people. Finally they moved, the man turning suddenly, slipping an arm
+higher around the woman's shoulders, and putting his face down to hers.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then he drew her into the wood path, and they passed down it out of
+sight. Judith did not know who the woman was, but the man was Colonel
+Everard. And they had kissed each other.</p>
+
+<p>Now they were gone. Judith drew a deep breath of relief and stepped out
+into the enclosure, pacing across it with slow steps, possessing it for
+her own and dismissing alien presences. There was a high-backed marble
+erection between the benches, which looked like a memorial to the dear
+departed, but was designed for a chair. She seated herself there
+deliberately, leaning back, at ease somehow in the unfriendly depths of
+it, a slender, uncompromising creature, like a young princess sitting in
+judgment on her throne.</p>
+
+<p>They had kissed each other. She knew they did things like this, but now
+she had seen it, which was different, and not very pleasant. But they
+were all so old. Did it really matter whether they kissed each other or
+not?</p>
+
+<p>"Stupid old things," said Colonel Everard's only authorized critic, "I
+don't care what they do."</p>
+
+<p>Here in the quiet of the garden you were free to think about more
+interesting things than the Everards or even fairy princes.</p>
+
+<p>"Stupid," repeated Judith absently, and forgot the Everards. The moon,
+far away but very clear,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> shone down at her in an unwinking,
+concentrated way, as if it were shining into the Colonel's garden and
+nowhere else, and at nobody but Judith. She did not look disconcerted by
+the attention, but stared back at it with eyes that were not sleepy now,
+but very big and bright&mdash;wondering, but not afraid.</p>
+
+<p>On still nights like this you could just hear the church clock strike
+from the garden, but you could not count all the strokes. Judith
+listened for the sound. It was early, and out here, in the cool, still
+air, it felt early, though the time had passed so slowly in the
+Colonel's sleepy rooms. She could hear no music from the house. They
+would soon begin to put out the bridge tables. There was always a chance
+that they would need her to complete a table, but if they did not, the
+Colonel's car was to take her home at nine.</p>
+
+<p>And the Colonel's youngest guest had further plans for the evening.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_SIX" id="CHAPTER_SIX"></a>CHAPTER SIX</h2>
+
+<p>"That will be all, Miss?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Judith, with unnecessary emphasis. "Oh, yes, indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>The Everards' car turned and flashed out of the drive and up the street.
+Judith stood still on the steps and watched it, if a young lady with her
+breath coming fast and her eyes shining bright in the dark, and her
+heart beating unaccountably hard can be said to be standing still. One
+light burned forlornly over the entrance of the inn. Light was Judge
+Saxon's one extravagance, and plenty of it was waiting for him in the
+house next door, though it would be two before any one left the
+Everards' but Judith.</p>
+
+<p>The house before her was dark, and the dimly lighted street was
+profoundly still, with the heavy and brooding stillness that comes upon
+village streets after nine and is to be found nowhere else in the world.
+Judith did not seem depressed by it. Somewhere on a side street solitary
+footsteps echoed hollow through the silence, and she listened intently,
+but they came no nearer, and presently died away. She fumbled excitedly
+with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> her key, threw open the door, and groped her way across the
+unlighted hall. She encountered the telephone table prematurely,
+clutched it, and laughed a high-keyed, strange little laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's there?" demanded a voice from the stairs, disconcertingly close.
+The lights, switched suddenly on, flashed into Judith's eyes, and Norah
+confronted her, peculiarly forbidding in a discarded cape of Judith's
+and her own beflowered best hat.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's you," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Who did you expect? Anybody else? Did&mdash;anybody come?"</p>
+
+<p>"I expected you a half hour ago."</p>
+
+<p>"What made you wait for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you want me to?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nana, of course, but if your sister is sick and needs you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Norah listened to this irreproachable sentiment suspiciously. "It's late
+to go," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll walk up with you if you're frightened."</p>
+
+<p>"You! Can you unhook that dress?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I'm going to bed pretty soon. I'm awfully sleepy."</p>
+
+<p>"There's some ginger ale on the ice."</p>
+
+<p>"I can get it open myself. Did anybody come?"</p>
+
+<p>"A boy you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Who?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You're too anxious to know, and too anxious to get rid of me.
+And you're acting nervous."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not. I'm just sleepy."</p>
+
+<p>Norah, her grimmest self, as she always was just before relenting, began
+to fumble with her hat-pins.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me help, if you really want to take off your hat. You'll spoil your
+beautiful roses. Darling, you look like your niece, the lovely Miss
+Maggie Brady, in that hat. Don't take it off. You're cross because you
+know where I've been. Well, they didn't eat me. I'm all here. It was
+Willard who came, and I don't care whether you tell me or not. And I
+don't want to get rid of you. And I love you and you love me, and you're
+not cross now."</p>
+
+<p>"If I love you, you've got need of it, then." Norah struggled
+perfunctorily, and permitted herself to be kissed. "Alone here till all
+hours of the night, and Mollie at the dance at the Falls, and your own
+mother&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But you won't worry about me? And you'll go? And you'll go now, before
+it gets later, so you won't be frightened. You'll go this minute?
+And&mdash;oh, Nana&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Norah, departing by the front door because the back one was secured by
+an elaborate system of locks of her own invention, and operated only by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+herself, turned to give Judith a farewell glance of grim adoration.</p>
+
+<p>"Nana, was it Willard that came?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And not&mdash;anybody else?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>Norah, winding herself tightly into the cape in a way that converted
+that traditionally graceful garment into a kind of armour, disappeared
+up the street. When she was out of sight, and not until then, Judith
+slammed the door shut, laughing her tense, excited laugh again.</p>
+
+<p>Then, for a sleepy young woman, she began to display surprising
+activity. First she turned off all the lights in the hall but one, in an
+opalescent globe, over the front door, looked at the faintly lighted
+vestibule with a calculating eye, and turned that out also. She looked
+critically in at the library, close curtained for the night, and dimly
+lit by the embers of the wood fire, raked apart, but not dead. She
+pushed them together expertly, and added a stick, a little one, which
+would soon burn down to picturesque embers, like the rest. She pulled an
+armchair closer to the fire, pushed it away again, and dropped two
+cushions on the hearth with a discreet space between.</p>
+
+<p>The remains of Willard's last half-dozen carnations and a box of the
+eighty-cent-a-pound candy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> which only Mr. Edward Ward was extravagant
+enough to prefer to the generally popular fifty-cent Belle Isle, were
+conspicuous on the table, and Judith carried them into the next room,
+out of sight. Just then the telephone rang.</p>
+
+<p>Judith started, dropped the candy, ran into the hall, and stood looking
+down at the small instrument resentfully, as if it were personally to
+blame because she could not see who was calling her without answering
+and committing herself. Once she picked it up doubtfully, but finally
+put it down, still ringing intermittently, and hurried into the kitchen.
+She put a second bottle of ginger ale on the ice, brought a hammered
+brass tray and two glasses from the butler's pantry, then substituted a
+less ostentatious bamboo tray, hesitated, and then put them all away
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Now she went to her own room, turned on an unbecoming but searchingly
+clear toplight, and frowned at herself in the mirror, jerked out her
+hairpins, shook out her soft hair, and brushed and pulled at it with
+unsteady hands. In spite of them, the pale gold braids, rearranged,
+looked almost as well as before, if no better, and the heightened colour
+in her cheeks was charming. From a corner of her glove-case she produced
+the two cosmetics then in favour with the younger set in Green River,
+burnt matches, and a bit of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> scarlet ribbon, which made an excellent
+substitute for rouge if you moistened it. The ribbon was an unhealthy
+red, and looked peculiarly so to-night. Judith dropped it impulsively
+into her wastebasket, but experimented with the matches.</p>
+
+<p>She made both her delicately shaded eyebrows an even splotchy black,
+admired the result, then suddenly rubbed it off, turned away from the
+mirror without a backward glance, and ran down into the hall. The clock
+was just striking ten.</p>
+
+<p>Judith paused for one breathless minute at the library door, pressing
+both hands against her heart, then she went into the firelit room and
+made the last and most important of her preparations. She switched on
+the lights, toplights and sidelights and reading-lamp, all of them, went
+to the middle one of the three front windows, crushed the curtains back,
+and raised both shades high to the top, so that the light in the room
+looked out at the street from this window from sill to ceiling. Judith
+slipped quickly out of range of the window, dropped down on one of the
+cushions by the fire, and waited.</p>
+
+<p>She had fluttered through her little hurry of preparation excitedly, but
+now there was evidence of deeper excitement about the tense quiet of
+her, huddled on her cushion, small hands clasping silken knees, and
+brooding eyes on the fire. There<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> was a dignity about her, too, in spite
+of her childish pose and a drooping grace that was almost a woman's.</p>
+
+<p>What she was waiting for was slow to come, but she did not seem
+disturbed by that. The hands of the clock above her seemed to move with
+the unbelievable quickness characteristic of clock hands when there is
+no other activity in the room, and she observed them calmly. Soon they
+pointed to the quarter hour, they passed it. She looked faintly worried
+then. The telephone rang again; she pressed her hands over her ears and
+shut her eyes tight, and did not answer. The stick on the fire burned
+low and she did not replace it. It parted and fell from the andirons
+with a dull noise that echoed loudly through the empty room. Judith
+started and jumped up, her eyes hard and bright, her hands tightly
+clenched.</p>
+
+<p>She eyed the clock threateningly, as if it were personally responsible
+for whatever disappointment she might be feeling, and she were daring it
+not to strike. It struck half-past ten in spite of her. Judith's mouth
+trembled childishly, and tears started to her eyes. They did not fall.
+Footsteps sounded outside. They turned into the drive. Judith stood on
+tiptoe and peeped at herself in the mantel mirror&mdash;her flushed cheeks,
+tumbled hair, and sparkling eyes. The steps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> crossed the porch, and she
+ran to the door and threw it open&mdash;the length of the chain, and no
+wider. She did not unbar the chain. On the threshold, with a substantial
+box of Belle Isle under his arm, stood Mr. Willard Nash.</p>
+
+<p>Judith regarded Mr. Nash and his Belle Isle with disfavour.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't come in," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Nash, who had been stooping to flick some dust from his boots,
+straightened guiltily. "Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's too late."</p>
+
+<p>"I've got to see you."</p>
+
+<p>"You do see me." A white dress, a face almost as white, and big, dark
+eyes were all he could see, but it seemed to be enough. He inserted a
+square-toed boot cautiously in the opening of the door.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to see you <i>about</i> something."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"A new comic song for the quartette. They won't let us do 'Amos Moss' at
+the Lyceum concert. That part about the red shirt is vulgar. The new
+one's close harmony. It will show off Murph's voice."</p>
+
+<p>"It's too late now. Go home, Willard."</p>
+
+<p>"But I brought you this."</p>
+
+<p>"Go home and eat it," suggested Judith.</p>
+
+<p>Willard turned scarlet, swung round, then<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> changed his mind and inserted
+his foot in the crack of the door again, this time with a purposeful
+air. He was to develop into the type of man to whom an unpropitious time
+and place are an irresistible temptation to demand a show-down. It is a
+type that goes far, though it is not essentially popular. Judith sighed,
+then resigned herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Judy, I don't make you out."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't have to."</p>
+
+<p>"I do." Willard's voice was impressive, as even a fat boy's can be when
+he is in the grip of fate and conscious of it. "I do."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, Willard, dear," murmured Judith, with disarming sweetness,
+but he was not to be turned from his purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"Judy, are you going with me or not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Going with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be a snob. What else can I call it but going with me? I don't
+know any other way to say it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then don't say it."</p>
+
+<p>"You've got my class pin and I've got yours. I know there isn't anybody
+else. You let me call and take you places, but you won't let me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>Willard looked sheepishly down at his boots, then bravely up at Judith.
+"Put my arm round you at picnics. Kiss you good-night."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Judith cut short this catalogue crisply.</p>
+
+<p>"Spoon?"</p>
+
+<p>This word was forbidden in the upper circles of the Green River younger
+set, and Willard looked pained, but collected himself.</p>
+
+<p>"We are the same as engaged," he insisted sturdily.</p>
+
+<p>He had forced an issue at last, but Judith evaded it, laughing softly in
+the dark.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, are we?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't we?"</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know there isn't anybody else?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you won't look at Ed, and Murph don't count." Willard made this
+pronouncement lightly, though the adamantine rules and impassable
+barriers of a whole social order were embodied in it. "Murph that you're
+so thick with, all of a sudden. He's a bully fellow, all right, next
+captain of the team, probably. Good thing he's broken into the crowd a
+little way. Too bad he's Irish. Murph don't count."</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;no!" A sudden and poignant sweetness thrilled in Judith's voice.
+The tenor of the Green River High School quartette, not ordinarily
+sensitive to variations of tone in the voices of others, could not
+ignore it. The change had disturbed him vaguely. It seemed to call for
+some comment.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Judy, you look great to-night.... I'd do anything for
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Then go home, Willard."</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't answered my question."</p>
+
+<p>"What question?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't tease."</p>
+
+<p>"I honestly don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't hear one word I'm saying to you."</p>
+
+<p>Judith laughed guiltily. "Then what makes you talk to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Judith&mdash;are we the same as engaged?"</p>
+
+<p>Judith hesitated. "Kissing each other good-night&mdash;and all that&mdash;is
+silly. I don't want to. Only sometimes I want to, and then afterward I'm
+ashamed, and can't understand why. Willard, I don't want to grow up. I
+don't ever want to. I want things to stay just the way they are. They
+are&mdash;lovely. Oh, Willard&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped, with tears in her eyes. There had been a real appeal in his
+earnest young voice, and she had done her best to answer it, painfully
+thinking out loud, with her heart in her words, making him an authentic
+confidence. But the confidence was off the point, and he ignored it,
+pursuing his subject with the concentration which will keep his sex the
+stronger one, votes for women or no votes for women.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you the same as engaged to me?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Will you go home if I say I am?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"There isn't any such thing as being the same as engaged."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Willard, forgetting himself in the heat of debate, had withdrawn his
+foot from the door. Judith, narrowly on the watch for this moment, now
+seized it, shutting him and his Belle Isle outside, and slamming the
+door in his face. He had gained his point, and would not linger. She
+heard him ring the bell once or twice in perfunctory protest, then put
+down his candy on the steps.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night," he called cheerfully, through the flimsy barrier of the
+pseudo-Colonial door.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night, Willard&mdash;dear!"</p>
+
+<p>Judith's voice was sweet, but indifferent, and her manner was
+indifferent, for a young lady who would have seemed, to a literal-minded
+person, to have materially affected her whole future life by this
+conversation. She did not watch Willard go. She turned and stood in the
+library door, smiling absently and humming a little snatch of a waltz
+tune. It was eleven now, but the hour had ceased to concern her, as if
+she had been watching the clock for Willard. Presently, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> if she
+really had, she tossed the cushions back on the couch, drew the shades
+over the window, turned off the lights, and disappeared upstairs.
+Muffled sounds of a methodical but unhurried preparation for bed drifted
+faintly down, one last ripple of song, and then it was silent there.</p>
+
+<p>It was very still in the library. The stillness of the whole empty house
+and the moonless night outside seemed to centre there. The dying fire
+threw out little spurts of flame and made wavering shadows on the hearth
+as if Judith were still crouching there. The embers glowed as red as
+when she had been fire-gazing, but they did not show what it was she had
+seen in the fire. They kept her secrets as safely as she kept them
+herself; as youth must keep its secrets, inarticulate, dumb, because it
+sees into the heart of the world so deeply that if it were granted
+speech it would make the world too wise. What Judith had seen in the
+fire, what had really been in her heart when she talked to Willard in
+the groping and pitiful language of youth, the only language she had,
+the fire could not tell, and perhaps Judith did not know.</p>
+
+<p>It was still, and the tiniest sounds were exaggerated: a board creaking
+at the head of the stairs, and creaking again, the stair-rail creaking,
+the ghost of a faint little sigh; tiny and intermittent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> sounds, but the
+silence became a listening hush because of them: listening harder and
+harder. At last a sound broke it: the doorbell, rung three times, one
+long peal and two short.</p>
+
+<p>It was rung faintly, but loud enough. There was a soft hurry of
+slippered feet down the stairs, and a slender figure, tall in
+straight-falling draperies, slipped cautiously down and across the hall
+to the door, stopped and stood leaning with one ear pressed against it,
+silent and motionless, hardly breathing. The faint signal was repeated.
+Judith did not move.</p>
+
+<p>There was one more ring, a soft tapping, and then silence. Judith
+listened for a minute, then whistled softly, a clear little signal, one
+long and two short, like the signal ring. There was no answer. She
+pulled frantically at the chain, got it loose, and threw open the door.</p>
+
+<p>A boy was standing on the steps, a stolid, unmoving figure, looming
+deceptively tall in the dark. He did not step forward or greet her.
+Judith put out a groping hand and caught at his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it you? Oh, I thought you had gone," she said. "I was watching for
+you upstairs."</p>
+
+<p>"I am going. I can't come in so late."</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course not."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what made you watch for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to see if you came."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Well, I did come, and now I'm going."</p>
+
+<p>"You walked past the house five times."</p>
+
+<p>"Eight." The boy laughed shortly, and Judith's soft laugh echoed his.
+"Oh, what's the use? I'm going."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you want to come in?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what made you walk past the house?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know well enough."</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to tell me.... You can come in just five minutes if you want
+to."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Judith caught her trailing draperies tighter round her, conscious that
+they were under observation. "It's not a kimono, it's a negligee. And
+you've seen my hair in braids before, when I played basket-ball. But you
+needn't come in unless you want to."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't."</p>
+
+<p>"You're not very nice to me. Willard tried to break in. Rena's been
+trying to get me by 'phone, to stay all night with me. You're not nice
+to me at all."</p>
+
+<p>His only reply was a kind of tortured groan, but she seemed content with
+it. Her voice grew compellingly sweet.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to talk to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on and talk."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She huddled her draperies closer. "I'm too cold."</p>
+
+<p>"Go to bed then."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't. If you don't come in I shall stand here till mother comes.
+I'll probably get pneumonia."</p>
+
+<p>This threat evoked no reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Neil," the name was said as only names are said that are new and
+dear&mdash;not often used yet, but often dreamed over, but there was still no
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, I'm awfully cold."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know I do. You know&mdash;&mdash; Oh, Judith, won't you please let me go? I
+don't want to come in, I tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"But you're coming?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Yielding abruptly, he stepped into the hall beside her. Judith, suddenly
+silent, concerned herself conscientiously with the chain.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't stand there like that. I can't fasten this if you do," she said
+breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Go into the library, and don't light the lights, if you're afraid of
+pigtails."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not afraid of&mdash;anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;I'm not." With a reckless laugh,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> which made this comprehensive
+challenge to the world still more comprehensive, she followed him into
+the firelit room. Slender and straight in soft-falling white, her face
+flushed and sweet, framed between silvery gold braids, her eyes wide and
+challenging, she stood looking at him across the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>He faced her awkwardly but bravely, tall in the shadowy room, his face
+very white, his dark eyes catching the last rays of light from the dying
+fire. The two did not move or speak till he gave a sudden, shaken laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"You wanted to talk to me&mdash;talk." He smiled a quick flashing smile.
+Judith drew away from him and he followed. "Now you've got me here,
+can't you shake hands with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, be careful."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm doing the best I can," he said in a choked voice. "You shouldn't
+get me here. You shouldn't get me to a house by night that's not open to
+me by day."</p>
+
+<p>"But it is. Only they'll never let me see you alone, and I like to. I
+like to talk to you. It makes me feel&mdash;comfortable. Isn't it comfortable
+here?" Judith paused, overcome by an unaccountable difficulty with her
+breathing, but mastered it. "Comfortable and cozy? Aren't you glad you
+came in?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Comfortable!" He laughed, came two steps nearer to her, and
+stopped stiffly. Judith, disposing her soft, silky draperies daintily,
+observed him in silence from a big chair which she had taken possession
+of rather abruptly, faintly smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't look at me like that," he commanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Like what? Sit down&mdash;over there, Neil. Isn't it cozy? Willard's got a
+new song that&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Willard!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be cross. We&mdash;haven't very much time."</p>
+
+<p>"Judith, where is this getting us? We're not children. Won't you talk
+straight to me? You ought to leave me alone, or talk straight."</p>
+
+<p>"Please don't be cross."</p>
+
+<p>"Cross!" He came across the hearth and stood close before her, awkward
+no longer, but splendid with youth in the firelight, his dark eyes
+shining.</p>
+
+<p>"You knew I'd come, no matter how hard I tried not to?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Judith breathed.</p>
+
+<p>"And you meant to let me in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And you know, if I come, if you let me, I can't help&mdash;can't help&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Judith!" He dropped on his knees beside<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> her and hid his face.
+Judith did not touch the dark head that she could see dimly in the
+shadowy room, outlined against her cloudy white, but she leaned closer
+to it, her lips parting softly, her eyes wide and strange.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want you to help it," she breathed.</p>
+
+<p>"But where will it get us?" pleaded a muffled voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care." Her hand hovered over the dark hair, touching it with
+the wonderful, blended awkwardness and adroitness of first caresses.</p>
+
+<p>He brushed the butterfly touch away and raised his head and looked long
+at her, slipping both arms round her waist and holding her tight.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you always say that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Judith!" Her sweet, flushed face was close above him now, eyes
+drooping, lips faintly apart, drawn down to his as gently and inevitably
+as tired eyes close into sleep. "Judith, some day you'll have to care."</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet. Neil, don't talk any more."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;can't."</p>
+
+<p>"Then kiss me."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_SEVEN" id="CHAPTER_SEVEN"></a>CHAPTER SEVEN</h2>
+
+<p>It was winter in Green River.</p>
+
+<p>The town, attracting Colonel Everard to it sixteen years before, newly
+prosperous, outgrowing its old lumbering days, with the ship-building
+industry already a thing of the past, with the power in the little river
+awaiting development, money in the small but thriving bank, and a new
+spirit everywhere, beyond the control of old leaders, too progressive
+for a provincial magnate's direction, had been in the interesting and
+dangerous condition of a woman ready for her next love affair; if the
+right man comes, she may live happy ever after, but even if the wrong
+man comes, a flirtation is due. Like a woman again, the town showed the
+strength of his hold on her in his absence; in winter, when the big,
+unfriendly house was shuttered and closed, the ladies of the inner
+circle wore out their summer evening gowns at mild winter gayeties,
+church socials, Village Improvement Society bridge parties, and the
+old-fashioned supper parties which the Nashes and Larribees and Saxons
+still ventured to give.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Humble festivities which he would not have
+honoured with his presence lacked allurement because he was not in town
+and staying away from them. Great matters and small hung fire to await
+his deciding vote, from the list of books to be bought for the library
+to the chairmanship of the school board. Marking time and waiting for
+the Colonel to come home; that was what winter meant to most of Green
+River, but not to Judith Randall. Winter was a charmed time to her; the
+time when her mother did not care what she did. Freedom was always
+sweet, but this winter it was sweeter than ever before to Judith.</p>
+
+<p>She was never lonely now. Whispering groups in the dingy corridor of the
+old schoolhouse, or in that sacred spot, the senior's corner, a cluster
+of seats in the northwest corner of the assembly-room devoted by
+tradition to secret conclaves, though not distinguishable from the rest
+of the seats in the room to uninitiated eyes, drew her in without
+question, slipping intimate arms round her waist.</p>
+
+<p>Attempts at informal gatherings in the Randall drawing-room were
+failures, chilled by brief but devastating invasions of Mrs. Randall
+with a too polite manner and disapproving eyes. But wherever the crowd
+drifted after school hours, Judith drifted, too, or was summoned by
+telephone, by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> imperative messages, vague, and of infinite
+possibilities:</p>
+
+<p>"Judy, this is Ed. There'll be something doing to-night at our house.
+Bring your new dance records." Or, as the outer fringe of the younger
+set, jealously on the watch for snobbishness, but disarmed at last,
+claimed her diffidently but eagerly, new names at which her mother
+raised her eyebrows appeared on her dance orders: Joe Garland, whose
+father kept the fish market, and Abie Stern, Junior, the tailor's son.
+"Is this Judith Randall? Well, Judith, this is Joe; Joe Garland. I'm
+getting up a crowd to go skating to-night, and have a rarebit afterward.
+Would you care to come?"</p>
+
+<p>She was one of the crowd. Natalie, little, sparkling-eyed, and
+black-haired, with the freshest and readiest of laughs, was more
+popular, filling her dance orders first and playing the lead in
+theatricals, and Rena Drew was more prominent, president of the class
+and the debating society, and the proud owner of the strongest voice in
+the school quartette, a fine big contralto which wrapped itself round
+Judith's small, clear soprano at public appearances and nearly
+extinguished it. Willard, the most eligible of the boys, was Judith's
+unquestioned property, otherwise nothing distinguished her. She was one
+of the crowd,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> and accepted the fact demurely, as if it were a matter of
+course, not a dream come true. Just as discreetly she conducted her
+affair with Neil Donovan, captain-elect of the team, literary editor of
+the school paper, star debater, and in his way a creditable conquest, if
+she had cared to claim him openly.</p>
+
+<p>"Neil danced three dances with me," confided Natalie, in the hushed
+whisper appropriate to the confidences that were part of the ceremony of
+spending the night together after a party, though Natalie's room, with
+the old-fashioned feather bed, where the two were cuddling together, was
+on the third story of the rambling white house, and safe out of hearing.</p>
+
+<p>"Neil?"</p>
+
+<p>"Judy, it's too bad to call him Murph and make fun of him. The day he
+came into the store to solicit ads for the <i>Record</i> father said that boy
+would go far, if he had half a chance, but no boy had a chance in this
+town, the way it is run, and no Irish boy ever did have a chance. Well,
+an Irish boy is just as good as anybody, if they only thought so."</p>
+
+<p>"But they don't."</p>
+
+<p>"Judy, you are horrid about Neil. You always are about any boy I get
+crushed on. Neil has perfectly beautiful eyes, and he is so sensi<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>tive.
+He kept looking at you all through that last schottische as if you had
+hurt his feelings. He must have gone home soon after that. I didn't see
+him again. You didn't dance with him once."</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor boy. And he's up there in the schoolhouse with you, hour after
+hour, practising quartette stuff, and Willard so crazy about you he
+can't see, and Rena crazy about Willard&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Rena can have Willard."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ward was not to be diverted. "Neil's father did keep a saloon, but
+he died when Neil was a baby. His uncle that he lives with keeps a store
+at the Falls, and that's all right. His aunt took in washing, but his
+mother never did. Charles Brady does get drunk, but Maggie drives him to
+it. She's getting awfully wild. She's a perfect beauty, though, and I
+wish I had her hair. But Charlie's only Neil's second cousin. And Neil
+is so quiet and pleasant, not like that Brady boy that was in my sister
+Lutie's crowd; just as fascinating, but Neil doesn't take liberties."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm getting sleepy, Nat."</p>
+
+<p>"Judy, the way I feel about Neil, about Irish boys, is this: we can't go
+with them afterward, but while they're in school with us, they are just
+as good as we are, and we ought to give them just as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> good a time as we
+can. If you know what I mean."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't. I'm sleepy."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not. I shan't shut my eyes." But Miss Ward did shut them. "Judy."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Judy, Abraham Lincoln split rails."</p>
+
+<p>"Cheer up. The Warren Worth Comedy Company is going to play at the Hall
+next week, and Warren Worth has perfectly beautiful eyes, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Not like Neil's."</p>
+
+<p>"Go to sleep, Nat."</p>
+
+<p>But Judith did not go to sleep until after an hour of staring wide-eyed
+into the dark, and she did not confide to Natalie or any one what had
+happened in the intermission after the schottische.</p>
+
+<p>"You act restless," Willard complained to her then. "You hardly looked
+at me all through the encore."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll look at you now, but get me some water first," she directed, and
+having disposed of him, slipped out alone into the dim and draughty
+corridor. Odd Fellows' Building, the centre of various business
+activities by day, looked deserted and forlorn at night, when the suites
+of offices were dark and closed, and the hall where they danced, gayly
+lighted and tenanted, was a little island of brightness in the
+surrounding dark.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Neil," Judith called softly, "Neil, where are you? I
+saw you come out here. I know you're here." The corridor was empty, but
+several office doors opened on it, and on one of them she saw Charlie
+Brady's name. She knocked at it. "You're in there. I know you are. Let
+me in." She tried the door, found it unlocked, and opened it. The room
+was dark, faintly lighted by the street lamps outside the one
+uncurtained window, where he sat with his head in his hands, huddled in
+a discouraged heap over Charlie Brady's desk. Judith came and perched on
+it triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Running away?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all I'm good for."</p>
+
+<p>"Look at me."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you hadn't any dances free."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't. This is Willard's."</p>
+
+<p>"Go back to Willard.... What did you come here for?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you?" He looked up now, with magic in his eyes and voice, the
+strange magic that came and went, and when it left him Judith could
+never believe it would come again. But it was here. With a little sigh
+she slipped off the desk and into the arms he held out for her, closing
+her eyes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I didn't want to dance with you," she whispered; "not with
+all those lights, and before those people."</p>
+
+<p>"No, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't stay very long. They'd miss me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll let you go when you want to."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to. I feel so comfortable&mdash;all sleepy, but so wide-awake.
+I never want to go."</p>
+
+<p>Judith, remembering this moment until she carried it into her dreams
+with her, could not have shared it with Natalie. It was a dream already,
+to be wondered at and forgotten by daylight, as she stared across the
+schoolroom at Neil, not a romantic figure at all with his ill-fitting
+suit and his tumbled hair; forgotten until the next moment like it
+came&mdash;next in a lengthening series of dream pictures, of moonlight and
+candlelight and faintly heard music, a secret too sweet to share, a
+hidden treasure of dreams.</p>
+
+<p>Certain pictures stood out clearest. In one, she was skating with Neil.
+Willard was giving a chowder party at the Hiawatha Club. This imposing
+name belonged to a rough one-room camp with a kitchen in a lean-to and a
+row of bunks in the loft above, and a giant chimney, with a crackling
+blaze of fire to combat the bleakness of the view through the
+uncurtained windows<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>&mdash;Mirror Lake. It was a failure as a mirror that
+day, veiled with snow, and the white birches fringing it showed bare and
+cold among the warm green of spruce and pine.</p>
+
+<p>The camp was built and owned and the canoes and iceboats kept in repair
+in the boathouse, and the cook maintained and replaced when he left from
+loneliness, all by a syndicate with Judge Saxon as president. Forming it
+was one of the last independent social activities of the town before the
+Colonel took charge.</p>
+
+<p>It was bad ice-boating to-day. The wind was fitful, and the boat, a
+graceful and winged thing in full flight, dragged heavily along, looking
+the clumsy makeshift box of unpainted boards that it was. It was a day
+to be towed along on your skates with one hand on the boat. Judith and
+Neil had tired of this and fallen behind.</p>
+
+<p>Close together, but not taking hands, they swung slowly through the
+unpeopled emptiness, leaving a tiny scattering of tracks behind, the
+blue-white ice firm under their feet through a light film of snow. The
+ice-boat was out of sight, the sprightly and unexpurgated ballad of
+"Amos Moss," rendered in the closest of close harmony, could be heard no
+longer, and a heavy silence hung over the lake. The camp lay far behind
+them, a vanishing speck.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Neil, take me back," Judith directed suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Please. I want some pop-corn.... Neil, I don't like you. You won't
+talk. You're queer to-day."</p>
+
+<p>He did not answer. They cut through the ice in silence. It was rougher
+here. They were near the north end of the lake. There was open water
+there to-day, black water into which a boat might crash and go down; it
+made the water under them seem nearer to Judith, black water with only
+the floor of ice between. She shivered, and Neil broke the silence
+abruptly, his eyes still straight ahead.</p>
+
+<p>"Judith."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you can talk then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Judith&mdash;do you love me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be silly." Judith spoke sharply. Days at the camp were always a
+trial to her. The crowd, bunched together in a big hay-rack mounted on
+runners, started out noisy and gay, like a party of children, singing,
+groping for apples in the straw, and playing children's games. But at
+night, slipping home under the moon to a tinkle of sleigh-bells, covered
+with rugs two by two, a change would take place: arms would slip around
+waists that yielded after perfunctory protest; in the dark of the woods
+there would be significant whis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>pering and more significant silences;
+Willard would be unmanageable. Judith saw this with alien eyes because
+of Neil, and dreaded it. This that was between them was so much more
+beautiful, not love-making, not real love, only a strange, white dream.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't, then? You don't love me?"</p>
+
+<p>"We're too young."</p>
+
+<p>He did not argue the point. His silence had made her lonely before, now
+it frightened her. She slipped a hand into his, warm through its clumsy
+glove.</p>
+
+<p>"Cross hands. Don't you want to?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"But I want to. I'm tired. How limp your hand feels. Hold my hands
+tighter. Neil&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mind&mdash;what I said just now?"</p>
+
+<p>"What did you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"That about not loving you."</p>
+
+<p>"That?" He laughed a bitter, lonely sort of laugh, as if she were
+talking about something that happened a long time ago. "You had to say
+it. It's true. I knew it well enough. I just thought I'd ask you."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want me to very much&mdash;want me to love you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk any more about it."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Neil, suppose I should marry Willard?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you will."</p>
+
+<p>"You won't mind too much?"</p>
+
+<p>"What call would I have to mind? Who am I? What am I?"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed again, the same hard and bitter laugh, and struck out faster,
+gripping her hands hard, so that it hurt, but looking away from her
+across the dead, even white of the trackless snow. There was a pain not
+to be comforted or reached in his beautiful eyes. It had nothing to do
+with her.</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, wouldn't you care at all?" she said jealously.</p>
+
+<p>"Care?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I married Willard?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, do you love me?"</p>
+
+<p>He did not answer or seem to hear, and now Judith gave up asking
+questions. Carried along at his side in silence, she listened to the
+muffled creak of the skates on the snow-covered ice, hushed by the
+steady and sleepy sound of it, half closing her eyes. His left arm was
+behind her shoulders now, to support her, and she could feel it there,
+warm and strong. Breathing when he breathed, her heart beating in time
+with his, swinging far to right and left, tense with the stroke<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> or
+yielding deliciously in the recovery, caught in the rhythm of it as if
+some force outside them both were carrying them on like one, and not
+two, and would never let them go, Judith yet felt far away from him.</p>
+
+<p>She was alone in the heart of a snow-covered world, but she was growing
+content to be alone. She looked up at his white, set face with wide and
+fearless eyes, while the lure of unexplored and unseen ice invited them
+all around, and the gray and brooding sky shut them in closer and
+closer.</p>
+
+<p>"Neil," she said softly, not caring now whether he answered or heard, "I
+wish we needn't ever go back. I love to-day."</p>
+
+<p>Not long after this Judith and Neil went snow-shoeing one Saturday
+afternoon by special appointment, an epoch-making event for them. Judith
+did not often walk with him or take him driving when the sleigh was
+entrusted to her. She was not often seen with him. With quartette
+practice and committee work for the dramatic club and other official
+pretexts for the time they spent together, Willard was not jealous yet,
+though the winter was almost over, and the treasury of dreams was
+filling fast.</p>
+
+<p>But this time she made an engagement with Neil as openly as if he were
+Willard, while Natalie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> listened jealously. She started with him openly
+from the front door, with her mother's disapproving eyes upon them from
+the library window, and Neil proudly carrying her snowshoes, all
+unconscious of the critical eyes. The afternoon began well, but no
+afternoon with Neil could be counted upon to go as it began. Two hours
+later, when they emerged from the Everard woods into the Colonel's
+snow-covered rose garden, they had quarrelled about half a dozen
+unrelated subjects, all equally unimportant in themselves, but suddenly
+important to Neil, who now found further matter for debate.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you bring me in here for?"</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't you know I was?"</p>
+
+<p>"How should I know? I'm no friend of Everard's. I don't know my way
+through his grounds."</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you call him Everard, without any Colonel or Mr.? It sounds
+so&mdash;common."</p>
+
+<p>"It's good enough for me. Here, I don't want to go near his house. I
+hate the sight of it."</p>
+
+<p>"But you can't go back by the path. It's too broken up." Judith plunged
+into the dismantled rose arbour. "Come on, if you don't want to see the
+house, take my hand and shut your eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what Green River does," Neil muttered darkly, "shuts its eyes."
+But he followed her.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The Red Etin's castle," Judith announced; "you
+know, in the fairy tale:</p>
+
+<table summary="SONG">
+<tr><td>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"The Red Etin of Ireland,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">He lived in Ballygan.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">He stole King Malcolm's daughter,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">The pride of fair Scotlan'.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'Tis said there's one predestinate</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">To be his mortal foe&mdash;&mdash;</span><br />
+</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Well, you talk as if the Colonel were the Red Etin, poor dear. Oh, Neil,
+look!"</p>
+
+<p>Sinister enough, looming turreted and tall against a background of
+winter woods, its windows, unshuttered still, since the last of the
+Colonel's week-end parties, and curtainless, catching the slanting rays
+of the afternoon sun and glaring malignantly, the house confronted them
+across the drifted lawn.</p>
+
+<p>In the woods that circled the house, denuded of undergrowth, seeming
+always to be edging forlornly closer to the upstanding edifice for
+comfort because it was barren and unfriendly, too, the new-fallen snow
+lay shadowy and soft, clothing the barrenness with grace. Giant pine and
+spruce that had survived his invasion stood up proud and green under the
+crown of snow that lay lightly upon them, as it had lain long ago,
+before the Colonel came. And between woods and house,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> erasing all trace
+of tortuous landscape gardening, flower-bed and border and path, as if
+it had never been, lay a splendid, softly shining sweep of blue-white
+snow. The Colonel's unbidden guests forgot their quarrel and plunged
+eagerly across the white expanse.</p>
+
+<p>"Catch me," Judith called, but it was Neil, snatching off her toboggan
+cap by its impudent tassel, who had to be caught. It was heavy and
+breath-taking work on the broad, old-fashioned snowshoes which she
+managed with clumsy grace. Judith, short-skirted and trim in fleecy
+white sweater, collar rolled high to the tips of small, pink ears, blond
+curls blowing in the wind, pursued ardently. Neil evaded her like a lean
+and darting shadow, hands deep in the pockets of his old gray sweater,
+cap low over his brooding eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Under the unrelenting glare of the Colonel's windows, and across the
+deserted grandeur of his lawn, the two small and dishevelled figures
+dodged and doubled and retreated, only to grapple and trip each other up
+at last at the foot of the veranda steps, and collapse there, breathless
+and laughing. But their laughter died quickly, and Judith, pulling the
+recovered cap over her wind-tossed curls, watched the brooding gloom
+come back into Neil's eyes as he settled into a sulky heap on the step
+below her.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Her quarrels with Neil were as strange as her beautiful
+hours with him, fed by black undercurrents of feeling that swept and
+surprised her, flaming up suddenly like banked fires. She was hotly
+angry with him now.</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, I heard what you said about Green River shutting its eyes. It was
+foolish."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd say it to his face." Neil flashed a black look at the bland and
+elegant drawing-room windows, as if he could talk to the Colonel through
+them. "I've got worse than that to say to Everard."</p>
+
+<p>"Then say it to me. Don't hint. I'm tired of hearing you. You're as bad
+as Norah."</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't understand."</p>
+
+<p>That is the irresistible challenge to any woman. Judith's eyes kindled.
+Neil slouched lower on the steps, dropping his head in his hands.
+"Everard," he threw out presently, "has bought the Hiawatha Club Camp."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe it."</p>
+
+<p>"The club was in debt. That's a bad thing for a club or a man to be, if
+the Colonel knows it. And it's a worse thing for a woman."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>He did not explain or raise his head. "I've got a job for the summer
+vacation," he said presently.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Already? Fine."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, fine. In the fish market&mdash;tend store, drive the cart. And I'm fired
+from the <i>Record</i>, Judith."</p>
+
+<p>"Fired?"</p>
+
+<p>"They're going to take on one more man, and pay him real money."</p>
+
+<p>"But you've got the Green River Jottings to do for the Wells <i>Clarion</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"And I may get two dollars a month out of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see Judge Saxon again?"</p>
+
+<p>"Last week."</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you tell me what he said?"</p>
+
+<p>"I told you what he would say."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Neil!"</p>
+
+<p>"The Judge hates to say no, that's why he took time to think it over.
+He'd be a bigger man if he didn't hate to say no. He was right to say no
+to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I wouldn't admit it."</p>
+
+<p>"What's it worth to read law in a country law office? The time for
+that's past. He's right. And suppose he took me on, what would it do for
+me? Look at Charlie. Doing hack work and dirty work to pay the rent of a
+place to drink himself to death in. He's got brains enough. He knows law
+enough. He's slaved and starved and got ready for his chance, and his
+chance don't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> come. Why? Because he's Charlie Brady. Well I'm Neil
+Donovan. I'm Irish, too, what they called me the first time I saw you&mdash;a
+paddy."</p>
+
+<p>"That's not the Colonel's fault."</p>
+
+<p>"Who do you think gets the <i>Record</i> job?"</p>
+
+<p>Judith shook her blond head, disdaining to answer, a gathering storm in
+her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Chet Gaynor&mdash;Mr. J. Chester Gaynor. Lil Burr's brother. Her prize
+brother, the one that's been fired from three prep schools. Everard got
+him a scholarship at the last one."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? He ought to help his friends. He's a kind man and lots of fun.
+It's not his fault if you don't get on. It's your own fault. You don't
+have to work in a fish market if you don't want to, or sit there and
+sneer at a man who doesn't care what you think of him. Abraham Lincoln
+split rails&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Judith stopped, amazed. Quite abruptly Neil had ceased to sit on the
+steps and sneer. He was on his feet, hands clenched, thin body tense and
+dangerous, face dead white and eyes blazing, as Judith had never seen
+him before, or only once before, too angry for words, but not needing
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, do you really hate him? Hate him like that? I never thought you
+meant it. But why&mdash;what has he done?"</p>
+
+<p>"Care what I think? If I was any one else<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>&mdash;your fool of a Willard&mdash;any
+one in this town but me, I'd make him care."</p>
+
+<p>"He's done nothing wrong. Neil, don't. Your eyes look all queer. You're
+frightening me."</p>
+
+<p>"No, he's done nothing wrong, nothing you could get him for. He's too
+careful. He plays favourites. He fools women. He locks the door to every
+chance to get on in this town and he sells the keys. He's got his hand
+on the neck of the town, and he's shutting it tighter and tighter.
+That's all he does. That's all Everard does."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't prove it."</p>
+
+<p>"He takes good care I can't."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't prove a word of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Your father could."</p>
+
+<p>"He's kind to father. He's kind to me."</p>
+
+<p>"You talk like a child."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you talk like my mother's cook.... Oh, Neil, I didn't mean to say
+that. Forgive me. Where are you going? I didn't mean to say it."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go."</p>
+
+<p>"You're hurting me."</p>
+
+<p>"I hate you! You're one of them&mdash;one of the Everard crowd. I hate you,
+too!"</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do?" Her short, panting struggle with him over,
+her wrists smarting from the backward twist that had broken her hold on
+him, she leaned against the veranda rail breath<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>less and stared with
+fascinated eyes. When this quarrel had gone the way of their other
+quarrels, atoned for by inarticulate words of infinite meaning,
+justified by the keen delight of reconciling kisses, Judith was to keep
+one picture from it: Neil as she saw him then, standing over her
+white-faced and angry, ragged and splendid, Neil as she had seen him
+once before.</p>
+
+<p>"May-night!" she cried. "You look the way you did that May-night. I'm
+afraid of you."</p>
+
+<p>"Everard!" He turned from her, and looking at the windows again as if
+the Colonel were behind him, swung back his arm, and sent it crashing
+through the glass of the nearest one&mdash;once and a second time. "Oh, you
+don't want me to call him Everard. Colonel Everard!"</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, I'm afraid."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at the fragments of broken glass and at Judith scornfully, but
+the angry light was fading out of his eyes already, the magic light;
+against her will she was sorry to see it go.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you hurt? Did you hurt your hand?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you care if I did? Don't be afraid, Judy. He can pay for a pane
+of glass or two. He wouldn't care if I burned his house down. Nobody
+cares what I do. I'm a paddy."</p>
+
+<p>Awkward, suddenly conscious of his snowshoes, he shuffled across the
+matched boards of the Colo<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>nel's veranda and down the steps, turning
+there for a farewell word:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going. Don't cry. I'm not worth it. I'm a paddy, from Paddy Lane."</p>
+
+<p>Dream pictures, pleasant or sad, making her cheeks burn in the dark, or
+little secret smiles come when Judith recalled them. Some lived in her
+heart and some faded. Judith did not choose or reject them deliberately.
+They chose or rejected themselves, arranging themselves into an
+intricate pattern of growing clearness. She did not watch it grow. It
+was only when it was quite complete that she would see it, but it was
+growing fast.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_EIGHT" id="CHAPTER_EIGHT"></a>CHAPTER EIGHT</h2>
+
+<p>"You'll find the coffee pot on the back of the stove. I'm washing out a
+few things," said Mrs. Donovan.</p>
+
+<p>Though she kept her five little nephews and nieces in dark-patterned
+dresses or shirts, as the case might be, and encouraged her brother
+Michael to wear flannel shirts, and even limited her eldest niece,
+Maggie Brady, clerking in the Green River Dry Goods Emporium now,
+instead of helping her father in his little store at the Falls, to three
+white waists a week, she was usually washing out a few things.</p>
+
+<p>The contending odours of damp clothes and rank coffee were as much a
+part of the Brady kitchen as the dishes stacked in the sink for Neil to
+wash, or the broken-legged, beautifully grained mahogany card table in
+the warm corner near the stove, where his school books were piled, a
+relic of his dead father's prosperous saloon-keeping days, or the view
+of Larribee's Marsh through the curtainless windows with their torn
+green shades.</p>
+
+<p>The swampy field was the most improvident part of an improvident
+purchase&mdash;a brown, tum<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>bledown house, wind swept and cold,
+inconveniently far from the settlement at the Falls and the larger town,
+heavily mortgaged, and not paid for yet, but early on sunny spring
+mornings like this the field was beautiful; level and empty and green,
+the only monotonous thing in that restless stretch of New England
+country, billowy with little hills, and rugged with clumps of trees. A
+boy could people the sunlit emptiness of the field with airy creatures
+of folk-lore, eagerly gleaned in a busy mother's rare story-telling
+moments, or with Cæsar's cohorts marching across it, splendid in the
+sun, if he had eyes for them. The only boy who ever had regarded the
+familiar, glinting green of the field with unkindled eyes to-day as he
+sat finishing his lukewarm breakfast. Yet it was Saturday morning, that
+magic time, the last Saturday of his last spring vacation, and he had
+only one more term of school before him.</p>
+
+<p>On this Saturday morning he had an unpleasant errand to do, and he was
+carefully dressed for it, just as he had been dressed for the Lyceum
+declamation contest and ball the night before, but not so effectively,
+for his best black suit showed threadbare in the morning sun, and the
+shine on his shoes was painstakingly applied, and a heavy, even, blue
+black, but they needed tapping. His brown eyes had a big, rather hungry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
+look that was unquestionably picturesque, and Miss Natalie Ward would
+have approved of it, if his mother did not, watching him as she trailed
+in and out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Making out all right? Don't hurry," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm in no hurry to get there," agreed her son.</p>
+
+<p>"He won't say no to you. He never has yet, and he likes you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he won't say no. Nothing new will happen to me in this town; not
+even that."</p>
+
+<p>Neil's mother paused, balancing her clothes basket against one hip, and
+deftly favouring the string-mended handle, then put it heavily down, and
+leaned on the table and looked at him&mdash;a small, tired, pretty woman,
+with gray, far-away eyes that were like no other eyes in Green River,
+and a smile like Neil's.</p>
+
+<p>"Tired?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Dog tired."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you were out till three."</p>
+
+<p>"One. That was Maggie you heard at three. Where was she?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's her business."</p>
+
+<p>"It's Charlie's, if he's going to marry her."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not yours, then. Never mind Maggie. Your uncle and I had a talk
+about you last night."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you ask to see my dance order?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> He made a defensive clutch
+at his pocket as if she had, and quick colour swept into his cheeks. She
+watched it, and watched it fade, leaving his face tired and sullen, and
+too old for its years. "Uncle!"</p>
+
+<p>"He's been like a father to you."</p>
+
+<p>"I've been two sons to him, then. He's worked me like two. If he grudges
+the time I take off, I can make it up to him. There's been little enough
+of it, and there'll be little more, and there's been little enough
+enjoyment in it, and I'm not ashamed of it. Why don't he spy on his own
+daughter, if he's curious? Why&mdash;&mdash;" This outburst ended as suddenly as
+it began, in a short, sullen laugh as he pushed his empty cup away. "Dan
+thinks he can land something for me with the telephone company. I
+couldn't send money home at first, but I'd be off your hands. Tell that
+to Uncle."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you be with Dan, in Wells?"</p>
+
+<p>"Somewhere outside Wells. It won't be too gay. You needn't be afraid
+I'll go to too many dances."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't glare at me. I'm not your uncle."</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>He flushed, laughed, and ignored the question, producing a small box and
+offering it. "I got that last night. Don't wipe your hands. They're good
+enough to handle it wet." A gold medal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> glittered in her hand. He
+observed it without enthusiasm, and noticing that, his mother shut the
+box abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, that's the first prize."</p>
+
+<p>"Looks like it. I spoke the Gettysburg address, and they always fall for
+that. Good-bye, I'm off."</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, come back here."</p>
+
+<p>He swung round with his cap doubled under his arm, and stood before her,
+helpless and sullen, hedged about with that sudden dignity which no
+woman creature can break through, but seeming to derive no comfort from
+it. Painful colour mounted to her cheeks, as if the effort of keeping
+him there was all she could manage without the effort of opening
+delicate subjects.</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, I'm worried about you."</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Are you afraid I'll marry beneath me? I won't marry without your
+consent. It's not being done."</p>
+
+<p>"You got three dollars from the <i>Clarion</i> last week."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you afraid I'll try to support a wife on it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's the most you've made from them. Why weren't you proud of it? Why
+aren't you proud of this prize? A year ago you'd have had me up at one
+to speak your piece to me. There's no life in you, and no pride, and I
+know why."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Me with so much to be proud of."</p>
+
+<p>"You're good enough for any girl, but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think I don't know my place, with the whole town teaching it to
+me going on eighteen years? I've got no false hopes, and I shan't lose
+my head over any girl. Let me be."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not the town that's taught you your place, it's&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you say her name."</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;empty headed and overdressed."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on. Judith Randall don't care what you think of her."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you even get up enough spirit to stand up for her? You that
+thought you had your fortune all but made when you got the chickens paid
+for, and followed me round the house, telling me how you'd run the town?
+You that could tell what was wrong with the <i>Record</i> editorials, if you
+couldn't pay for a year's subscription to the paper? You&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I come from one of the five lines in Ireland what have a right to
+the O', but you never tell me that unless you've got something else to
+tell me that you're afraid to tell. What is it this time?"</p>
+
+<p>"You come of Irish kings."</p>
+
+<p>"What did Uncle say last night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, he's getting to be an old man."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What did he say?"</p>
+
+<p>His mother did not reply. She avoided his eyes, and made no further
+criticism of him, or of a young lady who was no doubt as indifferent to
+her criticisms as Neil said, since she did not recognize Mrs. Donovan on
+the street.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle," Neil decided deliberately, "wants me to help in the store. I
+can't go to Wells."</p>
+
+<p>"He can't get on alone now Maggie's gone. We need your board money to
+run the house at all. Dan was wild to get away from Green River, but in
+two years he's got no farther than Wells, and ten dollars a week. I know
+we ought to leave you free to start yourself, if we can't give you a
+start, but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all you want to tell me?"</p>
+
+<p>She put out an unaccustomed arm and pulled him awkwardly close. He came
+obediently, and patted her shoulder stiffly but did not kiss her. "I
+know what this means," she asserted, and showed a rapidly forming
+intention of crying on his shoulder. "It hurts me like it does you."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" >
+<a id="illus2" name="illus2"></a>
+<img src="images/illus2.jpg" alt="'I know what this means,'" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>"It don't hurt me. I ought to have seen it myself. I ought not to have
+planned to go. It's all right, mother. Is that all?"</p>
+
+<p>"All? It's enough. I was awake half the night planning to break it to
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"You broke it all right. I'll be going." He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> shook out his crushed
+cap, and adjusted it with dignity, looking at her calmly out of
+impenetrable eyes, like a young prince ending an audience, with more
+power behind him than he knew, kissed her gravely on the cheek with cool
+young lips, and opened the door, and walked off into the sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the girl," said his mother, but not until the door had closed
+behind him. "No girl is good enough to do what she's done to you." Then
+she selected the frilliest of Maggie's blouses, which had dried while
+she talked, and spread it on the ironing table to sprinkle again.</p>
+
+<p>Neil did not look like a young man crossed in love, or a young man with
+his future wrecked by a word. He did not give a backward glance to the
+little brown house with the sun on its many-paned windows, or seem to
+hear the children's voices from the old barn behind the house&mdash;the
+favourite refuge of the little Bradys when they were banished from the
+kitchen&mdash;that echoed after him in the clear morning air, shrill and then
+fainter as he left the place behind.</p>
+
+<p>He had settled into his usual pace for this familiar walk&mdash;a steady
+stride that you could fit the unmanageable parts of a Latin verb to the
+rhythm of, or the refractory words of a song; but it was not a usual
+day. It was the first warm day of that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> April, warmer already, with the
+goading urge of spring in the softening air that frets and troubles with
+new desires and a sense of unfitness for them at once, and will not let
+you be. The road, fringed with scattering trees, and wind-swept and
+bleak on winter days, was golden with new sunlight, spongy underfoot,
+but drying under your eyes in the morning sun. The boy's brooding face
+did not change as he walked, but his shoulders straightened themselves,
+and lost their patient look, and his lean young body gave itself more
+gayly to the swing of his pace and looked strong and free, alive with
+the unconscious strength of youth that must be caught and harnessed to
+make the wheels of the world go round before it can be taught what its
+purpose is.</p>
+
+<p>Whether it troubled him or not&mdash;his face did not tell&mdash;all that his
+mother had hinted was wrong with his world, and more. No outsider had
+ever won a place like Neil's in Green River High School society so far
+as the unwritten history of it recorded. Charlie Brady in his time, and
+Dan after him, had been extra men at big dances, hard worked and
+patronized in school entertainments, more intimate with the boys than
+the girls. Charlie, deep in a secret love affair with Lil Gaynor, had
+still called her Miss in public, and treated her as respectfully as he
+did now that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> the affair was forgotten and she was Mrs. Burr and one of
+the Everard circle. Charlie and Dan had only looked over impassable
+barriers. Neil had been really inside&mdash;included in small, intimate
+parties, like week-ends at Camp Hiawatha, openly favoured by Natalie, if
+not Judith&mdash;inside and he would soon be shut out.</p>
+
+<p>There were new signs of it every day. The long, friendly winter, when he
+had been safe in that intimate fellowship, was over. The girls were
+planning their gowns for college commencement dances. Willard came back
+from a week-end at the state university pledged to a fraternity there
+and refusing to discuss minor subjects. God-like creatures in amazing
+neckties condescended to visit him, and Natalie was beginning to collect
+fraternity pins. Rena and Ed were engaged, and under the impression that
+it was a secret, and a place was being made for Ed in the bank. In one
+way or another, the world was opening to all of them, and closing to
+Neil.</p>
+
+<p>And with the spring, the Everards had come back to Green River. The big,
+over-decorated house had not been open a week, but already they pervaded
+the town. Their cars whirled through the splashing spring streets, and
+ladies not upon Mrs. Everard's calling list peered at the passengers to
+see who was in her favour. The Colonel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> was turning the Hiawatha Club
+into a private camp, and closing it to the town, but nobody protested
+much. He was ordering a complete set of slip covers from the furniture
+department of Ward's Emporium, and the daring group of prominent
+business men who ventured to assail the Colonel's political views and
+private morals sometimes in the little room at the rear of the store
+lacked support from Ward. Neil had the run of the store and hung about
+and listened, but never contributed. Whether these criticisms were
+justified or not, the Everards were back again.</p>
+
+<p>Judith had given up the Lyceum dance for the first of the Everard
+dinners the night before. It was three days since Neil had seen her, and
+he was to see her to-day, but he was showing no impatience for the
+meeting. The end of the world, not the beginning of it, that was what
+spring would mean to him, and that is a graver catastrophe at eighteen
+than at eighty. The boy who was facing it had passed the outlying
+straggle of houses, and had come to the edge of the town, and to the end
+of the long, hilly street that led down past the court-house, straight
+into Post Office Square, the heart of the town. It was still empty of
+traffic at ten, and looked sunny and empty and clean, wide-awake for the
+day. He took his hands out of his pockets, stopped whistling "Amos
+Moss,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> and hurried down Court-house Hill, stepping in time to the tune
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>A mud-splashed Ford clattered down Main Street, and drew up in front of
+the post-office as Neil reached it with a flourish that would have done
+credit to a more elegant equipage than this second-hand one of the
+Nashes. Two elegant young gentlemen, week-end guests of Willard's and
+duly presented to Neil the night before, ignored his existence, perusing
+a gaudily covered series of topical songs with exaggerated attention on
+the rear seat of the car, but Willard greeted him exuberantly:</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, there, Murph. You don't look like the morning after. Sorry I
+haven't got room for you. We've got other plans. We love the ladies."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm tied up, anyway. So long."</p>
+
+<p>Willard's tone was too patronizing, but he was not to blame, for the
+days when they would exchange intimate greetings at all were numbered.
+As Neil left them one of the elegant guests demanded audibly:</p>
+
+<p>"Who's your friend?"</p>
+
+<p>Neil flushed but did not look back. He had an errand to do in the few
+minutes before his appointment with Judge Saxon. He crossed the street
+to Ward's store.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Ward's Dry Goods Emporium, three stores in one, and
+literally three stores bought out one by one, and joined by connecting
+doors, though they could never be united in their style of architecture,
+was rather dark and chaotic inside, though a brave showing of plate
+glass across the front advertised its prosperity. Luther Ward himself,
+in his shirt sleeves, was looking over a tray of soiled, pale-coloured
+spats, assisted by a tall, full-bodied girl with a sweet, sulky mouth,
+and a towering mass of blue-black hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Donovan, what's new?" he said, with only a shade more
+condescension than Willard, and distinctly more friendliness.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing, sir," said Neil with conviction.</p>
+
+<p>"You want to talk to Maggie, here. I won't intrude on a family quarrel,"
+said Mr. Ward, and chuckling heartily at his own mild joke, as he
+generally did, and few others did, disappeared into the furniture
+department, the central one of the three stores, and his favourite. The
+two cousins regarded each other across the tray of spats as if the
+family quarrel were not a joke, but an unpleasant reality.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't come here and take up my time," stated Miss Brady.</p>
+
+<p>"Your time is pretty full&mdash;evenings, too. Do you know where Charlie was
+last night?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't care."</p>
+
+<p>"You ought. He's your second cousin, and goes by the same name as you,
+if you're not in love with him. He was in Halloran's billiard hall."</p>
+
+<p>"If he can't keep himself out of the gutter, I can't keep him out,"
+stated Miss Brady logically.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, don't push him in," her cousin advised, but the light of battle
+had died out of his eyes, leaving them listless. "It's nothing to me. I
+only came to bring you this."</p>
+
+<p>He produced something from an inner pocket and tossed it on the counter,
+something wrapped in a twist of newspaper, which parted as the girl bent
+eagerly over it, something which shone and twinkled alluringly, as she
+straightened it out with caressing fingers and held it up to the
+light&mdash;a little necklace of rather ornate design and startling colours,
+crimson stones and green and blue, the gayest of toys.</p>
+
+<p>"Seems to be yours all right."</p>
+
+<p>His cousin, who seemed to have forgotten his existence for one rapt
+moment, remembered it with a start. "Did you show this to your mother?"
+she asked sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she don't like to have me spend my money on imitation jewellery."
+Miss Brady delivered this very natural explanation haltingly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Do you?"</p>
+
+<p>One of the sudden, vivid blushes which had helped to establish her
+reputation as a beauty overspread Miss Brady's cheek. "I missed it this
+morning and didn't have time to hunt for it, and I was worried. I don't
+want to show it to her. It cost a good deal."</p>
+
+<p>"It must have. They say a ruby's the only stone you can't imitate."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" Miss Brady's cheeks grew still redder. "Why don't
+you save your big talk for Saxon? You may need it. Why don't you mind
+your own affairs, and leave mine alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Leave that on the kitchen floor for mother to find and sweep up in a
+broken dust-pan, or one of the kids to show to your father?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? Haven't I got a right to do what I want with my own money?
+Haven't I got a right to do what I want with myself? Who are you to
+dictate to me, with the Randall girl making a fool of you? Why&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That will be all." Though Miss Brady's voice had been threatening to
+make itself heard throughout all the three stores in one, she stopped
+obediently, looking defiant but frightened, but when her cousin spoke
+again the ring of authority which had shocked her was gone from his
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be scared. It's nothing to me what you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> do, and I shan't talk too
+much. You know me, Mag."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't, not lately. You act doped, not half there. I can't make
+you out. If you think&mdash;if you suspect&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't. It's nothing to me. I'm due at Saxon's. Put your glass beads
+away before Ward sees them. Good luck to you."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Brady, standing quite still in one of her carefully cultivated,
+statuesque poses, watched her cousin cross the street and disappear into
+a narrow and shabbily painted doorway there. Then she took his advice,
+and producing a red morocco wrist bag from under the counter, shut the
+necklace into it with a vicious snap, as if she did not derive so much
+pleasure as before from handling it now.</p>
+
+<p>Her cousin climbed the three flights of stairs to Judge Saxon's office.
+The stairs were dingy and looked unswept, and a pane of glass in the
+door of the untenanted suite across the landing from the Judge's was
+broken. Nothing about the Judge's quarters indicated that he was Colonel
+Everard's attorney, a big man in the town before the Everard régime, and
+under it&mdash;an unusual combination. His office was shabby outside and in.
+The lettering on the door, Saxon and Burr, Attorneys-at-Law, looked
+newer than it was by contrast, and it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> was still only six months old.
+Theodore Burr had his delayed junior partnership at last.</p>
+
+<p>The Judge's young client did not pause to collect himself on the worn
+door-mat, as he had done when he first came here on errands like this.
+They were an old story to him now, and so were scenes like the one with
+Maggie, which he had just come through so creditably. He looked quite
+unruffled by it, calm as people are when they have no troubles to
+bear&mdash;or when they have borne all they can, and are about to find relief
+in establishing the fact. He knocked and stepped inside.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_NINE" id="CHAPTER_NINE"></a>CHAPTER NINE</h2>
+
+<p>A fire in the air-tight stove in the corner had taken the early morning
+chill from the room and been permitted to burn out, now that the morning
+sun came in warm through the dusty windows, but the room was still close
+and cloudy with wood smoke. At a battered, roll-topped desk in the
+sunniest window Mr. Theodore Burr was struggling with the eccentricities
+of an ancient Remington, and looking superior to it and to all his
+surroundings, but the Judge was nowhere to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Burr was a very large, very pink young man, with blond hair which
+would have looked too good to be true on a woman, and near-set,
+green-blue eyes which managed to look vacant and aggressive at the same
+time. He was wearing a turquoise-blue tie which accentuated their
+effectiveness, and he occupied himself ostentatiously with the Remington
+for quite three minutes before he turned his most vacant and aggressive
+look upon his client.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Donovan?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Burr's manner was as patronizing as Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> Ward's with the
+friendliness left out, but his client was not chilled by it.</p>
+
+<p>"Theodore, where's the Judge?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Burr." The pink young man turned two shades pinker as he made the
+correction. "The Judge is engaged."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe it."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Burr laughed unpleasantly and held up his hand. From the other side
+of a door labelled private&mdash;misleadingly, for the Judge's little
+sanctum, where half the town had the privilege of crowding in and
+tipping back chairs and smoking, was the nearest approach to a clubroom
+that the town afforded, now that the Hiawatha Club was no more&mdash;muffled
+voices were faintly audible.</p>
+
+<p>"You can talk to me," said Mr. Burr.</p>
+
+<p>"I can, and I can go away and come back when he's not engaged. He said
+he'd see me."</p>
+
+<p>"He's changed his mind. He don't want to see you. I know all about your
+case."</p>
+
+<p>"You've learned a lot in six months."</p>
+
+<p>"Talk like that won't get you anything, Donovan, here or anywhere else,"
+remarked Mr. Burr, reasonably, if somewhat offensively. Admitting it,
+his client dropped into one of the Judge's big office chairs, and sat
+there, fingering his cap as he talked, and looking suddenly beaten and
+tired.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You're right, Theodore. Well, what's all this you know about my
+case?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mike Brady sends you here begging when he's ashamed to come himself.
+It's hard on you, Neil."</p>
+
+<p>"My uncle's too busy to come. Is that all you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know what you want to-day, and you can't have it."</p>
+
+<p>"What do I want?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Burr's manner had become alarmingly official, but his client
+continued to smile at him, and to fold and unfold his cap methodically.</p>
+
+<p>"An extension of time on your uncle's mortgage. The principal is due the
+first of next month. You've kept the Judge waiting twice for the
+interest, the security is insufficient, the bank holds a first mortgage
+on the house, and for fourteen months your uncle has made no payment to
+the Judge whatever."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't rub it in, Theodore."</p>
+
+<p>"This is no laughing matter. Business is business," stated the junior
+partner importantly.</p>
+
+<p>"More like charity, with the Judge, but Uncle isn't holding him up for
+much this time. Uncle's getting on his feet. The Judge never expected
+him to, and I didn't, but the automobiles help. Maggie served tea before
+she went to Ward's,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> and he's going on with it. His luck has turned.
+He's got the money to pay this year's interest and half the back
+interest that's due, but he wants to keep it and put it into
+repairs&mdash;the roof wants shingling, and if we could fix up the storeroom
+for a place to serve tea and ice-cream we could double trade. Then, next
+year&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We've heard too much about next year, Donovan."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't get tragic, Theodore. This is a new proposition. I'll go into
+figures with the Judge and prove it to him&mdash;don't want to waste them on
+you. But he won't be sending good money after bad this time, like he's
+done too many times. I'm as glad for him as I am for Uncle."</p>
+
+<p>"It can't be done."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, Theodore. I won't wait to see the Judge now, but you tell
+him&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It don't make any difference what I tell him. The Judge has made up his
+mind, and he won't change it. You can take it from me as well as him.
+You won't get another dollar of his money, and you won't get another
+month's extension of time. We're done with you."</p>
+
+<p>"I almost believe you mean that, Theodore."</p>
+
+<p>"As I said, the house is insufficient security, but for the sake of the
+dignity of the firm we must protect ourselves&mdash;&mdash;"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I believe you mean it, and the Judge gave you authority to say it."</p>
+
+<p>"We must go through the form of protecting ourselves and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>His client laughed. "You don't mean the Judge wants to take over the
+house. That's 'Way Down East stuff. If money's tight with him, we'll pay
+the interest and manage some way, though I don't see how. But the house
+would be no good to him if he took it, and he wouldn't take it if it
+was. I know the Judge. Don't let your imagination get away with you,
+Theodore."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry for you, Donovan."</p>
+
+<p>"You think he's going to take it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know he is."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that," his client decided slowly, "and you've got the Judge's
+authority for it, too."</p>
+
+<p>"Take it quietly. It's the best way," urged the junior partner
+helpfully.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand that's your motto, Theodore," said his client, and
+proceeded to take his advice, sitting quite still in the Judge's big
+chair, and fixing a clear-seeing but unappreciative gaze upon the
+immaculate folds of Mr. Burr's turquoise-blue tie. He took the advice
+too literally. The silence grew oppressive and sinister, and as if he
+found it so,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> Mr. Burr broke into a monologue, disjointed, but made up
+of irreproachable sentiments.</p>
+
+<p>"This is hard on your uncle, Neil, and it's hard on you, but it may be
+the best thing in the end. He's been hiding behind you too long. A
+business that can't stand on its own feet deserves to fail. He can start
+new and start clean. The Judge has been a good friend to you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't explain him to me. You don't own him, whoever else does,"
+interrupted the Judge's protégé softly.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean? If you don't think you're getting a square deal, say
+so."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want me to weep on your shoulder, Theodore?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Judge is your friend, and," Mr. Burr added handsomely, "I'm your
+friend, too."</p>
+
+<p>His client arose briskly, as if encouraged by this. "Theodore, you don't
+want to tell me what's back of your turning me down?" he asked. "No, I
+thought not. Well&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm your friend," repeated Mr. Burr, generously if irrelevantly, and
+this time without effect. His client had crossed the room without
+another glance at him, and had his hand on the knob of the Judge's
+office door. His manner still had the composure which Mr. Burr had
+advocated, but his face was very pale, ominously pale, and his brown<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+eyes were changed and bright, dangerously bright. To imaginative eyes
+like Mr. Burr's he must have looked suddenly taller.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Burr was facing an unmistakable crisis, with no time to wonder how
+long it had been forming, or why. He hurried after the boy and caught
+him fiercely if ineffectively by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't go in there," stated Mr. Burr arbitrarily, all logic
+deserting him. "You can't. You don't know&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm not going to knife the Judge," his client explained kindly.
+"I'm only going to find out what's back of this."</p>
+
+<p>"Take it quietly," was the ill-chosen sentiment which suggested itself
+to Mr. Burr. Neil Donovan swung round angrily, and paused to reply to
+it, with fires which the somewhat negative though offensive personality
+of the pink young man could never have kindled alight in his brown eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Quietly? There's been too much of that in this town. I'm sick of it.
+The only friend I've got who hasn't got one foot in the gutter goes back
+on me for no reason at all, the first time I ask a favour of him that
+don't amount to picking his pockets. The only big man in this rotten
+town who's halfway straight since Everard turned the town rotten begins
+to act like he wasn't straight.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> What's back of it? I'm going to know.
+Get out of my way, Theodore."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know who's in there."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care. I'm going to know." Disposing of the hovering and anxious
+intervention of Mr. Burr, and throwing the door open, he slammed it in
+the pink young man's perturbed face, and stepped alone out of the
+sunshine into the Judge's dim little inner office.</p>
+
+<p>The Judge's friendly littered little room was not so inviting in working
+hours as it was in the hospitable hours of late afternoon. It was like a
+woman seen in evening dress by daylight. But the boy who had invaded it
+so hotly unmasked no conspiracy here. The men at the table near the one
+window, with a pile of official but entirely innocent looking papers
+between them, had every right to be there. They were the Judge and
+Colonel Everard.</p>
+
+<p>The great man looked quite undisturbed by the boy's invasion, glancing
+up at him indifferently from the papers that he was turning over with
+his finely moulded, delicately used hands; he even looked mildly amused,
+but the boy turned to him first instinctively, and not to the Judge, who
+was peering at him with troubled and kindly eyes over the top of his
+glasses.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got to speak to the Judge. I'm sorry."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He stammered out his half-apology awkwardly enough, but the smouldering
+fires were still alight in his brown eyes, tragic fires of cowed and
+rebellious youth. The great man regarded him indifferently for a minute
+and then turned rather ostentatiously to his papers again.</p>
+
+<p>"Judge, I've got to speak to you alone."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't just now, son."</p>
+
+<p>"I've got to."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>The Judge's kind, drawling voice was not quite as usual, and his blue,
+near-sighted eyes were not; they were wistful and deprecating, and
+rather tired, a beaten man's eyes, eyes with an irresistible appeal to
+the race that is vowed to lost causes, this boy's race. The boy stepped
+instinctively closer.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't blame you, sir, but I've got to understand this and know what's
+behind it."</p>
+
+<p>"Better go home before you say anything you'll be sorry for, Neil."</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you go back on me?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're taking a sentimental attitude about a business matter. It's
+natural enough that you should. I'm sorry for you, son."</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The Judge drew himself up a shade straighter in his chair, and met the
+boy's insistent challenge with sudden dignity, kindly but judicial,
+peculiarly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> his own, but his flashes of it were not very frequent now.</p>
+
+<p>"Neil," he said deliberately, "I've got nothing to say to you alone.
+I've got nothing to say to you at all that Mr. Burr hasn't said. Is that
+quite clear to you?"</p>
+
+<p>It was entirely clear. The Judge had left no room for uncertainty or
+argument, and the boy did not attempt to argue or even to answer. He
+stood looking uncertainly down at the Judge, as if for the moment he
+could not see anything in the room quite distinctly, the Judge's face,
+with its near-sighted blue eyes and red-gold beard and thinning hair, or
+Colonel Everard's clear-cut profile.</p>
+
+<p>"Better go," said the Judge gently.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd better go," the boy repeated mechanically, but he did not move.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Everard put down his papers deliberately, and favoured him with
+a glance, amused and surprised, as if he had not expected to find him
+still in the room, and was prepared to forget at once that he was there;
+a disconcerting sort of glance, but the boy's brown eyes met it
+gallantly, and cleared as they looked. They grew bright and defiant
+again, with a little laugh in the depths of them. The ghost of a laugh,
+too, lurked in the boy's low voice somewhere.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You're right, Judge. I'll go. I'm wasting my time here," he said,
+"asking you who's back of what you've done to me&mdash;when I know. I
+won't ask you again, but I'll ask you, I'll ask you both, who's back of
+everything that's crooked or wrong in this town? Little or big, he's
+back of it all; straight back of it, or well back of it, hiding his face
+and pulling the wires. He's to blame for it all, for he's made the town
+what it is.</p>
+
+<p>"He's got his hand on the neck of the town, and got hold of it tighter,
+gradual, so nobody saw it and knocked it off; tighter and tighter,
+squeezing the life out. He never made a gift to the town with one hand
+that he didn't take it back with the other. What the town gets without
+him giving it, he won't let it keep. The whole town's got his stamp on
+it, grafting and lying and putting up a front. The whole town's afraid
+of him. The Judge here, that's the best man in town, don't dare call his
+soul his own. Me, I'm afraid of him, too, and the only reason I dare
+stand up and say to his face what's said behind his back is because I've
+got nothing to lose. It's him, there&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't, son," muttered the Judge tardily, unregarded, but Colonel
+Everard listened courteously, with a faint, amused smile growing rather
+stiff on his thin lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Him, that's too good to speak to me or look<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> at me, sitting there
+grinning, and reading fine print, making out not to care, he's back of
+it all&mdash;him, Everard."</p>
+
+<p>The two men, who had heard him out, did not interrupt him now. It was
+only a passionate jumble of boyish words they had listened to, but
+behind it, vibrating in his tense voice, was something bigger than he
+could frame words to express, something that commanded silence; pain
+forcing its way into speech, long repression broken at last. The dignity
+of it was about him still, though his brown eyes flashed no more
+defiance, and he was only a shabby and hopeless boy walking uncertainly
+to the office door, and fumbling with the handle.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go out this way," he said. "I've had enough of Theodore. And I've
+had enough of this place. I'll say good morning, gentlemen."</p>
+
+<p>In a prosaic and too often unsatisfactory world, which is not the stage,
+no curtain drops to relieve you of the embarrassment of thinking what to
+say next after a record speech; you have to step out of the limelight,
+and walk somewhere else. Neil Donovan, emerging from the ancient
+building which contained Judge Saxon's office into Post-office Square
+after a brief interval of struggling successfully for self-control in a
+dusty corridor little suited to such struggles, and not even en<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>suring
+the privacy which is wrongly believed to be necessary for them, had one
+more appointment to keep. He was late for it already. He glanced at the
+town clock and started off hurriedly to keep it.</p>
+
+<p>Back of Court-house Hill another street, starting parallel to Court
+Street, rapidly loses its sense of direction and its original character
+of a business street, wavers to right and left, past a scatter of
+discouraged looking houses, and finally slants off in the general
+direction of the woods at the edge of the town, and the abortive,
+sparsely wooded hill known to generations of picnickers&mdash;not the élite
+of the town, but humbler, more rowdy picnickers&mdash;as Mountain Rock.</p>
+
+<p>The street never reaches it, but loses itself in a grubby tangle of
+smaller streets, thickly set with small houses, densely and untidily
+populated, the section known at first derisively and later in good faith
+as Paddy Lane. Through the intricate geography of this quarter Colonel
+Everard's only openly declared enemy might have been seen making a hasty
+and expert way ten minutes later; quickly and directly as it permitted
+him to, he approached the base of the hill.</p>
+
+<p>Disregarding more public and usual ways of ascent, he struck straight
+across a stubbly field that lay behind a row of peculiarly forlorn and
+tumble<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>down houses into a path so narrow that it was hard to see until
+you were actually looking down it, between the twin birches that marked
+the entrance. He followed it to the base of the cliff itself. The belt
+of stunted birches and dusty-looking alders that skirted the cliff was
+broken by an occasional scraggly pine. The boy stopped under one of
+them, leaned against the decaying trunk, produced a letter, and read it.</p>
+
+<p>It was only a pencilled scrawl of a letter, on the roughest of copy
+paper, and so crumpled that he must have been quite familiar with it,
+but he read it intently.</p>
+
+<table summary="LETTER">
+<tr><td>
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Neil," it ran, "I'll meet you Saturday, on top of Mountain Rock,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">same time and place. I shan't see you till then. I don't want to.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">You frightened me last night. I don't like you lately. Be nice to</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">me Saturday. <span class="smcap">Judith</span>."</span><br />
+</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Only a pencilled scrawl, but he knew every word of it by heart, and of
+the burst of excited speech in the Judge's office nothing remained in
+his mind but the general impression that he had made a fool of himself
+there. Perhaps he was too familiar with Judith's letter, for the sting
+he had found there at first was gone from the words. He looked at them
+dully.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't stand much more," he said aloud.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He said it lifelessly, and with no defiance in his eyes, stating only a
+wearisome fact. He had seen the Colonel's face through a kind of red
+mist in the Judge's office, and felt reckless and strong. He did not
+feel like a hero now. He was tired.</p>
+
+<p>He would hardly have cared just now if you had told him that back in
+Judge Saxon's office two men who had not moved from their chairs since
+he left them, and who would not move until several vital points were
+settled, were discussing something he would not have believed them
+capable of discussing at such length and with so much feeling&mdash;the
+fortunes of the Donovan family.</p>
+
+<p>He did not care just now for the little sights and sounds of spring that
+were all around him, the cluster of arbutus leaves at his feet, the
+faint, nestling bird noises, sweeter than song, and the stir and rustle
+of tiny, unclassified sounds that were signs of the pulse of spring
+beating everywhere, of change and growth going on whether human beings
+perceived or denied it.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't stand any more," said the boy.</p>
+
+<p>Up the cliff to his right, strewn with pine needles that were brown-gold
+in the sun, a steep and tiny trail led the way to the top of the hill
+and his rendezvous. Now the boy crushed Judith's letter into his pocket,
+turned to the trail with a sigh, and began to climb.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_TEN" id="CHAPTER_TEN"></a>CHAPTER TEN</h2>
+
+<p>"They won't like it, Judith," said Mrs. Randall for the last time, as
+she slipped into her evening coat.</p>
+
+<p>"They? If you mean the Colonel&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I do."</p>
+
+<p>Judith, looking up at her mother from the chaise-longue, could not have
+seen the radiant vision that she had adored as a child, when the spring
+and the Everards and the habit of evening dress all returned at once to
+Green River. Mrs. Randall's blue gown was the creation of a Wells
+dressmaker, but lacked the charm of earlier evening frocks, anxiously
+contrived with the help of a local seamstress, when the clear blue that
+was still her favourite colour had been her best colour, when there was
+a touch more pink in the warm white of her complexion, and before the
+tiny, worried line in her broad, low forehead was there to stay. But
+there was no reflection of these changes in her daughter's big, watching
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"It will do him good not to like it," said Judith sweetly.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing, Mamma. Is that the carriage? Don't be
+late."</p>
+
+<p>Minna Randall looked down at her daughter in puzzled silence a moment,
+with the little line in her forehead deepening, then slipped to her
+knees beside her with a disregard for her new gown which was unusual,
+and put a caressing hand on her forehead, a demonstration which was more
+unusual still.</p>
+
+<p>"Your head does feel hot," she said, "but to stay away from a dance at
+your age, just for a headache&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I went to one last night."</p>
+
+<p>"A high school dance!"</p>
+
+<p>"There won't be any more of them. You needn't grudge it to me." Judith
+buried her face in the cushions, and lay very still.</p>
+
+<p>"But the Colonel really arranged this for you. Dancing bores him. He
+said you ought to be amused."</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't say so to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you laughing? I thought you were crying a minute ago." Judith gave
+no further signs of either laughing or crying. "Judith, what does he say
+to you? When you went with him to look at that night-blooming flower
+with the queer name, last week, and were gone so long, what did he talk
+to you about? You heard me. Please answer."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He's a stupid old thing."</p>
+
+<p>"What did he talk about?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't remember."</p>
+
+<p>"Judith," Judith's mother stood plucking ineffectively at her long
+gloves, and looking at the motionless white figure, very slender and
+childish against the chintz of the cushions, soft, tumbled hair, and
+hidden face, with a growing trouble in her eyes, "I ought to talk to
+you&mdash;I ought to tell you&mdash;you're old enough now&mdash;old enough&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Judith turned with a soft, nestling movement, and opened her eyes again,
+deep, watchful eyes that asked endless questions, and made it impossible
+to answer them, eyes that knew no language but their own, the secret and
+alien language of youth. Her mother sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"You're the strangest child. Sometimes you seem a hundred years old, and
+sometimes&mdash;you don't feel too badly to stay alone? Mollie would have
+stayed in with you, or Norah."</p>
+
+<p>"No. I would have gone, if I'd known you cared so much, but it won't do
+any good to make yourself late, Mamma. Father's calling," said Judith
+gravely. Still grave and unrelaxed, she returned her mother's rare
+good-night kiss, and watched her sweep out of the room, turning the
+rose-shaded night lamp low as she passed.</p>
+
+<p>There was a hurry of preparation downstairs,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> her mother's low, fretful
+voice and her father's high and strained one joined in a heated
+argument, and they started still deep in it, for her father did not call
+a good-night to Judith. The street door shut, and she was alone in the
+house. Carriage wheels creaked out of the yard and there was no
+returning sound of them in search of some forgotten thing; a long enough
+interval passed so that it was safe to infer that there would not be,
+but Judith lay as her mother had left her, as still as if her headache
+were really authentic, her questioning eyes on the rose-shaded light.</p>
+
+<p>There was much that might have increased her mother's concern for her in
+her face, if you could interpret it fully; sometimes the eyes suggested
+a fair proportion of the hundred years her mother had credited her with,
+sometimes there was dawning fear in them, and sometimes an inconsequent,
+gipsy light; sometimes her soft lips trembled pitifully, and sometimes
+they smiled. Always it was a lovely face, rose flushed and eager in the
+rosy light, and always something was evident which was enough to account
+for her mother's concern and for more concern than her mother was
+capable of feeling; Miss Judith Devereux Randall was growing up.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever questions occupied her answered themselves in a satisfactory
+way at last, even an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> amusing way, for her smile had come to stay and
+her eyes were dancing, when she jumped up from the chaise-longue at
+last, turned on more lights, opened closets and bureau drawers all at
+once, dropped various hastily chosen and ill-assorted articles on the
+immaculate counterpane of her bed, and began to dress.</p>
+
+<p>She dressed without a glance into the mirror, and without need of it, it
+appeared, when she stood before it at last, pulling a left-over winter
+tam over rebellious curls which she had made no attempt to subdue. She
+had buttoned herself hastily into the dress she had taken off last, a
+tumbled organdy, and thrown a disreputable polo coat over it, white like
+the cap, but of more prehistoric date, but on her slender person these
+incongruous garments had acquired a harmony of their own, and become a
+costume somehow. It might not have withstood a long or critical
+inspection, but it was not subjected to one. Youth, in its divinely
+suited garb of white, regarded itself with grave eyes for one breathless
+minute, flushed and coquetted with itself for another, and then was gone
+from the mirror. Judith turned off the lights and stole out of the room,
+and downstairs.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing in the dark and empty house to frighten her. It must
+have been fear of whatever was before her that made her slip so softly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
+across the hall, and tremble and stand still when the door chain
+rattled. The door was open at last. With a soft, inarticulate gasp of
+excitement, she stepped out into the May night.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Everard had an ideal night for the little dance in his garden,
+warm, but with a quiver of new life in the air. The May moon was in its
+last quarter, but lanterns were to supplement it. But the Colonel's
+guest of honour, pausing at the corner of Main Street and looking
+sharply to left and right, and then turning quickly off it, found very
+little light on the narrow and tree-fringed cross-street through which
+she was hurrying now but the moon.</p>
+
+<p>It hung slender and pale and low above the ragged row of little houses,
+and seemed to go with her through the dark, but she took no notice of
+its companionship. The street was deserted, and the tap of her little
+heels sounded disconcertingly loud in the emptiness of it as she hurried
+on, turning from the narrow street into a narrower one.</p>
+
+<p>This street had only one real end; pending the appropriation needed to
+carry it straight through, witheld by agencies which could only be
+connected by guess with Colonel Everard, it led feebly past a few houses
+which were nearly all untenanted and looked peculiarly so to-night, to a
+clump of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> alders at the edge of an unpenetrated wood lot, where it had
+paused. Just in front of it the girl paused, too.</p>
+
+<p>Her small, white-coated figure was only dimly to be seen in the dark of
+the street; the group in the shadow of the trees was harder to see, but
+it moved; a horse pawed the ground impatiently, the boy in the buggy
+leaned forward and spoke to him. Then Judith started uncertainly toward
+him, and spoke softly, in the arrogant phrasing of lovers, to whom there
+is only one "you" in the world:</p>
+
+<p>"Is that you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it you?" the boy's voice came hoarse through the dark. "I thought
+you weren't coming. I waited an hour for you yesterday on the Rock."</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't help it. I oughn't to be here now, and I almost didn't come,
+but I thought we'd have to-night. Neil, you hurt my hand. Be nice to
+me."</p>
+
+<p>She was standing close beside him now, and they could see each other's
+faces, white and strange in the dark, but the boy's looked whiter, and
+his breath came oddly, in irregular gasps. He held both her hands in
+his, but he did not bend down to her, nor kiss her.</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you look so queer? I don't like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> you. Be nice to me." There
+was something terribly wrong with the smug little phrases, or with any
+words at all just then, there in the heart of the silent dark, and
+facing the strangeness of the boy's eyes; words failed her suddenly, and
+she pulled her hands away, and hid her face in them. "I won't go with
+you&mdash;I'll go home, if you aren't nice to me&mdash;if&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You can't go home now." There was something in the boy's voice that was
+like the fierce clasp of his hands, something from which it was not so
+easy to escape. "It might be better if you hadn't come, better for both
+of us, but you can't go back now. It's too late. Yes, we'll have
+to-night. Get in, Judith."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_ELEVEN" id="CHAPTER_ELEVEN"></a>CHAPTER ELEVEN</h2>
+
+<p>"Get in, Judith."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't go. You can't make me."</p>
+
+<p>The boy did not answer or move. Boy and buggy and horse&mdash;Charlie Brady's
+ancient chestnut mare, not such a dignified creature by daylight, but
+high shouldered and mysterious now against the dark of the grove&mdash;might
+all have been part of the surrounding dark, they were so still, and
+Judith's little white figure was motionless, too.</p>
+
+<p>Judith stood looking up at the boy for one long, silent minute. Such
+minutes are really longer than other minutes, if you measure them by
+heartbeats, and how else are you to measure them? Strange, breathless
+minutes, that settle grave questions irrevocably by the mere fact of
+their passing, whether you watch them pass with open eyes or are
+helpless and young and vaguely afraid before them; helpless, but full of
+the untaught strength of youth, which works miracles without knowing how
+or why.</p>
+
+<p>"Get in," said the boy, very softly this time, so that his voice just
+made itself heard through the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> dark; it was like part of the dark,
+caressing and hushed and secret, and not to be denied. With a soft
+little laugh that was attuned to it, Judith yielded suddenly, and
+slipped into the carriage beside him, drawing the robe tight round her,
+and settling into her corner, all with one quick, nestling motion, like
+a bird perching.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are we going?" she said rather breathlessly, "Hurry. Let's go a
+long, long way."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. Don't be frightened, Judith."</p>
+
+<p>"Frightened?"</p>
+
+<p>He did not answer. Charlie's horse, debarred from its destined career by
+bad driving, that broke its wind in its first race, but of sporting
+ancestry and unable to forget it, especially when Charlie's adventures
+in the Green River under-world cheated it of exercise too long, was
+remembering it now, and bolting down the hilly little street, settled at
+last into a jerky and tentative gait with the air of accepting their
+guidance until it could arrange further plans, but remembering its
+ancestry still.</p>
+
+<p>"Splendid," Judith breathed. "Keep off Main Street."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>The ancient vehicle, well oiled, but rattling faintly still, swung
+alarmingly close to one street corner lamp-post and then another. Judith
+nestled almost out of sight in her corner. Neil leaned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> forward,
+gripping the reins with an ungloved hand that whitened at the knuckles,
+his dark eyes looking straight ahead. His brooding eyes and quiet mouth,
+and even the whiteness of his face had something unfamiliar about them,
+something that did not all come from the unhealthy light of the street
+lamps, something strange but unaccountably charming, too. Judith had no
+eyes for it just then.</p>
+
+<p>"This is silly. I ought not to have come. Who's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody. Just a tree. Sit still. We'll go under the railroad bridge and
+out over Grant's Hill. There won't be any more lights."</p>
+
+<p>"It looked like some one."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you care?"</p>
+
+<p>"It looked like your cousin Maggie."</p>
+
+<p>"She's at home in bed. She was tired to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh. Well, it looked like her. It was silly to come. I never shall come
+again."</p>
+
+<p>As if this were not a new threat, or had for some reason lost it terrors
+to-night, the boy did not contradict her. They had left track and
+railroad bridge behind now, darker blots against the surrounding dark,
+with the lights of the station showing faintly far down the track. They
+were passing the last of the houses that straggled along the
+unfashionable quarter above the railroad track.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> Most of the houses here
+were dark now. In the Nashs' windows the last light puffed suddenly out
+as they went by.</p>
+
+<p>Down in the town behind them other sleepy little lights were burning
+faintly, or going out, but ahead of them the faintly moonlit road looked
+wide-awake. It was an alluring road. It dipped into wooded hollows, it
+broke suddenly into arbitrary curves and windings but found its way out
+again, and kept on somehow, and gradually lifted itself higher and
+higher toward the crest of the hill five miles away that you reached
+without ever seeming to climb it, to be confronted all at once with the
+only real view between Wells and Green River.</p>
+
+<p>"I used to think Grant's Hill was the end of the world," said Judith
+softly. "Maybe it is. It's funny I can say things like that to you, when
+you only laugh and won't answer. Listen. Isn't it still, so still it
+almost makes a noise."</p>
+
+<p>It was very still. You could feel the pulse of the night here. There was
+a whisper and stir of life in the rustling trees when the road crossed
+some belt of woods; there was a look of blind, creeping life about the
+clustering shadows in stretches of moonlight, and the low-hanging moon
+above the dark fields they passed was a living thing, too, the most
+alive of all. Judith stirred in her corner, and turned and looked at
+it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It's sweet," she said. "And it's ours. It's still May. But we
+can't wish on the moon now; it's too late. And I don't want to wish, I'm
+so comfortable. Aren't you? Well, you needn't answer, then, and you
+needn't hold my hand." She had felt for a hand that avoided hers. With a
+sleepy, satisfied laugh, like a petted kitten purring, she settled
+herself again, with her head against an unresponsive shoulder, and
+pulled an unresponsive arm round her waist.</p>
+
+<p>"You aren't as soft as the cushions&mdash;not nearly. You're pretty hard, but
+I like you. I was afraid to come, but now&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Now what?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing to be afraid of. I'm so happy. There's nobody in the
+world but you and me. Neil, I'm going to sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. Shut your eyes, then, and don't keep staring at me. What
+makes your eyes so bright?"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" >
+<a id="illus3" name="illus3"></a>
+<img src="images/illus3.jpg" alt="'Shut your eyes'" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>"You."</p>
+
+<p>"Shut your eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. Nobody but you and me."</p>
+
+<p>They were really alone in the world now, alone in the heart of the
+night. Their little murmur of talk, so low that they could just hear it
+themselves, had been such a tiny trickle of sound that it did not quite
+break the silence, and now it had died<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> away. Asleep or awake, the
+girl was quite still, with her cheek pressed against the boy's shoulder,
+and her long-lashed eyes tight shut. The horse carried them over the
+moonlit road at a rate of speed that did not seem possible from its
+strange, loping gait. The effect of it was uncanny.</p>
+
+<p>Boy and girl and queer, high-shouldered horse, darkly silhouetted in the
+moonlight, lost to sight in the shadows of tall trees that looked taller
+in the dark, and then coming silently into view again, were like dim,
+flitting shadows in the night; like peculiarly helpless and
+insignificant shadows, restless and purposeless. The moon, soft and far
+away and still, seemed more alive than they did, and more competent to
+adjust their affairs.</p>
+
+<p>They required adjusting. That was in the watching brightness of the
+girl's eyes, fluttering open once or twice, only to close quickly again,
+in the tenseness of the boy's arm around her, in the set of his
+shoulders and lift of his stubborn young chin, in the very air that he
+breathed uneasily, the soft, disturbing air of the May night. It was not
+a boy and girl quarrel that was before them: it was something more. It
+was the strangest hour that had come to them in their secret treasury of
+strange hours that were touched with the glamour of black magic and
+swayed by laws they did not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> know. It might be the darkest hour. It was
+the test hour.</p>
+
+<p>There is no sure and easy way through such hours. If they faced theirs
+unprepared and afraid, so must the rest of the world, the part that is
+older and counted wiser. But this could have been no comfort just then
+to the boy and girl in the antiquated buggy, under the untroubled gaze
+of the wishing moon.</p>
+
+<p>They were almost on the crest of the hill now. One long, upward slant of
+road led straight to it, bare of trees, and silvery in the moonlight. At
+the foot, and just at the edge of a thick belt of woods, the boy pulled
+up as if to rest his horse for the gradual ascent. At his left, hardly
+visible at all to-night unless you stopped your horse to look for it, a
+narrow and overgrown road led off through the trees. Tightening the arm
+that held her cautiously, the boy looked down at the face against his
+shoulder, the faint, half-smile on the lips, and the lightly closed
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The girl did not move. Her cap had slipped off, and one small, bare hand
+clutched the fuzzy white thing tight, as a sleeping child's hand might
+have closed on some favourite toy. Her hair showed silvery blond and
+soft against his dark coat. With a quick, hungry motion, the boy dropped
+his head and kissed it lightly. Then, gripping<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> the reins with a
+firmness that no present activity of the animal called for, he left
+Green River's only noteworthy view without a backward glance, and turned
+his horse into the road through the woods.</p>
+
+<p>For the next few minutes he had no attention to spare for Judith,
+suspiciously quiet in his arms. He could not see her face. It was black
+dark under the trees, dark as if it had never been light. The track was
+wider than it looked, but also rougher. The trees grew close. Branches
+that he brushed aside sprinkled dew into his face. The buggy creaked out
+vain protests and useless warnings. Finally moonlight showed at the end
+of the black tunnel, and the horse, which had been encountering its
+difficulties in resourceful silence, made a faint, snorting comment
+which sounded relieved, and presently, with unexpected jauntiness, swung
+into the road again.</p>
+
+<p>It was technically a road, and it was the wreck of a very good road, but
+it was not in much better shape than the track they had reached it by.
+Aspiring amateurs had sketched it and camera fiends haunted it in their
+day. It was Colonel Everard's favourite bridle path, which naturally
+prevented repairs upon it. But before the railroad went through it had
+been Green River's only link with a wider world. Now a better built but
+more circuitous road had replaced it, designed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> for motoring. No motors
+ever penetrated here, and few carriages. It was left to the ghosts of
+ancient traffic, if they ventured here. The glancing moonlight under the
+close-growing trees might have been full of them to-night.</p>
+
+<p>But the boy was not looking for ghosts or interested in the history of
+the road or its charm, as he hurried his high-shouldered horse along it,
+still responding jauntily. He squared his chin more stubbornly than
+ever, and muttered encouragingly to the horse, and reached for his
+battered whip. Round this corner, beyond this milestone, the stage
+drivers used to make up time when the mail was late. A generous mile of
+almost level road curved ahead of Neil into the moonlight, a fairly
+clean bit of going even now. Judith and Neil were on the old coaching
+road to Wells.</p>
+
+<p>Neil reached for his whip, but did not take it out of the socket. A
+small hand closed over his. The head on his shoulder did not move, but
+dark eyes, watchful and deliberate, opened and looked up at him quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said a cool little voice, "you can take me home."</p>
+
+<p>"You're awake?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I waited to see where you were going, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> what you were going to do,"
+explained Judith simply. They were covering the banner stretch of road
+at a rate the old stage drivers had never emulated. Judith pushed Neil's
+arm away, and sat straight and looked at him. Her cheeks were gloriously
+flushed with the quick motion, and her soft, tumbled hair had broken
+into baby curls round her forehead, but her eyes were a woman's dark,
+unforgiving eyes. Neil gave her one furtive glance, and looked away.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you to take me home," she said.</p>
+
+<p>He made a muttered reply, inarticulate, so that it would have been hard
+to tell whether it was really addressed to Judith or the horse, and bent
+forward over the reins.</p>
+
+<p>The colour deepened in Judith's cheeks, her soft lips tightened into a
+straight line that was like her mother's mouth. Her cool, unhurried
+voice was like her mother's, too: "I knew when we started out I'd have
+trouble with you. Now I don't intend to have any more. I don't want to
+have to tell you again. Take me home."</p>
+
+<p>She had adopted the tone which Green River's self-made gentlewomen like
+Mrs. Theodore Burr mistakenly believed to be effective with servants.
+The boy beside her gave no sign that it was effective with him. He spoke
+softly to the horse again, and flicked at it coaxingly with the whip.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Neil, I am sorry for you," Judith stated presently, with no sympathy
+whatever in her judicial young voice. "I have been awfully good to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Good!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, good. I&mdash;had to be. Because I knew we didn't have much time. I
+knew&mdash;this&mdash;would have to stop some day. I knew it and you knew it, too.
+You always knew it. Well, I've been trying to tell you for a long time
+that it had got to stop. I tried, but you wouldn't let me. We're both
+getting older, too old for this, and I'm going away next year. And some
+things have happened to me, just lately&mdash;last week&mdash;that made me think.
+I've got to be careful. I've got to take care of myself. This has got to
+stop now&mdash;to-night. I wanted to tell you so. That's why I came;
+because&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know why you came."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be cross. Be good, and turn round now, and take me home. Neil,
+I'm not sorry, you know, for&mdash;anything. Ever since that first night at
+the dance you've been so sweet to me. I'm not sorry. Are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"How funny your voice sounds. Why don't you turn round?"</p>
+
+<p>He had no explanation to offer. The buggy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> plunged faster through the
+dark, and Judith braced herself in her corner.</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, turn round. Don't you hear me?"</p>
+
+<p>He gave no sign of hearing. The horse swung gallantly into a bit of road
+where the stage drivers had never been in the habit of hurrying, a
+tricky bit of road, with overhanging rocks jutting out just where you
+might graze them at sudden turns, and with abrupt dips into precipitous
+hollows. One stretched dark ahead of them now. Judith caught her breath
+as they plunged into it, and clutched Neil's arm. He laughed shortly,
+and did not shake off her hand. She pulled at his wrist and shook it.</p>
+
+<p>"Upset us if you want to. We'd go together," he urged, with a logic not
+to be questioned. "Together, and that suits me, Judy."</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, turn round. Neil!" Judith's voice was shrill with sudden terror
+repressed too long, but she struggled to make it steady and cold again,
+in one last effort at control.</p>
+
+<p>"Who do you think you are, Neil Donovan? I tell you to take me home."</p>
+
+<p>He did not even turn to look at her. He was getting the horse down the
+rocky slant of dimly lit road with a patience and concentration which
+there was nobody to appreciate just then. Judith collapsed into her
+corner. There was a faint sound<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> of helpless crying from her, then
+silence as she choked back the tears; silence, and an erect, stubborn
+figure showing oppressively big and dark between Judith and the moon.</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, I'm sorry ... Neil, I can't stand this," came a muffled voice.
+"Please speak to me."</p>
+
+<p>They were on level ground again, and the horse was disposed to make the
+most of it. The boy pulled her into a jolting walk which was not the
+most successful of her gaits, but represented a triumph for him just
+now, and then he turned abruptly to Judith, gathering both her hands
+into his free hand and gripping them tight.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll talk to you now," he said. "It's time I told you. Judith, you and
+I are not going back."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_TWELVE" id="CHAPTER_TWELVE"></a>CHAPTER TWELVE</h2>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"We're not going back," he repeated deliberately.</p>
+
+<p>"We are!" flashed Judith.</p>
+
+<p>"We're not going back. We're never going back."</p>
+
+<p>Judith drew back and stared at him, her hands still in his, and the boy
+stared back with a look that matched her own in his big, deeply lit,
+dark eyes. White faces, with angry, dark eyes, were all that they could
+see clearly, though they were crossing a patch of road where a ragged
+gap in the trees let some of the moonlight through; white faces like
+strangers' faces.</p>
+
+<p>They were only a boy and girl jolting through the woods in the night in
+a rattletrap buggy behind a caricature of a horse, but what looked out
+of their angry eyes and spoke in their tense young voices was greater
+than the immediate issue of their quarrel, and older and wiser than they
+were; as old as the world. Ancient enemies were at war once more. A man
+and a woman were making their age-old fight for mastery over themselves
+and each other.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Never, Judy."</p>
+
+<p>"Where are we going, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"What difference does it make?"</p>
+
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"To Wells. We can make it by morning. I've got the mortgage money with
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Your uncle's?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. What difference does that make? That, or anything? We'd go if we
+hadn't any money at all. We'd have to. Oh, Judith&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know what you're saying. Take me home. What are you laughing
+at?"</p>
+
+<p>"You. You sounded just like them, then, giving me orders&mdash;just like your
+whole rotten crowd, but you're through with them now, and you're through
+ordering me about and making a fool of me. I've been afraid to say my
+soul was my own. It wasn't, I guess. But we're all through with that.
+We're through, Judith."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course. Of course we're through. It's all right. Everything's
+all right, Neil dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Everything's all wrong, and I know whose fault it is now: it's your
+fault. Maybe I only had one chance in a hundred to get on, but one
+chance is enough, and I was taking it. You made me ashamed to take it. I
+was ashamed to do the work that was all I could get to do, and I had my
+head so full of you I couldn't do any work. Mag<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>gie's better than I am.
+She don't sit around with her hands folded and wait for Everard to get
+tired of her. And the whole town don't laugh at her. The whole town
+don't know&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, I said I was sorry. Please don't."</p>
+
+<p>"You've got the smooth ways of them all, but it's too late for that
+between us, Judy. Smooth, lying ways."</p>
+
+<p>"We can't go to Wells, Neil dear. What could we do there? Think."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sick of thinking. I'd get work maybe. I don't know. I don't care.
+Judith&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We can't. Not to-night, Neil. Wait."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sick of waiting. I've got nothing to gain by it. I've done all the
+waiting I could. I've stood all I could. You're the only thing I want in
+the world, and I couldn't wait for you any longer if I could get you
+that way&mdash;and I wouldn't get you. I'd lose you."</p>
+
+<p>"Not to-night. To-morrow, if you really want me to go. To-morrow,
+truly."</p>
+
+<p>"You're lying to me, and I'm tired of it."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Neil&mdash;Neil dear."</p>
+
+<p>"You're lying."</p>
+
+<p>"How dare you say that! I hate you!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's right. We'll talk straight now. It's time."</p>
+
+<p>"I hate you. Don't touch me. You're going<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> to take me home&mdash;you
+must&mdash;and I'm never going to speak to you again. I think you're crazy.
+But I'm not afraid of you&mdash;I'm not afraid."</p>
+
+<p>The low-keyed, hurrying voices broke off abruptly. There was no sound in
+the buggy but Judith's rapid breathing, more and more like sobs, but no
+tears came. The two faces that confronted each other were alike in the
+gloom, white and angry and very young; alike as the faces of enemies are
+when they measure each other's strength in silence. It was a cruel,
+tense little silence, but the sound that broke it was more cruel. It was
+dry and hard and had nothing to do with his own conquering laugh, that
+the girl knew, but it came from the boy.</p>
+
+<p>"How dare you laugh at me. I hate you!" Judith's voice came hoarse and
+unrecognizable.</p>
+
+<p>A hand caught blindly at the reins; another hand closed over it. Then
+there was silence again in the buggy, broken by panting sounds and
+little sobs. At the end of it Judith, forced back into her corner and
+held there, was really crying now, with hysterical sobs that hurt, and
+hot tears that hurt, too.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go," she panted. "I hate you! You've got to let me go."</p>
+
+<p>"What for?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going home. I'm going to get out and walk home."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Ten miles?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd walk a hundred miles to get away from you."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd have to walk farther to do that." The dry little laugh cut
+through the dark again, and Judith struck furiously at the arm that held
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"I hate you!" she sobbed.</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I do&mdash;I do&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care." The boy's voice sounded light and dry, like his laugh.
+"I don't care. Kiss me."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't! I won't! I'll never speak to you again. I'll never forgive
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Lying to me&mdash;fooling me; taking me up and dropping me like Everard does
+to women.... You're no better than he is. You're one of his crowd, but
+you're through with them.... Lying to me, when you do care. You do."</p>
+
+<p>"I hate you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, no, you don't."</p>
+
+<p>Little bursts of confused speech, all they had breath for and more,
+disconnected, not always understood, not always articulate, but always
+angry, came from them, with intervals of silent, panting struggle
+between. The two young creatures in the buggy were struggling in earnest
+now. The struggle was clumsy, like most really significant ones; sudden
+and clumsy and blind. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> two figures swayed aimlessly back and forth.
+The boy and girl were both on their feet now. The boy had dropped the
+reins. Both arms held the girl. Her pinioned arms fought to free
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"Judith, you don't hate me. Say it&mdash;say it."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a id="illus4" name="illus4"></a>
+<img src="images/illus4.jpg" alt="'Judith, you don't hate me. Say it&mdash;say it.'" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p>The two shadowy figures were like one now, but the girl's arms were
+free, pushing the boy away, striking at him impotently.</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't say it. I know. You had to come to-night. You couldn't stay
+away. You don't hate me. You never will. You couldn't. I'm crazy about
+you. You're the only thing that matters, if we should die the next
+minute. Everything's all wrong, and it's not my fault or yours.
+Everything's wrong, and this is wrong, too, but I don't care and you
+don't. Do you? Do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, let me go. I can't breathe."</p>
+
+<p>"I love you."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go."</p>
+
+<p>The shadow figures swayed and then were still. The girl's arms dropped.
+The little, one-sided struggle was over. There was a long, tired sigh,
+and then silence; silence, and one shadow face bending hungrily over the
+other shadow face. "Judith," the boy whispered breathlessly, "do you
+hate me now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Do you want me to let you go? Do you want me to take you home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," came the same answering whisper, the faintest and most uncertain
+of whispers, but two arms, gently freeing themselves, found their way to
+his shoulders, two hands locked behind his head and drew it gently down,
+until the two shadow faces were close once more, and lips that were not
+shadow lips met and clung together; not shadow lips, but hungry and warm
+and alive&mdash;untaught but unafraid young lips, ready for kisses that are
+no two alike and can never come again&mdash;wonderful kisses that blot
+everything out of the changing world but themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"Judith"&mdash;the boy lifted his head at last, and looked down at the face
+against his shoulder, pale and small, but with all the colour and light
+and life that night had taken from the world and hidden, burning
+undimmed in the awakening eyes&mdash;"you don't want me to take you home? You
+don't&mdash;care what happens?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>He could hardly hear her low whisper, but her face was answer enough,
+even for a boy who could not know what had touched it with new beauty,
+but had to guess, as his own heart and the night might teach him.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't care. I don't care."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Judith, you do love me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Oh, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"You're so sweet," he whispered, "I feel as if I'd never kissed you
+before&mdash;or seen you before. I love you, Judith."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I love you and I don't want to hurt you. You know that, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"But nothing's going to take you away from me now."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to hurt you."</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, I don't care what happens. I&mdash;don't&mdash;care."</p>
+
+<p>"Judith!"</p>
+
+<p>Once more her hands drew him close; shy hands, groping uncertainly in
+the dark, and shy lips kissed him. It was the coolest and lightest of
+kisses, but it was worth all the others, if the boy knew how much it
+promised&mdash;more than all her broken speech had promised, more than any
+spoken words.</p>
+
+<p>Judith herself did not know, but some instinct older than she was made
+her whisper: "Be good to me. Will you be good to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Judith."</p>
+
+<p>The boy answered her small, shaken whisper solemnly, as if he were
+taking a formal and irrev<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>ocable vow, but there was no one to listen to
+it here, and bear witness to it as irrevocable. The girl did not answer
+him. Suddenly shy, breathing quickly, and trying to laugh, she slipped
+out of his arms.</p>
+
+<p>The boy let her go. Some time before the trailing reins had been caught
+up and twisted twice round the whip socket. He had done this
+instinctively, he could not have told just when. He bent down and
+untwisted them now, rather slowly and awkwardly, not looking at Judith.
+Then he sat down stiffly beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"You're tired," he said, with new gentleness in his voice. He put an arm
+loosely round her waist in the manner of an affectionate but
+inexperienced parent, and her head dropped on his shoulder. "Very
+tired?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Judith, I'm sorry."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm sorry. How could I be so horrid? What made me? Did I hurt you,
+dear, with my hands?"</p>
+
+<p>"You couldn't hurt me."</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, you know what you said just now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind what I said."</p>
+
+<p>"You said you didn't want anything to take me away from you. Well, if it
+did, if anything did take me away from you&mdash;now, I'd&mdash;&mdash;"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd never forgive you. I couldn't. I'd despise you." This warning came
+in a low, uncertain voice, wasted, as countless warnings have been
+wasted on wiser masculine ears than the boy's. "Look at our moon up
+there. It's glad, I guess&mdash;glad about you and me. Why don't you listen
+to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm thinking, Judith. I've got to think."</p>
+
+<p>"You look very nice when you think. Your eyes look so big and still. You
+look&mdash;beautiful. I could really sleep now, I guess."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't want to. I'm too happy. How late is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's late. We couldn't get home now before awfully late&mdash;two or
+something. And the road's so narrow here, we couldn't turn round. We
+couldn't go home if we wanted to. Could we?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not very well, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad.... Neil."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you thinking now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"You do look beautiful. I don't know just why. I never saw you look just
+like this before; kind,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> but years older than I am, and miles away.
+Neil&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, don't think any more. Just love me.... I love you."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_THIRTEEN" id="CHAPTER_THIRTEEN"></a>CHAPTER THIRTEEN</h2>
+
+<p>Colonel Everard's little party was quite successful enough without the
+guest of honour. At least, it would have seemed so to Judith, if she
+could have looked in upon it just before midnight. A distinguished guest
+of the Colonel's had made an ungrateful criticism of the inner circle,
+on parade for his benefit only the week before at Camp Hiawatha, which
+was elaborately rebuilt now, and rechristened Camp Everard. He
+complained that the Colonel's parties were too successful.</p>
+
+<p>"Too many pretty women," he said, "or they work too hard at it&mdash;dress
+too well, or talk too well&mdash;don't dare to let down. You need more
+background, more men like Grant. You need to be bored. You can't have
+cream without milk. You can't take the essentials of a society and make
+a whole society out of them without adulterating them. It won't last.
+That's why Adam and Eve didn't stay in the garden. They couldn't&mdash;too
+much tension there. They needed casual acquaintances, and you need
+background. You can't get on without it."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We do," said his host.</p>
+
+<p>The distinguished critic was far away from the Colonel's town to-night,
+but the Colonel's party was all that he had complained of; the thing he
+had felt and tried to account for and explain was here, as it was at all
+the Colonel's parties, though a discreet selection of outsiders had been
+admitted to-night; the same sense of effort and tension, of working too
+hard, of a gayety brilliant but forced&mdash;artificial, but justifying the
+elaborate processes that created it by its charm, like some rare
+hothouse flower.</p>
+
+<p>You saw it in quick glimpses of passing faces thrown into strong relief
+by the light of the swinging lanterns, and then dancing out of sight;
+you heard it in strained, sweet laughter, and felt it in the beat of the
+music, and in the whole picture the party made of itself in the garden,
+the restless, changing picture, but this was not all&mdash;it was in the air.
+You could close your eyes and breathe it and feel it. It was unusually
+keen to-night, real, like a thing you could actually touch and see.</p>
+
+<p>You lost the keen sense of it if you looked too closely for signs of it.
+If you overheard bits of talk, they were not always clever at all, or
+even entirely gay. Worried lines showed under elaborate makeup in the
+women's faces, as if Cinderella had put on white gloves to hide smutty
+fingers;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> indeed, though they were trained to forget it and make you
+forget it, they were only so many Cinderellas, after all. Seen too
+closely, there was a look of strain about some of the men's faces.</p>
+
+<p>There was a reason for this look to-night, besides the set of reasons
+which the gentlemen of the Colonel's circle always had for looking
+worried; living beyond their incomes, living in uncertainty of any
+income at all, and other private reasons, different in each case, but
+all quite compelling; there was a reason, and the Colonel's guest of the
+week before was connected with it. Others would follow him soon, secret
+conferences would take place unrecorded, the Colonel's private telephone
+wire would be busy, and the telegrams he received would be
+frequent and not intelligible to the casual reader. These were the
+months before election, when the things that were going to happen began
+to happen. Their beginnings were obscure. The man in the street talked
+politics, but the man with his hands in the game kept still. Even when
+they slipped away to the smoking-room, or gathered at the edge of the
+lawn in groups of two and three that scattered as their host approached,
+the Colonel's guests were not discussing politics to-night.</p>
+
+<p>No tired lines were permitted to show in Mrs. Randall's face. Her fresh,
+cool prettiness was of the valuable kind that shows off best at the
+height<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> of the evening, when other women look tired. If she was aware of
+the fact and made the most of it, overworking her charming smile and
+wide-open, tranquil eyes, you could not blame her. It was not the time
+or place to overlook any weapons you might have. Whatever duties or
+privileges belonged to the Colonel's inner circle, you had to take care
+of yourself if you were part of it, and you learned to; that was evident
+from her manner. It seemed easy for her to-night. Just now she was
+sharing a bench and an evening cloak with Mrs. Burr, smooth, dark head
+close to her fluffy, blond one, and smiling into her face confidingly,
+as if all that lady's purring, disconnected remarks were equally
+agreeable to her.</p>
+
+<p>"We miss Judy so much," she said sweetly.</p>
+
+<p>"I can see just how much, dear," said Judith's mother more sweetly
+still.</p>
+
+<p>"And it's so long since she's been here."</p>
+
+<p>"She has her school work to do. She's just a child. She's not well
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"But I got the idea he meant this to be her evening."</p>
+
+<p>"He did."</p>
+
+<p>"There he is." The third person singular, unqualified, could mean only
+one gentleman to the ladies of the Colonel's circle, and that gentleman
+was passing close to them now, though he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> seemed unconscious of the
+fact. He was guiding Mrs. Kent through an old-fashioned waltz with
+elaborate precision. His concentration upon the performance increased as
+he passed them, and he did not look away from his partner's face, though
+it was not absorbingly attractive just now. The piquant profile had a
+blurred look, and the cheeks were flushed under the daintily calculated
+touch of rouge. Mrs. Burr turned to her friend with a faint but
+relentless light of amusement in her narrowed eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Edie's had just one cocktail too many."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." They ignored the more obvious fact that the Colonel had. The
+evening had reached the stage when he always had.</p>
+
+<p>"He hasn't danced with you many times, Minna dear."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm tired of dancing, but don't let me keep you here, Lil."</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't seen him dance with you at all."</p>
+
+<p>"He hasn't yet."</p>
+
+<p>"No?" said Mrs. Burr, very casually.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Lil, I think Ranny wants you. He's wandering about, looking vague."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you want me, dear? Well, Ranny always wants me."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Randolph Sebastian, discovering her suddenly, gave exaggerated proof
+of this as he carried<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> her off. If the Colonel's secretary had really
+been recruited from a dance hall, he had profited by what he saw there,
+and showed it in every quick, graceful turn he made. His partner was the
+type of woman that dancing might have been invented to show off; it gave
+her lazy, graciously built body a reason for being, and put a flicker of
+meaning into her shallow eyes so that she was not floridly pretty any
+longer, but beautiful. This was peculiarly apparent when she danced with
+Mr. Sebastian. She seemed to have been created for the purpose of
+dancing with him; it could not have been more apparent if their
+elaborate game of devotion to each other had been real, and they were
+really lovers.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Clifford Kent, suddenly appearing alone, slipped into Mrs. Burr's
+empty place. Her dance with the Colonel was over. "My Lord's in fine
+form to-night," she confided without preliminary. "We're going to play
+blind-man's buff after the duchess goes home." The duchess was Mrs.
+Grant, the Honourable Joe's wife, still the first lady of Green River,
+but the younger women were beginning to make fun of her discreetly
+behind her back. "He told me the tiger story." This represented a
+triumph. Getting the Colonel's smoking-room stories at first hand
+instead of second hand, from their husbands, was the only form of
+rivalry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> about which these ladies were frank with each other. "I got it
+out of Cliff first, anyway. He said he couldn't tell me, but he did. I
+made him. Where was Harry last night?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Cliff had a crowd of men locked into his den until two, talking. Didn't
+Harry know about it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What were they doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just talking. The Colonel and I don't know who else. I heard two
+strange voices, and I didn't hear Harry's voice. Didn't Harry know?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so. What did they talk about?"</p>
+
+<p>"Campaign stuff&mdash;prohibition or something. Cliff wouldn't tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"Was Teddy Burr there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't hear him. What do you care?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care."</p>
+
+<p>"If Harry didn't know, I ought not to have told you, but I can't help it
+now."</p>
+
+<p>"Edith, don't go. Wait."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't. I have this next with my Lord, too. I'm going to sit it out in
+the library and meet him inside. The duchess is getting jealous.
+Besides, there comes the dragon." Judge Saxon, looking shabby and old
+and tired, was making a circuitous way toward them. "Let me go. Oh,
+darling&mdash;" she put her small, flushed face suddenly close to her
+friend's to ask the question, and after it,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> fluttered away without
+waiting for the answer, leaving the echo of her pretty, empty laugh
+behind&mdash;"why didn't Judith come? What's the real reason? Has anybody
+been making trouble for her here? Never mind. You needn't tell me.
+Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Randall closed her eyes and pressed two fingers against her temples
+for a moment, and then looked up with almost her usual welcoming smile
+at Judge Saxon, who had come close to her, and stood looking down at her
+keenly with his kind, near-sighted, blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Hiding?" he said. "Tired?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not hiding from you. Take care of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Minna," he decided, "you little girls aren't so nice to me unless
+you're in wrong somehow and feel sorry for yourselves. What's the
+matter? Where's Harry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Inside somewhere. Don't ask me any more questions. I've answered all I
+can to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. I'll just sit here and enjoy the view and keep the other
+boys away."</p>
+
+<p>The view was hardly one to promote unmixed enjoyment. The two settled
+into a friendly silence in their corner, broken by an occasional quiet
+word in the Judge's intimate, drawling voice. Around them the temper of
+the party was changing, and a series of little signs marked the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> general
+change. More men crowded into the smoking-room between dances, and they
+stayed longer. Mrs. Grant left first according to her established
+privilege, and a scattering of other guests followed her. Nobody seemed
+to miss them or to be conspicuously happier without them. There was a
+heavy, dull look about the passing faces, a heaviness and staleness now
+about the whole atmosphere of the party, and this, like the unnatural
+excitement which it followed, and like the light, endless fire of
+inconsequent, malicious chatter, always the same, whether it meant
+nothing or meant real trouble brewing, was an essential part of all the
+Colonel's parties, too.</p>
+
+<p>The Judge regarded the change with faraway eyes, as he talked on in the
+wistful voice that goes with talking your own private language openly to
+people who cannot answer you in it.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't need the moon, do we, with those lanterns? But it was here first,
+and will be a long time after, and it's a good moon, too; quite
+decorative for a moon."</p>
+
+<p>"I hate it," said Mrs. Randall, with a personal vindictiveness not
+usually directed against natural phenomena. The Judge took no immediate
+notice of it. More guests had gone. In a cleared circle in the heart of
+the lanternlight Mrs. Kent was performing one of the more expurgated
+and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> perfunctory of her dances for the benefit of the select audience
+that remained, to scattered, perfunctory applause. The motif of it was
+faintly Spanish.</p>
+
+<p>"Paper doll," commented the Judge, "that's all that girl is. You and
+Harry are the best of them, Minna. They're a faky lot, all of
+them&mdash;about as real as a house of cards. It looks big, but it will all
+tumble down if you pull one card out&mdash;only one card. The devil of it is
+to know which card to take hold of, and who's to pull it out if you
+haven't got the nerve? I haven't. I'm too old. But it's a comfort to
+think of it. Don't you agree with me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't really hear you."</p>
+
+<p>"Minna, I've known you since you were two. Can't you tell me what's the
+matter? You're frightened."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him for a minute as if she could, turning a paling face to
+him, with the mask off and the eyes miserable, then she tried to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing's the matter. Nothing new."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, there's enough wrong here without anything new," said the Judge,
+rebuffed but still gentle. "I won't trouble you any longer, my dear.
+There comes Harry."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Randall's husband, an unmistakable figure even with the garden and
+the broad, unlighted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> lawn between, stood in the rectangle of light that
+one of the veranda windows made, slender and boyish still in spite of
+the slight stoop of his shoulders, and then started across the lawn
+toward the garden.</p>
+
+<p>His wife got rather stiffly to her feet and waited, looking away from
+the lighted enclosure, over the low hedge, at the lawn. Her eyes were
+dizzy from the flickering lights. She could not see him clearly, and the
+figure that followed him across the lawn was harder to see.</p>
+
+<p>It was a man's figure, slightly taller than her husband's. The man had
+not come from the veranda windows, or from the house at all, he had
+slipped round one corner of the house, stood still in the shelter of it,
+seeming to hesitate there, and then plunged suddenly across the lawn at
+a queer little staggering run. Twice she saw him stand still, so still
+that she lost sight of him under the trees, as if he had slipped away
+through the dark.</p>
+
+<p>In the garden Mrs. Kent's performance was over, and the game of
+blind-man's buff was beginning. It was a novelty, and acclaimed even at
+this stage of the evening. Lillian Burr's shrill laugh and Edith Kent's
+pretty, childish one could be heard through the other sounds. They were
+trying to blindfold the Colonel, who struggled but laughed, too, looking
+somehow vacuous and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> old, with his longish, white hair straggling across
+his forehead. No one in the garden but Minna Randall had attention to
+spare for an arriving guest, expected or unexpected.</p>
+
+<p>Which was he? He was out of sight again, but this time she had seen him
+reach the edge of the lighted enclosure. Was he gone, or waiting
+outside, or had he stepped under the trellis of the rose arbour, to
+appear suddenly at the end of it and among them? Instinctively she kept
+her eyes upon it, though her husband had already passed through. She was
+watching for the figure that it might frame next.</p>
+
+<p>"Harry," she said to her husband, who had seen her and elbowed his way
+to her, and stood beside her, looking pale and tired like herself in the
+lanternlight and not boyish at all, "who was that man? Who was it
+following you?"</p>
+
+<p>He paid no attention to her question. He did not seem to hear it. He put
+a hand on her arm, and she could feel that it trembled.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Harry, what is it?" she said. "I've had such a horrible evening.
+I'm so afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid, Minna," he said very gently, "but you must come to the
+telephone. Norah's calling you. She's just come home. She wants to tell
+you something about Judith."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_FOURTEEN" id="CHAPTER_FOURTEEN"></a>CHAPTER FOURTEEN</h2>
+
+<p>"Judith?" Mrs. Randall took her husband's news quietly, with something
+that was almost relief in her face, the relief that comes when a
+gathering storm breaks at last, and you learn what it is you have been
+afraid of, though you must go on being afraid. "What is it? Is she ill,
+Harry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come and talk to Norah."</p>
+
+<p>"No, we'll go straight home."</p>
+
+<p>"But she's not there, Minna. That's all Norah'll say to me, but she's
+got some idea where she is, and says she'll tell you. Judith isn't
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"It must be nearly morning."</p>
+
+<p>"It's two."</p>
+
+<p>"It was after nine when we started."</p>
+
+<p>"Minna, didn't you hear what I said?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Randall's face had not changed as she heard; it looked
+unchangeable, like some fixed but charming mask that she wore. The lips
+still smiled though they had stiffened slightly, and she watched the two
+women's attempts to blindfold the Colonel&mdash;unaided now, but hilariously<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+applauded by the circle around her&mdash;with the same mild, interested eyes,
+wide-set and Madonna calm.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, Judith's not there. What does Norah know? Why don't you do
+something? Where is she?... My God, look at them. What are they doing
+now? Look at Everard."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Burr had drawn the knot suddenly tight in the white scarf she was
+manipulating, and slipped out of the Colonel's arms and out of reach. He
+followed, and then swung round and stumbled awkwardly after Edith Kent,
+who had brushed past him, leaving a light, challenging kiss on his
+forehead, and was further guiding him with her pretty, empty laugh. The
+game of blind-man's buff was under way.</p>
+
+<p>Crowding the garden enclosure, swaying this way and that and threatening
+to overflow it, a pushing, struggling mass of people kept rather
+laboriously out of one another's way and the Colonel's, not so much
+amused by the effort as they were pretending to be; people with heavy
+and stupid faces who had never looked more irrevocably removed from
+childhood than now that they were playing a children's game.</p>
+
+<p>In the heart of the crowd, now plunging ahead of it, now lost in it, the
+first gentleman of Green River disported himself. His white head was
+easy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> to follow through the crowd, and the thing that made you follow it
+was evident even now&mdash;much of his old dignity, and the charm that was
+peculiarly his; you saw it in an occasional stubborn shake of his
+beautifully shaped head, in the grace of the hand that caught at some
+flying skirt and missed it. He was the first gentleman of Green River
+still, but he was something else.</p>
+
+<p>His white hair straggled across his forehead moist and dishevelled, and
+his face showed flushed and perspiring against the white of the scarf.
+The trailing ends of the scarf flapped grotesquely about his head, and
+the high, splendidly modelled forehead was obscured and the keen eyes
+were hidden. The beauty of the face was lost, and the mouth showed thin
+lipped and sensual. The Colonel was really a stumbling, red-faced old
+man.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at him. That's what she's seen. This was Judith's party. That's
+what we've hung on in this town for till it's too late to break loose.
+We never can get away now. We can't&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Keep still, Harry. Do you want to be heard? Did any one hear you at the
+telephone? Keep still and come home."</p>
+
+<p>"You're right. You're wonderful. You don't lose your nerve."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't afford to, and neither can you. Come&mdash;&mdash; Oh, Harry, look. I saw
+him following you.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> What does he want? What's the matter? What is he
+going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Randall had adjusted her cloak deliberately, and turned to pilot
+her husband out of the garden, slipping a firm little hand through his
+arm. Now she clung to him and stood still, silent after her little fire
+of excited questions. The entrance to the garden was blocked. An
+uninvited and unexpected guest was standing there.</p>
+
+<p>His entrance had been unheralded, and his welcome was slow to come. The
+crowd had closed in round the Colonel, with Edith Kent caught suddenly
+in his arms, and giving a creditable imitation of attempting to escape.
+Interested silence and bursts of laughter indicated the progress of it
+clearly, though the two were entirely out of sight. Nobody saw the
+newcomer except the Randalls.</p>
+
+<p>He stood in the entrance to the rose arbour, clutching at the trellis
+with one unsteady hand, and managing to keep fairly erect, a slightly
+built, swaying figure, black-haired and hatless. He kept one hand behind
+him, awkwardly, as a shy boy guards a favourite plaything. He was
+staring into the crowd in the garden as if he could see through into the
+heart of it, but had not the intellect just then to understand what he
+saw there.</p>
+
+<p>It was the man Mrs. Randall had seen lurking in the shadow of the trees,
+but he was no mysterious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> stranger, though here in the light of the
+lanterns she hardly recognized him as she looked at his pale, excited
+face; it showed an excitement quite unaccounted for by the perfectly
+obvious fact that he was drunk, and entirely unconnected with that fact.
+Here and there on the outskirts of the crowd some one turned and saw
+him, too, and stared at him. They all knew him. He was Neil Donovan's
+cousin, the discredited young lawyer, Charlie Brady.</p>
+
+<p>He did not speak or move. He only stood still and looked at them with
+vague, puzzled eyes, and lips that twitched as if he wanted to speak,
+but standing so, he had the centre of the stage. He could not command
+it, he had pushed his way into it doggedly, uncertain what to do first,
+but he was there. One by one his audience had become conscious of it,
+and were confronting him startled and uncertain, too. Young Chester
+Gaynor elbowed his way to the front, but stopped there, grinning at the
+invader, restrained perhaps by a lady's voice, which was to be heard
+admonishing him excitedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you get hurt, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"How did he get here? Why can't somebody get him out?" other excited
+ladies inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Get Judge Saxon," directed Mr. J. Cleveland Kent's calm and
+authoritative voice.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Get Sebastian. Where is the fellow? Is he afraid?" demanded the
+Honourable Joe from the extreme rear. Some one laughed hysterically. It
+was Mrs. Burr. The laugh was quickly hushed, but the new guest had heard
+it, though no other sound seemed to have impressed him. He laughed, too,
+a dry, broken ghost of a laugh, as cracked and strange as his voice,
+which he now found abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Lillie," he called. "Hello, Lillie dear,"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Burr was not heard to reply to this affectionate greeting, but he
+hardly paused for a reply. His light, high, curiously detached sounding
+voice talked on with a kind of uncanny fluency.</p>
+
+<p>"Lillie," he urged cordially, "I heard you. I know you're there. Come
+out and let's have a look at you. I don't see anything of you lately.
+You're too grand for me. I don't care. I'm in love with a prettier girl.
+But you used to treat me all right, Lillie dear, and I treated you
+right, too. I never told. A gentleman don't tell. And you were straight
+with me. You never double-crossed me, like you and the dago Sebastian do
+to Everard. Everard! That's who I want to talk to. Where is he?"</p>
+
+<p>At the mention of the name his wavering gaze had steadied and
+concentrated suddenly on the centre of the group in the garden, and now,
+while<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> he looked, the crowd parted. Pushing his way through, the Colonel
+faced his uninvited guest.</p>
+
+<p>The great man was not at his best. His most ardent admirer could hardly
+have claimed it. He had pulled the muffling scarf down from his eyes,
+but was still tearing at the knot impatiently. Mrs. Kent had come
+fluttering ineffectively after him, catching at his arm. He struck her
+hands away, and pushed her back, addressing her with a lack of ceremony
+which outsiders were not often permitted to hear him employ toward a
+member of his favoured circle.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep out of this, Edith, and you keep quiet, Lil. You girls make me
+sick," he snapped. "Half the trouble in this town comes because you
+can't learn to hold your tongues. You'd better learn. You're going to
+pay for it if you don't, and don't you lose sight of that. Well, Brady,
+what does this mean? What can I do for you?"</p>
+
+<p>The ring of authority was in his voice again, as if he had called it
+back by sheer will power. He had stepped forward alone, and stood
+looking up at his guest, still framed in the sheltering trellis, and his
+blurred eyes cleared and grew keen as he looked, regarding him
+indifferently, like some refractory but mildly amusing animal. His
+guest's defiant eyes avoided his, and the ineffective, swaying figure
+seemed to shrink and droop and grow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> smaller, but it was a dignified
+figure still and a dangerous one. There was the snarling menace of
+impotent but inevitable rebellion about it, of men who fight on with
+their backs against the wall; a menace that was not new born to-night,
+but the gradual growth of years, just the number of years that the
+Colonel had spent in Green River.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, sir," stammered his guest.</p>
+
+<p>"Then apologize and get out."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you'll find you can, Brady."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't. I've got to ask you a few questions."</p>
+
+<p>They seemed to be slow in framing themselves. There was a little pause,
+the kind of pause that for no apparent reason deprives you for the
+moment of any desire to move or speak. The unassuming figure of the
+young man under the trellis stood still, swaying only slightly from side
+to side. A deprecating smile appeared on his lips, as if his errand were
+distasteful to him and he wished to apologize for it. Gradually the
+smile faded and the eyes grew steady again and unnaturally bright. He
+held himself stiffly erect where he stood for a moment, took a few
+lurching steps forward, paused, and then plunged suddenly across the
+garden toward Colonel Everard.</p>
+
+<p>It would have been hard to tell which came first, the little, stumbling
+run forward, the Colonel's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> instinctive move to check it, the stampede
+of the devotees of the time-honoured game of blind-man's buff, acting
+now with a promptness and spontaneity which they had not displayed in
+that game, Lillian Burr's hysterical scream, the snarling words from the
+Colonel that silenced it, or the quick flash of metal. It had all
+happened at once. But now, in an amphitheatre of scared faces, as far
+behind as the limits of the garden enclosure would allow, Mr. Brady and
+his host stood facing each other alone, and the Colonel, now entirely
+himself, with the high colour fading out of his cheeks, was looking with
+cool and unwavering eyes straight into the barrel of Mr. Brady's
+revolver.</p>
+
+<p>It was a clumsy, old-fashioned little weapon. Brady's thin hand grasped
+it firmly, as if some stronger hand than his own were steadying his. He
+laughed an ineffective laugh, like a boastful boy's, but there was a
+threat in it, too.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you got to say for yourself? I'll give you a chance to say
+it," he stated magnanimously, "but you shan't say a word against her.
+She was always a good girl. She is a good girl. What have you done with
+her? Where is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't make yourself altogether clear, Brady," said the Colonel
+smoothly.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Maggie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Maggie?" The Colonel's eyes swept the circle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> of his guests
+deliberately, as if to assure himself that no lady of that name was
+among them.</p>
+
+<p>"Maggie. You know the name well enough." The sound of it seemed to give
+the lady's champion new courage; it flamed in his eyes, hot, and quick
+to burn itself out, but while it lasted, even a gentleman who had
+learned to face drawn revolvers as indifferently as the Colonel might do
+well to be afraid of him. "Maggie's missing. I'm going to find her.
+That's all I want of you. I won't ask you who's worked on her and made a
+fool of her. I won't ask you how far she's been going. But I want her
+back before the whole town knows. I want to find her and find her quick.
+She's a good girl and a decent girl. She's going to keep her good name.
+She's coming home."</p>
+
+<p>"Commendable," said the Colonel, not quite smoothly enough. His guest
+was past listening to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Maggie. That's all I want. You're getting off easy. Luck's with you.
+I've stood a lot from you, the same as the town has. It will stand a lot
+more, and I will. Get Maggie back. Get her back and give her to me and
+leave her alone, and I'll eat out of your hand and starve when you don't
+feed me, the same as the rest"&mdash;he came two wavering steps nearer, and
+dropped his voice to a dry quaver meant to be confidential, a grotesque<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
+and sinister parody of a confidence&mdash;"the rest, that don't know what I
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I won't tell. Don't be afraid. A gentleman don't tell, and there's
+nobody that can but me. Young Neil don't know. The luck's with you, sir,
+just the same as it always was."</p>
+
+<p>"I've had enough of this. Get home, Brady," cried the Colonel, in a
+voice that was suddenly wavering and high, like an old man's, but his
+guest only smiled and nodded wisely, beginning to sway as he stood, but
+still gripping the clumsy revolver tight.</p>
+
+<p>"Just the same as it was when old Neil Donovan died."</p>
+
+<p>"Get home," shrilled the Colonel again, but his guest pursued the tenor
+of his thoughts untroubled, still with the look of an amiably disposed
+fellow-conspirator on his weak face, a maddening look, even if his words
+conveyed no sting of their own.</p>
+
+<p>"Neil Donovan," he crooned, "my father's own half-brother, and a good
+uncle to me, and a gentleman, too. He sold rum over a counter, but he
+was a gentleman, for he didn't talk too much. A gentleman don't tell."</p>
+
+<p>But the catalogue of his uncle's perfections, whether in place here or
+not, was to proceed no further. The audience pressed closer, as eager
+to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> look on at a fight as it was to keep out of one. There was a new and
+surprising development in this one. The two men had closed with each
+other, and it was not the half-crazed boy who had made the attack, but
+the Colonel himself.</p>
+
+<p>It was a sudden and awkward attack, and there was something stranger
+about it still. The Colonel was angry. He had tried to knock the weapon
+out of the boy's hand, failed, and tried instinctively, still, to get
+possession of it, but he was not making an adequate and necessary
+attempt to disarm him, he was no longer adequate or calm. He was angry,
+suddenly angry with the poor specimen of humanity that was making its
+futile attempt at protest and rebellion, as if it were an equal and an
+enemy. His face was distorted and his eyes were dull and unseeing. His
+breath came in panting gasps, and he made inarticulate little sounds in
+his throat. He struck furious and badly directed blows.</p>
+
+<p>It was a curious thing to see, in the heart of the great man's admiring
+circle, at the climax of his most successful party of the year. It did
+not last long. The two struggling figures broke away from each other,
+and the boy staggered backward and stood with the revolver still in his
+hand. He was a little sobered by the struggle, and a little weakened by
+it, pale and dangerous, with a fanatic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> light in his eyes. Some one who
+had an eye for danger signals, if the Colonel had not, had made his
+unobtrusive way forward, and joined him now. He was not the most
+formidable looking of allies, but he stood beside them as if he had a
+right to be there, and the Colonel turned to him as if he recognized it.</p>
+
+<p>"Hugh, you heard what he said?" he appealed; "you heard?"</p>
+
+<p>"Judge, you keep out of this," Brady called, "keep out, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Judge Saxon, keeping a casual hand on his most prominent client's arm,
+stood regarding Mr. Brady with mild and friendly blue eyes. He had quite
+his usual air of being detached from his surroundings, but benevolently
+interested in them.</p>
+
+<p>"Charlie," he said, as if he were recognizing Mr. Brady for the first
+time at this critical moment, and deriving pleasure from it. "Why,
+Charlie," his voice became gently reproachful, but remained friendly,
+too. "Everard, this boy don't mean a word he says," he went on, with
+conviction, "he's excited and you're excited, too. This is a pretty poor
+time for you to get excited, Everard."</p>
+
+<p>"You're right, Hugh," muttered the Judge's most prominent client
+thickly; "you're right. Get him away. Get him home."</p>
+
+<p>"He's a good boy," pronounced the Judge.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was not the obvious description of Mr. Brady just at that moment.
+There was only friendly amusement in the Judge's drawling voice and
+shrewd eyes, but back of it, unmistakably there, was something that made
+every careless word worth listening to. Mr. Brady was resisting it. His
+face worked pitifully.</p>
+
+<p>"Judge, I told you to keep out. I don't want to hurt you."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, Charlie."</p>
+
+<p>"Every word I say is God's truth, Judge."</p>
+
+<p>The Judge did not contradict this sweeping statement. He was studying
+Mr. Brady's weapon with some interest. "Your uncle's," he commented,
+pleased. "Why, I didn't know you still owned that thing, Charlie."</p>
+
+<p>"I want Maggie. I want&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you what you want," offered the Judge, amicably, "you want to
+hand that thing to me, and go home."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Brady received this suggestion in silence, a silence which left his
+audience uncertain how deeply he resented it. Indeed, they were
+painfully uncertain, and showed it. Bits of advice reached the Judge's
+ears, contradictory, though much of it sound, but he took no notice of
+it. He only smiled his patient and wistful smile and waited, like a man
+who knew what would happen next.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Hand it to me," he repeated gently.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't, Judge." Mr. Brady's weapon wavered, and then steadied itself.
+His thin body trembled. The fanatic light in his eyes blazed bright. The
+excitement which had gripped him, too keen to last long, reached its
+climax now in one last burst of hysterical speech.</p>
+
+<p>"He's a liar and a thief," he asserted, uncontradicted. He was not to be
+contradicted. There was a dignity of its own about the hysterical
+indictment, grotesque as it was, an unforgettable suggestion of truth.
+"He's a thief and a murderer, too. I don't have to tell what I know.
+Everybody knows. You all know, all of you, and you don't dare to tell.
+He's murdering the town."</p>
+
+<p>The high, screaming voice broke off abruptly. Mr. Brady, still with the
+echo of his big words in his ears and apparently dazed by it, stood
+looking blankly into the Judge's steady and friendly eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't&mdash;I won't&mdash;&mdash;" he stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"Hand it to me," said the Judge, as if no interruption had occurred. For
+a moment the boy before him looked too dull and dazed to obey or to
+hear. Then, as suddenly as if some unseen hand had struck it out of his,
+the revolver dropped to the ground, and he collapsed, sobbing
+heartbrokenly, into the Judge's arms.</p>
+
+<p>He was a heroic figure no longer. The alien<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> forces that made him one
+had deserted him abruptly, and he looked unworthy of their support
+already, only an inconsiderable creature of jangled nerves and
+hysterical speech, which would be discredited if you looked at him, even
+if it still echoed in your ears. The Judge, holding him and quieting
+him, looked allied with him, humble and discredited, too. The relieved
+audience hung back for a moment, taking in the full force of the
+picture, before it broke ranks to crowd round the Colonel and offer him
+belated support. The Colonel said a few inaudible words to Judge Saxon,
+and then turned from him and his protégé with the air of washing his
+hands of the whole affair. He looked surprisingly unruffled by it, even
+stimulated by it. The interruption to his party was over.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It ended as it had begun, the most successful party of the year. Mr.
+Brady's invasion was not the first unscheduled event which had enlivened
+a party at the Birches. There was more open and general speculation
+about the fact that the Randalls left immediately after, did not linger
+over their good-nights, and were obviously not permitted by their host
+to do so.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Randall, leaning back in her corner with her hand tight in Harry's,
+and her long-lashed eyes, that were like Judith's, tightly shut, showed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+the full strain of the evening in her pale face. She was a woman who did
+not look tired easily, but she was also a woman who could not afford to
+look tired.</p>
+
+<p>There was no appeal or charm about her pale face now, only a naked look
+of hardness and strain. Her husband, staring straight ahead of him with
+troubled eyes, and his weak, boyish mouth set in a hard, worried line,
+spoke rapidly and disconnectedly not of Judith, or the Colonel's ominous
+coldness to him, but of Mr. Brady.</p>
+
+<p>"Maggie's a bad lot," he was explaining for approximately the fifth time
+as they whirled into the drive and under their own dark windows. "She
+always was. Everard isn't making away with the belle of Paddy Lane. Not
+yet. He's not that far down. But that dope about old Neil Donovan&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Harry, hush," his wife said, "here we are. What do you care about
+Brady?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," he whispered, his arm tightening round her as he lifted her
+down. "I don't care about anything in the world but Judith."</p>
+
+<p>"Neither do I. Not really," she said in a hurried, shaken voice that was
+not like her own, "you believe that, don't you, Harry?"</p>
+
+<p>He did not answer. Gathering up her skirts, she followed him silently to
+the front of the house,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> single file along the narrow boardwalk, not yet
+taken up for the summer, creaking loudly under their feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Look," she whispered, catching at his arm. The front of the house was
+dark except for two lights, a flickering lamp that was being carried
+nearer to them through the hall, and a soft, shaded light that showed at
+a bedroom window. The window was Judith's. He fumbled for his key, but
+the door opened before them. Norah, her forbidding face more militant
+than ever in the flickering light of the kerosene hand-lamp she held,
+her white pompadour belligerently erect, and her brown eyes maliciously
+alight, peered at them across the door chain, and then gingerly admitted
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a sweet time of night to be coming home to the only child you've
+got," she commented, "why do you take the trouble to come home at all?"</p>
+
+<p>It was a characteristic greeting from her. If it had not been, Mrs.
+Randall would not have resented it now. She clutched at the old woman's
+unresponsive shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is she?" she demanded breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"Judith is it you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes."</p>
+
+<p>"How should I know how she spends her even<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>ings? At some of the girls'
+to-night. Rena Drew's maybe. I don't know. It's a new thing for you to
+care. She was late in, and it's no wonder I was worried. She's like my
+own to me. But she needs her sleep now. You'd better go softly
+upstairs."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean she's here?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it to you?" Norah, one bony hand clutching the newel post as if
+it were a negotiable weapon of defense, and her brown eyes flashing as
+if she were capable of using any weapon for Judith, barred the way up
+the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, she needs her sleep, poor lamb&mdash;poor lamb," she said, "and
+you're not to go near her to-night. You're to promise me that. But she's
+here fast enough. My lamb is safe at home in her own bed."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_FIFTEEN" id="CHAPTER_FIFTEEN"></a>CHAPTER FIFTEEN</h2>
+
+<p>On an afternoon in June a year later than the interrupted party at the
+Everards' a young man sat at Mr. Theodore Burr's desk in Judge Saxon's
+outer office. It was still technically Mr. Burr's desk, but the young
+man looked entirely at home there. A litter of papers which that
+fastidious gentleman would never have permitted himself now covered it,
+and the air was faintly scented with the smoke of a cigarette widely
+popular in Green River, but not with devotees of twenty-five-cent
+cigars, like Mr. Burr. The bulky volume open on the desk was thumbed and
+used as Mr. Burr had never used any book that looked or was so heavy.
+The book was Thayer on Constitutional Law, and the young man dividing
+his attention between it and Main Street under his window flooded with
+June sunshine was Neil Donovan.</p>
+
+<p>He divided his attention unequally, as Main Street late on that sunny
+afternoon might persuade the most studious of young men to do. The
+square was crowded&mdash;crowded, it is true, much as a busy street on the
+stage is crowded, where the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> same overworked set of supers pass and
+repass. The group of bareheaded girls now pacing slowly by arm in arm
+under the window were returning from what was approximately their fourth
+visit that afternoon to the post-office, the ice-cream parlours, the new
+gift shop and tea-room, or some kindred attraction. The Nashes' new
+touring car, driven by the prettiest girl in Willard's June house party,
+under the devoted instruction of Willard himself, was whirling through
+the shopping district for at least the third time.</p>
+
+<p>However, it was an imposing pageant enough, though the boy at the window
+did not appear to find it so, regarding it with approving but grave
+eyes, and returning Mr. Nash's flourishing salute unsmilingly&mdash;a brave
+pageant of gay and flimsy gowns, of youth returning to the town, and
+movement and colour, and June fairly begun.</p>
+
+<p>June so far was like other Junes in Green River. Colonel Everard and the
+season of social and political intrigues were here. Rallies in the town
+hall would soon begin. Men with big names in state politics would make
+speeches there, while the Colonel presided with his usual self-effacing
+charm, which did not advertise the known fact that he was a bigger power
+in the state than any of them. The good old question of prohibition was
+the chief issue, as usual; discreet representatives of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> people
+would, according to a catch phrase at the capital, vote for prohibition,
+and then go round to the best hotel and get drunk; and discreet
+politicians, like the Colonel, would make money out of both these facts
+in their own way.</p>
+
+<p>Behind the closed door of Judge Saxon's office low-keyed, monotonous
+voices were talking, and a secret conference was going on. Troubled
+times were here again for those deep in the Colonel's councils. They
+were never sure of a permanent place there, but always on the watch for
+one of his sudden changes of front, which threatened not only his
+enemies but his friends. But he had recovered and held their confidence
+before, and he could this year.</p>
+
+<p>All scandals of the year before were decently hidden. Maggie Brady was
+missing and continued to be missing. By this time it was the general
+verdict that she had always been bound to come to a bad end, and Charlie
+Brady to drink himself to death. Nobody interrupted his attempts to do
+so. His drunken outburst of speech had echoed a growing sentiment in the
+town, but it grew slowly, for under its thin veneer of sophistication
+Green River was only a New England town still, conservative and slow to
+change.</p>
+
+<p>Green River had not changed much in a year, but Neil Donovan's fortunes
+had. Nobody<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> knew the full history of the change except Neil, but others
+could have thrown sidelights upon it, among them Mrs. Randall's second
+maid, Mollie. On the morning after that same party of the Colonel's,
+which Mr. Brady attended so unexpectedly, and Judith did not attend,
+Mollie opened the Randalls' door to an early caller.</p>
+
+<p>Even in curl papers, she was usually too much for the young man now on
+the doorstep. He was in the habit of looking at his boots and addressing
+them instead of her, and Mollie quite understood that, for they were
+shabby boots. They looked shabbier than ever to-day, and so did his
+shiny coat, but his eyes were steady and clear, and there was clear
+colour in his cheeks, as if he had had the only restful and well-earned
+sleep in Green River.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Judith," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at home," said Mollie, in a manner successfully copied from French
+maids in the ten, twenty, thirties.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense. Her curtains aren't up," replied the young man who was
+usually made speechless by it.</p>
+
+<p>"She's asleep," conceded Mollie, in a manner more colloquial but also
+more forbidding. "She don't want to see you."</p>
+
+<p>Mollie was incapable of interpreting Judith's wishes, but the young man
+was not; his smile<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> conveyed this, though it was friendly enough. "When
+Miss Judith gets up, tell her&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you she don't want to see you," snapped Mollie in a tone any
+French maid would have deplored. "She don't want to see anybody."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell her that I'll call again at three this afternoon," directed the
+young man calmly, and completed his disturbing effect upon Mollie by
+turning and walking briskly away without a backward glance, and without
+his usual air of self-consciousness when her eyes were upon him. He
+carried his shabby coat with an air, and held his head high, and swung
+out of sight down the sleepy little street as if he were the only
+wide-awake thing in the whole sunny, sleepy town.</p>
+
+<p>It was a disconcerting moment for Mollie or any lady properly conscious
+of her power, and sorry to see a sign of it disappear, even the humblest
+of signs. It would still have been disconcerting, if she could have
+foreseen that Judith would not receive this young man alone, either at
+three that afternoon, or for many afternoons. The young man was not
+overawed by Mollie. That was established once and for all. He would
+never be overawed by her again. She slammed the door rather viciously.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep quiet there," said Norah, appearing inopportunely, as her habit
+was, with a heavily<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> laden breakfast tray. "She needs her rest. But
+she's awake. She rang. You can take this up and leave it outside her
+door. Who was talking to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't know what's come to him," Mollie complained. "Who does he
+think he is? Did anybody leave him a fortune over night? It was the
+Donovan boy."</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes after Neil's encounter with Mollie, when Mr. Theodore Burr
+admitted him listlessly after his third knock at Judge Saxon's door, he
+could see no evidence that any one had left the Donovan boy a fortune
+over night, but did note a change in him. There was something
+appealingly grave and sedate about his face, as if a part of its youth,
+the freakish, unconquerable laughter of it, that had defied and
+antagonized Mr. Burr, were gone forever, burned away, somehow, in a
+night. It was a look Mr. Burr was to grow well used to in the next few
+months. Perhaps the unaccountable affection he was to feel for the boy
+in the course of them was born then and there.</p>
+
+<p>Neil emerged from the Judge's private office after a briefer talk than
+usual, and the Judge did not escort him to the door in his accustomed,
+friendly fashion. Mr. Burr did, and made him clumsy and unwonted
+confidences there.</p>
+
+<p>"The old man's not quite fit to-day," he said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> "I ought to have told
+you. It's a poor time to get anything out of him. Been shut up there by
+himself doping out something. Won't say two words to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he must be in a bad way, Theodore," said the boy, with the ghost
+of his old, mocking smile, which Mr. Burr somehow did not find annoying
+at all.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Neil," he surprised himself by saying, "I like you. I always
+did. You deserve a square deal. You're too good for the Brady gang.
+You're too good for the town. If there was anything I could do for
+you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe there is, Theodore," the boy turned in the corridor to say.
+"Cheer up. You'll have a chance to see. I'm coming to work for the
+Judge, I start in next week."</p>
+
+<p>"But the Judge turned you down." Mr. Burr's brain struggled with the
+problem, thinking out loud for the sake of greater clearness, but too
+evidently not achieving it. "The Judge likes you, too, but he couldn't
+take you in if he wanted to. He talked of it, but gave it up. He'd be
+afraid to. Everard&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I start in next week," repeated Mr. Donovan.</p>
+
+<p>"But what did you say to him?" demanded Mr. Burr. "What did he say to
+you? How did you dare to ask him again?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I didn't ask him. Don't worry, Theodore. I haven't been trying any
+black magic on the Judge. I don't know any. Maybe I'll learn some. I'm
+going to learn a good deal. I've got to. Nobody knows how much. Even the
+Judge don't know. I'm coming to work for the Judge, that's all, but I
+didn't ask him." Mr. Burr, listening incredulously, did not know that
+this was a faithful if condensed account of his talk with the Judge and
+more, the key to much that was to happen to this pale and determined
+young man, the secret of all his success. He gave it away openly, and
+without pride:</p>
+
+<p>"I just told him so."</p>
+
+<p>Neil started in the next week. If Mr. Burr watched his young associate
+somewhat jealously at first in the natural belief that a boy who had
+changed the course of his life in a five-minute interview would do
+something equally spectacular next, and if the Judge, who had said to
+him at last, "Well, it's my bad morning, son, and your good morning, so
+you get your way, but you're climbing on a sinking ship, and remember I
+told you so. And I'll tell you something else. It will be poor pickings
+here for all of us, and I'm sorry, but I'm the sorriest for you," was
+inclined to follow him furtively over the top of his spectacles with a
+look that held all the pathetic apology of age to youth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> in his kind,
+near-sighted eyes, this was only at first.</p>
+
+<p>Colonel Everard, returning a few weeks later from one of his sudden,
+unexplained absences from town, and making an early morning visit to his
+attorney, was admitted by a young man whom he recognized, but pretended
+not to.</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you?" he inquired, "the office boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just about that, sir," the young man admitted, as if he had no higher
+ambition, but the Judge, entering the room with more evidence of
+beginning the day with the strength that the day required, than he had
+been showing lately in his carriage and look, put a casual hand on the
+boy's shoulder, and kept it there.</p>
+
+<p>"The last time we discussed enlarging my office force, you didn't
+advocate it, Everard," he said rather formally.</p>
+
+<p>"So you aren't discussing it with me now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think you'd better discuss it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think you are in no position to discuss it. You've been recently
+furnished with much more important material to discuss. I haven't seen
+you since your garden party, have I?"</p>
+
+<p>"No." Both men seemed to have forgotten the boy's existence, but now the
+Colonel recalled it, and apparently without annoyance, and flashed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> a
+disarming smile at him, giving up gracefully, as he always did if he was
+forced to give up at all. "Well, you're right, Hugh. You're always
+right. Do as you please. But this boy's got a temper of his own
+and&mdash;quite a flow of speech. Runs in his family, evidently. Properly
+handled, these are assets, but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, sir," Neil found himself stammering. "I shouldn't have
+spoken to you as I did that day. I'm sorry."</p>
+
+<p>"Next time be sure of your facts." The voice was friendly, almost
+paternal, but it held an insidious challenge, too, and for one betraying
+moment all the native antagonism that was really there flashed in the
+Colonel's eyes. Few enemies of his had been permitted to see it so
+clearly. It was a triumph for Neil, if a barren one. "Be very sure."</p>
+
+<p>"I will, sir," said Neil deliberately, but very courteously. Then the
+Colonel disappeared into the private office with his arm about his
+trusted attorney's shoulders, and the young man for whose sake his
+attorney had openly defied him for the first time in years began to
+empty the office waste-baskets.</p>
+
+<p>The winter weeks in the Judge's office passed without even moments of
+repressed drama like this. There was little to prove that they were the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+most important weeks of his life to Neil. At first they were lonely
+weeks. Mr. Burr, unusually prompt, reached the office one crisp
+September morning in time to find him staring out of the window at a
+straggling procession passing on its way up the hill to the schoolhouse,
+hurrying on foot in excited groups, or crowded into equipages of varying
+sizes and degrees of elegance, properly theirs or pressed into service.</p>
+
+<p>"First day of school," said Neil, and did not need to explain further,
+even to Mr. Burr. From to-day on new faces would look out of the
+many-paned windows of the old, white-painted building. New voices would
+sing in the night on their way home from barge rides and dances. There
+were to be new occupants of the seats of the mighty; a new crowd would
+own the town. The door of the country of the young was shut in this
+boy's face from to-day, and that is always a hard day, but it was
+peculiarly hard in Green River, where the country of the young was the
+only unspoiled and safe place to live. And there were signs of a private
+and more personal hurt in the boy's faraway eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that letter?" said Mr. Burr.</p>
+
+<p>"Seed catalogue."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't she write to you every day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Is she too proud, or did she forget all about you? She'll have
+time to, away half the summer, and not coming home for vacations. She
+won't see you till next June."</p>
+
+<p>"If you mean Judith Randall," her late class-mate replied in a carefully
+expressionless voice, "why should she write to me, and why shouldn't she
+forget all about me?" There was a faint, reminiscent light in his eyes,
+as if he were not seriously threatened with the prospect, but it died
+away quickly, and his face grew very grave.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a business man now, Theodore."</p>
+
+<p>"You are," said his newest friend, "and we couldn't keep house without
+you now. You're in a class by yourself."</p>
+
+<p>This was true. Neil did not take his big chance at life as other boys
+equally in need of it would have done. He did not lose his head. He
+showed no pride in it. Green River, soon seeing this, rewarded him in
+various ways, each significant in its own fashion. Nondescript groups
+round the stove in his uncle's little store ceased to look for signs
+that he felt superior to them, and welcomed him as before, restoring to
+him his privilege of listening to talk that was more important than it
+seemed, public sentiment uncoloured and without reserve, the real voice
+of the town. Mrs. Saxon, of the old aristocracy of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> town, with
+inborn social prejudices stronger than any acquired from the Everards,
+broke all her rules and invited him to Sunday-night supper.</p>
+
+<p>"The boy's not spoiled," his old friend Luther Ward said to the Judge
+approvingly. "He knows his place."</p>
+
+<p>"That's the surest way to climb out of it," said Judge Saxon, advisedly,
+for it was the Judge who had the closest and most discerning eyes upon
+Neil Donovan's career. Listlessly at first, because he had looked on at
+too many uphill and losing fights against the world, but later with
+interest, forced from him almost against his will, he watched it grow.</p>
+
+<p>To a casual observer the boy would have seemed to be fitting himself not
+for an ornament to the legal profession, but for the office boy Colonel
+Everard had called him, but he would have seemed a willing office boy.
+He spent hours uncomplainingly looking up obscure points of law for some
+purpose nobody explained to him. He devoted long, sunny afternoons to
+looking up titles connected with some mortgage loan which nobody gave
+him the details of, and he seemed satisfied with his occupation, and
+equally satisfied to devote a morning to plodding through new-fallen
+snow delivering invitations to some party of Mrs. Saxon's.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When he was actually studying, he lost himself in the Judge's
+out-of-date reference books, as if they contained some secret as vital
+as the elixir of youth, and might yield it at any moment. Mr. Burr, at
+first ridiculing pupil and course of instruction alike, and with some
+show of reason, began shamefacedly and afterward openly to give him what
+benefit he could from the more modern education which had been wasted
+upon him. Between his two teachers the boy arrived at conclusions of his
+own. Neil was studying law by the old method which evolved so many
+different men of letters and keen-witted lawyers, a method obsolete as
+the Judge's clothes, but Neil gave allegiance to it ardently, as if it
+had been invented for him.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you get out of this?" the Judge demanded, coming upon Neil late
+one afternoon, poring over the uninspired pages of Mr. Thayer by the
+fading light. "What do you hope to get?"</p>
+
+<p>"All there is in it," said the boy simply, and without oratorical
+intent.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose you do pass your bar examinations. What then? What will you do
+with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll wait and see then. I had to begin somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" said the Judge, and as he asked the question, the answer to it,
+which he had once<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> known so well and forgotten, looked at him in the
+boy's pale face and glowing eyes, the great answer not to be silenced,
+youth, and the wonderful, wasteful urge of youth. "Don't you know this
+town's sick?" he demanded abruptly. "It's dirty. You can't clean it up.
+Don't you ever try. Don't you stir things up. Don't you dig in too deep.
+I suppose you know the town's got no room for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, I know."</p>
+
+<p>"Where do you expect to end?" the Judge began irritably, "in the
+poorhouse? You're so damn young," he grumbled. "It's a good thing I
+didn't know you when I was young. I'd have listened to you then."</p>
+
+<p>"You will now, sir," said the boy, and the Judge did not contradict him,
+but instead, under shy pretence of groping for the switch of the desk
+lamp, found the boy's hand and gripped it.</p>
+
+<p>"You're a good boy," he remarked irrelevantly. "Mind what I said, and
+don't dig in too deep."</p>
+
+<p>The Judge did not explain whose secrets he hoped to protect by this
+vague warning. Probably he could not have explained. It was one of those
+instinctive pronouncements which shape themselves in rare moments when
+two people are close and mean more than either of them know. Certainly
+if the key to any secret was to be found<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> within the Judge's dingily
+decorated walls or in his battered safe, or learned from his partner,
+the boy had exceptional opportunities to unearth it. Theodore Burr's
+intimacy with Neil developed rapidly. He stuck to it obstinately, in
+spite of his wife, showing more independence about it than he had in
+years. The two had tramped and snow-shoed together through long winter
+hours of intimate talk and more intimate silence, and they found the
+first Mayflowers of the year together. Only the week before he had
+committed the crowning indiscretion of giving up a poker game at the
+Everards' to go shooting with Neil.</p>
+
+<p>The Judge, in the strenuous days of Colonel Everard's summer campaign,
+had no time to observe the growth of this intimacy or to think much
+about Neil, but he might have been interested in a snatch of talk in the
+Brady kitchen one evening, if he could have overheard it, more
+interested than Mrs. Donovan, who did not remember it long.</p>
+
+<p>Her son was an hour late for supper, but she was used to that, for now
+that he was on his feet the house revolved around him. She served him,
+and then sat watching him with her hands folded, and the new dignity
+that had come with his first bit of success straightening her tired
+shoulders, and the look of age and pain that had been grow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>ing there
+since Maggie disappeared widening her soft, deep eyes. He had dropped
+wearily into his chair, and he ate almost in silence, but she was used
+to that, too.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the short, June twilight was over, and a pattering summer rain
+had begun to fall. Neil's dark hair was damp with it and clung to his
+forehead in close curls. Once, passing his chair, she smoothed it with a
+hand that was work hardened but finely made and could touch him lightly
+and shyly still. Her son pulled her suddenly close, and hid his face
+against her.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" she asked, softly and not too soon as she stood still and
+held him. "What's wrong, then? Where have you been?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing's wrong. Nothing new. I went round to Theodore Burr's, but I
+left there at five. I didn't mean to be late home or make work. But I
+had a hunch to look in at Halloran's. I thought I'd find Charlie there.
+I did, and I had to get him home."</p>
+
+<p>"Taking your strength," said Mr. Brady's aunt, unfeelingly but
+truthfully, "a good-for-nothing&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That's not the worst thing he does."</p>
+
+<p>"What is, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Talking."</p>
+
+<p>"He don't mean anything by that."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes he does. Sometimes he tells you things that you never
+suspected and you don't believe him at first, but you find they're true;
+things that have been locked up in his addled brain so long that they're
+out of date, and you don't know how to profit by them or handle them,
+but they're true&mdash;all true."</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, you don't half know what you're saying. You're tired."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Donovan released herself abruptly to get the tea-pot from the
+stove. Her son, who had been talking in a low, monotonous voice, more to
+himself than her, watched her with dazed eyes that slowly cleared.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess you're right," he said. "I didn't mean to frighten you. Charlie
+was no more loose mouthed to-day than he always is. I got hold of
+nothing new, but I have hold of more than I can handle, and I'm tired
+and I'm scared, and there's only one of me."</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Donovan preferred her own interpretation of the situation, as
+most ladies would have. She made it tactfully, keeping her eyes away
+from him, busy with the tea-pot. "You're young, and it's June. Neil, the
+children walked round with the Sullivan girl to take home the wash to
+the Randalls'. They had some talk with Norah there. Judith will be home
+this week."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She had mentioned the much-debated name in a voice which
+she kept indifferent, but she flashed a quick, apprehensive glance at
+him. She was quite unprepared for its effect upon him. He only laughed,
+and then his face sobered quickly, and his eyes grew lonely and tired
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"Judith," he said, "you think that's my trouble, mother. Well, I'm not
+so young as I was last June." Then he began with considerable relish to
+drink his tea.</p>
+
+<p>"You're contrary and close mouthed, but you're only a boy like all other
+boys," said Mrs. Donovan, sticking to her point, "and you're a good son
+to me."</p>
+
+<p>The boy who had made this rare and abortive attempt at confidences only
+the night before showed no need of repeating it as he gazed out of the
+Judge's window. He looked quite competent to bear all his own troubles
+alone, and a generous share of other people's, though somewhat saddened
+by them. Perhaps his mother's diagnosis of him was correct. He leaned
+his chin on his hands and stared out of the window like any dreaming
+boy, as if it was. But the winter that had passed so lightly over Green
+River had left traces of its own upon him. His profile had a clearer,
+more sharply outlined look. The lines at the corners of his mouth were
+firmer though<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> they were no deeper, and the mouth was still a boy's
+mouth, red-lipped and lightly closed. But the dreaming eyes were a
+man's, dreaming still, but alert, and ready to banish dreams.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon light was fading fast. It was not so easy now to read the
+fine print of Mr. Thayer's notes, and the boy made no further pretence
+of trying to. He let Mr. Thayer slip to the floor, and stretched himself
+in his chair with a sigh of relief. The sounds of talk in the Judge's
+room had grown fainter and more intermittent and finally ceased. The
+Judge, still deep in conference with them, had left with his guests by
+the private door. The boy was alone in the office.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually, as he sat there, the bright pageant of the busy little street
+had dimmed. It made a softer and mellower picture, a blend of delicate
+colours in the slant mellow light, and it was not so busy now. There
+were fewer passers-by, and they hurried and did not loiter past. It was
+almost supper-time. Willard Nash, not joy riding now, but dispatched
+reluctantly alone on some emergency errand, flashed by in his car, and
+disappeared up Main Street.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the double row of shops the upper section of the street was
+empty. The maples, in full leaf now and delicately green, shadowed the
+upward<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> slant of smooth road alluringly. Touched with golden afternoon
+light, and half hidden by the spreading green, the old, solidly built
+houses planted so heavily in the midst of their well-kept lawns had new
+and unguessed possibilities. Any one of them just then might have
+sheltered a fairy princess. The one that did was just within range of
+the boy's grave, patient eyes, a protruding porch, disproportionately
+enlarged and ugly, a sweep of vividly green lawn stripped bare of the
+graceful, dishevelled growth of lilac and syringa bushes that had graced
+it before Mrs. Randall's day.</p>
+
+<p>Not from that house, but from somewhere beyond it, a car flashed into
+view and cut smoothly and quickly down through the street, almost
+deserted now. The boy followed it idly with his eyes. The low-built,
+graceful lines of it held them. It approached, and slowed down directly
+under the windows, and the boy leaned forward and looked.</p>
+
+<p>It was stopping there. It was one of the Everard cars, as the trim lines
+and perfection of detail would have shown without the English
+chauffeur's familiar, supercilious face. The car had only one occupant,
+a slender young person in white. She slipped quickly out, and
+disappeared into the dingy entrance hall below.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She had not seen the boy at the window. He stood still now in his
+corner, and waited. The tap of her feet was light even on the old
+creaking stairs, but he heard. She knocked once and a second time, and
+then threw open the door impatiently, saw who was there, and stopped
+just inside the door, and looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>Her white dress and big, beflowered hat looked as cool and as new as
+June itself. They did not make the dingy room look dingier, they made
+you forget it was dingy. Her soft, befrilled skirts fluffed and flared
+in the brave and bewildering mode of the moment. Skirts, small shoes
+that were built to dance, not to walk, the futuristic blend of flowers
+in her hat, and the girdle, unrelentingly high and futuristic of colour,
+too, that gave her waist an unbelievably slender look, were all in the
+dainty and sophisticated taste of a sophisticated young lady, and under
+the elaborate hat there was a sophisticated young face. It looked
+smaller and more faintly pink. The small chin was more prominent. But
+she still had the wide, reproachful eyes of a child. They regarded the
+boy unwinkingly. One hand went behind her, found the knob of the door,
+and closed it mechanically, but the eyes did not leave his face.</p>
+
+<p>He stepped uncertainly forward, and stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Judith," he said, in a voice that held all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> the authority Judge
+Saxon's assistant had acquired in the long year of his service and more,
+"Well?" and then, in a voice that held no authority at all, but was
+suddenly husky and small: "Oh, Judith, won't you speak to me?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" >
+<a id="illus1" name="illus1"></a>
+<img src="images/illus1.jpg" alt="'Oh, Judith, won't you speak to me?'" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_SIXTEEN" id="CHAPTER_SIXTEEN"></a>CHAPTER SIXTEEN</h2>
+
+<p>"Judith," Neil said.</p>
+
+<p>Neil's visitor flashed a quick glance round the dim office, empty except
+for the lean young figure that confronted her. It was a hunted glance,
+as if she really meant to turn without speaking and pick up her
+beruffled skirts, and run away down the dusty stairs, but she did not
+run away. Suddenly quite herself, recovering by tapping some emergency
+reserve of strength as only ladies can, but as most of them can, even
+the most amateurish and beruffled of ladies, she crossed the room to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>She came deliberately, with an impressive flutter of hidden silk. She
+was smiling a faint half-smile, sweet but indefinably teasing, and
+holding out a daintily gloved hand. It touched Neil's lightly and
+impersonally, not like a girl's warm hand at all, but like the hand of a
+society forever beyond his reach, held out patronizingly to this boy
+beyond its pale, only to emphasize the distance between them.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do?" she murmured, formally but sweetly.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> "How do you do?"
+the boy stammered. "Judith, oh, Judith, I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He broke off, staring helplessly into her eyes. They were dark and
+accusing and grave, and a heartache shadowed the depths of them, the
+lonely and infinite heartache of youth, when you cannot measure your
+pain or argue it away, but must suffer and suffer instead. But the boy
+was too miserable just then to read it there.</p>
+
+<p>"Judith," he began, "don't you care any more? Why wouldn't you read my
+letters? Why wouldn't you let me explain? Won't you let me now? I can,
+Judith."</p>
+
+<p>Still smiling, not taking the trouble to interrupt him, she waited for
+him to finish, and as she waited and smiled, he had suddenly nothing
+more to say. Judith was so slender and white and still as she stood
+there. All the outraged dignity of an offended schoolgirl was helping to
+make this overwhelming little effect of hers, and every trick of poise
+and carriage that she had acquired in a year, and something else,
+something that shamed and silenced the boy as no tricks could have done,
+and made her pathetic little show of injured dignity real. A woman's shy
+soul was reaching out for every defence it had to protect itself; a
+woman's new-born, bewildered soul looked out of Judith's beautiful,
+grieved eyes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was very still in the office. Outside an automobile
+horn sounded aggressively, once and again, and Judith gave the boy an
+amused, apologetic glance.</p>
+
+<p>"Parks is in a hurry," she said. "He ought not to do that. The Colonel
+wouldn't like it. But I won't keep him waiting. I'm going out to the
+Camp for supper. Father and mother are there already. I stopped for the
+Judge, but he doesn't seem to be here. He is walking out to the Camp, I
+suppose. I'm&mdash;glad to have seen you." Her voice choked perilously over
+this irreproachable sentiment, then steadied and modulated itself
+according to the instructions of the highly accredited elocution teacher
+of which she had enjoyed the benefit for a year. "Good-night."</p>
+
+<p>Again she put out her cool little hand, but this time the boy's hand
+closed on it tight.</p>
+
+<p>"Judith," he began, his words coming fast, the contact seeming to
+release all that had been storing itself up in his lonely heart for a
+year. Once released, it came tumbling out incoherently, with the lilting
+brogue of the ragged little boy that he used to be singing through it,
+and the breathless catch in his voice that is the supremest eloquence
+for the kind of words that he had to say. But Judith gave no sign of
+being moved by it, and while she listened, a hard look, too unrelenting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+for any eloquence to reach, was growing in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Judith, you're so sweet, so sweet; sweeter than you were last
+year&mdash;sweeter than you ever were before. I didn't know anybody could be
+sweeter, even you. I was so lonely. I wanted you so, and now you've
+come. Everything will be all right, now you've come. And you came
+straight here. You knew I was here, and you came because you knew. You
+came straight to me."</p>
+
+<p>"I came for the Judge," she corrected him gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"But you knew I was here."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew you were working for the Judge, but I didn't think you'd be here
+so late in the afternoon. I didn't come to see you. I didn't want to.
+Why should I? But I'm glad you are doing so well. Good-night, Neil."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night," he muttered mechanically, checked once more in spite of
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>But as he spoke, he felt her hands, both in his now, and held tight,
+tremble and try softly at first, and then in sudden panic, to pull
+themselves away. Her voice, that had been so grave and cool, with no
+echo of the excitement that was in his, failed her now, though she kept
+her wide-open eyes bravely upon him. She was afraid of him, this young
+lady who was making such elaborate at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>tempts to hide it, this young lady
+not of his world, and so anxious to prove it to him, this calm stranger
+with Judith's eyes. She was very much afraid, and she could not hide it
+any longer.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go," she tried to say.</p>
+
+<p>"Judith," he dropped her hands obediently, but his arms reached out for
+her and caught her and held her close, "you didn't come for the Judge.
+You came to see me."</p>
+
+<p>"No. No."</p>
+
+<p>Her face was hidden against his shoulder. Her voice came muffled and
+soft. Neil paid no further attention to it. "No," it insisted faintly.
+"Let me go." Then it insisted no more, and the boy laughed a soft,
+triumphant little laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"You did come to see me, and you love me. You love me and I love you.
+You were angry, of course. Of course you sent back my letters. But
+you're going to listen to me now. You're going to let me explain. I
+couldn't that night. I couldn't talk any more. I didn't dare. I had to
+keep hold of myself. I had to get you home. And I did, dear. I turned
+round and took you home, and I got you home&mdash;safe. You're going to
+listen? And not be angry any more? You won't, will you? You
+won't&mdash;dear?"</p>
+
+<p>Her face was still out of sight, and her white figure was motionless in
+his arms. She did not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> relax there, but she did not struggle. She looked
+very slender and helpless so. Her futuristic hat had slipped from its
+daring and effective adjustment, and fallen to the Judge's dusty floor,
+where it lay unregarded. The silvery blond head against his shoulder was
+changed like the rest of her, a mass of delicately adjusted puffs and
+curls, but in the fast-fading light he saw only the soft, pale colour of
+her hair and the tender curve of her throat. He kissed it reverently and
+lightly, once only, and then his arms let her go.</p>
+
+<p>"You're so sweet," he whispered; "too sweet for me. But you're mine,
+aren't you? Tell me you are. And you forgive me for&mdash;everything? Tell
+me, Judith."</p>
+
+<p>She seemed in no hurry to tell him. She faced him silently, her white
+dress whiter than ever in the fading light, and her face big eyed and
+expressionless. He waited reverently for her answer, and quite
+confidently, picking up the elaborate hat mechanically, and then
+smoothing the ribbons tenderly, and pulling at the flowers, as he
+realized what he held.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little hat," he said softly, with the brogue coaxing insinuatingly
+in his voice. "Poor little girl. I didn't mean to frighten you. And I
+didn't mean to&mdash;that night.... Judith!"</p>
+
+<p>It was undoubtedly Judith who confronted him,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> and no strange lady now.
+It was as if she had been waiting for some cue from him, and heard it,
+and sprung into life again, not the strange lady, not even the girl of
+the year before, but a long-ago Judith, the child who had come to his
+rescue on a forgotten May night, the child of the moonlit woods, with
+her shrill voice and flashing eyes. She was that Judith again, but grown
+to a woman, and now she was not his ally, but his enemy. She snatched
+the beflowered hat away, and swung it upon her head with the same
+reckless hand that had swept the lantern to the ground in her childish
+defence of him. Her eyes defied him.</p>
+
+<p>"That night," she stormed, "that night. Don't you ever speak of that
+night to me again. I never want to hear you speak again. I never want to
+see you again. I'll never forgive you as long as I live. I hate you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Judith, listen to me," begged the boy. "Listen. You must."</p>
+
+<p>But the girl who swept past him and turned to confront him at the door
+was past listening to him. Words that she hardly heard herself, and
+would not remember, came to her, and she flung them at him in a
+breathless little burst of speech that hurt and was meant to hurt. The
+boy took it silently, not trying to interrupt, slow colour reddening his
+cheeks, his eyes growing angry then sullen. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> words that Judith used
+hardly mattered. They were futile and childish words, but because of the
+blaze of anger behind them, that had been gathering long and would go on
+after they were forgotten, they were splendid, too.</p>
+
+<p>"I hate you! I don't belong to you. I don't belong to anybody. I'm not
+like anybody else. Nobody cares what I do, and I don't care. I don't
+care. Nobody ever takes care of me or knows when I need it. Well, I can
+take care of myself. I'm going to now. I never want to belong to
+anybody. If I did, it wouldn't be you."</p>
+
+<p>"Judith, stop! You'll be sorry for this."</p>
+
+<p>"If I am, it's no business of yours. It's nobody's business but mine."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be sorry," the boy muttered again, and this time the girl did
+not contradict him or answer. Her shrill little burst of defiance was
+over, and with it the sullen resentment that had crimsoned the boy's
+face as he listened began to die away. He was rebuffed and thrown back
+upon himself. His heart would not open so easily again. It would be a
+long time before it opened at all. But he did not resent this. He only
+looked baffled and puzzled and miserable, and the girl staring mutely at
+him from the doorway with big, starved eyes, looked miserable, too. She
+would be angry again. All the hurt pride and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> anger that had been
+gathering in her heart for a year was not to be relieved by an
+unrehearsed burst of speech. It had been sleeping in her heart. It was
+all awake now, and she would be angrier with the boy and the world than
+ever before, angrier and more reckless. But just now her anger was
+blotted out and she was only miserable. In the gloom of the office there
+was something curiously alike about the two tragic young faces.</p>
+
+<p>The two were alone together there, but they had never been farther
+apart. There was a whole world between them, a lonely world, where
+people all speak different languages, and understand each other only by
+a miracle, and most of them are so used to being alone that they forget
+they once had a moment of first realizing it. But when it was upon them,
+it was a bitter moment. These two young creatures were both living
+through it now. They looked at each other blankly, all antagonism gone.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't listen?" said the boy wonderingly, admitting defeat. "You
+won't forgive me?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Judith pitifully. "I can't."</p>
+
+<p>Neil looked at her forlornly, but did not contest this. He came meekly
+forward, not trying to touch her again, and opened the door for her.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, good-night," he said. "Good-night, dear."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye," Judith said. "Good-bye, Neil."</p>
+
+<p>Then, jerking her flaunting hat into adjustment with trembling fingers,
+and shaking out her befrilled skirts with a poor little imitation of her
+earlier airs and graces, she slipped out into the corridor, groped for
+the dusty stair rail, and clutched at it with a new disregard for her
+immaculate whiteness, and disappeared down the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>In the street below the last of the afternoon light still lingered,
+reflected from the polished windows of the bank building, and faintly
+illuminating the half-deserted square, but the sun was just going down
+behind the court-house roof, a big, crimson ball of vanishing light.
+Judith, appearing below in the doorway, stood regarding it deliberately
+for a minute, ignoring the chauffeur's discreet manifestations of
+impatience, and then made herself comfortable deliberately in the
+Colonel's car.</p>
+
+<p>She sat there proudly erect, a dainty, aloof little lady. She seemed to
+have recovered her high estate upon entering it, and become a princess
+beyond Neil's reach once more. Watching her gravely from the Judge's
+window, he could not see the angry tears in her eyes or the reckless
+light in them.</p>
+
+<p>Little preliminary pants and puffs came from the car, discreetly
+impatient, as if they voiced all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> the feelings that the correct Parks
+repressed. He relieved them with one blatant flourish of sound from the
+horn, and swung the car grandly across the square, round the corner, and
+out of sight. Judith was gone, and she had not once looked up at the boy
+in the window.</p>
+
+<p>She had not even seen another cavalier, who dashed out of a shop and
+tried to intercept and speak to her, but was just too late; Mr. Willard
+Nash, thrilled by his first sight of her, ready to return to his old
+allegiance at a word, and advertising the fact in every line of his
+forlorn fat figure as he stood alone on the sidewalk gazing wistfully
+after the vanished car.</p>
+
+<p>The boy at the window did not waste his time in this way. Judith was
+gone, and with her the spell that had held him mute and helpless, and he
+was a man of affairs once more. He was not a very cheerful man of
+affairs to-night. He was not singing or whistling to himself, as he
+usually did, but he moved competently enough about the room, entering
+the Judge's private office with its smell of stale tobacco smoke and
+group of chairs, so confidentially close that they looked capable of
+carrying on the conference their late occupants had begun without help
+from them. He rearranged this room, giving just the straightening
+touches to the jumble of papers on the desk that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> the Judge permitted,
+and no more, and putting the outer office in order, too.</p>
+
+<p>By his own desk he paused, fingering Mr. Thayer's thumbed pages
+absently. He had no attention to spare for them just then, or for the
+graver questions that had absorbed him just before Judith came. They
+would soon claim him again. They awaited him now, but out in the
+gathering dark that he watched from the darkening office something else
+waited, too.</p>
+
+<p>His heart ached with it, but it beat harder and stronger for it, and new
+strength to meet old issues came pulsing from it, as if he were awake
+again after a year of sleep. He was grieved and miserable, but he was
+awake. For his mother was right: he was only a boy like other boys; he
+was young and it was June, and whether she was kind or unkind, Judith
+Randall was back in Green River.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Judith, whirled along the fast-darkening road between close-growing
+pines, dulling from green to black, and birches, silver against them,
+looked for the welcoming lights of Camp Everard through a mist of angry
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>She shed them decorously, even under cover of the dark; she was still a
+dainty and proud little lady, with nothing about her to advertise
+con<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>spicuously that she was crying, or why. But her little gloved hands
+were closing and unclosing themselves, her lips were trembling in spite
+of her, and there was a hunted look in her eyes as she turned them
+toward the dark woods, as if her quarrel with Neil were not her only
+trouble. The tears that she controlled so gallantly were a protest
+against a world only half understood and full of enemies whose alien
+presence she was just beginning to feel.</p>
+
+<p>But Neil, as she had just seen him, was enough to occupy the mind of
+such a young lady, or a much older one. The look in his eyes as he stood
+holding open the Judge's door for her was a highly irritating one for
+any lady to meet. He was older and wiser than she was, no matter what
+she could say or do to hurt him; he was stronger than she was, and
+patiently waiting to prove it to her; that was what Neil's eyes were
+saying.</p>
+
+<p>They said it first when he left her at her own door without a good-night
+on that strange May night a year ago; when she stood looking up at him
+changed and alien and silent, with the May moon behind him, that had
+brought her bad fortune instead of good, still dim and alluring with
+false promises above the shadowy elms in the little street, and they
+looked down at her just so&mdash;Neil's grave, unforgettable, conquering
+eyes.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> They were eyes that followed you to-night, when you tried to
+forget them and look at the dark woods and fields; eyes that looked at
+you still when you closed your own.</p>
+
+<p>But Judith would not look at them. The eyes were lying to her. Neil was
+not really wise or kind. He was cruel. He had hurt her and slighted her,
+and she was through with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Parks, can't you go faster?" she said suddenly, in her clear little
+voice. "It's so late, and I'm hungry and cold."</p>
+
+<p>"It's bad going through here, Miss," the chauffeur said.</p>
+
+<p>They were turning into a narrow mile or so of road that sloped gradually
+down through a series of arbitrary curves and bends to the lake and the
+camp, a changed and elaborate structure now, overweighted with verandas
+and uncompromisingly lit with new electric lights. But the road was one
+of the things that the Colonel did not improve when he changed the
+public camp into a private one. It was unchanged and unspoiled, a
+mysterious wood road still, alluring now in the gloom.</p>
+
+<p>Judith's own people were waiting for her there at the end of that road.
+They were all the people she had. Willard and schooltime and playtime
+were more than a year behind her; they were be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>hind her forever. She
+could never go back to them. She had never really been part of them. She
+had forced herself into a place there, but she had lost it now, and it
+could never be hers again.</p>
+
+<p>These were her people. They were strange to her still, but she had grown
+up breathing the feverish air that they breathed, and with little
+whispers of hidden scandal about her. Judith was alone between two
+worlds: one was closed to her, and she was before the door of another,
+where she did not know her way. She was really alone, as she had told
+Neil, more alone than she knew; a lonely and tragic figure, white and
+small in the corner of the big car.</p>
+
+<p>But she was not crying now. She dabbed expertly at her eyes with an
+overscented scrap of handkerchief and sat up, looking eagerly down the
+dark road. She could catch far echoes of a song through the still night
+air, faint echoes only, but it was a song that she knew, a gay little
+song, and it came from a place where people were always kind and gay. It
+was like a hand stretched out to her through the dark, a warm hand, to
+beckon her nearer, and then draw her close. She leaned forward and
+listened and looked.</p>
+
+<p>There was the camp, the first glimpse of it, though soon a dip of the
+road would hide it again. It was an enchanting glimpse, a far,
+low-lying<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> flicker of light. And there, just by the big, upstanding
+boulder where the road turned abruptly, she saw something else. She saw
+it before Parks did, as if she had been watching for it. It was a man's
+figure that started forward, came to the edge of the road, and waited.
+The man looked more than his slender height in the shadow, but his
+light, quick walk was unmistakable. It was Colonel Everard.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, Parks," Judith said, with new authority in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>He stood waiting for her silently, without any greeting at all, and she
+slipped her hand into his and stepped out and stood beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on," he said to the chauffeur. "It's too rough here for the car.
+It's easier on foot. Miss Randall will walk with me."</p>
+
+<p>The car, skilfully manipulated along the steep, zigzag road, but a
+clumsy thing at best here in the woods, and an artificial and ugly
+thing, lumbered away, breaking through outreaching branches. Judith
+watched it out of sight. Then and not till then she turned to her host.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you going to speak to me?" the great man inquired respectfully,
+as if her intentions deserved the most serious consideration.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Judith serenely, unflattered by it.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to say?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What do you want me to say?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to shake hands with me."</p>
+
+<p>A hand touched his lightly. It drew quickly away, but it was a confiding
+little hand.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't seem surprised to see me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not," said Judith.</p>
+
+<p>"But you're glad to see me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"It's stuffy inside, and they've got a fire in the billiard room and
+won't leave it. I wanted&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Judith laughed and let him draw her hand through his arm as they began
+to grope their way down the road. "You wanted to meet me."</p>
+
+<p>She made the correction triumphantly and confidently, as she would have
+made it to Willard. All this was coquetry, as she and Willard understood
+it, and it was an old game to her, and a childish game, but there was
+something strangely exciting about the fact that the Colonel understood
+it, too, and condescended to play at it. It was more exciting than usual
+to-night.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I want to meet you?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Why weren't you downstairs last night when I came to see your father?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was tired."</p>
+
+<p>"You weren't running away from me?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And you won't ever run away from me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"You're afraid of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," said Judith. "Look, there's the moon."</p>
+
+<p>It was low above the trees, rising solemn and round and slow. It looked
+reproachful and grave, like Neil's eyes. It was looking straight at
+Judith. Judith turned her eyes sternly away. What was the Colonel
+saying? Something that did not sound like Willard at all, or like the
+Colonel, either. Nobody had ever spoken to her in just that voice
+before. It was a choked, queer voice. But Judith smiled up at him and
+listened, tightening the clasp of her hand on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid of me. Don't ever be afraid.... You're so sweet
+to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I won't," said Judith defiantly, straight to the round, accusing
+moon. "I won't be afraid."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_SEVENTEEN" id="CHAPTER_SEVENTEEN"></a>CHAPTER SEVENTEEN</h2>
+
+<p>"I don't like the look of you," said Mrs. Donovan.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you're hard to please." Neil turned at the foot of the steps to
+say, trying to smile as he said it. "Harder than I am. I do like the
+look of you."</p>
+
+<p>The Donovans, mother and son, were both quite sufficiently attractive to
+the eye at that moment. This was the second day of September, and also
+the second day of the county fair in Madison, five miles away&mdash;the big
+day of the fair, and Neil's uncle had been up at dawn to escort the
+younger Bradys there in a borrowed rig, and in the company of at least
+half Green River in equipages of varied style and state of repair. Neil
+had slept late, breakfasted sketchily, and dined elaborately alone with
+his mother. Now the long, still, sunny afternoon was half over, and she
+stood in the kitchen door, watching him start for town.</p>
+
+<p>The kitchen, newly painted this year, looked empty and unnaturally neat
+behind her, but friendly and lived in, too, with the old, creaking
+rocker pulled to an inviting angle at the window<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> overlooking the marsh,
+and a sofa under the other window, its worn upholstery covered freshly
+with turkey-red; one splash of clear colour, sketched in boldly, just in
+the corner where it satisfied the eye. Her neighbours did not take this
+humble fabric seriously for decorative purposes; indeed, they would not
+have permitted a sofa in the kitchen at all, but her neighbours were not
+of her gracious race. They could not wear a plain and necessary white
+apron like the completing touch to a correct toilette assumed
+deliberately. Mrs. Donovan could, and she did to-day. Also her brown
+hair, dulled to a softer, more indefinite brown by its sprinkling of
+white, rippled softly about her low forehead, and her dress was faded to
+a tender, vague blue like the blue of her eyes. Her eyes, almost on a
+level with Neil's as she stood on the step above him, had the charm that
+was peculiarly their own to-day, cloudy as they were with the faraway
+look of a race that believes in fairies, but warm and human, too, with
+an intimate mother look of concern for Neil.</p>
+
+<p>Neil met it steadily, not a sullen boy as he would have been under that
+questioning a year ago, not resenting it at all, but keeping his secrets
+deliberately. It had always been hard for her to make him answer
+questions. It was not even easy for her to ask them now.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You don't sleep," she began.</p>
+
+<p>"Neither do you, if you've been catching me at it," reasoned her son
+correctly.</p>
+
+<p>"You work too hard." She had made an accusation that he could not deny,
+so he only smiled his quick, flashing smile. "You won't even take a day
+to yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have the office and most of the town to myself this afternoon.
+I'll have to go. I've got something special to look into."</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Charlie?" she demanded at once.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he's not troubling me to-day. He's safe at Madison with his new
+mare. He'll break loose there, then come home and repent and stay
+straight for weeks and make no trouble for me. He's due to break loose.
+He's been good too long&mdash;too good to be true. He was in fine form last
+night." Mr. Charlie Brady's cousin grinned reminiscently.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"He gave me quite a little side talk on good form in dress and diction.
+Charlie claims I won't make an orator, and he don't like my taste in
+ties."</p>
+
+<p>"Who does he think he is?" flashed Mr. Brady's aunt indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Who do you think he is?" her son inquired unexpectedly. "For whatever
+you think, that's me. I'm no better than Charlie."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Charlie?" Mrs. Donovan gasped, and then plunged into an indignant
+defence of her son, not pausing to take breath.</p>
+
+<p>"You?" she began. "You that's planted firm on the ladder and right-hand
+to the Judge already, and him getting older every day, and Theodore Burr
+just kept on in the office because Everard's after Burr's wife. So he
+is, and the town knows it, and Theodore'll wake up to it soon. A fine
+partner Theodore is for the Judge, poor boy, but he's a good boy, too,
+though none too strong in the head; Lil Burr is a good girl, too, and
+she'd make a good wife to Theodore if she could be left to herself.
+She'd make it up with Theodore, as many a girl has done that's got more
+for her husband to forgive than Lil.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Lil. Her head's high above me now, but the time was she cried on
+my shoulder; crying for Charlie, she was, before ever Charlie took up
+with Maggie and Lil with Theodore; when the four of them were all young
+together, and the one as good as the other. Young they were, and the
+hearts of them young&mdash;wild, doubtful hearts. Many's the time Lil would
+come to me then, here in this same kitchen, and go down on her knees,
+her that was tall and a fine figure of a girl, and cling onto me, crying
+her heart out; crying she was for all the world like&mdash;like&mdash;&mdash;"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Donovan checked herself abruptly with shrewd eyes upon her son.</p>
+
+<p>"Like young things do cry, and tell you their troubles in tears, not
+words." She ended somewhat vaguely, and came quickly back to her main
+subject again.</p>
+
+<p>"You that can walk into the big rally next week and sit with the men
+that count, and whisper and talk to them, and hold your head high, with
+nothing against you, and will be sitting up on the platform soon, with
+the best of them, and be mayor yet, like Everard's going to be, or
+governor, maybe&mdash;you to compare yourself with Charlie, if he is my
+half-sister's own son. He's a drunken good-for-nothing. He's got no
+spirit in him if he'll stay here at all, where he's ashamed himself and
+make a show of himself. How is it he's able to stay? Where does he get
+the money he spends? This town don't pay it to him. Who does?"</p>
+
+<p>"What put that into your head?" her son asked sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"There's talk enough of it, and there'll be more. The whole town will be
+asking soon."</p>
+
+<p>"The town asks a lot of questions it don't dare hear the answers to,"
+said Neil softly, unregarded. His mother returned to her grievance:</p>
+
+<p>"You to be likening yourself to Charlie."</p>
+
+<p>"When Charlie was twenty-five," Neil began<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> slowly, "he was where I will
+be then, or better. The Judge was a friend to him, too, and the Judge
+was a better friend then to have. Charlie was setting up for himself,
+well thought of. My own father trusted him. When I was a boy and not
+grown, Charlie was a son to him, and more. He was a better spoken lawyer
+than I'll ever make, quick and smooth with his tongue, and he was fine
+appearing, and put up a better front than I do. I've gone part of the
+road that Charlie went. What will stop me from going the whole road?
+What's beat Charlie is strong enough to beat me.... Don't look so
+scared, mother. I don't want to scare you. I only want you to be fair to
+Charlie."</p>
+
+<p>"His heart's broke," she conceded, melting. "He's nothing with Maggie
+gone."</p>
+
+<p>"His heart's broke, but that's not what beat him," her son stated with
+authority. "He was beat before."</p>
+
+<p>"When?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was beat," Neil stated deliberately, "when Everard moved to Green
+River."</p>
+
+<p>This was a sweeping statement, but Neil did not qualify it. He dropped
+the subject and stood silent, turning absent eyes upon the green expanse
+of marshy field that had been the starting-place of all his dreams when
+he was a dream-struck,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> gazing boy. His mother's eyes followed his,
+growing cloudier and soft as if even now she could read them there.</p>
+
+<p>"Rests your eyes," Neil said, after a minute; "looks pretty, too, in the
+sun. It's a pretty green. We'll drain it, perhaps, by the time I'm mayor
+or governor. It might pay. I'll be going now."</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, when did you see her last?" asked his mother suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"See who?" he muttered, and then flushed, and straightened himself, and
+met her eyes bravely.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw Judith yesterday," he said, "on Main Street, and&mdash;she cut me."</p>
+
+<p>"Did she walk past you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, she wouldn't do that. She pretended not to see me, but she saw me,
+all right. She passed me in an automobile."</p>
+
+<p>"Whose?"</p>
+
+<p>"One of Everard's."</p>
+
+<p>"Was he with her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Neil," his mother began a little breathlessly, "I want to tell you
+something. I've said hard things to you, and they weren't deserved. I
+know it now, and I'm sorry. I want to take them all back. I've said hard
+things about Judith Randall."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She hurried on, afraid of being stopped, but he made no move to stop
+her. He listened courteously, his face not changing.</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, she's not what I thought. There's no harm in her. There's no
+pride in her. She's just lonesome. She's just a young, young girl. She's
+sweet-spoken and sweet-faced. Neil, from all I hear&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't hear all this direct from&mdash;Judith, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Judith?" she hesitated, flashing a questioning glance at him. "Is it
+likely? How would I get the chance? But from all I hear, she's too good
+for Everard and the like. And she's not safe with them. She needs&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?" interrupted her son gravely, with the air of seeking information
+on a subject quite strange to him and rather distasteful. But she tried
+to go on.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;Judith needs&mdash;any one that's fond of her, any one that she's fond of,
+to be good to her now. I've seen her, and it's in the eyes of her. No
+man ever knows just what a woman is grieving for, but that's all one if
+he'll comfort her when she's grieving. She needs&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Neil's eyes were expressionless. She sighed and put her two hands on his
+shoulders. "Have it your own way," she said. "I'll say no more."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Neil caught at one of the hands on his shoulders and kissed it.</p>
+
+<p>"For one thing," he said, "Judith or any girl needs a mother with a
+heart in her&mdash;like I've got, but you're the one in the world. I'm
+going."</p>
+
+<p>But he did not go at once. Standing beside her, suddenly awkward and
+shy, he first gave her the confidence that she could not force from him,
+all in one generous breathless burst of words.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, Charlie's not the only one with his heart broke. But
+heart-break isn't the worst thing I've got to bear. There's something
+else. I can't tell you. I'd rather bear it alone. I've got to.
+Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>Then he left her standing still in the door, shading her cloudy blue
+eyes with one small hand and looking after him. He swung into the dusty
+road and, keeping his head high and his eyes straight ahead, undazzled
+by the sharp sunlight of mid-afternoon on the long stretch of unshaded
+way, passed out of sight toward Green River.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_EIGHTEEN" id="CHAPTER_EIGHTEEN"></a>CHAPTER EIGHTEEN</h2>
+
+<p>Neil turned into Post-office Square just on the stroke of four. The
+square was as empty and strange to the eye as his mother's kitchen,
+though this was the rush hour of the day in that business centre upon
+ordinary days, when the fair had not emptied the town.</p>
+
+<p>A solitary Ford of prehistoric make stood before the post-office, and
+even that was just cranking up. It lurched dispiritedly off, leaving a
+cloud of dust behind. A dejected-looking group of children hung about
+the door of the ice-cream parlour, and appeared to lack the initiative
+to enter in. Half the shops were shut. In the big show-window of the
+central section of Ward's Emporium Luther Ward, usually on parade and
+magnificently in charge of his shop and his staff of employees at this
+time of day, stood in his shirt sleeves, embracing an abnormally slender
+lady in a mauve velveteen tailored suit.</p>
+
+<p>At first glance he seemed to be instructing her in the latest dance
+steps, but on a nearer view the visible part of her proved to be wax,
+and the suit was ticketed nineteen-fifty. He jerked her into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> place,
+turned and saw Neil, and hailed him cheerfully, waving him round to the
+main entrance door, where he joined him, still wiping his brow.</p>
+
+<p>"If you want a thing well done, do it yourself," he said, explaining his
+late exertions with the air of believing the explanation was original
+with him and did credit to his intellect. "What are you here for,
+brother? Isn't Madison good enough for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," Neil said. "Not with the big race called off."</p>
+
+<p>"Called off? How's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you weren't there, Luther."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ward gave a gratified laugh at this graceful compliment, and
+descended to facts.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm too old for horse racing. It's my boy's turn. He went over with
+Willard Nash's crowd to-day. Why didn't you?" Mr. Ward demanded
+severely.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Willard asked me all right. He's quite strong for me now." Mr. Ward
+had doubted this, being on the watch for slights to Neil and resenting
+them, though he never made an effort to prevent them. This was the usual
+attitude of Neil's more influential friends.</p>
+
+<p>"Willard's a shrimp," said Mr. Ward gruffly. "And I like you," he added
+in a burst of frankness. "I always did like you, Neil. You've pulled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+yourself up by your boot-straps, and I hope you hang on to them tight.
+There's nobody better pleased than I am. Oh, I got a rig and sent all
+the help from the store over to the fair to-day," he added, turning
+quickly to impersonal subjects.</p>
+
+<p>"You always do treat them right."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, this wasn't my idea. I got it from the Colonel." A look of
+harmless but plainly evident pride came into Mr. Ward's open and ruddy
+countenance as he mentioned the great man's name. It was only the week
+before that he had received his first dinner invitation from the
+Everards. It came at the eleventh hour and did not include his wife, but
+he was dazzled by it still. "You know what he's doing? Closing his
+house, practically, for all three days of the fair, and sending all the
+help on the place over there&mdash;two touring cars full. It's a fine thing
+for them. They're high-class help and don't have it any too interesting
+down here. Anybody that says he's not democratic don't know the Colonel.
+This town don't half know him yet."</p>
+
+<p>"You're right," Neil put in softly.</p>
+
+<p>"Democratic," declaimed Mr. Ward, "and public spirited. Look at the
+fountain he's going to put up in the square. Look at the old Grant house
+going to be fitted up for a library. Look at him running for mayor, when
+he's been turning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> down chances at bigger offices for years&mdash;willing to
+stay here and serve for the good of the town. There's talk against him
+more than ever this year. I know that. It amounts to an indignation
+meeting when the boys get together at Halloran's. Well, failures hate a
+successful man, and their talk don't count. It will die down. But I hate
+to hear of it. For the Colonel's put this town on the map. He's not
+perfect, but who is? And suppose he does have a good time his own way?
+We've got a right to&mdash;all of us. It's a free country."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ward delivered this last sentiment with touching faith in its force
+and freshness, and waved a plump hand of invitation toward the little
+private office back of the main section of his store, where he had
+developed his unfailing eloquence of speech upon subjects of public
+interest, and liked best to practise it. But Neil, himself listened to
+with growing deference by the groups that forgathered there, was not to
+be lured to that sanctum to-day. Speaking hastily and vaguely of work to
+be done, he escaped from his good friend and across the street to Judge
+Saxon's office.</p>
+
+<p>He climbed the stairs heavily, and did not linger before the door to
+picture the sign changed to "Saxon, Burr, and Donovan," as he had done
+more times than he cared to admit. The office<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> was not a thing to be
+proud of as a step up in life for him to-day; it was a place to be alone
+in, as men feel alone and safe in the place that is their own because
+they have worked there.</p>
+
+<p>Showing this in every move, Neil locked the door, threw off his cap, and
+dropped into the broken-springed chair at the desk that was nominally
+Theodore Burr's, but really his. He groped mechanically for the handle
+of the drawer where he usually rested his feet, found it hard to open,
+gave up the attempt and, leaning back without its support, stared at Mr.
+Burr's ornate, brass-mounted blotter with unseeing eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting there, he was no longer the boy who had the privilege of
+intimate talk with prominent citizens like Mr. Ward and valued it; or
+the boy who had laughed at his mother's anxiety so bravely. He was not
+even the boy that he used to be, sullen, but rebellious, too. To-day for
+the first time he was something worse, a defeated boy. The long minutes
+dragged like hours, and he sat through them as he would have sat through
+hours, silent and motionless, losing run of time and acknowledging
+defeat.</p>
+
+<p>For there was something that this boy wanted, and had always wanted, as
+he could never want other things, even success or love, as a boy or a
+man can want one thing only in one lifetime. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> was a remote and
+preposterous dream that he had, a dream that nobody else in Green River
+was foolhardy enough to cherish long, but this boy belonged to the race
+of poets and dreamers, the race that must sometimes dream true, because
+it always dreams. His dream had taken different forms: sometimes he saw
+himself doing desperate things, setting fire to a house that he knew and
+hated, striking a blow in the dark for which nobody thanked him, but the
+issue was always the same, and the dream never left him. He was to find
+Green River a new master. He was to save the town. That was his dream.
+It had never left him till now.</p>
+
+<p>He was only a lean, tense boy, crouched over a battered desk and staring
+out of the window at a country street with absent, beautiful eyes, but
+he was living through a tragic hour; the terrible hour that poets and
+dreamers know when they lose hold upon their dreams. Measured by
+minutes, this hour was not long. Neil passed a hand across his forehead
+and sat up, reaching for his cap in a dazed way, for he was not to be
+permitted to hide longer from his trouble here. The plump and personable
+figure of Mr. Theodore Burr was crossing the square and disappearing
+into the door below. His unhurried step climbed the stairs. Neil opened
+the door to him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Hello, stranger. Why aren't you at Madison?" Neil said.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't go," said Mr. Burr lucidly. "Where are you going? I don't want
+to drive you away from here."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, just out. I was going anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't invite me. I don't blame you. I'm poor company, and I've got
+business to attend to here."</p>
+
+<p>"No!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why shouldn't I have business here?" snapped Mr. Burr.</p>
+
+<p>"You should, you should, Theodore. Say"&mdash;the question had been troubling
+Neil subconsciously all the time he sat at the desk&mdash;"what's wrong with
+that lower drawer? I can't open it."</p>
+
+<p>"It's locked."</p>
+
+<p>"What for?"</p>
+
+<p>"That," said Mr. Burr with dignity, "is my private drawer&mdash;for private
+papers."</p>
+
+<p>"Papers!" Mr. Burr's private papers were known to consist chiefly of a
+file of receipted bills and a larger file of unreceipted bills, both
+kept with his usual fastidious neatness. "What papers?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's my business. I've got some rights here, if I am a figurehead.
+I've got some privileges."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Sure. Don't you feel right to-day, Theodore?"</p>
+
+<p>"That," said Mr. Burr, "is my business, too."</p>
+
+<p>Neil stared at his friend. Mr. Burr was faultlessly groomed, as always,
+his tie was of the vivid and unique blue that he affected so often, and
+a very recent close shave had acted upon him as usual, giving him a pink
+and new-born appearance, but his eyes looked old and tired, as if he had
+not slept for weeks and had no immediate prospect of sleeping, and there
+were lines of strain about his weak mouth. He was not himself. Even a
+boy preoccupied with his own troubles could not ignore it.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you feel right?" Neil said. "Don't you want me to do something,
+Theodore?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Get out of here. Leave me alone," Mr. Burr snapped angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," said Neil soothingly.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Mr. Burr gripped Neil's reluctant, shy, boy's hand, kept it in
+his for a minute in silence, and then abruptly let it go, pushing Neil
+toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't begrudge me one locked drawer when you'll own the whole place
+some day," he said, with all the dignity that his fretful burst of
+irritation had lacked. "I'd like to see that day. You're a good boy,
+Donovan."</p>
+
+<p>"You're not right. You've got a grouch.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> Come with me and walk it off,"
+Neil said uneasily, but he did not press the invitation, and his friend
+had little more to say. His silence was perhaps the most unusual thing
+about his behaviour, which was all out of key to-day. Neil remembered
+afterward that just as he closed the door upon Mr. Burr and his
+vagaries, shutting them at the same time out of his mind, Mr. Burr,
+sitting rather heavily down in the broken-springed desk chair, was
+bending and stretching out a faultlessly manicured, slightly unsteady
+hand toward the locked drawer of the desk.</p>
+
+<p>Neil stepped out into the street with a cautious eye upon the Emporium
+across the way, but no portly form was in sight there now, and no hearty
+voice hailed him. He crossed the square and turned north, walking
+quickly, soon leaving the larger houses behind, and then the smaller
+houses above the railroad track, always climbing gradually as he walked.
+Finally, at the entrance to an overgrown road that led off to his left,
+and at the highest point of his long and slow ascent, he turned and
+looked back at the town.</p>
+
+<p>The town that Colonel Everard had put on the map hardly deserved the
+honour, seen so in a glitter of afternoon light, with the long, sloping
+hill leading down to it, and the white tower of the church pointing high
+above it, a cozy huddle of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> houses at the foot of the hill. It looked
+unassuming and sheltered and safe, only a group of homes to make a
+simple and sheltered home in. The boy looked long at it, then turned
+abruptly and plunged into the road before him.</p>
+
+<p>It led straight across a shallow belt of fields and deep into the woods.
+Only a cart-track at first, it soon lost itself here in a path, and the
+path in turn grew fainter and became a brown, alluring ghost of a path.
+It was hard to trace, but this was ground that Neil knew, a favourite
+haunt of his, though few other boys ventured to trespass here. The woods
+were part of the Everard estate.</p>
+
+<p>Neil had found his first May flowers here on the first spring that he
+was privileged to give them to Judith. Last year she had helped him look
+for them here. His errand here was not so pleasant to-day. The brown
+path did not really lead to the heart of the woods as it seemed to. It
+was not so long as it looked. It was a fairly direct short cut to the
+Everard house.</p>
+
+<p>The boy followed it quickly, with no eyes for the dim lure of the woods
+to-day.</p>
+
+<p>"You've beat me," he muttered once to himself; "I'll have a look at
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Soon the woods were not so thick. They fell away around him, carelessly
+thinned at first, littered with fallen trees and stumps, but nearer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> the
+house combed out accurately by the relentless processes of landscape
+gardening, and looking orderly and empty. The little path vanished
+entirely here. Ahead of Neil, through a thin fringe of trees, was the
+Colonel's rose garden; beyond it, the broad stretch of lawn and the
+house, bulky and towered and tall.</p>
+
+<p>Neil broke through the trees and stood and looked at it, straight ahead,
+seen through the frame of the trellised entrance to the garden,
+upstanding and ugly and arrogant.</p>
+
+<p>"You've beat me," he said to the Colonel's house. "You've beat me; you
+and him. I hate you!"</p>
+
+<p>His voice had a hollow sound in the empty garden. Garden and lawn and
+house had the same look that the whole deserted town had caught to-day;
+the look of suddenly empty rooms where much life has been, a breathless
+strangeness that holds echoes of what has happened there, and even hints
+of what is to happen; haunted rooms. It is not best to linger there.
+Neil turned uneasily toward the path again.</p>
+
+<p>He turned, then he turned back, stood for a tense minute listening, then
+broke through the rose garden and began to run across the lawn. Very
+faint and small, so that he could not tell whether it was in a man's
+voice or a woman's, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> echoing clearly across the deserted garden, he
+had heard a scream from the house.</p>
+
+<p>It came from the house somewhere, though as Neil ran toward it the house
+still looked tenantless. The veranda was without its usual gay litter of
+cushions and books and serving trays. At the long windows that opened on
+it all the curtains were close drawn&mdash;or at all but one.</p>
+
+<p>As Neil reached the house he saw that the middle window was thrown high
+and the long, pale-coloured curtain was dragged from its rod and
+dangling over the sill. Just then he heard a second scream from the
+house. It was so choked and faint that he barely heard it. Neil ran up
+the steps and slipped through the open window into the Everards'
+library.</p>
+
+<p>Little light came through the curtained windows. The green room,
+sparsely scattered with furniture in summer covers of light chintz that
+glimmered pale and forbidding, looked twice its unfriendly length in the
+gloom. There was a heavy, dead scent of too many flowers in the air. On
+a table across the room a bowl of hothouse hyacinths, just overturned,
+crushed the flowers with its weight and dripped water into the sodden
+rug.</p>
+
+<p>Neil, at the window looking uncertainly into the half-dark room, saw the
+bowl and the white mass<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> of crushed flowers, and then something else,
+something that shifted and stirred in a far corner of the room. He saw
+it dimly at first, a dark, struggling group. There were two men in it.</p>
+
+<p>One was a man who had screamed, but he was not screaming now. It would
+hardly have been convenient for him to scream, for the other, the
+smaller and slighter man of the two, was clutching him by the throat,
+gripping it with a hand that he could not shake off as the two figures
+swayed back and forth.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's there?" Neil cried.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody answered him. Nobody needed to, for just then the two men who
+seemed to be fighting swung into the narrow strip of light before the
+uncurtained window and he could see their faces. He could see, too, that
+they were not fighting now, though they had seemed to be. The bigger man
+was choked into submission already. No sound came from him and he hung
+limp and still in the little man's hold. Just in the centre of the strip
+of light the little man relaxed his grip, and let him fall. He dropped
+to the floor in a limp, untidy looking heap, and lay still there, with
+the light full on his face, closed eyes and grinning mouth. The man was
+Colonel Everard, the man who stood over him was Charlie Brady.</p>
+
+<p>As Neil looked Brady dropped on his knees<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> beside the Colonel, felt for
+his heart, and found it. He knelt there, motionless, holding his hand
+pressed over it and peering intently into his face. Presently he got to
+his feet deliberately, gave a deep sigh of entire content with himself,
+and looked about him. Then and not until then he saw Neil. He saw him
+without surprise, if without much pleasure, it appeared.</p>
+
+<p>"You're late," he remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"You drunken fool," Neil began furiously, then stopped, staring at his
+cousin. Whatever the meaning of this exhibition was, Charlie was not
+drunk. The excitement that possessed him was excitement of some other
+kind. It possessed him entirely, though it was under control for the
+moment. His muscles twitched with it. His shoulders shifted restlessly.
+His hands closed and unclosed. His eyes were strangely lit, and there
+was an absent, exalted look about them. Whatever the excitement, it was
+strong&mdash;stronger than Charlie. Neil, his eyes now used to the
+half-light, could see no weapon in the room, dropped on the floor or
+discarded. Mr. Brady, normally a coward in his cups and out of them, had
+attacked his enemy with his bare hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Charlie, what's got you?" Neil said. "What's come to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"What's come to him, there?" Charlie said, in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> voice that was changed,
+too, and was as remote and as strange as his eyes, a low voice, with the
+deceptive, terrible calm of gathering hysteria about it.</p>
+
+<p>"Look what's come to him," the voice went on. "Don't he deserve it, and
+worse? How did I find him to-day when I broke in through the window
+there? At his old tricks again. There was a woman with him in the
+library there, when he came out to me. He locked the door. She's there
+now. Neil, you'd better get away from here. I don't know what you're
+doing here, but you'd better go, and go quick."</p>
+
+<p>He had given this advice indifferently. He made his next observation
+indifferently, too, with his furtive, absent eyes on the library door.</p>
+
+<p>"I've killed him."</p>
+
+<p>"What's got you? Are you crazy?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;not now. You'd better go. I want to take a look in there first. The
+key's in the door."</p>
+
+<p>"Charlie, come back here."</p>
+
+<p>The note of command that he was used to responding to in his young
+cousin's voice reached and controlled Mr. Brady even now; he obeyed and
+swung round and stood still, looking at Neil. Neil's dark eyes, just
+above the level of his own, and so like them, were unrecognizable now.
+They were dull with anger, and they were angry with him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" he quavered. "What's the matter, Neil?"</p>
+
+<p>Between the two cousins, as they stood facing each other, the Colonel
+lay ominously still. The cruel eyes did not open, and the distorted
+mouth did not change.</p>
+
+<p>"Look! You can see for yourself. Feel his heart," Mr. Brady offered, but
+his cousin's dark, disconcerting eyes did not leave his face. "What's
+the matter, Neil? What are you going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to make you talk out to me," Neil said. "You'll tell me
+what's got you, and why you did this, which will be the ruin of you and
+me, too, but first you'll tell me something else. You'll tell me what
+you've hid from me for a year, you who can tell me the truth when you're
+drunk and lie out of it when you're sober, till you've worn me out and
+I'm sick of trying to get the truth from you. I'll be getting it now too
+late, but I'll get it. Have you or have you not been living on this
+man's money?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Was it hush money?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Mr. Brady said. "Neil, I'll tell you everything. You've guessed
+most of it, but I'll tell you the rest. I can prove it. I can prove
+everything I know. I did take hush money. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> was dirty money, but I
+didn't care. I didn't care what happened. I didn't care till to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"To-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"I got&mdash;a letter."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on," Neil said.</p>
+
+<p>As he spoke Mr. Brady's face began suddenly to change, lighting again
+with that strange excitement which had gripped him, revived, and burning
+through its thin veneer of control. His eyes blazed with it, and his
+voice shook with it. He waved a trembling hand toward the library door.
+A sound had come from the library, the faintest of sounds, a low,
+frightened cry. It was like the ghost of a cry, but he heard. Neil heard
+it, too, and was at the door before him, trying to unlock it, fumbling
+with the key.</p>
+
+<p>"She's there yet," Mr. Brady cried; "whoever she is. Well, she'll be the
+last of them. I had a letter, I tell you, a letter from Maggie. She's
+coming home, what's left of her&mdash;what he's left of her&mdash;Everard. I never
+thought he was to blame. I said he was, but I was talked out of it. If
+I'd thought so, if I'd suspected it, would I have touched a penny of his
+dirty money? But she's coming home. Maggie's coming home."</p>
+
+<p>For the moment Neil was not concerned with the fact. Graver revelations
+might have passed over him unheeded. The key had turned at last.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> Then
+Neil felt the door being pushed open from inside. He stepped back and
+waited. The door opened cautiously for an inch or two, then swung
+suddenly wide. Standing motionless, framed in the library door, was
+Judith.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_NINETEEN" id="CHAPTER_NINETEEN"></a>CHAPTER NINETEEN</h2>
+
+<p>The two cousins, Mr. Brady shocked into sudden silence, stood with
+Colonel Everard's unconscious body behind them, unregarded, like any
+other bulky and motionless shape in the dim room, and stared at the girl
+who had come from the locked library.</p>
+
+<p>"Not you," Neil's voice said dully. "Not here."</p>
+
+<p>But the girl was Judith.</p>
+
+<p>Bare-headed, slender in soft-falling white, she stood in the library
+door with both hands behind her, clasping her big, limp hat by its
+flaring brim. Her lightly poised, blond head was fluffy with small,
+escaping curls, her clear-coloured cheeks were warmly flushed, and
+between her red, slightly parted lips her breath came too quickly, but
+softly, still. A sheer, torn ruffle trailed from her skirt. One
+rose-coloured bow hung from her girdle awry and crushed, and looked the
+softer for that, like a crumpled flower.</p>
+
+<p>About her dress and her whole small self there was a drooping and
+crumpled look. It was the look of a child that has played too hard.
+Surely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> the most incongruous and pathetic little figure that had ever
+appeared from a room where a distressed or designing lady was suspected
+of hiding, she stood and returned Neil's look, but there was blank panic
+in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>They turned from Neil to Mr. Brady, wild eyed and pale beside him, to
+the disordered room, and back to Neil again, with no change of
+expression at all. They were wide and dilated and dark, intent still on
+some picture that they held and could not let go. Judith came an
+uncertain step or two forward into the room, stiffly, as if she were
+walking in her sleep, and stood still.</p>
+
+<p>"Neil, what did you come here for?" she said. "I'm glad you came."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was sweet and expressionless, like her eyes, and though she
+had called Neil by name, she looked at him as if she had never seen him
+before. One small hand reached out uncertainly, pulled at his sleeve,
+and then, as he made no move to take it, dropped again, and began to
+finger the big hat that she held, and pluck at the flowers on it, but
+her eyes did not leave his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Will they stand for this?" Mr. Brady was demanding incoherently behind
+them, "as young as this? Will the town stand it? No. And they won't
+blame me now. They can't. It was coming to you&mdash;you&mdash;&mdash;"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He was in the grip of his own troubles again, and breaking into little
+mutterings of hysterical speech, which he now addressed directly to
+Colonel Everard, standing over him and not seeming to feel the need of
+an answer. It was an uncanny proceeding. The girl and boy did not watch
+it. They were seeing only each other.</p>
+
+<p>"Judith," Neil began stumblingly, "what were you doing there? What's
+frightened you so? What you heard out here? That's all that frightened
+you, isn't it? Isn't it? But what made you come here alone like this?
+Didn't you know&mdash;&mdash; Oh, Judith&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped and looked down at her, saying nothing, but his eyes were
+troubled and dark with questions that he did not dare to ask. There was
+no answer to them in Judith's eyes, only blank fear. As Neil looked, the
+fear in Judith's eyes was reflected in his, creeping into them and
+taking possession there.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Judith," he whispered miserably. "Oh, Judith."</p>
+
+<p>Judith seemed to have heard what he said to her from far away, and to be
+only faintly puzzled by it, not interested or touched. Her eyes kept
+their secrets under his questioning eyes. They defied him. She was not
+like his little lost sweet-heart found again, but a stranger and an
+enemy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> one of the people he hated, people who intrigued and lied, but
+were out of his reach and above him, and were all his enemies.</p>
+
+<p>The boy's world was upsetting. Nothing that had happened to him in that
+room or ever had happened to him before had shaken it like that minute
+of doubt that he lived through in silence, with the strain of it showing
+in his pale face, and Charlie's voice echoing half heard in his ears. He
+drew back from Judith slightly as they stood. He was trembling. Judith's
+face was a blur of white before his eyes, then he could not see it&mdash;and
+then, as suddenly as it had come, his black minute was over.</p>
+
+<p>"Take me away. I don't want to stay where he is any more. Is he dead?"
+Judith said, and she slipped her hand into Neil's.</p>
+
+<p>Judith's voice was as lifeless and strange as before, and the hand in
+his was cold, but it was Judith's own little clinging hand, and the
+boy's hand closed on it tight. He stood still, feeling it in his, and
+holding it as if the poor little cold hand could give him back all his
+strength again. He looked round him at the dim room and its motionless
+owner and Charlie as if he were seeing them clearly for the first time.
+He was not angry with Charlie any longer. He was not angry at all. He
+drew a deep, sobbing breath of relief, dropped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> his dark head suddenly
+and awkwardly toward Judith's unresponsive hand and kissed it, and then
+very gently let it go.</p>
+
+<p>"Judith, you're you," he said, "just you, no matter what happens, and
+nothing else matters; nothing in the world, as long as you are you."</p>
+
+<p>Judith only smiled her faint half smile at him, as if she guessed that
+some crisis had come and passed, but did not greatly care.</p>
+
+<p>"Take me away," she repeated patiently. "I thought there'd be other
+people here. He said so. But I've come here alone before, only he was
+different to-day. He was different."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't tell me. I don't want to know. I won't ever ask you again. I
+never ought to have asked you. It's all right, dear. It's all right."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know people were like that&mdash;anybody, ever. I just didn't
+know&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't, dear," said Neil sharply. The small, bewildered voice that held
+more wonder and pain than her words broke off, but her bewildered eyes
+still wondered and grieved. Neil's arms went out to her suddenly and
+drew her close, holding her gently, and hiding her small, pathetic face
+against his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't," he whispered. "I'll take care of you. I'm going to take care of
+you. Nobody's going to hurt you any more."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Neil, I just didn't know. I didn't know."</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right. I'm going to take you away. Just wait, dear. I'm going
+to take care of you."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke to her softly, saying the same thing over and over, as if he
+were quieting a frightened child. She was quiet in his arms like a
+frightened and tired child in any arms held out to it. One arm had
+slipped round his neck and clung to him. She drew long choking breaths
+as if she were too tired to cry. Gradually they stopped, but the arm
+round his neck only clung tighter.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't leave me," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm not going to. I'm going to take care of you. You know that,
+don't you, Judith?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Neil?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Neil." Still in his arms, because she felt safe and protected there,
+Judith lifted her head and looked at him, and into her sweet, dazed
+eyes, full of a terror that she could not understand, came a faint flash
+of anger. This boy who held her so safe and comforted was her enemy,
+too. Long before the ugly accident of what had happened behind the
+library doors he had been her enemy, and he was her enemy now, though
+she needed his protection and took it. Their quarrel was not over.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Neil, I don't forgive you. I'm never going to forgive you."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"And I hate you. You know that, don't you? I hate you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear, I know it. We aren't going to talk about that now. Let me
+go."</p>
+
+<p>Both arms were round him now. Judith let him draw them gently apart and
+down, and drew back from him. The anger was gone from her eyes. She
+watched him wide eyed and still, as children watch the incomprehensible
+activities of grownups, or devoted but jealous dogs watch them.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't leave me," she said. "You're sweet to me." Then she gave a sharp,
+startled little cry.</p>
+
+<p>"Neil," she begged, "don't touch him. I don't want you to touch him.
+What are you going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>The light had not had time to dim or shift perceptibly in Colonel
+Everard's big room while so much was settling itself for Neil and
+Judith. The Colonel still lay with the pale shaft of afternoon light on
+his unconscious face. Now the boy was kneeling beside him. He slipped a
+strong, careful arm under his shoulders, and bent over him, touching him
+with quick, sure hands. He ignored Mr. Brady, who stood crying out
+inco<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>herent protests beside him, and finally put a shaking hand on his
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Neil shook it off, and rose and stood facing his cousin.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought so," he said, with a short laugh. "You had me going at first,
+Charlie, when I came in here and saw what a pretty picture you made. I
+believed you. I thought you had killed him. I might have known things
+like that don't happen in Green River."</p>
+
+<p>Neil put both hands on his cousin's shoulders and looked at him. Mr.
+Brady was not an attractive sight at that moment. The excitement that
+had held and swayed him was leaving him now, and he looked shaken and
+weak. An unhealthy colour purpled his cheeks, and his sullen eyes glared
+vindictively, but could not meet Neil's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't laugh at me," he muttered. "Don't you dare to laugh at me."</p>
+
+<p>"Going to beat me up, too?" his cousin inquired. "Poor old Charlie!
+Let's hope your friend there will laugh at you when he talks this over
+with you. He'll come out of this all right, but he'll be in a better
+temper if he has a doctor here. I'll 'phone for one."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean? I've killed him. I'm glad I killed him."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His cousin laughed again. "Killed him? The man's no more dead than you
+are. You've knocked him out, that's all. But you didn't kill him. Is
+that the 'phone over there?"</p>
+
+<p>A desk telephone on a big Louis Quinze table at one end of the room, the
+instrument masked by the frilly skirts of a French mannequin, perhaps
+the only lady who had ever been permitted to be insipid in that room and
+to stay there long, answered Neil's question by ringing faintly, once
+and again. Neil started toward it, but did not reach it. Mr. Brady had
+flung himself suddenly upon him in a last burst of feverish strength,
+which he dissipated recklessly by shrieking out incoherent things, and
+striking misdirected blows.</p>
+
+<p>Neil parried them easily, caught his thin arms and held them at his
+sides. Keeping them so, he forced him against the edge of the flimsy
+table and held him there and looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>"You shan't answer that 'phone," Mr. Brady cried, in a last futile burst
+of defiance. "You shan't stop me. You shan't interfere. I'll kill him, I
+tell you, and you shan't answer that 'phone. You shan't&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Brady's voice died away, and he was silent under his cousin's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Through?" said Neil presently.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he muttered.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean it?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Brady nodded sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>"You've made a fool of yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Brady nodded again.</p>
+
+<p>"Neil," he got out presently, "I can make it up to you. I haven't been
+square with you, but I can. I will. You don't know&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You've done talking enough. Will you go now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll quiet down and go to mother's and stay there till I come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Neil let him go.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe I'll finish up your friend for you myself, Charlie, after you
+leave here," he offered. "I've thought of it often enough. Now I come
+here and fight for him instead of fighting against him. I fight with
+you. Poor old Charlie. Murder and sudden death! I tell you, things like
+that don't happen in Green River."</p>
+
+<p>Neil stopped talking suddenly. The telephone at his elbow had rung
+again, this time with a sharp, sudden peal, peremptory as an impatient
+voice speaking. Neil caught it up, jerked off the simpering lady by her
+audacious hat, and answered.</p>
+
+<p>At once, strangely intimate and near in that room where the three had
+been shut in for the last half hour alone and away from the rest of the
+world<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> while it went on as usual or faster, a man's voice spoke to him.
+It was almost unrecognizable, so excited and hoarse, but it was Luther
+Ward's.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello," Neil said. "Hello. Yes, this is Everards'. No, he can't come to
+the 'phone. He&mdash;what? What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>Neil stopped and listened breathlessly. Mr. Brady, slinking head down
+from the room, turned curiously to stare at him, and Judith, slipping
+across the room like a little white ghost, drew close to him and felt
+for his hand. Neil took her hand, this time with no response of heart or
+nerves. He had put down the telephone, replacing the receiver
+mechanically, but Luther Ward's voice still echoed in his ears.</p>
+
+<p>It had spoken to an uncanny accompaniment of half-heard voices, rattling
+unintelligibly in the room where Ward was, the prosaic, tobacco-scented
+room that Neil knew so well.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell Everard to come," Ward's voice had said. "He's to come down here,
+to Saxon's office. I'm there now. Theodore Burr has shot himself. Yes,
+shot himself. He won't live through the night. Who's this talking to me?
+Neil Donovan, it's you. What are you doing at Everard's? Never mind.
+Come down here yourself. Come straight down. Theodore's conscious, and
+talking, and he's been asking for you."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_TWENTY" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY"></a>CHAPTER TWENTY</h2>
+
+<p>Green River was getting ready for the rally in Odd Fellows' Hall. It was
+six o'clock on the evening of the seventeenth of September, and "Grand
+rally, Odd Fellows' Hall, September Seventeenth at eight-thirty," had
+been featured for weeks in the Green River <i>Record</i>, on the list that
+with a somewhat arrogant suggestion of prophetic powers possessed by the
+_Record_ was headed "Coming Events." It was always a scanty list,
+especially in the fall, when ten, twenty, thirty companies began to play
+larger centres, and church lawn parties and circuses could no longer
+appear on it. Sometimes not more than six events were to come in a gray
+and workaday world. But six were enough to announce. Even a true prophet
+is not expected to see all the future, only to see clearly all that he
+sees, and the <i>Record</i> did that.</p>
+
+<p>This rally was important enough to be listed all by itself, and it did
+not need the adjective grand. It was The Rally.</p>
+
+<p>It was Green River's own&mdash;a local, almost a family, affair. No
+out-of-town celebrities were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> to be imported this time, to be listened
+to with awe and then wined and dined by the Colonel safe from the
+curious eyes of the town. This time old Joe Grant was to preside, as he
+had done as a matter of course on all such occasions when he was the
+acknowledged head of the town in political and financial matters, in the
+old days of high-sounding oratory and simpler politics that were gone
+forever, but were not very long ago. Judge Saxon, an old timer, too, and
+better loved than the Honourable Joe, had declined the honour of
+presiding, but had the authentic offer of it, his first distinction of
+the kind for years.</p>
+
+<p>It was a local but very important occasion. It was Colonel Everard's
+first official appearance as candidate for mayor. It was to be a very
+modest appearance. No more time was allotted for his speech than for
+Luther Ward's. He was putting himself on a level with Luther and the
+Judge and the Honourable Joe and identifying himself at last with local
+politics. The evening emphasized the great man's condescension in
+accepting this humble office and honouring Green River. Even with the
+scandal of Theodore Burr's suicide unexplained still and only two weeks
+old, interest centred on the rally. It was a triumph for the town.</p>
+
+<p>Green River was almost ready. Dugan's or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>chestra was engaged for the
+evening, instead of a rival organization from Wells, which the Colonel
+often imported upon private and public occasions. Jerry Dugan was
+getting old, too, like the Judge and the Honourable Joe. He had not lost
+the peculiar wail and lilt from his fiddling, but he had made few recent
+additions to his repertoire. Just now the band concert in front of Odd
+Fellows' Hall was winding up with his old favourite: "A Day on the
+Battlefield."</p>
+
+<p>It had the old swing still, contagious as ever. Loafers in front of the
+hall shuffled their feet in time to it. Moon-struck young persons
+hanging two by two over the railings of the bridge to gaze at the water
+straightened themselves and listened. An ambitious soloist lounging
+against the court-house fence across the square began to whistle it with
+elaborate variations, at the inspiring moment when "morning in the
+forest" had bird-called and syncopated itself into silence, and actual
+fighting, and the martial music of the charge began.</p>
+
+<p>High and lilting and shrill, it hung in the still night air, alive for
+the hour, challenging the echoes of dead tunes that lingered about the
+square, only to die away and be one with them at last; band music,
+old-fashioned band music, blatant and empty and splendid, clear through
+the still night air, attuned to the night and the town.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Good old tune. Gets into your feet," Judge Saxon said, while his wife
+adjusted his tie before the black walnut mirror in their bedroom, but
+his unusual tribute to the tune was perfunctory to-night, and his wife
+ignored it, wisely taking this moment of helpfulness to plunge him
+suddenly and briskly into a series of questions which she had been
+trying in vain for some time to get the correct answers to.</p>
+
+<p>"Hugh," she said, "why wouldn't you take the chair to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"You were the only thing I ever tried to take away from Joe Grant and
+got away with it, Millie," the Judge explained gallantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think this rally is like old times? Don't you want to see the
+town stand on its own feet again, instead of being run from outside?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do, Millie."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Saxon made her next point triumphantly, connecting it with the
+point before by some obscure logic known only to ladies.</p>
+
+<p>"Hugh, a father could not do more for Lillian Burr than the Colonel has
+since poor Theodore went. The house full of flowers, calling there
+himself every day and twice a day, though she won't see him; but Lillian
+won't see any one. The Colonel's been ailing himself, too, but he
+wouldn't put off the rally and disappoint the town. And<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> the new library
+will open this fall, and there's talk that he's giving an organ to the
+church. Hugh, don't you think Theodore's death may have sobered him?
+Don't you think this may be the beginning of better things? Don't you
+think&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I think you're making a butterfly bow. I don't like them," said the
+Judge, with the ingenuous smile that somehow closed a subject. She
+sighed, but changed her attack.</p>
+
+<p>"Turn round now. I want to brush you. Hugh, what has happened to Neil
+Donovan?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, happened to him?" snapped the Judge, and then added
+soberly, "I don't know, Millie. I wish I did."</p>
+
+<p>"An Irish boy can get just so far and no farther."</p>
+
+<p>"How far, Millie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be flippant, Hugh. There's something strange about Neil lately.
+He didn't speak three times at the table last time he came to supper
+here. He looks at me as if he didn't know who I was when I speak to him
+on the street sometimes. There's no life in him. He's like Charlie and
+all the rest of them&mdash;giving out just when things are going his way;
+that's an Irish boy every time."</p>
+
+<p>"When things are going his way? When his best friend has just shot
+himself?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't refer to that, Hugh," said Mrs. Saxon with dignity.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No?"</p>
+
+<p>"I referred to Neil's family affairs, and the fact that Colonel Everard
+has taken him up."</p>
+
+<p>"Maggie home and behaving herself and no questions asked, Charlie
+shipped to Wells, and Neil going shooting twice with the Colonel?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three times, Hugh."</p>
+
+<p>"And that's what you call things going his way."</p>
+
+<p>"Hugh, why should those two spend any time together at all? They hate
+each other, or I always thought so&mdash;that is, if a man like the Colonel
+could hate a boy like Neil. What does he want of Neil now? What does
+Neil want of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"They don't tell me, Millie."</p>
+
+<p>"But it's queer. It frightens me, Hugh. It's as queer as&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everything," Mrs. Saxon said, goaded into an exaggeration foreign to
+her placid type, "everything, lately. You refusing to preside to-night.
+Lillian Burr shutting herself up in this uncanny way. It is uncanny,
+even if she is in trouble. Minna Randall taking to church work, and
+sewing for hours at a time, and taking long drives with her husband.
+They haven't been inside the Colonel's doors for weeks. Their second
+girl told<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> our Mary that they have refused five invitations there in the
+last month. It's my idea that he gave that last stag dinner because he
+couldn't get Minna or Edith there, or any woman. Why should his own
+circle turn against him, just when he's doing real good to the town? And
+it's not only his own circle that's against him. I was matching curtains
+at Ward's when Sebastian came in to-day, and Luther Ward was barely
+civil to him&mdash;the Colonel's own secretary. What's wrong with the town,
+Hugh? Can't it be grateful to the Colonel, now when he really deserves
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry about what Everard deserves. He's not likely to get it,
+Millie."</p>
+
+<p>Again the Judge was closing the subject, and this time his wife had no
+more to say. She gave his threadbare, scrupulously pressed coat a final
+pat and jerk of adjustment, and stood off and looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll do," she said, "now go along. The music's stopping. It won't
+look well if you're late."</p>
+
+<p>She turned off the flickering gas jet above the marble-topped bureau
+abruptly, but not before the Judge had caught the gleam of tears in her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Why girl," he said, and came close to her and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> slipped an arm round her
+plump, comfortable waist. "You're really troubled."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And vexed with me for not helping you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>He had drawn her toward a front window of the big, square room. The
+Judge and his wife stood by it quietly, looking down through a triangle
+of white, starched curtains at the glimmering, sparsely lit length of
+street below, and straightening out their difficulties in darkness and
+silence, as all true lovers should, even lovers at fifty, as these two
+were fortunate enough to be.</p>
+
+<p>"Millie, I don't want to tease you," the Judge said. "I'll tell you
+anything you want to know."</p>
+
+<p>"I've been so worried," she wept comfortably against his shoulder. "I'm
+so afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I feel as if something&mdash;anything might happen. I&mdash;oh, you'll only
+laugh. I can't just tell you, Hugh."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you," said the Judge.</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated and then went on slowly, speaking more to himself than to
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Women hate change. That makes them dread it, even when it's not coming.
+You're dreading it, but it's not coming now, dear. There's feeling
+against Everard. You're right, but you exagger<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>ate it. It's instinctive
+and unformulated. It hasn't gone far and won't go any farther. He won't
+let it. The rally and the library and this new democracy stuff, stag
+dinners to Ward's crowd and all, are part of a campaign to stop it. The
+campaign will succeed. Everard's own crowd won't quarrel with him. They
+can't afford to. Everard has pulled through worse times than this. I've
+helped him myself, and I shall help him again.</p>
+
+<p>"There'll be no change, Millie. Things will go on just the way they are.
+I've lived the best years of my life believing that it was best they
+should, and if I'm wrong, I'm too old to change my mind. I've said
+somebody had to own the town, and it might as well be Everard. I've said
+the Burrs and Kents and Randalls, and old Joe Grant's young wife with
+their parties and drinks and silly little love affairs, were playing too
+hard, but doing no real harm, planting their cheap, fake smart set here
+in Green River where it don't belong. Now poor Theodore Burr's dead.
+That don't look like play. Harry Randall's so deep in debt to the bank
+for what Everard's let him borrow that he has to stay on there at three
+thousand a year, though he's been offered twice that in Wells. Everard
+won't let him go. And the best I can say about myself in the years I've
+worked for Everard is that I've kept my hands clean, if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> I have had to
+keep my eyes shut, but I can say that to you, Millie."</p>
+
+<p>"It does look like old times down there," he went on softly, after a
+minute. "The street and the lights are the same. And it sounds like old
+times. It was from a rally in the hall that I first went home with you,
+Millie. Remember? I was just a boy then, but I wish I was half the man I
+was then, to-night." He heard a murmur of protest, and laughed. "But I
+do, Millie. I&mdash;wouldn't be helping Everard."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Hugh!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't worry. Everard will pull through all right. Look at the Randalls
+over there, starting for the hall. Leave your windows open, Millie, and
+you'll soon hear them all cheering for Everard. The moon won't rise till
+late, but it will be full to-night. Listen, the band's going into the
+hall now."</p>
+
+<p>The Judge rested his cheek for a moment against his wife's soft, smooth
+hair, the decorous, satisfying caress of a decorous generation, then he
+raised his head with a long, tired sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I was young," he said. "I wish I was young to-night."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"I wish I was young," the Judge had said, with a thrill and hunger that
+was the soul of youth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> itself in his voice. At the moment when he said
+it, a boy who had the privilege that the Judge coveted, and was not
+enjoying it just then, was leaning against the court-house railing, and
+watching Green River crowd into Odd Fellows' Hall.</p>
+
+<p>Another boy had pushed his way across the square to his side, and was
+not heartily welcomed there, but was calmly unconscious of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Some night, Donovan," he remarked,</p>
+
+<p>"Some night, Willard," Neil agreed gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Going in? Good for three hours of hot air?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not going. No."</p>
+
+<p>"Good boy. Say&mdash;" Mr. Willard Nash lowered his voice as he made this
+daring suggestion&mdash;"we'll go around to Halloran's, and get into a little
+game."</p>
+
+<p>His invitation was not accepted.</p>
+
+<p>"Jerry Dugan's not dead yet," observed Willard presently.</p>
+
+<p>Strains of a deservedly popular waltz tune, heard from inside the hall,
+gave faint but unmistakable proof of this. Willard kept time with his
+feet as he listened, paying the tune the tribute of silence, a rare one
+from him. Standing so, the two were sharply contrasted figures, though
+the flickering lamps in the square threw only faint light here, and
+showed them darkly outlined against the railing, as they leaned there
+side by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> side. Pose, carriage, every movement and turn of the head were
+different, as different as a bulky and overgrown child is from a boy
+turning into a man.</p>
+
+<p>"Some night," Willard repeated, unanswered, but unchilled by it, "and
+some crowd."</p>
+
+<p>The hall had been filling fast. Though the waltz still swung its faint
+challenge into the night, so much of Green River had responded to it
+already that now it was arriving only by twos and threes. But the groups
+still followed each other fast under the big globe of light at the
+entrance door, gayly shaded with red for the occasion, and up the bare,
+clattering stairs to the floor above, and the hall.</p>
+
+<p>Willard was right, more right than he knew. There was a crowd up there,
+a crowd as Willard did not understand the word; a crowd with a tone and
+temper of its own and a personality of its own. It was subject to laws
+of its own and could think and feel for itself, and its thoughts and
+feelings were made up of the brain stuff of every person in it, but
+different from them all. It was a newly created thing, a new factor in
+the world, and like all crowds it was born for one evening, to live for
+that evening only, and do its work and die.</p>
+
+<p>Upstairs behind closed doors, such a crowd was forming; getting ready to
+think its own thoughts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> and act and feel, and so many houses, little and
+big, had emptied themselves to contribute to it, so many family
+discussions like the Saxons' had gone on as a prelude to it, that you
+might fairly say the crowd up there was Green River.</p>
+
+<p>Willard, watching the late arrivals and commenting upon them to Neil,
+still an uncommunicative audience, was vaguely stirred.</p>
+
+<p>"This gets me," he conceded. "There's something about old Dugan's music
+that always gets me. For two cents, I'd go in. I sat through a patent
+medicine show there last week, because I didn't have the sense to stay
+away. It always gets me when there is anything doing in the hall.
+And&mdash;" he paused, heavily testing his powers of self-analysis, "it gets
+me," he brought out at length, "more to-night than it ever did before.
+It&mdash;gets me."</p>
+
+<p>"Look, there's Joe Grant," Willard went on. "This is his night, all
+right. Look at the bulge to that manuscript case, and the shine to his
+hair. He mixes varnish with his hair dye, all right. I said, look at
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm looking."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you don't do much else. What's eating you to-night? Say, will you
+go in if I will?"</p>
+
+<p>An inarticulate murmur answered him.</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"All right. Well, what do you know about that? Look there."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm looking."</p>
+
+<p>The latest comers were crowding hurriedly into the entrance hall by this
+time, and with them, a slender, heavily veiled figure had slipped
+quickly through the door and out of sight.</p>
+
+<p>"Was that Lil?" Willard said. "Lil Burr?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"She wouldn't come here; I don't believe it."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it."</p>
+
+<p>"How?"</p>
+
+<p>"She told me."</p>
+
+<p>"What was she doing, talking to you? Why, she won't talk to anybody.
+She&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You'll be late at Hallorans'."</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you coming?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"But you said you would. I don't want to go if you don't. I don't half
+like to leave you here, you act so queer to-night. What makes you act
+so? What's eating&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing."</p>
+
+<p>Willard detached himself from the railings and regarded his friend,
+suddenly breathless with surprise, and deeply grieved. Nothing. The
+word, harmless in itself, had been spoken so that it hit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> him like an
+actual blow, straight from the shoulder. Neil, shifting so that the
+light showed his face, was returning his look with the sudden,
+unreasoning anger that we feel toward little sounds that beat their slow
+way into our consciousness at night, to irritate us unendurably at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Go," he urged, "go along to Halloran's. Go anywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what do you know about that?" began Willard, offended, and then
+forgave him. There was a look in Neil's pale face that commanded
+forgiveness. It was pale and strained with a trouble that had nothing to
+do with Willard, and Willard was respectful and inarticulate before it.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right," Willard muttered, "that will be all right. I'll go."</p>
+
+<p>Neil took no notice of this promise. Up in the hall the waltz had
+swelled to a high, light-hearted climax, heady and strained, like the
+sudden excitements that sweep a crowd. It came clear through the open
+windows, making one last appeal to the boy below to come up and be part
+of what was there. And just then a small closed car swept down through
+the empty square and stopped. Two men stepped out, and paused in the
+doorway under the red-shaded light.</p>
+
+<p>One was the Colonel's secretary, waiting on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> step beyond range of
+the light, a tall, shadowy figure, and the other, who stood with the
+light on his face, was Colonel Everard.</p>
+
+<p>He was still pale from his week of illness, but his keen eyes and
+clear-cut profile were more effective for that. He stood listening to
+the sounds from upstairs, and he smiled as he listened. He turned at
+last and looked out across the square as if he could feel Neil's eyes
+upon him and were returning their look, and then turned away and
+disappeared up the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Neil," Willard was announcing uneasily, "I think a lot of you. I'd do a
+lot for you. If you're in wrong, any way, if&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Willard broke off, rebuffed. Neil did not even look at him. He stood
+staring at the lighted doorway where the Colonel had stood and smiled,
+as if he could still see him there. He was a creature beyond Willard's
+world, as he looked, but unaccountably fascinating to Willard. Willard
+regarded him in awed silence.</p>
+
+<p>Now Dugan's music had stopped. Some one above shut a window with a
+clatter that echoed disproportionately loud. Then there was silence up
+there, tense silence, and the call of the silence was harder to resist
+than the music. The boy by the court-house railing could not resist it.
+He pushed away Willard's detaining hand, and with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>out a word to him or
+another glance at him, was across the square and through the red-lighted
+door, and running up the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you know about that?" Willard demanded, in vain. "What do you
+know&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Willard, certainly, knew nothing, and gave up the attempt to understand,
+with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>A little later the vantage point of the court-house fence was
+unoccupied. Of the two boys who had occupied it, one was making a
+belated and rather disconsolate way toward Halloran's&mdash;the one who would
+be boasting to-morrow that he had spent the last fifteen minutes with
+Neil Donovan. The other boy stood listening outside the closed doors of
+the hall.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>It was half an hour later and it had been an important half-hour in Odd
+Fellows' Hall, that uneventful but vital time when the newly made
+creature that is the crowd is passive, gathering its forces slowly,
+getting ready to fling the weight of them into one side of a balance
+irrevocably, if it has decisions to make; the most important half-hour
+of the evening if you were interested in the psychology of crowds. The
+Honourable Joe Grant was not. He would have said that the first speech
+dragged and the half-hour had been dull. Dull or significant, that
+half-hour was over, and Green<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> River was waking up. In the listening
+hush of the hall the big moments of the evening, whatever they were to
+be, were creeping nearer and nearer. Now they were almost here.</p>
+
+<p>The Honourable Joe had just introduced Luther Ward and heavily resumed
+his seat. He sat portly and erect and entirely happy behind the
+thin-legged, inadequate looking table that held a water pitcher, his
+important looking papers, and his watch. The ornately chased gold watch
+that had measured so many epoch-making hours for Green River was in
+public life again, like the Honourable Joe. He fingered it
+affectionately, wiped his forehead delicately from time to time with a
+purple silk handkerchief, followed Mr. Ward's remarks with unwavering
+brown eyes, and smiled his benevolent, public-spirited smile. This was
+his night indeed.</p>
+
+<p>Behind the Honourable Joe, on the stage in a semicircular row of chairs
+were the speakers of the evening, and before him was Green River.</p>
+
+<p>The badly proportioned little hall was not at its best to-night. It was
+too brightly lit and the footlights threw an uncompromising glare upon
+the tiny stage. Red, white, and blue cheesecloth in crude, sharp
+colouring draped windows and stage, making gay little splashes of colour
+that emphasized the dinginess of the room. Only the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> Grand Army flag,
+borrowed and draped elaborately above the stage, showed faded and thin
+against the brightness of the cheesecloth, but kept its dignity and kept
+up its claim to homage still. And the ugliness of the room was a thing
+to be discounted and forgotten, like some beautiful, full-blooded
+woman's tawdry, and ill-chosen clothes, because this room held Green
+River.</p>
+
+<p>Green River, filling the little room to over-flowing, standing in the
+rear of the room, crowding every available inch of space on benches,
+window sills, and an emergency supply of camp chairs, impressive as that
+much sheer bulk of humanity, crowded between four walls, becomes
+impressive, and impressive in its own right, too; Green River
+represented as it was, with all the warring, unreconciled elements that
+made the town.</p>
+
+<p>For they were all here, Paddy Lane, and the Everard circle, and the
+intermediate stages of society, the Gaynors and other prosperous farmers
+and unprosperous farmers and their wives, from the outskirts of the
+town, and citizens a cut above them both, like the Wards, were all
+represented here. Mrs. Kent, hatless and evening coated, was elbowed by
+a lady from Paddy Lane, hatless because she had no presentable hat, and
+wearing a ragged shawl. These two were side by side, and they had the
+same look on their faces. There<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> was something of it now on every face
+in the room. It was a look of listening and waiting.</p>
+
+<p>It was on every face, and it grew more intense every minute that Luther
+Ward's speech droned on, though it was only a dry, illogical rehash of
+political issues that could not have called that look into any face. It
+was as if the audience listened eagerly through it because every word of
+it was bringing them nearer to something that was to follow. What was
+it? What did Green River want? What was it waiting for? Green River
+itself did not know, but it was very near.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was coming now. This might well be the climax of the evening.
+No more important event was scheduled. Luther Ward, looking discontented
+with his performance, but relieved to complete it, had sunk into his
+chair to a scattered echoing of applause, and the next speaker was
+Colonel Everard.</p>
+
+<p>The Honourable Joe was rising to introduce him. The little introductory
+speech was a masterpiece, for, though the Colonel had edited every word
+of it, it was still in the Honourable Joe's best style, flowery and
+sprinkled with quotations.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not say more," it concluded magnificently, "of one whose life
+and work among you can best speak for itself, and who will speak for
+himself now, in his own person. I present to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> you the Republican
+candidate for mayor, Colonel Everard."</p>
+
+<p>And now the Honourable Joe had bowed and smiled himself into his seat,
+and the great man was on his feet, and coming forward to the centre of
+the stage. The first real applause of the evening greeted him, not very
+hearty or sustained, but prompt at least. He looked like a very great
+man indeed, as he stood acknowledging it, his most effective self, a
+strong man, though so lightly built, erect and pliant of carriage, a man
+with infinite reserves of power and dignity. He was smiling, and his
+smile was the same that the boy by the court-house fence had seen, a
+tantalizing smile of assurance and charm and power, as if he were master
+of himself and the town.</p>
+
+<p>This was his moment, planned for and led up to for weeks, but Colonel
+Everard was slow to take advantage of it. He stood still, with his eyes
+toward the rear of the hall. As he stood so, heads here and there turned
+and looked where he was looking. Presently all Green River saw what the
+Colonel saw. A boy was pushing his way toward the front of the hall&mdash;a
+boy who had slipped quietly inside the doors unnoticed fifteen minutes
+before, and came forward now just as quietly, but held their eyes as he
+came. Now he had reached the stage, and he broke through the barrier of
+golden-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>rod that fenced the short flight of steps, crushing the flowers
+under his feet, and now he was on the stage confronting Colonel Everard.
+It was Neil Donovan.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down," he said to the great man. "They're not going to listen to
+you. They're going to listen to me."</p>
+
+<p>After that he did not wait to see if the great man took his amazing
+advice. He came forward alone, and spoke to Green River. He was not an
+imposing figure as he stood there, only a lean, eager boy, with dark,
+flashing eyes, and a face that was very pale in the glare of the
+footlights. He hardly raised his tense, low-pitched voice as he spoke,
+but Green River heard.</p>
+
+<p>"You're going to listen to me."</p>
+
+<p>And it was true. Green River was going to listen. In the middle of the
+hall, where the chief delegation from Paddy Lane was massed, a ripple of
+excitement promised the boy support. It was seconded by a muttering and
+shuffling of feet on the rear benches, devoted to the youth of the town.
+From here and there in the hall there were murmurs of protest, too,
+dying out one by one, and ceasing automatically, like the whispered
+consultation that went on behind him on the stage.</p>
+
+<p>But the boy did not wait for support or regard interruptions. He did not
+need to. The audience<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> was his in spite of them, and he knew it and they
+knew it. Whatever he had to say, important or not, it was what they had
+been waiting for; that was what the evening had been leading to, and it
+was here at last. Pale and intent, the boy looked across the footlights
+at Green River. The audience was his, but he had no pride in the
+triumph. He began haltingly to speak.</p>
+
+<p>"It will do no good to you or me, but you're going to listen. I've got a
+word to say about Everard.</p>
+
+<p>"He's sucked your town dry for years and you know it. He's had the pick
+of your men and used their brains and their youth, and he's had the pick
+of your women. If there are any of you here that he's got no hold on,
+it's because you're worth nothing to him. He's got the town. Now he's
+driven one of your boys to his death.</p>
+
+<p>"'I can't beat him.' That's what Theodore Burr said to me the night he
+died. 'They won't blame him for this. I want to die because I don't want
+to live in the world with him, but I'll do no harm to him by dying, only
+to Lily and me. They won't blame him. You can't beat Everard.'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you don't blame Everard. He's got you where you don't blame him,
+whatever he does. You shut your eyes to it. He's got you. You know all
+this and you shut your eyes. Now I'll<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> tell you some things you don't
+know. Everard's been trying for weeks to bribe me to keep my mouth shut,
+like he bribed Charlie for years. He might have saved his breath and his
+money. I can't hurt him, whether I keep my mouth shut or not. You won't
+blame him. You'll let him get away with this, too. But you're going to
+know."</p>
+
+<p>The boy came closer still to the footlights and leaned across them,
+pausing and deliberately choosing his words. The pause, and the look in
+his dark, intent eyes as he stood there challenged Green River and dared
+it to interrupt him. But it was too late to interrupt, too late to stop
+him now. And behind him in the place of honour in the centre of the row
+of chairs on the stage, one man at least was powerless to stop him:
+Colonel Everard, who listened with a set smile on his lips, and a set
+stare in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"He's the man that broke Maggie Brady's life to pieces," Neil's low
+voice went on. "Everard's the man. He got her away from town. He filled
+her head with him and set her wild and she had to go. When he was tired
+of her, he left her in a place he thought she'd be too proud to come
+back from. She was proud, but he's broken her pride, and she crawled
+back to us. The prettiest girl in the town, she was, and you all knew
+that, and my sister and more to me&mdash;&mdash;" he broke off<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> abruptly, and
+laughed a dry little laugh that echoed strangely in the silent room. His
+voice sounded dry and hard as he went on.</p>
+
+<p>"He broke Maggie's life, but what's that to you, that give him a chance
+at your women, knowing well what he is, and leave them to take care of
+themselves with him, your own women that are yours to take care of,
+daughters and wives? It's nothing to you, but you're going to know it,
+and you're going to know this. I had it straight from Theodore Burr the
+night he died.</p>
+
+<p>"Everard's going to sell you out at the next election, the whole of
+you&mdash;his own crowd, too. He's been planning it for months. He's worked
+prohibition for all it's worth to him; worked for it till the state went
+dry, and then he's made money for you that are in it with him, and more
+for himself, protecting places like Halloran's that sell liquor on the
+quiet, and the smuggling of liquor into the state. Well, he's made money
+enough that way, and it's getting risky, and now he sees a way to make
+more and let nobody in on it. He's going to sell out to the liquor
+interests and work against prohibition, and the big card he'll use will
+be exposing Halloran's and the secret traffic in liquor, and all the
+crowd that's been buying protection from him. There's a big campaign
+started already, and big money being spent. There'll be big<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> money in it
+for him. There'll be arrests made here and a public scandal. He's going
+to sell the town.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe that interests you some. Maybe it gets you. It won't for long.
+He'll crawl out of it and lie out of it and talk you and buy you back to
+him. Well, I know one thing more, and he can't lie or crawl out of it.
+My father could have put him behind bars any time in twenty years. He's
+a common thief.</p>
+
+<p>"It was when he was seventeen, and studying law first, back in a town up
+state that's not on the map or likely to get there, and he was called by
+a name there that wasn't Everard. He was seventeen, but he was the same
+then as now; he had the same will to get on and the power to, no matter
+who he trampled on to get there, and the same charm that got men and
+women both, though they didn't trust him&mdash;got them even when he was
+trampling on them and they knew it. It got him into trouble there with
+two girls at once. One was the girl that gave him his start, the chance
+to go into her uncle's office. He was the biggest man in the town. Older
+than Everard, this girl was, and teaching in the school he went to, when
+she fell in love with him and brought him home to her town and gave him
+his chance. He was tired of her, and she was where it was bound to come
+out soon how things were with them, and so was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> the other girl, a girl
+that he wasn't tired of, the daughter of the woman where he boarded. He
+tried to get her to go away with him. She wouldn't go and she wouldn't
+forgive him, but the town was getting too hot for him, and he had to go.</p>
+
+<p>"He had to go quick and make a clean getaway and he wanted a real start
+this time. He had to have money. That was a dead little town. There was
+only one place he could get money enough, in the little hotel there. It
+was the only bank they had. The keeper of it used to cash checks and
+make loans. Everard was lucky, the same then as now. There was almost
+five thousand dollars in the safe in the hotel office the night he broke
+into it, and that was enough for him. He had a fight with the hotel
+clerk, but he got away with the money, and he got away from the town.</p>
+
+<p>"The clerk was his best friend in town&mdash;never trusted him, but fell for
+him the same as the girls and lent him money and listened to his
+troubles&mdash;and fell for him again when he ran across him again, years
+later, here in Green River. Everard told him he'd sent the money back,
+and he kept the secret. He never took hush money for it like Charlie. He
+said Everard ought to have his chance, and was straight now. But he fell
+for Everard again, that's what happened. Everard had him, the same as
+the rest of you.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The clerk was my father."</p>
+
+<p>The boy's voice broke off. There was dead silence in the hall. Green
+River had been listening almost in silence, and did not break it now.
+Presently the boy sighed, shrugged his thin shoulders as if they were
+throwing off an actual weight, and spoke again, this time in a lifeless
+voice, with all the colour and drama wiped out of it, a voice that was
+very tired.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all," he said. "That's back of him, with his fine airs and his
+far-reaching schemes and his big name in the state. You've stood for a
+crook. Will you stand for a common criminal, a common thief? Now you
+know and it's up to you. That's all."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>An hour later a boy was hurrying through the dark along the road to the
+Falls.</p>
+
+<p>He was almost home. Green River lay far behind with its scattered,
+sparsely strewn lights. The flat fields around him and the unshaded road
+before him, so bleak by day, were beautiful to-night, far reaching and
+mysterious. Above them, flat looking and unreal, remote in a coldly
+clouded sky, hung the yellow September moon.</p>
+
+<p>"I've done for myself," the boy was saying half out loud, as if the
+faraway moon could hear. "I've lost everything now. I've done for
+myself."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The boy was sure of this, but could have told little more
+about the events of the evening. He remembered listening outside the
+hall doors until he was drawn inside in spite of himself, and listening
+there until something snapped in his brain, and suddenly the long days
+of repression, of vainly wondering what to do with his hard-won
+knowledge, were over, and he was pouring it all out in one jumbled burst
+of speech. He had no plan and no hope of doing harm to his enemy by
+speaking. He had to speak.</p>
+
+<p>After he had spoken he remembered getting down from the stage and out of
+the hall somehow. He remembered the crushed goldenrod, slippery under
+his feet. Against a background of blurred, unrecognizable faces, he
+remembered a tall, black-garbed figure that rose to its feet swaying and
+then steadying itself. It was Lilian Burr. Less clearly he remembered a
+wave of sound from the hall that followed him as he hurried away across
+the square. It was not like applause. He did not know or care what it
+meant. After that, he remembered only the cool dark of the September
+night as he walked through it aimlessly at first, and then turned toward
+home.</p>
+
+<p>"I've lost everything," he had said, and it must be true. How could he
+face the Judge again? How could he go on living in Green River? This<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>
+was what all his long-cherished dreams had come to; a scene that Charlie
+might have made, and disgrace in the eyes of the town. He had lost
+everything.</p>
+
+<p>Yet strangely, as he said it, he knew that it was not true. Whatever he
+had lost, he had better things left. He had those free and splendid
+minutes of speaking out his heart. They could not be taken from him. The
+freedom and relief of them was with him still. And he had the road firm
+under his feet, and the clean air blowing the fever out of his brain,
+and the strength of his own young body, clean strength, good to feel as
+he walked through the night. And along the dark road before him,
+familiar as it was, and worn so many times by discouraged feet, the
+white track of moonlight beckoned him, clean and new. It was a way that
+might lead anywhere&mdash;to fairy-land, to success, to the end of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Now the boy made the turn in the road that brought him within sight of
+home. Faint lights twinkling from it, intimate and warm, invited him as
+never before. Was his mother waiting up for him? Home itself, lighted
+and intimate and safe, was enough to find waiting. His heart gave a
+strange little leap that hurt, but was keen pleasure, too. Almost
+running, he covered the last bit of road, crossed the grassy front yard
+and then<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> climbed the creaking front steps, and stood for a minute that
+was unendurably long, fumbling with the door.</p>
+
+<p>The door was unlocked and gave suddenly, opening wide, and he stood on
+the threshold of the kitchen. The lights he had seen were in the
+sitting-room beyond. In this room there was only moonlight. It came
+through the window that looked out on the marshy field, the fairies'
+field. Surely there must be fairies there to-night, out in the empty
+green spaces, flooded with moonlight. But the fairies were not all in
+the field, there was one in the room. Neil could see it.</p>
+
+<p>The old rocking chair stood in the moonlit window. It was holding two,
+his mother, and some one else&mdash;the fairy, golden haired and white robed
+and slender, and close in his mother's arms. As he stood and wondered
+and looked, a board creaked under his feet. It was the faintest of
+sounds, but a fairy's ears are keen, and the fairy heard, and stirred,
+and turned in his mother's arms.</p>
+
+<p>Now Neil could see her face. It was flushed and human and warm, and in
+her eyes, opening grave and deep, was a look that was the shyest but
+surest of welcomes. The welcome was all for Neil, and the fairy was
+Judith.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_TWENTY-ONE" id="CHAPTER_TWENTY-ONE"></a>CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE</h2>
+
+<p>A boy and a girl sat on the doorsteps of the Randall house.</p>
+
+<p>It was almost a year since the night of the rally. It was an evening in
+late May&mdash;late, but it was May, and the fairies' month still. There was
+a pleasant, shivery chill in the air. A far sprinkling of stars made the
+dark of the still, windless night look darker and warmer and safer to
+whisper in. The big horse-chestnut tree at the corner of the syringa
+hedge was only a darker blot against the surrounding dark, and the slope
+of faintly lit street on the other side of the hedge looked far away,
+with the dark sweep of lawn between. It was a night for the fairies, or
+for the girl and boy, and that was quite as it should be, for it was
+their first together for months.</p>
+
+<p>Judith and Neil sat discreetly erect on the steps, undoing what those
+months apart had done with little bursts of shy speech, and long, shy
+silences that helped them more. In the longest and shyest silence their
+hands had groped for each other once, met as if they had never touched
+before, and clung together for a minute as if they never meant to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span> let
+go, but Judith kept firmly to impersonal subjects still.</p>
+
+<p>"You did it all," she said. "Things do happen so fast when they happen.
+Just think, this time last year he was like a king!"</p>
+
+<p>"Everard?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Do you remember how I used to be cross when you called him that,
+and wouldn't say Colonel? How childish that was!" Judith patronized her
+dead self, as a young lady may, with her twentieth birthday almost upon
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"You weren't childish."</p>
+
+<p>"What was I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just what you are now."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful." Neil chose his one adequate word, from the tiny vocabulary
+of youth, small because few words are worthy to voice the infinite
+dreams of it. "Wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm not wonderful. You are. That dreadful old man, and every one
+knew he was dreadful and wouldn't do anything about it till you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Bawled him out? That's all I did, you know, really. It was a kid's
+trick. He lost out because it was coming to him anyway. Poor Theodore
+saw to that. He turned the town against Everard when he killed himself.
+It wasn't turning fast,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> but it was turning. I did give it a shove and
+make it turn faster, but I didn't even have sense enough to know I had
+until the day after the rally, when the Judge sent for me and told me. I
+didn't dare go near him until he sent for me, and I thought he had sent
+for me to fire me."</p>
+
+<p>"But you broke up the rally. They were dead still in the hall until you
+left, and then they went crazy, calling for you, and all talking at
+once, talking against you, some of them, till it really wasn't a rally
+any more, but just like a mob. Oh, I know. The Judge tells me, every
+time I go to ride with him, and when he came on to the school last
+winter and saw me there, he told me all over again. Father has never
+half told me. He hates to talk about the rally or the Colonel either,
+but I don't care, he and mother are both so sweet to me lately&mdash;just
+sweet.</p>
+
+<p>"So it was just like a mob, and then poor Mrs. Burr got up and tried to
+speak, and they got quiet and listened, and she said "Every word the boy
+says is true and more&mdash;more&mdash;&mdash;" just like that, and then she got faint
+and had to stop, and then the Judge took hold. That's what he says he
+did, took hold, and he says it was time, because they might have tarred
+and feathered the Colonel if he hadn't. I don't suppose they would, but
+I wish I could have seen the Judge take hold. I love him."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Don't you love anybody else?"</p>
+
+<p>Judith ignored this frivolous interruption, as it deserved.</p>
+
+<p>"And so your work was done, though you didn't know it and ran away. And
+the Judge says you are a born orator, Neil. That you've got the real
+gift, the thing that makes an audience yours. I don't know just what he
+means, but I know you've got it, too. You're going to be a great man,
+Neil."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't do anything."</p>
+
+<p>"You're the only man in town who thinks that, then, or has since that
+night. He&mdash;Everard&mdash;was done for the minute you stepped on the stage,
+the Judge says. Only they managed it decently, the Judge and the few
+that kept their heads. They announced that Colonel Everard was
+indisposed and couldn't speak, and the Judge took him home. He really
+was ill next day. There's something wrong with his horrid heart. And
+that gave him a good excuse not to run for mayor, he gave that up
+himself. And in a few days the Judge and Luther Ward went to him and
+told him what else he had to do, and he did it. He had to resign from
+everything, everything he was in charge of or was trustee of, or had
+anything to do with, and get out of town. If he'd do that, they wouldn't
+make any scandal or bother him afterward, but let<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> him start new. And
+they gave him six months to do all that decently and save his face. Why
+did he have to do it decently? Why couldn't they tar and feather him? I
+wish they had. I wish&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Wish something else, Judith. Something about us."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by us?"</p>
+
+<p>"You and me."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it splendid the Judge is going to be president of the bank?" said
+Judith hastily.</p>
+
+<p>"Splendid," said a future president of the Green River Bank, who was
+occupying the step beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"And isn't it nice that poor Mrs. Burr is going to marry Mr. Sebastian,
+even if she does have to move away from Green River? I like people to be
+happy, don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. No, I don't. Not other people. I don't care whether they are happy
+or not, and I don't want to talk about them, only about you and me."</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't like the way I talk, I'll keep still," Judith said, in a
+severe but small voice, but a small hand groping for his softened the
+threat, and a soft, sudden laugh as his arm slipped round her atoned for
+it entirely. Then there was silence on the steps, a long, whispering,
+wonderful silence. Long before Judith spoke again all the work of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> the
+lonely months was undone. And the low whispers that the two exchanged
+conveyed no further information about Colonel Everard.</p>
+
+<p>But there was no more to tell. The master of Green River was master no
+longer and the end of all the intricate planning and scheming that had
+made and kept him master was a story that Judith could tell in a few
+careless sentences and forget. If she had seen and guessed some things
+that she could not forget, in the strange little circle that had found a
+place for her, she would never see them again. That order was gone from
+the town forever, with the man who had created it, and beside her on the
+steps was the boy who could make her forget it, and see beyond the long,
+hard years between. And, as she almost could guess, in these magic
+minutes when she could dream and dream true, that boy was the future
+master of Green River.</p>
+
+<p>Judith sighed, and stirred in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you happier now?" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"But you're going to be great. You are, really."</p>
+
+<p>"I am if you want me to. Judith, how long does your father think you and
+I ought to wait?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. You can ask him. He likes you better than me. He always
+wanted me to be a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> boy.... Neil, I want to tell you something. Keep your
+arm like that, but don't look at me."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's about what you don't like me to talk about."</p>
+
+<p>"Everard?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and it's about something dreadful, that day in his library when I
+was alone with him, and you came. He&mdash;frightened me."</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind, dear, now."</p>
+
+<p>"He frightened me but that was&mdash;all. I wasn't hurt or anything. I just
+didn't know he&mdash;anybody&mdash;could look the way he was looking, or act the
+way he was acting, and then I felt sick all over. I was afraid. But he
+was just trying to kiss me, of course, and I wasn't going to let him,
+the horrid old man. So I think now it was silly to be frightened. Was
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, it wasn't silly, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad. And Neil&mdash;I want to tell you something else. It's about&mdash;that
+night&mdash;in the buggy, on the old road to Wells, you know, when you were
+going to elope with me and changed your mind."</p>
+
+<p>"When I frightened you so. Oh, Judith."</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't&mdash;frighten me," said a very small voice indeed. "You&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Made me want you&mdash;want to go away with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> you. I never felt like that
+before, all waked up and different and&mdash;happy. Oh, you didn't frighten
+me. I wasn't angry because you tried to take me away. It was because you
+brought me back."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you know why I brought you back?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, because I loved you. I didn't love you till then, not really; not
+till that minute in the carriage. I know just what minute. When you let
+me kiss you, and didn't mind any more. Then I knew about&mdash;love. I never
+knew before, but I'll never forget again. It isn't just wanting people,
+it's taking care of them, and not hurting them. Waiting till you can
+have things&mdash;right. So I wanted to have you right and be fit for you,
+and after that night I went to work and I wouldn't be stopped, not by
+anything in this town or the world. Oh, Judith, why don't you speak to
+me? It isn't much use to talk. You don't understand."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;do."</p>
+
+<p>"You're crying!"</p>
+
+<p>She was crying, and she did understand. Before this unexpected,
+beautiful proof of it, the boy was reverent and half ashamed, as if a
+woman's tears were a sacred miracle invented for him. He held her hand
+timidly and pressed it. Presently she drew it away, and suddenly she was
+not crying,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span> but laughing, a low, full-throated laugh as wonderful to
+him as her tears.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you, you did it all," she said softly. "Well, you didn't. Neil,
+there's what did it all. Because, if you only go on believing in things
+and being sweet and true and not afraid, and&mdash;wishing, then everything
+will come right. It's got to, just because you want it to. So there's
+what did it all and made us so happy, you and me. I love it. Love it,
+Neil."</p>
+
+<p>Neil looked where Judith was looking. Above the horse-chestnut tree, so
+filmy and faint that the stars looked brighter than ever, so pale that
+it was not akin to the stars, but to the dark beyond, where adventures
+were, so friendly and sweet that it could make the wish in your heart
+come true, hung a new-risen silvery crescent of light.</p>
+
+<p>"But it's only the moon," Neil said.</p>
+
+<p>"It's&mdash;the wishing moon," said Judith.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<div class="tranotes">
+<span class="smcap">Transcriber's Note:</span><br /><br />Minor spelling and typographical errors have been
+corrected without note. Some illustrations have been relocated for
+better flow. The illustration used for the frontispiece has been
+moved to its proper place in the text (page 239). The Table of Contents does not appear
+in the original.<br /><br />
+
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WISHING MOON***</p>
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@@ -0,0 +1,9060 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Wishing Moon, by Louise Elizabeth Dutton,
+Illustrated by Everett Shinn
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Wishing Moon
+
+
+Author: Louise Elizabeth Dutton
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 23, 2010  [eBook #31057]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WISHING MOON***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Peter Vickers, Juliet Sutherland, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 31057-h.htm or 31057-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31057/31057-h/31057-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31057/31057-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WISHING MOON
+
+by
+
+LOUISE DUTTON
+
+Author of "The Goddess Girl"
+
+
+[Illustration: "'_Oh, Judith, won't you speak to me?_'"]
+
+[Illustration: Publisher's logo]
+
+Illustrated by Everett Shinn
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Garden City   New York
+Doubleday, Page & Company
+1916
+
+Copyright, 1916, by
+Louise Dutton
+
+All rights reserved, including that of
+translation into foreign languages,
+including the Scandinavian
+
+Copyright, 1916, The Metropolitan Magazine Company
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  "'Oh, Judith, won't you speak to me?'"    _Frontispiece_
+    (See page 239)
+
+                                               FACING PAGE
+
+  "'I know what this means,' she asserted"             128
+
+  "'Shut your eyes'"                                   166
+
+  "'Judith, you don't hate me? Say it--say it'"        180
+
+
+
+
+THE WISHING MOON
+
+
+
+
+The Wishing Moon
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+
+A little girl sat on the worn front doorsteps of the Randall house. She
+sat very still and straight, with her short, white skirts fluffed
+daintily out on both sides, her hands tightly clasped over her thin
+knees, and her long, silk-stockinged legs cuddled tight together. She
+was bare-headed, and her short, soft hair showed silvery blonde in the
+fading light. Her hair was bobbed. For one miserable month it had been
+the only bobbed head in Green River. Her big, gray-green eyes had a
+fugitive, dancing light in them. The little girl had beautiful eyes.
+
+The little girl was Miss Judith Devereux Randall. She was eleven years
+old, and she felt happier to-night than she remembered feeling in all
+the eleven years of her life.
+
+The Randalls' lawn was hedged with a fringe of lilac and syringa bushes,
+with one great, spreading horse-chestnut tree at the corner. The house
+did not stand far back from the street. The little girl could see a
+generous section of Main Street sloping past, dark already under
+shadowing trees. The street was empty. It was half-past six, and
+supper-time in Green River, but the Randalls did not have supper, they
+dined at night, like the Everards. To-night mother and father were
+dining with the Everards, and the little girl had plans of her own.
+
+Father was dressed, and waiting, shut in the library. Mother was
+dressing in her big corner room upstairs, with all the electric lights
+lighted. The little girl could see them, if she turned her head, but
+mother was very far away, in spite of that, for her door was locked, and
+you could not go in. You could not watch her brush her long, wonderful
+hair, or help her into her evening gown. Mother's evening gown was black
+this summer, with shiny spangles--a fairy gown. Mother had to be alone
+while she dressed, because she was going to the Everards'.
+
+There were two Everards, the Colonel, who was old because his hair was
+white, and his wife, who wore even more beautiful clothes than mother.
+She had heard her father say that the Colonel had made the town, and she
+had heard Norah, the cook, say that he owned the town. She had an idea
+that these two things were not quite the same, though they sounded
+alike, for father was fond of the Colonel, and Norah was not. At any
+rate, he was president of the bank--father and Norah agreed about
+that--and he lived in a house at the edge of the town, in what used to
+be a part of Larribees' woods. Father used to go Mayflowering there, but
+now nobody could.
+
+The house was ugly, with things sticking out all over it, towers and
+balconies and cupolas, and it was the little girl's twin. She was born
+the year the Everards settled in Green River.
+
+"And you're marked with it," Norah said, in one of their serious talks,
+when Mollie, the second girl, was out, and the two had the kitchen to
+themselves. Norah was peeling apples for a pie, and allowing her
+unlimited ginger-snaps, straight from the jar. "Marked with it, Miss
+Judy."
+
+"What?"
+
+"That house, and what goes on in it."
+
+"What does go on?"
+
+"You'll know soon enough."
+
+"I'm not marked with it. I've got a birthmark, but it's a strawberry, on
+my left side, like the princesses have in the fairy tales."
+
+"You are a kind of a princess, Miss Judy."
+
+"Is that a bad thing to be, Nana?"
+
+"It's a lonesome thing."
+
+"My strawberry's fading. Mother says it will go away."
+
+"It won't go away. What we're born to be, we will be, Miss Judy----.
+Bless your heart, you're crying, with the big eyes of you. What for,
+dear?"
+
+"I don't know. I don't want to be a princess. I don't want to be
+lonesome. I hate the Everards."
+
+"Well, there's many to say that now, and there'll be more to say it
+soon." Norah muttered this darkly, into her yellow bowl of apples, but
+Judith heard: "Here, eat this apple, child. You musn't hate anybody."
+
+"I do. I hate the Everards."
+
+Queer things came into your head to say when you were talking with
+Norah, who had an aunt with the second sight, and told beautiful fairy
+tales herself, and even believed in fairies; Judith did not. The
+Everards gave Judith and no other little girl in town presents at
+Christmas, and invited Judith and no other little girl to lunch. They
+had a great deal to do with her trouble, her serious trouble, which she
+would not discuss even with Norah. But she did not really hate the
+Everards--certainly not to-night. She was too happy.
+
+Judith was going out to hang May-baskets.
+
+So was every other little girl in town who wanted to, and it was a
+wonderful thing to be doing to-night. It was really May night, by the
+weather as well as the calendar--the kind of night that Norah's fairies
+meant should come on the first of May: warm, with a tiny chill creeping
+into the air as the dark came, a pleasant, shivery chill, as if there
+might really be fairies or ghosts about. It was still and clear. One
+star, that had just come up above the horse-chestnut tree, looked very
+small and bright and close, as if it had climbed up into the sky out of
+the dark, clustering leaves of the tree.
+
+This was the star that Judith usually wished on, but she could wish on
+the moon to-night; Norah had told her so; wish once instead of three
+nights running, and get her wish whether she thought of the red fox's
+tail or not. The new moon of May was a wishing moon.
+
+A wishing moon! The small white figure on the steps cuddled itself into
+a smaller heap. Judith sighed happily and closed her eyes. She was going
+with the others. She had her wish already.
+
+It was Judith's great trouble that she was not like other little girls.
+Until she was six Judith had a vague idea that she was the only child in
+the world. Then she tried to make friends with two small, dirty girls
+over the back fence, and found out that there were other children, but
+she must not play with them. One day Norah found her crying in the
+nursery because she could not think what to play, and soon after Willard
+Nash, the fat little boy next door, came to dinner and into her life,
+and after that, Eddie and Natalie Ward, from the white house up the
+street, and Lorena Drew, from over the river. Still other children came
+to her parties, so many that she could not remember their names. Then
+Judith's trouble began. She was not like them.
+
+She did not look like them; her clothes were not made by a seamstress,
+but came from city shops, and had shorter skirts, and stuck out in
+different places. She could not do what they did; Mollie called for her
+at nine at evening parties, and she usually had to go to bed half an
+hour after dinner, before it was dark. She had to do things that they
+did not do: make grown-up calls with her mother and wear gloves, and
+take lessons in fancy dancing instead of going to dancing school.
+
+But she had gone to school now for almost a year, a private school in
+the big billiard-room at the Larribees', but a real school, with other
+children in it. They did not make fun of her clothes, or the way she
+pronounced her words, very often now. She belonged to a secret society
+with Rena and Natalie. She had spent one night with Natalie, though she
+had to come home before breakfast. The other children did not know she
+was different, but Judith knew.
+
+Unexpected things might be required of her at a moment's notice: to be
+excused from school and pass cakes at a tea at the Everards'; to leave a
+picnic before the potatoes were roasted, because Mollie had appeared,
+inexorable; unaccountable things, but she was to be safe to-night. May
+night was not such a wonderful night for any little girl as it was for
+Judith.
+
+The lights were on in Nashs' parlour, and not turned off in the
+dining-room, which meant that the rest of the family were not through
+supper, but Willard was. Presently she heard three loud, unmelodious
+whistles, his private signal, and a stocky figure pushed itself through
+a gap in the hedge which looked, and was, too small for it, and Judith
+rubbed her eyes and sat up--it crossed the lawn to her.
+
+"Good morning, Merry Sunshine," said Willard, ironically.
+
+"I wasn't asleep."
+
+"You were."
+
+"I heard you coming."
+
+"You did not."
+
+"I did so."
+
+These formalities over, she made room for him eagerly on the steps.
+Willard looked fatter to Judith after a meal, probably because she knew
+how much he ate. His clean collar looked much too clean and white in the
+dark, and he was evidently in a teasing mood, but such as he was, he
+was her best friend, and she needed him.
+
+"Willard, guess what I'm going to do?"
+
+"I don't know, kid." Willard's tone implied unmistakably that he did not
+want to know.
+
+"To-night!"
+
+Judith's voice thrilled. Willard stared at her. Her eyes looked wider
+than usual, and very bright. She was smiling a strange little smile, and
+a rare dimple, which he really believed she had made with a slate
+pencil, showed in her cheek. The light in her face was something new to
+him, something he did not understand, and therefore being of masculine
+mind, wished to remove.
+
+"You're going to miss it to-night for one thing, kid," he stated
+deliberately.
+
+"Oh, am I?" Judith dimpled and glowed.
+
+"We're going to stay out until ten. Vivie's not going." Willard's big
+sister had chaperoned the expedition the year before. Now it was to go
+out unrestrained into the night.
+
+"That's lovely."
+
+Willard searched his brain for more overwhelming details.
+
+"We've got a dark lantern."
+
+"That's nice."
+
+"I got it. It's father's. He won't miss it. It's hidden in the Drews'
+barn. We're going to meet at the Drews, to fool them. They'll be
+watching the Wards'."
+
+"They will?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"The--paddies?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+Judith drew an awed, ecstatic breath. He was touching now on the chief
+peril and charm of the expedition. Hanging May-baskets, conferring an
+elaborately-made gift upon a formal acquaintance, was not the object of
+it--nothing so philanthropic; it was the escape after you had hung them.
+You went out for adventure, to ring the bell and get away, to brave the
+dangers of the night in small, intimate companies. And the chief danger,
+which you fled from through the dark, was the paddies.
+
+She did not know much about them. She would not show her ignorance by
+asking questions. But there were little boys with whom a state of war
+existed. They chased you, even fought with you, made a systematic
+attempt to steal your May-baskets. They were mixed up in her mind with
+gnomes and pirates. She was deliciously afraid of them. She hardly
+thought they had human faces. She understood that they were most of them
+Irish, and that it was somehow a disgrace for them to be Irish, though
+her own Norah was Irish and proud of it.
+
+"Sure!" said Willard. "Irish boys. Paddies from Paddy Lane. Ed got a
+black eye last year. We'll get back at them. It will be some evening."
+Judith did not look jealous or wistful yet. "The whole crowd's going."
+
+"Yes, I know," thrilled Judith. "Oh, Willard----"
+
+"Oh, Willard," he mimicked. Judith pronounced all the letters in his
+name, which was not the popular method. "Oh, Willard, what do you think
+I heard Viv say to the Gaynor girl about you?"
+
+"Don't know. Willard, won't the paddies see the dark lantern?"
+
+"Viv said you were as pretty as a doll, but just as stiff and stuck-up,"
+pronounced Willard sternly. "And your father's only the cashier of the
+bank, and just because the Everards have taken your mother up is no
+reason for her to put on airs and get a second girl and get into
+debt----"
+
+He broke off, discouraged. Judith did not appear to hear him. After the
+masculine habit, as he could not control the situation, he rose to
+leave.
+
+"Well, so long, kid. I've got to go to the post-office."
+
+Even the mention of this desirable rendezvous, which was denied to her
+because Mollie always brought home the evening mail in a black silk
+bag, did not dim the dancing light in Judith's eyes. She put a hand on
+his sleeve.
+
+"Willard----"
+
+"Well, kid?"
+
+"Willard, don't you wish I was going to-night?"
+
+"What for, to fight the paddies, or carry the dark lantern?"
+
+"I could fight," said Judith, with a little quiver in her voice, as if
+she could.
+
+"Fight? You couldn't even run away. They'd"--Willard hissed it
+mysteriously--"they'd get you."
+
+"No, they wouldn't, because"--something had happened to her eyes, so
+that they did not look tantalizing--"you'd take care of me, Willard,"
+she announced surprisingly, "wouldn't you?"
+
+"Forget it," murmured Willard, flattered.
+
+"Wouldn't you?"
+
+"I----"
+
+"Willard!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well--I am. Father made mother let me. I'm going with you."
+
+The words she had been trying to say were out at last in a hushed voice,
+because her heart was beating hard, but they sounded beautiful to her,
+like a kind of song. Perhaps Willard heard it, too. He really was her
+best friend, and he did not look so fat, after all, in the twilight. She
+waited breathlessly.
+
+"You are?"
+
+Judith nodded. She could not speak.
+
+"Well!" Willard's feelings were mixed, his face was not fashioned to
+express a conflict of emotions, and words failed him, too. "You're a
+queer kid. Why didn't you tell me before?"
+
+"Aren't you glad, Willard?"
+
+"You'll get sleepy."
+
+"Aren't you glad?"
+
+"Sure I'm glad. But you can't run, and you are a cry-baby."
+
+These were known facts, not insults, but now Judith's eyes had stopped
+dancing.
+
+"Judy, are you mad with me?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You're the queerest kid." Up the street, he caught sight of a member of
+a simpler sex than Judith's. "There's Ed coming out of the gate. I've
+got to see him about something. See you later. Don't be mad. So long!"
+
+The house was astir behind Judith. Father was opening and shutting
+doors, and hunting for things. Norah was helping mother into her wraps
+and scolding. Somebody was telephoning. Mother's carriage was late.
+
+But it was turning into the yard now, a big, black hack from the Inn,
+with a white horse. Judith liked white horses best. The front door
+opened, and her father, very tall and blond, with his shirt-front
+showing white, and her mother, with something shiny in her black hair,
+swept out.
+
+"Look who's here," said her father, and picked her up with his hands
+under her elbows. "Going to paint the town red to-night, son?"
+
+"Red?" breathed Judith. How strong father was, and how beautiful mother
+was. She smelled of the perfume in the smallest bottle on the
+toilet-table. How kind they both were. "Red?"
+
+"Harry, you see she doesn't care a thing about going. She'd be better
+off in bed. Careful, baby! Your hair is catching on my sequins. Put her
+down, Harry. You'll spoil the shape of her shoulders some day."
+
+"Don't you want to go, son?"
+
+"I--" Judith choked, "I----"
+
+"Well, she's not crazy about it, is she?"
+
+"Then do send her to bed."
+
+"No, you can't break your promise to a child, Minna."
+
+"Prig," said mother sweetly, as if a prig were a pleasant thing to be.
+"All right, let her go, then. Oh, Harry, look at that horse. They've
+sent us the knock-kneed old white corpse again."
+
+Mother hurried him into the carriage, and it clattered out of the yard.
+They did not look back. They were always in a hurry, and rather cross
+when they went to the Everards. For once she was glad to see them go,
+such a dreadful crisis had come and passed. How could father think she
+did not want to go, father who used to hang May-baskets himself? Norah
+was calling her, but she did not answer. Norah was cross to-night. She
+did not know how happy Judith was.
+
+Nobody knew, but now Judith did not want to tell. She did not want
+sympathy. She was not lonely. This secret was too important to tell.
+And, before her eyes, a lovely and comforting thing was happening,
+silently and suddenly, as lovely things do happen. Quite still on the
+steps, a white little figure, alone in a preoccupied world, but calm in
+spite of it, Judith looked and looked.
+
+Above the horse-chestnut tree, so filmy and faint that the star looked
+brighter than ever, so pale that it was not akin to the stars or the
+flickering lights in the street, but to the dark beyond, where
+adventures were, so friendly and sweet that it could make the wish in
+your heart come true, whether you were clever enough to wish it out loud
+or not, hung the wishing moon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+
+A small, silent procession was edging its way along Church Street,
+darkly silhouetted against a faintly starred sky. It was a long hour
+later now, and looked later still on Church Street. There were few
+lights left in the string of houses near the white church, at the lower
+end of the street, and here, at the upper end, there were no lights but
+the one street lamp near the railroad bridge that arched black overhead,
+and there were few houses. The street did not look like a street at all,
+but a country road, and a muddy one.
+
+The narrow board sidewalk creaked, so the procession avoided it, and
+stuck to the muddy side of the road.
+
+The procession looked mysterious enough, even if you were walking at the
+tail of it and carrying a heavy market basket; if you had to smell the
+lantern, swung just in front of you, but did not have the fun of
+carrying it; if a shaker cloak, hooded and picturesque, in the
+procession, hampered your activities; if you had questions to ask, and
+nobody answered you.
+
+"Willard."
+
+"Sh!"
+
+One by one, they came into sight, in the wavering light of the street
+lamp, and melted into the dark under the bridge; Ed, in his white
+sweater, captaining them, and keenly aware of it; Rena and Natalie, with
+the larger market basket between them; Willard, bulky in two sweaters,
+and tenderly shielding his lantern with a third, and Judith. Her face
+showed pale with excitement against the scarlet of her hood. One hand
+plucked vainly at Willard's sleeve; he stalked on, and would not turn.
+Only these five, but they had consulted and organized and reorganized
+for half an hour in the Drews' barn before they started, and had hung
+only three May-baskets yet. However, the adventure was under way now.
+
+"Willard, now it's my turn to carry the lantern."
+
+"Judy, you can't."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It might explode." The feeble flame gave one dispirited upward spurt at
+this encouragement, causing excitement in front.
+
+"Oh, Ed!"
+
+"Ed, make him put it out."
+
+"Rena and Nat, you keep still. Judy's not scared, are you Judy?"
+
+"No! Oh, no!"
+
+"The lantern's a sick looking sight, and he can carry it
+if he wants to, but we don't need it."
+
+"I like that. You tried to get me to let you carry it, Ed."
+
+"Don't talk so much."
+
+"Who started the talk?"
+
+"Well, who's running this, anyway--you, Willard Nash?"
+
+"There's a dog in that house."
+
+"Sh!"
+
+"But that dog's only a cocker spaniel. He can't hurt you."
+
+"Judy, sh!"
+
+Sh! Somebody was always saying that. It was part of the ceremony, which
+had been the same all three times. The procession was halting opposite
+the Nealy house. A whispered quarrel started every time they approached
+a house, and was hushed halfway through and not taken up again. The
+quarrel and the hush were part of the ceremony, too.
+
+The Nealy house was small and harmless looking, and entirely dark, but
+they did not allow that to make them reckless. They stood looking warily
+across the dark street.
+
+"But there's nobody there. Maggie Nealy's out, too, to-night, and her
+mother----"
+
+"Sh!" Willard put a hand over Judith's mouth. It smelled of kerosene,
+and she struggled, but did not make a noise. Just at this dramatic
+moment the Nealy's dog barked.
+
+Judith could hear her heart beat and feel her damp feet getting really
+wet and cold.
+
+"Now," Ed whispered, close to her ear and uncomfortably loud, and she
+fumbled in her basket. Willard jiggled the lantern dizzily over her
+shoulder, tissue paper tore under her fingers, and bonbons rattled.
+Hanging May-baskets was certainly hard on the May-baskets, and they were
+so pretty; pale coloured, like flowers.
+
+"I can't find the right one. The marks are all falling off. The candy's
+falling out."
+
+"We can't stand here all night. Here----"
+
+"Willard, take your hands out. Not that one----"
+
+"Willard and Judy stop fighting. That one will do. I'm going."
+
+There was dead silence now, and Ed, clutching the wreck of a sizable
+crepe-paper creation to the bosom of his white sweater, doubled into a
+crouching, boy scout attitude, crossed the road, and approached the
+house. Nothing but his own commendable caution delayed his approach. The
+small dog's dreams within were untroubled now. There were no signs of
+life.
+
+He reached the front door, deposited the May-basket with a force that
+further demolished it, and took to his heels. After another breathless
+wait the procession formed behind him and trailed after him up the road,
+hilly here, so that the market basket grew heavier.
+
+"Some evening," Willard murmured to himself, not the rest of the world,
+but he sounded amiable.
+
+"Willard."
+
+"Well, kid."
+
+"There wasn't anybody in that house. Ed knew it."
+
+"There might have been. They might have come home."
+
+"But they didn't ... Willard, is this all there is to it?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Hanging May-baskets. Throwing them down that way. I thought maybe they
+really hung them, on the doorknob--I thought----"
+
+"Silly! Ed's going cross lots, and up the wood road to Larribees'. Good
+work. That will throw them off the track."
+
+"Throw who off the track?"
+
+"You scared? Want to go home?"
+
+"Oh, no! But who? There's nobody chasing us. Nobody."
+
+"No. We've got them fooled. It's some evening."
+
+"Willard, where are the paddies?"
+
+That was the question Judith had been wanting to ask more and more, for
+an hour, but it came in a choked voice, and nobody heard. They were
+plunging into a rough and stubbly wood lot, and hushing each other
+excitedly. Twigs caught at Judith's skirt, and it was hard to see your
+way, with the moon, small and high above the trees in Larribee's woods,
+only making the trees look darker. The wood road was little used and
+overgrown.
+
+"If they get us in here!"
+
+"They won't, Willard." Judith's voice trembled.
+
+"Cry-baby!"
+
+"I am not."
+
+"Here, buck up. We're coming out right here, back of the carriage house.
+If Ed catches you crying he'll send you home."
+
+But Ed had his mind upon higher things. "You girls stay here with the
+baskets. Don't move. Willard, you go right and I'll go left, and we'll
+meet at the carriage-house steps, if the coast is clear."
+
+"If they get us----"
+
+If! The boys crunched out of hearing on the gravel, awesome silence set
+in, and Rena and Natalie whispered; Judith was not to be awed. Four
+May-baskets hung, and nobody objecting; dark cross-streets chosen
+instead of Main Street and no danger pursuing them there. If there was
+no danger in the whole town, why should there be in one little strip of
+woods, though it was dark and strange, and full of whispering noises?
+Judith had clung to Willard's hand in terror, turning into the
+cross-streets, and nothing came of it. She was not to be fooled any
+longer. There was no danger.
+
+Not that she wanted to be chased. She did not know what she wanted. But
+she had come out into the dark to find something that was not there. She
+had been happier on the doorsteps thinking about it. This, then, was
+hanging May-baskets--all there was to it. But it was pleasant here in
+the dark, pleasanter than walking through mud, and quarrelling. Now Rena
+and Nat were quarrelling again.
+
+"Get back there! Ed said not to move."
+
+"They've been gone too long. Something's the matter."
+
+"There they come. I hear them. Get back!"
+
+They were coming, but something else was happening. Willard's three
+whistles sounded, then Ed's voice, and a noise of scuffling on the
+gravel--and a new boy's voice.
+
+Rena and Natalie, upsetting their basket as they started, and not
+noticing it, pushed through the trees and ran. Judith stood still and
+listened. She did not know the voice. It was shrill and clear. She could
+hear the words it said above the others' voices, all clamouring, now, at
+once. She held her breath and listened. She could not move.
+
+"I don't want your damn May-baskets."
+
+"Liar! Get back of him, Rena. Come on, Nat."
+
+"You'll get hurt. Let me go."
+
+"Liar--Paddy!"
+
+The magic word fell unheeded. The boy was laughing, and the laugh filled
+her ears, a splendid laugh, fearless and clear.
+
+"Paddy!"
+
+"I don't want your damn May-baskets."
+
+"Paddy--Paddy!"
+
+This time there was no answer. Judith, tearing at the hooks of her cape,
+and throwing it off as she ran, broke through the circling trees. Then
+she stopped and looked.
+
+Rena stood high on the carriage-house steps and held the lantern. It
+wavered and swung in her hand, and threw a flickering circle of light
+round the group by the steps.
+
+The sprawled shadows at their feet seemed to have an undue number of
+arms and legs, and the children were a struggling, uncertain mass of
+motion, hard to make out, like the shadows, but they were only four:
+Willard, grunting and groaning; Natalie attacking spasmodically in the
+rear, and the strange little boy, the enemy. He was the heart of the
+struggling group, and Judith looked only at him. She could do nothing
+but look, for Judith had never seen a little boy like this.
+
+They were three against one, and the one was a match for them. He was
+slender and strong, holding his ground and making no noise. He was
+coatless and ragged shirted, and one sleeve of his shirt was torn, so
+that you could see how thin his shoulder was. He held his head high, and
+smiled as he fought. A shock of blond hair was tossed high above his
+forehead. He had a thin, white face, and dark jewels of flashing eyes.
+As she stood and looked, they met Judith's eyes, and Judith knew that
+she had never seen a boy like this, because there was no boy like
+this--no little boy so wild and strange and free, so ragged and brave.
+If he could come out of the dark, it was full of unguessable things,
+splendid and strange and new. Judith's heart beat hard, a hot feeling
+swept over her, and a queer mist came before her eyes. A wonderful boy;
+a fairy boy! What would they do to him? What did they do to paddies?
+There was no little boy like this in the world.
+
+"Judy!" The others had seen her and were calling her. "Come on. Help get
+him down."
+
+"He chased Willard round here."
+
+"He led the gang last year."
+
+"It's Neil Donovan."
+
+"Get him down!"
+
+Judith did not answer then. Her cheeks flamed red, and her eyes looked
+as big and dark as the stranger's, and her small hands clenched tight.
+It was only a minute that she stood so. The three were close to him,
+hiding him. She saw his face again, above Willard's pushing shoulder,
+and then--she could not see it.
+
+"Judy, what's the matter? Come on!"
+
+And Judith came. She plunged straight into the struggling group, and
+hammered at it indiscriminately with two small fists. She caught at a
+waving coat sleeve, and pulled it--Willard's, and it tore in her hands.
+She spotted Eds white sweater, and beat at it fiercely, with all her
+strength.
+
+"That's me, Judy. Cut it out!"
+
+"Then let him go. Three to one is no fair. Let him go!" They did not
+hear her, or care which side she was on, or take the trouble to drive
+her away. Judith drew back and stood and looked at them, breathless and
+glowing and undefeated, for one long minute.
+
+"Boy," she called then, softly, as if he could hear when the others
+could not, "wait! It's all right, boy. It's all right."
+
+Then she charged up the steps at Rena. Judy, the most demure and
+faithful of allies, confronted Rena, amazingly but unmistakably changed
+to a foe; Judy, with her immaculate and enviable frock smirched and
+torn, and her sleek hair wildly tossed, her cheeks darkly flushed, and
+her eyes strange and shining; a Judy to be reckoned with and admired and
+feared--a new Judy.
+
+"What's the matter? Are you crazy? What do you want?"
+
+"Make them let him go. They've got to let him go."
+
+"He's a paddy--Neil Donovan--a paddy."
+
+"They've got to let him go.... Give that to me."
+
+"What for? Judy, don't hurt me. Judy!"
+
+Judith wasted no more words. She caught Rena's wrist, twisted it, and
+snatched the lantern out of her hand. She held it high above her head,
+and shook it recklessly.
+
+"Don't, Judy! Don't!" The flame sputtered crazily. Judy still shook the
+lantern, dancing out of reach, and laughing. "Nat--everybody--stop Judy.
+She's making the lantern explode. Oh, Ed!"
+
+Natalie heard, and then the others. They looked up at her, all of them.
+Rena and Natalie screamed. Willard started toward her. "Put it down,
+kid," he was calling.
+
+"I'll put it down.... Now boy."
+
+There he was, with Ed's arm gripping his shoulders. He did not give any
+sign that he knew she was trying to help him, or that he wanted help. He
+was not afraid of the lantern, like the others. His black eyes were
+laughing at all of them--laughing at Judith, too. He was looking
+straight at Judith.
+
+"Now, boy," she called, "now run!" and she gripped the lantern tight,
+swung it high, and dashed it to the ground.
+
+It fell at the foot of the steps with a crash of breaking glass. The
+light sputtered out. The air was full of the smell of spilled kerosene.
+In the faint radiance that was not moonlight, but a glimmering
+reflection of it, more confusing than darkness, dim figures struggled
+and shrill voices were lifted.
+
+"Get him. Hold him."
+
+"Get the lantern."
+
+"Get Judy."
+
+"Hold him, Ed."
+
+"That's me."
+
+"Get him, Rena."
+
+Judith laughed, and out of the dark he had come from, the dark of
+May-night, lit by a wishing moon, that grants your secret wish for
+better or for worse, irrevocably, a far-away laugh answered Judith's.
+The boy was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+
+Miss Judith Devereux Randall was getting into her first evening gown.
+
+The Green River High School football team was giving its annual
+September concert and ball in Odd Fellows' Hall to-night. The occasion
+was as important to the school as a coming-out party. The new junior
+class, just graduated from seclusion upstairs to the big assembly room
+where the seniors were, made its first public appearance in society
+there. Judith was a junior now.
+
+Her first dance, and her first evening gown; it was a memorable scene,
+fit to immortalize with the first love-letter and the first proposal, in
+a series of pictures of great moments in a girl's life--chosen by some
+masculine illustrator, touchingly confident that he knows what the great
+moments of a girl's life are. Judith seemed to be taking this moment too
+calmly for one.
+
+The dress lay ready on the bed, fluffy and light and sheer, a white
+dream of a dress, with two unopened florist's boxes beside it, but there
+was no picturesque disarray of excited toilet-making in her big,
+brightly lighted room, and no dream-promoting candlelight. And there
+were no pennants or football trophies disfiguring the daintily flowered
+wall paper, and no pictures or programs in the mirror of the dainty
+dressing-table; there was no other young girl's room in town where they
+were prohibited, but there was no other room so charming as Judith's,
+all blue-flowered chintz and bird's-eye maple and white fur rugs, and
+whiter covers and curtains.
+
+Judith was the most charming and immaculate thing in the room, as she
+stood before the cheval-glass, bare armed and slim and straight in
+beruffled, beribboned white, pinning the soft, pale braids tight around
+her small, high-poised head. Quite the most charming thing, and Norah,
+fingering the dress on the bed disapprovingly, and giving her keen,
+sidelong glances, was aware of it, but did not believe in compliments,
+even to the creature she loved best in the world.
+
+Her mouth was set and her brown eyes were bright with the effort of
+repressing them. Judith, seeing her face in the glass, turned suddenly
+and slipped her arms round the formidable old creature's neck, and
+laughed at her.
+
+"Don't you think I'm perfectly beautiful?" she demanded. "If you really
+love me, why not tell me so?"
+
+"Your colour's good." Judith pressed a delicately flushed cheek to
+Norah's, and attempted a butterfly kiss, which she evaded grimly. "Good
+enough--healthy and natural."
+
+"Oh, no. I made it. Oh, with hot water and then cold, I mean. Nana,
+don't begin about rouge. Don't be silly. That red stuff in the box on
+mother's dresser is only nail paste, truly."
+
+"Who sent the flowers?"
+
+"Look and see."
+
+"Much you care, if you'll let me look."
+
+"Do you want me to care?"
+
+"Much you care about the flowers or the party."
+
+Judith had caught up the alluring dress without a second glance, and
+slipped it expertly over her head, and was jerking capably at the
+fastenings.
+
+"With the spoiled airs of you, and Willard Nash sending to Wells for
+flowers, when his father clerked in a drygoods store at his age----"
+
+"Oh, carnations are cheap--or he wouldn't get them."
+
+"These aren't cheap, then."
+
+The smaller box was full of white violets.
+
+"Give them to me. No, you can't see the card. You don't deserve to.
+You're too cross, and besides you wouldn't like it. Do my two top hooks.
+Now, am I perfectly beautiful?"
+
+Under her capable hands a pretty miracle had been going on, common
+enough, but always new. Ruffle above ruffle, the soft, shapeless mass of
+white had shaken itself into its proper lines and contours, lightly,
+like a bird's plumage settling itself, and with it the change that comes
+when a woman with the inborn, unteachable trick of wearing clothes puts
+on a perfect gown, had come to her slight girl's figure. It looked
+softer, rounder, and more lightly poised. Her throat looked whiter above
+the encircling folds of white. Her shy half smile was sweeter. The white
+violets, caught to her high girdle, were sweeter, too.
+
+Norah surrendered, her voice husky and reluctant.
+
+"You're too good for them."
+
+"For the G. H. S. dance? For Willard?" Judith pretended great humility:
+"Nana!"
+
+"There's others you're more than too good for. Others----"
+
+"Nana, don't."
+
+"Come here." Norah put two heavy hands on her shoulders and regarded her
+grimly. It was the kind of look that Judith used to associate with
+second sight, and dread. It was quite formidable still. But Judith met
+it steadily, with something mature and assured about her look that had
+nothing to do with the softness and sweetness of her in her fluffy
+draperies, something that had no place in the heart of a child;
+something that Norah saw.
+
+"Too good for them, and you know it," pronounced Norah. "You know it too
+well. You know too many things. A heart of gold you've got, but your
+head will rule your heart."
+
+"Nonsense." Norah permitted herself to be kissed, still looking
+forbidding, but holding Judith tight.
+
+"Little white lamb, may you find what's good enough for you," she
+conceded, unexpectedly, "and may you know it when you find it."
+
+"You're an old dear, and you're good enough for me."
+
+Downstairs there was a more critical audience to face. Judith saw it in
+the library door, and stood still on the stair landing, looking down.
+She held her head high, and coloured faintly. She looked very slender
+and white against the dark woodwork of the hall. The Randall house had
+been renovated the year before--becoming ten years older in the process,
+early Colonial instead of a comfortable mixture of late Colonial and
+mid-Victorian. The hall was particularly Colonial, and a becoming
+background for Judith, but the dark-haired lady in the door had no more
+faith in compliments than Norah, and there was a worried wrinkle in her
+low forehead to-night, as if her mind were on other things.
+
+"Will I do, mother?"
+
+"It's a good little gown, but there's something wrong with the neck
+line. You're really going then?"
+
+"I thought I would."
+
+"Be back by half-past ten. We're going to have some cards here. The
+Colonel likes you to pass things."
+
+"I thought father's head ached."
+
+"He's sleeping it off."
+
+"I--wanted him to see how I looked."
+
+"I can't see why you go."
+
+"I thought I would. I'll go outside now, and wait for Willard."
+
+Judith closed the early Colonial door softly behind her, and settled
+down on the steps. She arranged her coat, not the one her mother lent
+her for state occasions, but a white polo coat of her own, with due
+regard for her ruffles and her violets. The violets were from Colonel
+Everard. Norah, with her tiresome prejudice against the Everards, and
+mother, who thought and talked so much about them that she was almost
+tiresome, too, were both wrong about this party. She did want to go.
+
+The church clock was striking nine. There was nothing deep toned or
+solemn about the chime; it was rather tinny, but she liked it. It
+sounded wide awake, as if things were going to happen. Nine, and the
+party was under way. The concert was almost over. The concert was only
+for chaperones and girls who were afraid of not getting their dance
+orders filled. The truly elect arrived just in time to dance. Some of
+them were passing the house already. Judith saw girls with
+light-coloured gowns showing under dark coats, and swathing veils that
+preserved elaborate coiffures. Bits of conversation, monosyllabic and
+formal, to fit the clothes, drifted across the lawn to her.
+
+She had not been allowed to help decorate the hall, but she had driven
+with Willard to Nashes' Corners for goldenrod, and when they carried it
+in, big, glowing bundles of it, she had seen fascinating things:
+Japanese lanterns, cheesecloth in yellow and white, the school colours,
+still in the piece, and full of unguessable possibilities, and a rough
+board table, the foundation of the elaborately decorated counter where
+Rena and other girls would serve the fruit punch. All the time she
+dressed she had been listening for the music of Dugan's orchestra, and
+caught only tantalizing strains of tunes that she could not identify.
+There was a sameness about the repertoire. Most of the tunes sounded
+unduly sentimental and resigned. But now they were playing their star
+number, a dramatic piece of program music called "A Day on the
+Battlefield."
+
+The day began with bird notes and bugle calls, but was soon enlivened by
+cavalry charges and cannonades. The drum, and an occasional blank
+cartridge, very telling in effect, were producing them now. Judith
+listened eagerly.
+
+She needed friends of her own age for the next two years, but she must
+not identify herself with them too closely, because she would have wider
+social opportunities by and by; that was what her mother said, and she
+did not contest it; by and by, but this party was to-night.
+
+Willard was coming for her now, half an hour ahead of time, as usual. He
+crossed the lawn, and sat heavily down on the steps.
+
+"Hello. Don't talk," said Judith.
+
+Willard was silent only long enough to turn this remark over in his
+mind, and decide that she could not mean it, but that was five minutes,
+for all his mental processes were slow. Down in the hall the last of the
+heroes was dying, and Dugan's orchestra rendered Taps sepulchrally.
+Judith drew a long breath of shivering content.
+
+"Cold?" inquired Willard.
+
+"No."
+
+"You're looking great to-night."
+
+"In the dark? In an old polo coat?"
+
+"You always look great."
+
+Judith was aware of an ominous stir beside her, and changed her
+position.
+
+"Oh, Judy."
+
+"When you know I won't let you hold my hand, what makes you try?"
+
+"If I didn't try, how would I know?" said Willard neatly.
+
+"Oh, if you don't know without trying," Judith sighed. The cannonade in
+the hall was over, and the night was empty without it.
+
+"They took in thirteen dollars and fifty-two cents selling tickets for
+to-night." Willard, checked upon sentimental subjects, proceeded to
+facts. He had so many at command that he could not be checked.
+
+"Who did?"
+
+"The team. They divide it. Only this year they've got to let the
+sub-team in on it, the faculty made them, and they're sore. And there's
+a sub on the reception committee."
+
+"I don't care."
+
+"You ought to. A sub, and a roughneck. The sub-team is a bunch of
+roughnecks, but he's the worst. On the reception committee! But they'll
+take it out of him."
+
+"Who? The reception committee?"
+
+"No, the girls. They won't dance with him. He won't get a decent name on
+his card. Roughneck, keeping Ed off the team. He's an Irish boy."
+
+"An Irish boy?" Something, vague as an unforgotten dream that comes back
+at night, though you are too busy to recall it in waking hours, urged
+Judith to protest. "So is the senior president Irish."
+
+"No, the vice-president." There was a wide distinction between the two
+offices. "Besides"--this was a wider distinction--"Murph lives at the
+Falls."
+
+Living at the Falls, the little settlement at the head of the river, and
+lunching at noon, in the empty schoolhouse, out of tin boxes, with a
+forlorn assembly of half a dozen or so, was a handicap that few could
+live down.
+
+"Murph?"
+
+"The team calls him Murphy. I don't know why. They're crazy about him.
+He lives a half mile north of the Falls. Walking five miles a day to
+learn Latin! He's a fool and a roughneck, but he can play ball.
+Yesterday on Brown's field----"
+
+Willard started happily upon technicalities of football formations.
+Judith stopped listening. He could talk on unaided, pausing only for an
+occasional yes or no.
+
+Brown's field! It was a tree-fringed stretch of level grass set high at
+the edge of the woods, on the other side of the river, with glimpses of
+the river showing through the trees far below. Here, on long autumn
+afternoons, sparkling and cool, but golden at the heart, ending
+gloriously in red, sudden sunsets, football practice went on every day;
+shifting here and there, mysteriously, over the field, the arbitrary
+evolutions that were football, the shuffling, and shouting, and panting
+silence; on rugs and sweaters under the trees, an audience of girls,
+shivering delightfully, or holding some hero's sweater, too proud to be
+cold.
+
+Judith had seen all this through Willard's eyes, or from a passing
+carriage, but now she would go herself, go perhaps every day. Her mother
+would let her. She would not understand, but she would let her, just as
+she had to-night. Judith could be part of the close-knit life of the
+school in the last two years there--the years that counted. The party
+was a test and her mother had met it favourably. That was why she was
+glad to go, as nearly as she understood. She did not know quite what she
+wanted of the party, only how very much she wanted to go.
+
+Willard was asking a question insistently: "Didn't he do pretty work?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Why, the fellow I'm telling you about--the roughneck."
+
+"Roughneck," said Judith dreamily. The word had a fine, strong sound.
+Willard was holding her hand again, and she felt too comfortable and
+content to stop him.
+
+The orchestra down the street was playing the number that usually ended
+its programs, a medley of plantation melodies. They were never such a
+strain on the resources of a hard-working but only five-piece orchestra
+as the ambitious, martial selections, and here, heard across the dark,
+they were beautiful: plaintive and thrillingly sweet. "Old Kentucky
+Home," was the sweetest of all, lonely and sad as youth, and insistent
+as youth, claiming its own against an alien world.
+
+"Oh, Willard!" breathed Judith. Then, in quite another tone, "Oh,
+Willard!"
+
+Encouraged by her silence, he was reaching for her other hand, and
+slipping an arm round her waist.
+
+"You feel so soft," objected Judith frankly, getting up. "I do hope I'll
+never fall in love with a fat man. Come on, let's go!"
+
+She waited for him politely on the sidewalk, and permitted her arm to
+be duly grasped. Willard, sulky and silent, but preserving appearances,
+piloted her dutifully down the street. Willard's silences were rare, and
+Judith usually made the most of them, but she did not permit this one to
+last. She did not want any one, even Willard, to be unhappy to-night.
+
+"Willard."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Don't take such long steps, or I can't keep up with you. You're so
+tall."
+
+"Do you want to be late?"
+
+"Oh, no! Are we?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But there's only one couple behind us, and the music's stopped."
+
+"It takes half an hour to get the chairs moved out."
+
+"Willard."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Is the first dance a grand march and circle?"
+
+"No, that's gone out. They have contras instead, but the first is a
+waltz."
+
+"Willard, mother said I mustn't dance contras, but I shall--with you."
+
+"Well!"
+
+"Don't you want me to?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Willard, are you cross with me?"
+
+"No." They were in front of the Odd Fellows' Building now. The door was
+open. The pair behind them crowded past and clattered hurriedly up the
+bare, polished stairs. The orchestra could be heard tuning industriously
+above. They were almost late, but Willard drew her into a corner of the
+entrance hall, and pressed her hand ardently.
+
+"Judy, I couldn't be cross with you."
+
+"Don't be too sure!" Judith laughed, and ran upstairs ahead of him.
+
+"There's the ladies' dressing-room. I'll get the dance orders and meet
+you outside."
+
+There was a whispering, giggling crowd in the dressing-room, mostly
+seniors, girls she did not know, but they seemed to know her, and she
+was conscious of curious looks at her hair and dress. It was the
+simplest dress in the room, and her mother would not have approved of
+the other dresses, but Judith did. There was something festive about the
+bright colours, too bright most of them: sharp pinks, and cold, hard
+blues. There was a yellow dress on a brunette, who was cheapened by the
+crude colour, and a scarlet dress too bright for any one to wear
+successfully on a big, pretty blond girl, who almost could. Judith
+smelled three distinct kinds of cheap talcum powder, and preferred them
+all to her own unscented French variety. She had a moment of sudden
+loneliness. Was she so glad to be here, after all?
+
+It was only a moment. The tuning of instruments outside broke off, and
+the first bars of a waltz droned invitingly out: "If you really love
+me," the song that had been in her ears all the evening, a flimsy ballad
+of the year, hauntingly sweet, as only such short-lived songs can be.
+Moving to the tune of it, Judith crowded with the other girls out of the
+dressing-room.
+
+The hall was transformed. It was not the room she had dreamed of, a
+great room, dimly lit, peopled with low-talking dancers, circling
+through the dimness. The place looked smaller decorated, and the
+decorations themselves seemed to have shrunk since she saw them. The
+lanterns had been hung only where nails were already driven, and under
+the supervision of the janitor, who would not permit them to be lighted.
+The cheesecloth was conspicuous nowhere except around the little stage,
+which it draped in tight, mathematically measured festoons. Beneath,
+under the misleading legend, "G. H. S.," painted in yellow on a
+suspended football, Dugan's orchestra performed its duties faithfully,
+with handkerchiefs guarding wilted collars.
+
+The goldenrod, tortured and wired into a screen to hide the footlights,
+was drooping away already and showing the supporting wires. The benches
+were stacked against the wall, all but an ill-omened row designed for
+wall-flowers, and the floor was cleared and waxed. But little patches of
+wax that were not rubbed in lurked for unwary feet, and there were
+clouds of dust in the air. In one corner of the hall most of the
+prominent guests of the evening were attempting to obtain dance orders
+at once, or to push their way back with them to the young ladies they
+were escorting.
+
+These ladies, and other ladies without escorts, were crowding each other
+against the stacked benches and maneuvering for positions where their
+dance orders would fill promptly. The atmosphere was one of strife and
+stress. But Judith found no fault with it. She was not aware of it.
+
+In a corner near the stage, by the closed door of the refreshment-room,
+a boy was standing alone. He was tearing up his dance order. It was
+empty, and he was making no further attempts to fill it. He tore it
+quite unostentatiously so that no young lady disposed to be amused by
+his defeat could see anything worth staring at in his performance, and
+he was forgotten in his corner. But Judith stared.
+
+She had remembered him tall, but he was only a little taller than
+herself. His black suit was shiny, and a size too small for him, but it
+was carefully brushed, and he wore it with an air. His hair was darker
+than she remembered, a pale, soft brown. It was too long, and it curled
+at the temples. He stood squarely, facing the room, as if he did not
+care what anybody did to him, but there was a look about his mouth as if
+he cared. He raised his eyes. They were darker than she remembered,
+darker and stranger than any eyes in the world. They looked hurt, but
+there was a laugh in them, too, and across the hall they were looking
+straight at Judith.
+
+"Here you are. I've got myself down for all your contras. Just in time."
+
+Willard, mopping his brow, slipping on a patch of wax, and saving
+himself with a skating motion, brought up triumphantly beside her,
+waving two dance orders. Judith pushed them away, and said
+something--she hardly knew what.
+
+"What, Judy? What's that? You're engaged for this? You can't dance it
+with me?"
+
+"No. No, I can't."
+
+Judith slipped past him, and started across the floor. The music was
+louder now, as if you were really meant to dance, and dance with the
+person you wanted to most. The floor was filling now with dancers
+stepping forward awkwardly, but turning into different creatures when
+they danced, caught by the light, sure swing of the music, whirling and
+gliding. The words sang themselves to Judith, the silly, beautiful
+words:
+
+    Please don't keep me waiting.
+      Won't you let me know
+    That you really love me?
+      Tell--me--so.
+
+A girl in red was dancing in a quick, darting sort of way, in and out,
+among the others, and her dress was beautiful, too, like a flower. The
+boy in the corner was watching it. He did not see Judith come.
+
+"I thought you couldn't be real. When I never saw you again I thought I
+had dreamed you."
+
+Judith said it softly and breathlessly, and he did not hear. She put her
+hand on his arm, and he turned and looked at her.
+
+"Don't you remember me?" Judith was too happy to be hurt even by this.
+The light, sweet music called to her. "Don't you remember? Never mind!
+Come and dance with me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+
+Willard stood still and stared after Judith for one bewildered minute;
+that was as long as he could stand still. Odd Fellows' Hall had ceased
+to afford standing-room.
+
+The floor was filling and more than filling with determined young
+persons who were there to dance, and looked as if they had never had any
+aim but to dance. The enthralled silence, which was more general than
+conversation, advertised it. Even acknowledged belles, like the girl in
+red, coquetted incidentally, with significant but brief confidences and
+briefer upward glances. There was an alarming concentration, intent as
+youth itself, to be read in their unsmiling faces and eager eyes.
+
+They danced quite wonderfully, most of them, as only country-bred young
+people can, with free-limbed young bodies, more used to adventuring in
+the open air than to dancing, but attuned to the rhythm of the dance by
+right of their youth. The old-fashioned waltz, that our grandmothers
+lost their hearts to the time of, still prevailed in Green River; not
+the jerkier performance that was already opening the way for the
+one-step and the dance craze in larger centres, but the old waltz, with
+the first beat of each measure heavily emphasized--a slow swinging,
+beautiful dance, and they danced it with all their hearts.
+
+In and out among them, two slender, quick-turning figures were making an
+intricate way. The girl danced delicately and surely, a faint, half
+smile parting her lips, her small, smooth head erect, the silvery gold
+hair that crowned it shimmering and pale in the uncompromising light of
+the newly installed electric chandeliers, her eyes intent on the boy.
+
+His performance was not expert, but it had a charm all its own. He put a
+great deal of strength into it, and made it evident that he possessed
+still more; strength enough to master the art of dancing once and for
+all, by the sheer force of it, if he cared to exert it, and a laughing
+light in his eyes, as if dancing was not important enough for that, and
+nothing else was.
+
+An ambitious pair, experimenting with the dip waltz, just introduced
+that year, and pausing on the most awkward spots in the crowded floor,
+blocked his path, and he swung heavily out of their way just in time,
+squaring his chin and holding his head a shade higher. The girl in red
+was whirled toward him in double-quick time, and he dodged,
+miscalculated his distance, but met the shock of her squarely, whisking
+Judith out of her way.
+
+"Good try, Murph," her partner called.
+
+Willard regarded the encounter disapprovingly from the door of the
+gentlemen's dressing-room, to which he had edged his way. His was not an
+expressive countenance, and that was a protection to him just now. He
+was bewildered and deeply hurt, but he merely looked fat and slightly
+puzzled, as usual.
+
+"Judy turn you down?" inquired his friend Mr. Ward, also watching from
+the dressing-room door, with the few other gentlemen who were without
+partners for this dance. It was the most important dance of the evening,
+for you danced it with the lady of your choice, or with nobody. It
+cemented new intimacies or foreshadowed the breaking of old; settled
+anew the continually agitated question of "who was going with who."
+
+"Judy turn you down?" said Mr. Ward, but he meant it as a pleasantry.
+Mr. Willard Nash was not often turned down, even at this early age. He
+was too eligible.
+
+"Rena turn you down, Ed?"
+
+"Yes." Mr. Ward became suddenly confidential, and lowered his voice.
+"Mad. She wanted me to get her a shinguard to mount tintypes
+on--tintypes of the team."
+
+"Buy it or steal it?" inquired Willard sarcastically.
+
+"I offered to buy it," his friend confessed, "buy her a new pair, but
+she wants one that's been used."
+
+"You spoil Rena. You can't spoil a girl." They laughed wisely. "It don't
+pay."
+
+"Mad with Judy?"
+
+"Well--no," said Willard magnanimously. He thought quite rapidly, as his
+brain, not overworked at other times, could do in emergencies. "My feet
+hurt. Pumps slip at the heel. I've been stuffing them out. Judy came
+with me, but I had to be excused for this dance."
+
+"Good thing for him."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"For Murph--for Neil Donovan. They'll all dance with him if she does;
+though Judy don't know that. She's not stuck on herself, and never will
+be. I didn't know she knew Murph."
+
+"Well, you know it now," said Willard shortly, his man-of-the-world
+composure failing him. Judith was circling nearer now, slender and
+desirable. He hesitated between an angry glare and a forgiving smile,
+but she did not look to see which he chose. She whirled quickly by.
+
+"Smooth little dancer, and she's no snob. Judy's all right," said Ed.
+"Watch Murph! He's catching on--never danced till last night. Some of
+the fellows taught him. He never danced with a girl before."
+
+"If my feet hurt," remarked Mr. Nash irrelevantly, and without the close
+attention from his friend which this important announcement called for,
+"I may not dance at all to-night."
+
+Willard stopped abruptly. "What do you know about that"; a voice was
+saying, in the rear of the dressing-room; he stiffly refrained from
+turning to see whose, "Judith is dancing the first dance with Neil
+Donovan!"
+
+Judith was dancing the first dance with Neil Donovan. It was social
+history already, accepted as such, and not further discussed, even by
+Willard. But many epoch-making events are not even so much discussed,
+they look so simple on the face of them. We cross a room, and change the
+course of our lives by crossing it, and few people even observe that we
+have crossed the room.
+
+If Judith had affected the course of her life materially by crossing the
+room to the strange boy, she did not seem to be thinking of it just now.
+She was not thinking at all. She was only dancing, following her
+partner's erratic course quite faithfully, and quite intent on doing so;
+feeling every beat of the music, and showing it, pink-cheeked and
+sparkling eyed, and pleasantly excited, but nothing more.
+
+The wistful and dreamy look was gone from her eyes, and her half-formed
+desire for something to happen this evening, something that had never
+happened before, was gone from her, too. She felt content with whatever
+was going to happen, and deeply interested in it, and particularly
+interested in dancing.
+
+They had danced almost in silence, rather a grim silence at first, but
+now that the boy could let the music carry him with it, and was
+beginning to trust it, too, the silence was comfortable. But the few
+words he managed to say were worth listening to and answering, not to be
+dreamed through and ignored, like Willard's. His voice was not as she
+remembered it, and that was interesting, too, deeply significant, though
+she could not have said why. Everything seemed unaccountably interesting
+to-night.
+
+"I thought it was louder," she said, "or higher--or something."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Your voice."
+
+It was quite husky and low, and he pronounced a word here and there with
+a brogue like Norah's, only pleasanter, with a kind of singing sound.
+It was never the word you expected. You had to watch for it. She could
+hear it now.
+
+"Won't you please tell me who you are?"
+
+"I know who you are, and I know where you live."
+
+"Where do I?"
+
+"At the Falls, and I know when you moved there--five years ago, or six."
+
+"Six. How do you know?"
+
+"Oh, I know."
+
+As you grew older, and learned to call more boys and girls in the school
+by name, and more of the clerks in the shops, you discovered new people
+in the town where you thought you knew everybody, and it made the town
+infinitely large. But this boy had not been so near her, or she would
+have seen him. He could not have been in school with her. He must have
+worked on a farm and studied by himself with the grammar-school teacher
+at the Falls, and taken special examinations to enter the Junior class
+this year, as Willard said that some boy at the Falls was doing. He must
+be that boy or Judith would surely have seen him.
+
+She nodded her head wisely. "I know."
+
+"You know a lot." In his soft brogue this sounded like the most
+complimentary thing that could be said.
+
+"But you don't remember me." This had troubled her at first. Now it
+seemed like the most delicious of jokes, and they laughed at it
+together.
+
+"That was the first thing you said to me."
+
+"Isn't it queer"--Judith's eyes widened and darkened as if it were
+something more than queer, something far worse--"so queer! I can't think
+what the first thing was that you said to me."
+
+They confronted this problem in silence, staring at each other with
+wide-open eyes. Though they were circling smoothly at last, carried on
+by the slow, sweet music, so that they hardly seemed to be moving at
+all, and though he did not really move his head, the boy's eyes seemed
+to Judith to be coming nearer to hers, nearer all the time. They were
+beautiful eyes, deep brown, and very clear. His brown hair grew in a
+squarish line across his forehead, and waved softly at the temples. It
+looked as if he had brushed it hard there to brush the curl out, but it
+was curliest there.
+
+"You've got the brownest eyes," said Judith.
+
+"You've got the biggest eyes. Won't you tell me your name?"
+
+Judith did not answer. She looked away from the disconcerting brown eyes
+and down at her hand, against his shoulder, her own little hand, with
+the careful manicure and the dull polish that was all her mother
+permitted; bare of rings, though Norah had given her a beautiful garnet
+ring for Christmas. How shiny his coat-sleeve was, and her hand looked
+unfamiliar to her--not like her own at all. She pressed tighter against
+his shoulder to steady herself.
+
+The music was growing quicker and louder, working up gradually but
+surely into a breathless crescendo that meant the end of the dance. It
+whirled them dizzily about. The sleepy spell of the dance broke in this
+final crash of noise, and as it broke a sudden panic caught Judith.
+
+What had she been saying to this boy? She had never talked like this to
+a boy before. And why was she dancing with him? She ought to be dancing
+with Willard--Willard, waiting there in the dressing-room door with her
+dance order in his hand, with the patient and puzzled look in his eyes,
+with brick-red colour in his cheeks from the affront she had subjected
+him to. What would Willard think of her? What would her mother think?
+And who was this boy? Just what the children had called him in taunting
+screams, on that long-ago May night, and she would have liked to scream
+it now--a paddy.
+
+Instead, she lifted her head, no longer afraid of the boy's brown eyes,
+and said it, as cruelly as she could, in her soft and clear little
+voice:
+
+"Paddy," she said; "a paddy from Paddy Lane."
+
+She looked defiantly into his eyes, but they did not grow angry. They
+only grew very soft and kind, and they laughed at her. She wanted to
+look away from the laughter in them, but she could not look away from
+the kindness. Now she was not angry with him any more, but glad she was
+dancing with him. She knew she never wanted to stop dancing.
+
+"Paddy?" He thought she had said it to remind him of that May night; he
+was remembering it now. "Are you that little girl?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The little girl who broke the lantern?"
+
+"Yes," said Judith proudly.
+
+"And had such long black legs, and went scuttling across the lawn, and
+screaming out to me--that funny little girl?"
+
+"But I did break the lantern," said Judith.
+
+All the bravest stories that she had made up in the dark to put herself
+to sleep with at night, all the perilous adventures of land and sea,
+camp fire or pirate ship, began with the breaking of that lantern, and
+the boy she rescued had been her companion upon them, her brushwood boy,
+her own boy. She had found him at last, and he was laughing--laughing at
+her.
+
+"Sure you did. As if I couldn't have broken away from a bunch of fool
+kids, without being doped with the smell of kerosene, and yelled at by
+another fool kid. Sure you broke the lantern. How mad I was."
+
+"You didn't remember." It was not a joke any longer now, but a tragedy,
+and Judith felt overwhelmed by it, alone in the world. "You forgot, and
+I--remembered."
+
+The brown eyes and the gray met in one last long look and when the brown
+eyes saw the hurt in Judith's, the laughter died out of them. Again they
+seemed to be growing nearer and nearer to hers, but this time Judith was
+not afraid, she was glad.
+
+"If you didn't save my life then, you did to-night." It came in a husky
+burst of confidence, straight from his shy boy's heart, very rare and
+very precious. Judith caught her breath.
+
+"Oh, did I? Did I?"
+
+"Yes. This crowd here had me mad--crazy mad. I was going home. I was
+going to get off the team. I wasn't going to school next week, and I've
+worked my hands off to get there. Maybe you remembered and I forgot,
+but--I won't forget again. You were that little girl." It was not a
+slight to the little girl she used to be, but a tribute to the girl she
+was; that was what looked out of his brown eyes at Judith, and sang
+through the brogue in his voice.
+
+"You were that little girl--you!"
+
+"Yes," breathed Judith; "yes!"
+
+They whirled faster and faster. This was really the end of the dance,
+and this dance could never come again. Judith held tight to his shiny
+shoulder, breathless, hurrying to part with her secret and strip herself
+bare of mystery generously in a breath. All sorts of barriers might come
+between them, she might put them there herself, and she was quite aware
+of it, but not yet, not until the music stopped.
+
+"My name's Judith--Judith Randall. Call me Judy."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+
+Colonel Everard sat at the head of his dinner table. A little dinner for
+twelve was well under way at the Birches. Mrs. Everard was confined to
+her tower suite to-night with one of the sudden headaches which unkind
+critics held were likely to come when the Colonel entertained. Randolph
+Sebastian, his secretary, had superintended the arrangements for the
+dinner.
+
+Pink roses, rather too many of them, were massed on the big, round
+table. Rather too much polished silver was to be seen on it; the most
+ornate candlesticks in the Everard collection, and a too complete array
+of small, scattered objects, each with a possible but not an essential
+function, littering a cloth already complicated by elaborate inserts of
+lace. But the brilliantly lighted, over-decorated table was effective
+enough in the big, darkly wainscoted room, a little island of light and
+colour.
+
+The room was characterless, but finely and generously proportioned, and
+not so blatantly new as the rest of the colonel's house still looked.
+Against the dark walls the pale-coloured gowns around the table were
+charming. Indeed, most of the gowns were designed for this setting.
+
+For there were no outsiders among the Colonel's guests to-night.
+Sometimes there were distinguished outsiders, politicians and other big
+men, diverted from triumphant tours through larger centres by the
+Colonel's influence, and by his courtesy exhibited to Green River after
+they had dined, or bigger men still, whose comings and goings the public
+press was not permitted to chronicle. Sometimes, too, there were
+outsiders on probation, the outer fringe of Green River society,
+admitted to formal functions, and hoping in vain to penetrate to
+intimate ones; ladies flustered and flattered, gentlemen sulky but
+flattered, conscious that each appearance here might be their last, and
+trying to seem indifferent to the fact.
+
+But this was the Colonel's inner circle, gathered by telephone at
+twenty-four hours' notice, as they so often were. No course that the
+chef had contributed to the rather too elaborate menu was new to them.
+The Pol Roger which the big English butler was just starting on his
+second round was of the vintage year usually to be found on the
+Colonel's wine list, and on most intelligently supervised wine lists. A
+dinner for twelve, like plenty of little dinners elsewhere, no more
+correct and no less, but it had this to distinguish it; it was being
+served in Green River.
+
+Served complete from hors-d'oeuvres to liqueurs, in a New England town
+where high tea had been the fashion not ten years ago, and church
+suppers were still important occasions--where you were rich on five
+thousand a year, and there were not a dozen capitalists secure of so
+much, where a second maid was an object of pride, and there was no
+butler except the Colonel's. And he had imported this butler and his
+chef and his wines, but not his guests; they were quite as impressive,
+quite able to appreciate his hospitality, if not to return it in kind,
+and they were all but one native products of Green River.
+
+The youngest guest was eating mushrooms _sous cloche_ in contented
+silence at the Colonel's left. The scene was not new to her. She could
+not remember her first party here; she was probably the only person in
+Green River who could pass over that momentous occasion so lightly. She
+had grown up as the only child in the inner circle. She had been
+privileged to excuse herself, when the formal succession of courses at
+some holiday function was too much for her, and read fairy tales on a
+cushion by the library fire, out of the fat, purple edition de luxe of
+the "Arabian Nights" that was always waiting for her there. Though her
+white ruffled skirts had grown long now, and her silvery gold braids
+were pinned up, and she was allowed to fill an empty place at the
+Colonel's table whenever he asked her, if not quite on his regular
+dinner list yet, Judith was not much changed from that wide-eyed child,
+and to-night her eyes looked sleepy and soft, as if she had serious
+thoughts of the cushion by the fire and the fairy book still.
+
+The scene was not new, but it kept a fascination for her, like a
+transformation scene in a pantomime. Mr. J. Cleveland Kent, the manager
+of the shoe factory, who had taken her in to dinner, had been leaning
+out of a factory window in his shirt-sleeves, his black hair tumbled,
+and badly in need of a shave, when she passed on her way home from
+school. He looked mysterious and interesting in a dinner coat, like her
+idea of an Italian nobleman.
+
+When Judith knocked at the kitchen door to deliver a note, Mrs. Theodore
+Burr, in a pink cooking apron, corsetless, and with her beautiful yellow
+hair in patent curlers, had been blackening the kitchen stove, and
+quarrelling with the furnace man about an overcharge of fifty cents on
+his monthly bill. The Burrs had no maid. Theodore Burr had been
+assisting Judge Saxon ever since he passed his bar examinations, but he
+was not admitted to partnership yet. This was beginning to make gossip,
+for he worked hard. He had broken his dinner engagement to-night, as he
+often did, to stay at home and work. Randolph Sebastian, the secretary,
+with the queer, hybrid foreign name, and thin face and ingratiating
+brown eyes, had his place at the table.
+
+Mrs. Burr, stately and slender now in jetted black, the lowest cut gown
+in the room, her yellow hair fluffing and flaring into an unbelievable
+number of well-filled-out puffs, was chattering to the Colonel in a low
+voice, so that Judith could not understand, and breaking into French at
+intervals--Green River High School French, but she spoke it with an air,
+narrowing her blue-gray eyes after an alluring fashion she had and
+laughing her full-toned laugh. She was a full-blown, emphatic creature,
+though she had been married only three years, and was Lil Gaynor still
+to half the town.
+
+Auburn-haired little Mrs. Kent had been lying down all the afternoon, as
+her disapproving domestic had informed any one who inquired at the door
+in a shrill voice that did not promote repose. She was very piquant and
+enticing now, with her bright, slanting hazel eyes, and a contagious
+laugh, but her dinner partner, Judith's father, was tired and hard to
+amuse. He looked very boyish when he was tired; his blue eyes looked
+large and pathetic.
+
+The other two young women and Judith's mother, whose dark, low-browed
+Madonna beauty was gracious and fresh to-night, set off by her
+clear-blue gown, with a gardenia caught in her sheer, white scarf,
+deserved the Honourable Joseph Grant's flowery name for them, the Three
+Graces.
+
+Before the Colonel's time and Judith's the Honourable Joe had been the
+most important man in Green River, and in evening things, and after a
+properly concocted cocktail he still looked it, florid and portly and
+well set-up, with a big voice that could still sound hearty though it
+rang rather empty and hollow sometimes. He looked ten years younger than
+his old friend, Judge Saxon. The Judge's coat was getting shiny at the
+seams, and--this appeared even more unfortunate to Judith--he was in the
+habit of pointing out that it was shiny, and without embarrassment. Mrs.
+Saxon's pearl-gray satin was of excellent quality, but of last year's
+cut, and the modest neck was filled in with the net guimpe which she
+affected at informal dinners. The Saxons were not quite in the picture,
+but they were always very kind to Judith.
+
+And if they were not in the picture, Mrs. Joseph Grant, certainly not
+the youngest woman in the room, though she was not the oldest, occupied
+the centre of it.
+
+She was like the picture of the beautiful princess on the hill of glass,
+in a book of Judith's, and besides, she had once been a real debutante,
+of the kind that Judith liked to read about in novels, before the
+Honourable Joe brought her from Boston to Green River. Judith liked to
+look at her better than any one here except Colonel Everard.
+
+"Cosmopolitan--ten years ahead of Wells, or any town in your state; real
+give and take in the table talk; really pretty women; the same little
+group of people rubbing wits against each other day after day and
+getting them sharpened instead of dulled by it; a concentrated, pocket
+edition of a social life, but complete--nothing provincial about it," a
+very distinguished outsider had said after his last week-end with the
+Colonel.
+
+But he was fresh from a visit to the state capital, the most provincial
+city in the state when the legislature was not in session; also he had a
+known weakness for pretty women. Green River did not admire the
+Colonel's circle so unreservedly, but Green River was jealous. Whatever
+you thought of it, it was made of fixed and unpromising material, and
+making it was no mean achievement, and the man at the head of the table
+looked capable of it, and of bigger things.
+
+The Colonel was a big man and a public character, and as with many
+bigger men, you could divide the facts of his life into two classes:
+what everybody knew and what nobody knew. If the known facts were not
+the most dramatic ones, they were dramatic enough. He was sixty now. At
+fifteen he had been a student in a small theological seminary, working
+for his board on his uncle's farm, and engaged to the teacher of the
+district school, who helped him with his Greek at night. He gave up the
+ministry for the law, used his law practice as a stepping-stone into
+state politics, climbed gradually into national politics, built up a
+fortune somehow--these were the days of big graft--married for money and
+got an assured position in Washington society thrown in, and soon after
+his marriage chose Green River as a basis of operations, spending a
+winter month in Washington which later lengthened to three, ostensibly
+for the sake of his wife's health. The title of Colonel came from
+serving on the Governor's staff in an uneventful year. He had held no
+very important office, but his importance to his party in state and
+national politics was not to be measured by that.
+
+White haired, slightly built, managing with perfectly apparent tricks
+of carriage and dress to look taller than he was, he was the effective
+figure in this rather unusually good-looking group of people. Just now
+he was lighting a fresh cigarette for Mrs. Burr so gracefully that even
+Judge Saxon must enjoy watching, so Judith thought, though there was a
+tradition that he did not like women to smoke. Shocking the Judge was
+one of their favourite games here. It was only a game. Of course they
+could never shock anybody. They were quite harmless people, too grown up
+to be very interesting, but almost always kind, and always gay.
+
+The Colonel's profile was really beautiful through the curling, bluish
+smoke, and Judith liked his quick, flashing smile. He turned now and
+smiled at Judith. Her own smile was charming, a faint, half smile, that
+never knew whether to turn into a real smile or to go away and not come
+again, but was always just on the point of deciding.
+
+"Is our debutante bored?"
+
+"Oh, no; I was just thinking. No."
+
+"She's blushing. Look at her."
+
+"Yes, look at a real one. Do you good, Lil," agreed the Judge, and Mrs.
+Burr rubbed a pink cheek with her table napkin, exhibited it daintily,
+and laughed.
+
+"Rose-white youth! But she doth protest too much." The Honourable Joe
+was fond of quotations, and often tried to make his remarks sound like
+them, when he could not recall appropriate ones, raising a solemn fat
+finger to emphasize them: "The thoughts of youth are long, long
+thoughts."
+
+"Wrong, wrong thoughts," supplied Randolph Sebastian, so gravely that
+the Honourable Joe accepted the amendment, and looked worried, as only
+the thought of losing his grip on Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations" could
+worry him at the end of a perfect meal.
+
+"Wrong thought?" he repeated, in a puzzled voice.
+
+"Thinking's barred here. What's the penalty, Judge?"
+
+"You aren't likely to get it inflicted on you, so I won't tell you,
+Lil."
+
+"No, I don't think; I act," Mrs. Burr admitted cheerfully. She always
+became a shade more cheerful just when you expected her to lose her
+temper.
+
+"How true that is," observed Mr. Sebastian gently.
+
+"Ranny!"
+
+"Didn't you play auction with me last night? We're out just----"
+
+"Don't tell me. I can't think in anything beyond three figures. Ted's
+doing higher mathematics over it. That's why he's home, really. I'll
+play with you again to-night, for your sins."
+
+"For my sins!" He made melancholy eyes, as if he were really confessing
+them. Mr. Sebastian always pretended a deep devotion to Mrs. Burr.
+Judith thought it was one of the silliest of their games.
+
+"But what was Judy thinking about?" demanded Mrs. Grant, in the sweet,
+indifferent voice that always made itself heard.
+
+"She met a fairy prince at the ball last night. They are still to be
+met--at balls."
+
+"You'd meet one anywhere he made a date, wouldn't you, Edith Kent?" said
+the Judge rudely. "Give Miss Judy a penny for her thoughts, if you want
+them, Everard. You've got to pay sometimes, you know--even you."
+
+"Don't commercialize her too young," said Mr. Sebastian smoothly.
+"Though, on the whole--can you commercialize them too young?"
+
+"Judith, what were you thinking about?" the Colonel interrupted, rather
+quickly, turning every one's eyes upon her at once, as he could with a
+word.
+
+Judith met them confidently--amused, curious eyes, but all friendly and
+gay. They talked a great deal of nonsense here, but it did not irritate
+her, as it did her friend Judge Saxon, though she was not always amused,
+and could not always understand. They never tried to shock her. She was
+sorry for the Judge. He was not at home with these gay and good-natured
+people, and it was so easy to be.
+
+She tipped her head backward in deliberate imitation of Edith Kent, whom
+she admired, half closed her eyes, like Lillian Burr, whom she admired
+still more, gazed up at the Colonel, and said, in her clear little
+voice:
+
+"I was thinking about you."
+
+"That's the answer," said Mr. Kent, and rewarded it with a lump of sugar
+dipped in his apricot brandy.
+
+"For an ingenue?" said Mrs. Burr, very sweetly indeed.
+
+"'She's getting older every day,'" hummed Mrs. Kent, in her charming,
+throaty contralto.
+
+But Judge Saxon pushed back his chair and rose abruptly.
+
+"I've had dinner enough," he said, "and so have you, Miss Judy."
+
+"We all have, Hugh," said the Colonel quickly, and rose, too, and
+slipped an intimate hand through his arm. "Run along, children! Hugh,
+about that Brady matter----"
+
+Judge Saxon submitted sulkily, but was laughing companionably with the
+Colonel by the time they all reached the library.
+
+Judith never admired the Colonel more than when he was managing Judge
+Saxon in a sulky mood. And she never admired the Colonel and his friends
+more than she did in the lazy intimate hour here before the cards began.
+
+The room was long and high, and too narrow; unfriendly, as only a room
+that is both badly proportioned and unusually large can be, but you
+forgot this in the softening glow of candles and rose-shaded lights. You
+forgot, too, that you were an exile from your own generation, among
+elders who bored you, though you were subtly flattered to be among them.
+Safe on a high window-bench in the most remote window, entirely your
+own, since the architect had not designed it to be sat on, and nobody
+else took the trouble to climb up, it was so much pleasanter to watch
+these people than to talk to them; they had such pretty clothes, and
+wore them so well, and made such effective, changing pictures of
+themselves in the big room.
+
+Sometimes they amused themselves with the parlour tricks that they had
+so many of, and sometimes they drifted in and out in groups of two and
+three, to more intimate parts of the house: the smoking-room, or Mrs.
+Everard's suite, if she was well, or out through the French windows,
+across the broad, glassed-in veranda that ran the length of the room and
+darkened it unpleasantly by day, into the Colonel's rose garden. It was
+warm enough for that to-night, and a yellow, September moon showed
+invitingly through the windows. Mrs. Grant, who liked to be alone, as
+Judith could quite understand, since she had to listen to the Honourable
+Joe's big voice so much of the time, was slipping out through a window
+now, taking the coat that Mr. Sebastian brought her, but refusing to let
+him go with her.
+
+He went to the piano, ran his thin, flexible brown fingers over the
+keys, struck into a Spanish serenade, and sang a verse of it in his
+brilliant but tricky tenor, with his languishing eyes upon Mrs. Burr.
+
+"Ranny, do you want to tell the whole world of our love? You terrify
+me," she said, and took refuge on one arm of the Colonel's chair.
+Judith's mother, protesting that she needed a chaperon, promptly took
+possession of the other arm, disposing her blue, trailing skirts
+demurely, and looking more Madonna-like than ever through the cloudy
+smoke of a belated cigarette. The others made themselves equally
+comfortable, all but Judge Saxon, who had ceased to advertise the fact
+that he was not.
+
+"Smile at me," Mrs. Kent begged, hovering over his chair; "I'm going to
+sing by and by, and I need it. Do smile! If you don't, I'm going to kiss
+you, Judge."
+
+"Go as far as you like, but be sure how far you like to go, Edith," said
+the Judge quietly. She flushed, and turned away abruptly, playing with a
+pile of songs.
+
+"I'm looking for a lullaby. Our youngest seems to need it."
+
+"Not in your line, are they?" said Sebastian, and began to improvise
+one, while Judith, in her corner, closed her eyes contentedly. Whether
+there was any truth or not in the report that he had been playing a
+ramshackle piano in an East Side restaurant in New York when the Colonel
+picked him up, Sebastian could do charming things with quite simple
+little tunes, if you did not inquire into problems of harmony and
+counterpoint too closely. He was doing them now, weaving odds and ends
+of familiar tunes, rather scapegrace and thin, into a lovely, reassuring
+whole, that made you feel rested and safe. Judith, making herself
+comfortable against a stiff and unwieldy Arts and Crafts sort of
+cushion, as long experience had taught her to, listened, smiling.
+
+She had no idea what a unique position she was occupying there. Judge
+Saxon grumbled and scolded, but he was part of the group in the room.
+He had grown into it, and belonged to them, as he might have belonged to
+an uncongenial family. The Colonel's distinguished guests saw them only
+on their best behaviour. Their local critics never penetrated here at
+all. Judith was the only outsider who did, and she had besides the
+irrevocable right of youth to pronounce judgment upon those who have
+prepared the world for it to occupy. She was their only licensed critic.
+What did she think of them? Her blond head drooped sleepily. She did not
+look disposed to say.
+
+Sebastian played on, drifting into something sophisticated, with a
+suggestion of waltz rhythms running through it. There was a stir of
+movement in the room, and the sound of windows opening and shutting,
+once, and then again. Judith did not turn her head to see who had gone
+out. She was too comfortable. It was strange that he could make you so
+comfortable with his music, when he made you so uncomfortable if you
+talked to him, watching you so closely with his queer, bright eyes.
+
+He stopped abruptly, with a big, crashing discord, and Judith rubbed her
+eyes and sat up. Mrs. Kent was going to sing now. She tossed some music
+to him.
+
+"That's over your head," she said; "over all your heads; better put me
+up there, too, Cleve. Besides, I want to dance. That table will do."
+She cleared it unceremoniously, with her husband's help, and established
+herself there, poised motionless, through the introductory bars of the
+song, her sleepy eyes wide awake now, and a red rose from a bowl on the
+table caught between her teeth.
+
+Quietly, always careful to avoid the reputation of being shocked, like
+the Judge, Judith slipped down from her perch, and across the room, and
+out through the window.
+
+    "Please keep my folks from kickin';
+    Grab me while I'm a chicken,
+    I'm getting older every day."
+
+Mrs. Kent's fresh voice was urging, as Judith tiptoed across the
+veranda.
+
+The rowdy words of her little songs and the demure plaintiveness of Mrs.
+Kent's voice made an effective contrast. It amused Judith as much as any
+one, and she liked to laugh, but she liked better to cry, and if you
+could not hear the words, Mrs. Kent's voice made you cry; big, luxurious
+tears, that stood in your eyes and did not fall. As she found her way
+across the lawn, among the elaborate flower-beds, the voice followed
+her, mellow and sweet. It had never sounded so sweet before. Everything
+sweet in the world was sweeter to-night.
+
+At the edge of the lawn Judith paused. Ahead of her three marble steps,
+flanked by urns filled with ivy, glaring things in the daytime but
+glimmering shadowy white and alluring now, led up the terrace to the
+rose garden; a fairy place, far from the world, so hedged in and
+shadowed by trees that it was dark even by moonlight, entered through an
+old-fashioned trellised arbour, that was so mysterious and dark, she
+liked it almost as well now when the rambler roses were not in flower.
+
+When she left the room her mother had been sitting in Colonel Everard's
+chair, she seemed to remember, and the Colonel and Mrs. Burr were
+nowhere to be seen. The whole room looked emptier, though she did not
+know who else was missing. But there were two people now in the rose
+arbour. She could just hear their voices, low, with long silences
+between.
+
+She wanted the place to herself. She stood still, hoping that they would
+go. There was a path into the woods on the other side of the little
+garden: the Colonel's bare, semicultivated woods, combed clean of
+underbrush, but you did not miss it at night. The woods were full of
+adventure, but the garden was better to dream in, and Judith had a great
+deal to dream about.
+
+The lighted house looked quite small and far away across the wide,
+moonlit lawn. They had stopped singing, and the laughter that followed
+the song did not sound so clear as the music; you could just hear it.
+Presently you could hear nothing, and it was quiet in the rose arbour,
+too. She waited until she was sure, standing quite still at the edge of
+the dark enclosure, not a ruffle of her white dress fluttering, very
+slender and small against the dark of the leaves. Then she slipped into
+the arbour.
+
+Through a fringe of drooping vine that half hid the picture, she could
+see the garden, empty and dimly moonlit, with the marble benches faintly
+white. She hurried through, pushed a trailing vine aside, then dropped
+it and shrank back under the trellis.
+
+The garden was empty. But across it, just at the entrance of the wood
+path, she saw a man and a woman. At first she took the two figures for
+one, they were standing so closely embraced. She could not see their
+faces, only the two dark figures standing there like one. They stood
+still a long time. They might have been lovers in a picture, only you
+could not paint pictures of darkly clothed, ungraceful, shapeless
+people. Finally they moved, the man turning suddenly, slipping an arm
+higher around the woman's shoulders, and putting his face down to hers.
+
+Then he drew her into the wood path, and they passed down it out of
+sight. Judith did not know who the woman was, but the man was Colonel
+Everard. And they had kissed each other.
+
+Now they were gone. Judith drew a deep breath of relief and stepped out
+into the enclosure, pacing across it with slow steps, possessing it for
+her own and dismissing alien presences. There was a high-backed marble
+erection between the benches, which looked like a memorial to the dear
+departed, but was designed for a chair. She seated herself there
+deliberately, leaning back, at ease somehow in the unfriendly depths of
+it, a slender, uncompromising creature, like a young princess sitting in
+judgment on her throne.
+
+They had kissed each other. She knew they did things like this, but now
+she had seen it, which was different, and not very pleasant. But they
+were all so old. Did it really matter whether they kissed each other or
+not?
+
+"Stupid old things," said Colonel Everard's only authorized critic, "I
+don't care what they do."
+
+Here in the quiet of the garden you were free to think about more
+interesting things than the Everards or even fairy princes.
+
+"Stupid," repeated Judith absently, and forgot the Everards. The moon,
+far away but very clear, shone down at her in an unwinking,
+concentrated way, as if it were shining into the Colonel's garden and
+nowhere else, and at nobody but Judith. She did not look disconcerted by
+the attention, but stared back at it with eyes that were not sleepy now,
+but very big and bright--wondering, but not afraid.
+
+On still nights like this you could just hear the church clock strike
+from the garden, but you could not count all the strokes. Judith
+listened for the sound. It was early, and out here, in the cool, still
+air, it felt early, though the time had passed so slowly in the
+Colonel's sleepy rooms. She could hear no music from the house. They
+would soon begin to put out the bridge tables. There was always a chance
+that they would need her to complete a table, but if they did not, the
+Colonel's car was to take her home at nine.
+
+And the Colonel's youngest guest had further plans for the evening.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+
+"That will be all, Miss?"
+
+"Yes," said Judith, with unnecessary emphasis. "Oh, yes, indeed!"
+
+The Everards' car turned and flashed out of the drive and up the street.
+Judith stood still on the steps and watched it, if a young lady with her
+breath coming fast and her eyes shining bright in the dark, and her
+heart beating unaccountably hard can be said to be standing still. One
+light burned forlornly over the entrance of the inn. Light was Judge
+Saxon's one extravagance, and plenty of it was waiting for him in the
+house next door, though it would be two before any one left the
+Everards' but Judith.
+
+The house before her was dark, and the dimly lighted street was
+profoundly still, with the heavy and brooding stillness that comes upon
+village streets after nine and is to be found nowhere else in the world.
+Judith did not seem depressed by it. Somewhere on a side street solitary
+footsteps echoed hollow through the silence, and she listened intently,
+but they came no nearer, and presently died away. She fumbled excitedly
+with her key, threw open the door, and groped her way across the
+unlighted hall. She encountered the telephone table prematurely,
+clutched it, and laughed a high-keyed, strange little laugh.
+
+"Who's there?" demanded a voice from the stairs, disconcertingly close.
+The lights, switched suddenly on, flashed into Judith's eyes, and Norah
+confronted her, peculiarly forbidding in a discarded cape of Judith's
+and her own beflowered best hat.
+
+"Oh, it's you," she said.
+
+"Who did you expect? Anybody else? Did--anybody come?"
+
+"I expected you a half hour ago."
+
+"What made you wait for me?"
+
+"Didn't you want me to?"
+
+"Nana, of course, but if your sister is sick and needs you----"
+
+Norah listened to this irreproachable sentiment suspiciously. "It's late
+to go," she said.
+
+"I'll walk up with you if you're frightened."
+
+"You! Can you unhook that dress?"
+
+"Yes. I'm going to bed pretty soon. I'm awfully sleepy."
+
+"There's some ginger ale on the ice."
+
+"I can get it open myself. Did anybody come?"
+
+"A boy you know."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"You're too anxious to know, and too anxious to get rid of me.
+And you're acting nervous."
+
+"I'm not. I'm just sleepy."
+
+Norah, her grimmest self, as she always was just before relenting, began
+to fumble with her hat-pins.
+
+"Let me help, if you really want to take off your hat. You'll spoil your
+beautiful roses. Darling, you look like your niece, the lovely Miss
+Maggie Brady, in that hat. Don't take it off. You're cross because you
+know where I've been. Well, they didn't eat me. I'm all here. It was
+Willard who came, and I don't care whether you tell me or not. And I
+don't want to get rid of you. And I love you and you love me, and you're
+not cross now."
+
+"If I love you, you've got need of it, then." Norah struggled
+perfunctorily, and permitted herself to be kissed. "Alone here till all
+hours of the night, and Mollie at the dance at the Falls, and your own
+mother----"
+
+"But you won't worry about me? And you'll go? And you'll go now, before
+it gets later, so you won't be frightened. You'll go this minute?
+And--oh, Nana----"
+
+Norah, departing by the front door because the back one was secured by
+an elaborate system of locks of her own invention, and operated only by
+herself, turned to give Judith a farewell glance of grim adoration.
+
+"Nana, was it Willard that came?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And not--anybody else?"
+
+"No."
+
+Norah, winding herself tightly into the cape in a way that converted
+that traditionally graceful garment into a kind of armour, disappeared
+up the street. When she was out of sight, and not until then, Judith
+slammed the door shut, laughing her tense, excited laugh again.
+
+Then, for a sleepy young woman, she began to display surprising
+activity. First she turned off all the lights in the hall but one, in an
+opalescent globe, over the front door, looked at the faintly lighted
+vestibule with a calculating eye, and turned that out also. She looked
+critically in at the library, close curtained for the night, and dimly
+lit by the embers of the wood fire, raked apart, but not dead. She
+pushed them together expertly, and added a stick, a little one, which
+would soon burn down to picturesque embers, like the rest. She pulled an
+armchair closer to the fire, pushed it away again, and dropped two
+cushions on the hearth with a discreet space between.
+
+The remains of Willard's last half-dozen carnations and a box of the
+eighty-cent-a-pound candy which only Mr. Edward Ward was extravagant
+enough to prefer to the generally popular fifty-cent Belle Isle, were
+conspicuous on the table, and Judith carried them into the next room,
+out of sight. Just then the telephone rang.
+
+Judith started, dropped the candy, ran into the hall, and stood looking
+down at the small instrument resentfully, as if it were personally to
+blame because she could not see who was calling her without answering
+and committing herself. Once she picked it up doubtfully, but finally
+put it down, still ringing intermittently, and hurried into the kitchen.
+She put a second bottle of ginger ale on the ice, brought a hammered
+brass tray and two glasses from the butler's pantry, then substituted a
+less ostentatious bamboo tray, hesitated, and then put them all away
+again.
+
+Now she went to her own room, turned on an unbecoming but searchingly
+clear toplight, and frowned at herself in the mirror, jerked out her
+hairpins, shook out her soft hair, and brushed and pulled at it with
+unsteady hands. In spite of them, the pale gold braids, rearranged,
+looked almost as well as before, if no better, and the heightened colour
+in her cheeks was charming. From a corner of her glove-case she produced
+the two cosmetics then in favour with the younger set in Green River,
+burnt matches, and a bit of scarlet ribbon, which made an excellent
+substitute for rouge if you moistened it. The ribbon was an unhealthy
+red, and looked peculiarly so to-night. Judith dropped it impulsively
+into her wastebasket, but experimented with the matches.
+
+She made both her delicately shaded eyebrows an even splotchy black,
+admired the result, then suddenly rubbed it off, turned away from the
+mirror without a backward glance, and ran down into the hall. The clock
+was just striking ten.
+
+Judith paused for one breathless minute at the library door, pressing
+both hands against her heart, then she went into the firelit room and
+made the last and most important of her preparations. She switched on
+the lights, toplights and sidelights and reading-lamp, all of them, went
+to the middle one of the three front windows, crushed the curtains back,
+and raised both shades high to the top, so that the light in the room
+looked out at the street from this window from sill to ceiling. Judith
+slipped quickly out of range of the window, dropped down on one of the
+cushions by the fire, and waited.
+
+She had fluttered through her little hurry of preparation excitedly, but
+now there was evidence of deeper excitement about the tense quiet of
+her, huddled on her cushion, small hands clasping silken knees, and
+brooding eyes on the fire. There was a dignity about her, too, in spite
+of her childish pose and a drooping grace that was almost a woman's.
+
+What she was waiting for was slow to come, but she did not seem
+disturbed by that. The hands of the clock above her seemed to move with
+the unbelievable quickness characteristic of clock hands when there is
+no other activity in the room, and she observed them calmly. Soon they
+pointed to the quarter hour, they passed it. She looked faintly worried
+then. The telephone rang again; she pressed her hands over her ears and
+shut her eyes tight, and did not answer. The stick on the fire burned
+low and she did not replace it. It parted and fell from the andirons
+with a dull noise that echoed loudly through the empty room. Judith
+started and jumped up, her eyes hard and bright, her hands tightly
+clenched.
+
+She eyed the clock threateningly, as if it were personally responsible
+for whatever disappointment she might be feeling, and she were daring it
+not to strike. It struck half-past ten in spite of her. Judith's mouth
+trembled childishly, and tears started to her eyes. They did not fall.
+Footsteps sounded outside. They turned into the drive. Judith stood on
+tiptoe and peeped at herself in the mantel mirror--her flushed cheeks,
+tumbled hair, and sparkling eyes. The steps crossed the porch, and she
+ran to the door and threw it open--the length of the chain, and no
+wider. She did not unbar the chain. On the threshold, with a substantial
+box of Belle Isle under his arm, stood Mr. Willard Nash.
+
+Judith regarded Mr. Nash and his Belle Isle with disfavour.
+
+"You can't come in," she said.
+
+Mr. Nash, who had been stooping to flick some dust from his boots,
+straightened guiltily. "Why?"
+
+"It's too late."
+
+"I've got to see you."
+
+"You do see me." A white dress, a face almost as white, and big, dark
+eyes were all he could see, but it seemed to be enough. He inserted a
+square-toed boot cautiously in the opening of the door.
+
+"I want to see you _about_ something."
+
+"What?"
+
+"A new comic song for the quartette. They won't let us do 'Amos Moss' at
+the Lyceum concert. That part about the red shirt is vulgar. The new
+one's close harmony. It will show off Murph's voice."
+
+"It's too late now. Go home, Willard."
+
+"But I brought you this."
+
+"Go home and eat it," suggested Judith.
+
+Willard turned scarlet, swung round, then changed his mind and inserted
+his foot in the crack of the door again, this time with a purposeful
+air. He was to develop into the type of man to whom an unpropitious time
+and place are an irresistible temptation to demand a show-down. It is a
+type that goes far, though it is not essentially popular. Judith sighed,
+then resigned herself.
+
+"Judy, I don't make you out."
+
+"You don't have to."
+
+"I do." Willard's voice was impressive, as even a fat boy's can be when
+he is in the grip of fate and conscious of it. "I do."
+
+"I'm sorry, Willard, dear," murmured Judith, with disarming sweetness,
+but he was not to be turned from his purpose.
+
+"Judy, are you going with me or not?"
+
+"Going with you?"
+
+"Don't be a snob. What else can I call it but going with me? I don't
+know any other way to say it."
+
+"Then don't say it."
+
+"You've got my class pin and I've got yours. I know there isn't anybody
+else. You let me call and take you places, but you won't let me----"
+
+"What?"
+
+Willard looked sheepishly down at his boots, then bravely up at Judith.
+"Put my arm round you at picnics. Kiss you good-night."
+
+Judith cut short this catalogue crisply.
+
+"Spoon?"
+
+This word was forbidden in the upper circles of the Green River younger
+set, and Willard looked pained, but collected himself.
+
+"We are the same as engaged," he insisted sturdily.
+
+He had forced an issue at last, but Judith evaded it, laughing softly in
+the dark.
+
+"Oh, are we?"
+
+"Aren't we?"
+
+"How do you know there isn't anybody else?"
+
+"Well, you won't look at Ed, and Murph don't count." Willard made this
+pronouncement lightly, though the adamantine rules and impassable
+barriers of a whole social order were embodied in it. "Murph that you're
+so thick with, all of a sudden. He's a bully fellow, all right, next
+captain of the team, probably. Good thing he's broken into the crowd a
+little way. Too bad he's Irish. Murph don't count."
+
+"No--no!" A sudden and poignant sweetness thrilled in Judith's voice.
+The tenor of the Green River High School quartette, not ordinarily
+sensitive to variations of tone in the voices of others, could not
+ignore it. The change had disturbed him vaguely. It seemed to call for
+some comment.
+
+"Judy, you look great to-night.... I'd do anything for you."
+
+"Then go home, Willard."
+
+"You haven't answered my question."
+
+"What question?"
+
+"Don't tease."
+
+"I honestly don't know."
+
+"You don't hear one word I'm saying to you."
+
+Judith laughed guiltily. "Then what makes you talk to me?"
+
+"Judith--are we the same as engaged?"
+
+Judith hesitated. "Kissing each other good-night--and all that--is
+silly. I don't want to. Only sometimes I want to, and then afterward I'm
+ashamed, and can't understand why. Willard, I don't want to grow up. I
+don't ever want to. I want things to stay just the way they are. They
+are--lovely. Oh, Willard----"
+
+She stopped, with tears in her eyes. There had been a real appeal in his
+earnest young voice, and she had done her best to answer it, painfully
+thinking out loud, with her heart in her words, making him an authentic
+confidence. But the confidence was off the point, and he ignored it,
+pursuing his subject with the concentration which will keep his sex the
+stronger one, votes for women or no votes for women.
+
+"Are you the same as engaged to me?"
+
+"Will you go home if I say I am?"
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"There isn't any such thing as being the same as engaged."
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Willard, forgetting himself in the heat of debate, had withdrawn his
+foot from the door. Judith, narrowly on the watch for this moment, now
+seized it, shutting him and his Belle Isle outside, and slamming the
+door in his face. He had gained his point, and would not linger. She
+heard him ring the bell once or twice in perfunctory protest, then put
+down his candy on the steps.
+
+"Good-night," he called cheerfully, through the flimsy barrier of the
+pseudo-Colonial door.
+
+"Good-night, Willard--dear!"
+
+Judith's voice was sweet, but indifferent, and her manner was
+indifferent, for a young lady who would have seemed, to a literal-minded
+person, to have materially affected her whole future life by this
+conversation. She did not watch Willard go. She turned and stood in the
+library door, smiling absently and humming a little snatch of a waltz
+tune. It was eleven now, but the hour had ceased to concern her, as if
+she had been watching the clock for Willard. Presently, as if she
+really had, she tossed the cushions back on the couch, drew the shades
+over the window, turned off the lights, and disappeared upstairs.
+Muffled sounds of a methodical but unhurried preparation for bed drifted
+faintly down, one last ripple of song, and then it was silent there.
+
+It was very still in the library. The stillness of the whole empty house
+and the moonless night outside seemed to centre there. The dying fire
+threw out little spurts of flame and made wavering shadows on the hearth
+as if Judith were still crouching there. The embers glowed as red as
+when she had been fire-gazing, but they did not show what it was she had
+seen in the fire. They kept her secrets as safely as she kept them
+herself; as youth must keep its secrets, inarticulate, dumb, because it
+sees into the heart of the world so deeply that if it were granted
+speech it would make the world too wise. What Judith had seen in the
+fire, what had really been in her heart when she talked to Willard in
+the groping and pitiful language of youth, the only language she had,
+the fire could not tell, and perhaps Judith did not know.
+
+It was still, and the tiniest sounds were exaggerated: a board creaking
+at the head of the stairs, and creaking again, the stair-rail creaking,
+the ghost of a faint little sigh; tiny and intermittent sounds, but the
+silence became a listening hush because of them: listening harder and
+harder. At last a sound broke it: the doorbell, rung three times, one
+long peal and two short.
+
+It was rung faintly, but loud enough. There was a soft hurry of
+slippered feet down the stairs, and a slender figure, tall in
+straight-falling draperies, slipped cautiously down and across the hall
+to the door, stopped and stood leaning with one ear pressed against it,
+silent and motionless, hardly breathing. The faint signal was repeated.
+Judith did not move.
+
+There was one more ring, a soft tapping, and then silence. Judith
+listened for a minute, then whistled softly, a clear little signal, one
+long and two short, like the signal ring. There was no answer. She
+pulled frantically at the chain, got it loose, and threw open the door.
+
+A boy was standing on the steps, a stolid, unmoving figure, looming
+deceptively tall in the dark. He did not step forward or greet her.
+Judith put out a groping hand and caught at his shoulder.
+
+"Is it you? Oh, I thought you had gone," she said. "I was watching for
+you upstairs."
+
+"I am going. I can't come in so late."
+
+"No, of course not."
+
+"Then what made you watch for me?"
+
+"I wanted to see if you came."
+
+"Well, I did come, and now I'm going."
+
+"You walked past the house five times."
+
+"Eight." The boy laughed shortly, and Judith's soft laugh echoed his.
+"Oh, what's the use? I'm going."
+
+"Don't you want to come in?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then what made you walk past the house?"
+
+"You know well enough."
+
+"I want you to tell me.... You can come in just five minutes if you want
+to."
+
+"I--you----"
+
+Judith caught her trailing draperies tighter round her, conscious that
+they were under observation. "It's not a kimono, it's a negligee. And
+you've seen my hair in braids before, when I played basket-ball. But you
+needn't come in unless you want to."
+
+"I don't."
+
+"You're not very nice to me. Willard tried to break in. Rena's been
+trying to get me by 'phone, to stay all night with me. You're not nice
+to me at all."
+
+His only reply was a kind of tortured groan, but she seemed content with
+it. Her voice grew compellingly sweet.
+
+"I want to talk to you."
+
+"Go on and talk."
+
+She huddled her draperies closer. "I'm too cold."
+
+"Go to bed then."
+
+"I won't. If you don't come in I shall stand here till mother comes.
+I'll probably get pneumonia."
+
+This threat evoked no reply.
+
+"Neil," the name was said as only names are said that are new and
+dear--not often used yet, but often dreamed over, but there was still no
+answer.
+
+"Neil, I'm awfully cold."
+
+"I don't care."
+
+"Oh, don't you?"
+
+"You know I do. You know---- Oh, Judith, won't you please let me go? I
+don't want to come in, I tell you."
+
+"But you're coming?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Yielding abruptly, he stepped into the hall beside her. Judith, suddenly
+silent, concerned herself conscientiously with the chain.
+
+"Don't stand there like that. I can't fasten this if you do," she said
+breathlessly.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Go into the library, and don't light the lights, if you're afraid of
+pigtails."
+
+"I'm not afraid of--anything."
+
+"Well--I'm not." With a reckless laugh, which made this comprehensive
+challenge to the world still more comprehensive, she followed him into
+the firelit room. Slender and straight in soft-falling white, her face
+flushed and sweet, framed between silvery gold braids, her eyes wide and
+challenging, she stood looking at him across the hearth.
+
+He faced her awkwardly but bravely, tall in the shadowy room, his face
+very white, his dark eyes catching the last rays of light from the dying
+fire. The two did not move or speak till he gave a sudden, shaken laugh.
+
+"You wanted to talk to me--talk." He smiled a quick flashing smile.
+Judith drew away from him and he followed. "Now you've got me here,
+can't you shake hands with me?"
+
+"Neil, be careful."
+
+"I'm doing the best I can," he said in a choked voice. "You shouldn't
+get me here. You shouldn't get me to a house by night that's not open to
+me by day."
+
+"But it is. Only they'll never let me see you alone, and I like to. I
+like to talk to you. It makes me feel--comfortable. Isn't it comfortable
+here?" Judith paused, overcome by an unaccountable difficulty with her
+breathing, but mastered it. "Comfortable and cozy? Aren't you glad you
+came in?"
+
+"Comfortable!" He laughed, came two steps nearer to her, and
+stopped stiffly. Judith, disposing her soft, silky draperies daintily,
+observed him in silence from a big chair which she had taken possession
+of rather abruptly, faintly smiling.
+
+"Don't look at me like that," he commanded.
+
+"Like what? Sit down--over there, Neil. Isn't it cozy? Willard's got a
+new song that----"
+
+"Willard!"
+
+"Don't be cross. We--haven't very much time."
+
+"Judith, where is this getting us? We're not children. Won't you talk
+straight to me? You ought to leave me alone, or talk straight."
+
+"Please don't be cross."
+
+"Cross!" He came across the hearth and stood close before her, awkward
+no longer, but splendid with youth in the firelight, his dark eyes
+shining.
+
+"You knew I'd come, no matter how hard I tried not to?"
+
+"Yes," Judith breathed.
+
+"And you meant to let me in?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"And you know, if I come, if you let me, I can't help--can't help----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Oh, Judith!" He dropped on his knees beside her and hid his face.
+Judith did not touch the dark head that she could see dimly in the
+shadowy room, outlined against her cloudy white, but she leaned closer
+to it, her lips parting softly, her eyes wide and strange.
+
+"I don't want you to help it," she breathed.
+
+"But where will it get us?" pleaded a muffled voice.
+
+"I don't care." Her hand hovered over the dark hair, touching it with
+the wonderful, blended awkwardness and adroitness of first caresses.
+
+He brushed the butterfly touch away and raised his head and looked long
+at her, slipping both arms round her waist and holding her tight.
+
+"Will you always say that?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Oh, Judith!" Her sweet, flushed face was close above him now, eyes
+drooping, lips faintly apart, drawn down to his as gently and inevitably
+as tired eyes close into sleep. "Judith, some day you'll have to care."
+
+"Not yet. Neil, don't talk any more."
+
+"I--can't."
+
+"Then kiss me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+
+It was winter in Green River.
+
+The town, attracting Colonel Everard to it sixteen years before, newly
+prosperous, outgrowing its old lumbering days, with the ship-building
+industry already a thing of the past, with the power in the little river
+awaiting development, money in the small but thriving bank, and a new
+spirit everywhere, beyond the control of old leaders, too progressive
+for a provincial magnate's direction, had been in the interesting and
+dangerous condition of a woman ready for her next love affair; if the
+right man comes, she may live happy ever after, but even if the wrong
+man comes, a flirtation is due. Like a woman again, the town showed the
+strength of his hold on her in his absence; in winter, when the big,
+unfriendly house was shuttered and closed, the ladies of the inner
+circle wore out their summer evening gowns at mild winter gayeties,
+church socials, Village Improvement Society bridge parties, and the
+old-fashioned supper parties which the Nashes and Larribees and Saxons
+still ventured to give.
+
+Humble festivities which he would not have honoured with his presence
+lacked allurement because he was not in town and staying away from them.
+Great matters and small hung fire to await his deciding vote, from the
+list of books to be bought for the library to the chairmanship of the
+school board. Marking time and waiting for the Colonel to come home;
+that was what winter meant to most of Green River, but not to Judith
+Randall. Winter was a charmed time to her; the time when her mother did
+not care what she did. Freedom was always sweet, but this winter it was
+sweeter than ever before to Judith.
+
+She was never lonely now. Whispering groups in the dingy corridor of the
+old schoolhouse, or in that sacred spot, the senior's corner, a cluster
+of seats in the northwest corner of the assembly-room devoted by
+tradition to secret conclaves, though not distinguishable from the rest
+of the seats in the room to uninitiated eyes, drew her in without
+question, slipping intimate arms round her waist.
+
+Attempts at informal gatherings in the Randall drawing-room were
+failures, chilled by brief but devastating invasions of Mrs. Randall
+with a too polite manner and disapproving eyes. But wherever the crowd
+drifted after school hours, Judith drifted, too, or was summoned by
+telephone, by imperative messages, vague, and of infinite
+possibilities:
+
+"Judy, this is Ed. There'll be something doing to-night at our house.
+Bring your new dance records." Or, as the outer fringe of the younger
+set, jealously on the watch for snobbishness, but disarmed at last,
+claimed her diffidently but eagerly, new names at which her mother
+raised her eyebrows appeared on her dance orders: Joe Garland, whose
+father kept the fish market, and Abie Stern, Junior, the tailor's son.
+"Is this Judith Randall? Well, Judith, this is Joe; Joe Garland. I'm
+getting up a crowd to go skating to-night, and have a rarebit afterward.
+Would you care to come?"
+
+She was one of the crowd. Natalie, little, sparkling-eyed, and
+black-haired, with the freshest and readiest of laughs, was more
+popular, filling her dance orders first and playing the lead in
+theatricals, and Rena Drew was more prominent, president of the class
+and the debating society, and the proud owner of the strongest voice in
+the school quartette, a fine big contralto which wrapped itself round
+Judith's small, clear soprano at public appearances and nearly
+extinguished it. Willard, the most eligible of the boys, was Judith's
+unquestioned property, otherwise nothing distinguished her. She was one
+of the crowd, and accepted the fact demurely, as if it were a matter of
+course, not a dream come true. Just as discreetly she conducted her
+affair with Neil Donovan, captain-elect of the team, literary editor of
+the school paper, star debater, and in his way a creditable conquest, if
+she had cared to claim him openly.
+
+"Neil danced three dances with me," confided Natalie, in the hushed
+whisper appropriate to the confidences that were part of the ceremony of
+spending the night together after a party, though Natalie's room, with
+the old-fashioned feather bed, where the two were cuddling together, was
+on the third story of the rambling white house, and safe out of hearing.
+
+"Neil?"
+
+"Judy, it's too bad to call him Murph and make fun of him. The day he
+came into the store to solicit ads for the _Record_ father said that boy
+would go far, if he had half a chance, but no boy had a chance in this
+town, the way it is run, and no Irish boy ever did have a chance. Well,
+an Irish boy is just as good as anybody, if they only thought so."
+
+"But they don't."
+
+"Judy, you are horrid about Neil. You always are about any boy I get
+crushed on. Neil has perfectly beautiful eyes, and he is so sensitive.
+He kept looking at you all through that last schottische as if you had
+hurt his feelings. He must have gone home soon after that. I didn't see
+him again. You didn't dance with him once."
+
+"No."
+
+"Poor boy. And he's up there in the schoolhouse with you, hour after
+hour, practising quartette stuff, and Willard so crazy about you he
+can't see, and Rena crazy about Willard----"
+
+"Rena can have Willard."
+
+Miss Ward was not to be diverted. "Neil's father did keep a saloon, but
+he died when Neil was a baby. His uncle that he lives with keeps a store
+at the Falls, and that's all right. His aunt took in washing, but his
+mother never did. Charles Brady does get drunk, but Maggie drives him to
+it. She's getting awfully wild. She's a perfect beauty, though, and I
+wish I had her hair. But Charlie's only Neil's second cousin. And Neil
+is so quiet and pleasant, not like that Brady boy that was in my sister
+Lutie's crowd; just as fascinating, but Neil doesn't take liberties."
+
+"I'm getting sleepy, Nat."
+
+"Judy, the way I feel about Neil, about Irish boys, is this: we can't go
+with them afterward, but while they're in school with us, they are just
+as good as we are, and we ought to give them just as good a time as we
+can. If you know what I mean."
+
+"I don't. I'm sleepy."
+
+"I'm not. I shan't shut my eyes." But Miss Ward did shut them. "Judy."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Judy, Abraham Lincoln split rails."
+
+"Cheer up. The Warren Worth Comedy Company is going to play at the Hall
+next week, and Warren Worth has perfectly beautiful eyes, too."
+
+"Not like Neil's."
+
+"Go to sleep, Nat."
+
+But Judith did not go to sleep until after an hour of staring wide-eyed
+into the dark, and she did not confide to Natalie or any one what had
+happened in the intermission after the schottische.
+
+"You act restless," Willard complained to her then. "You hardly looked
+at me all through the encore."
+
+"I'll look at you now, but get me some water first," she directed, and
+having disposed of him, slipped out alone into the dim and draughty
+corridor. Odd Fellows' Building, the centre of various business
+activities by day, looked deserted and forlorn at night, when the suites
+of offices were dark and closed, and the hall where they danced, gayly
+lighted and tenanted, was a little island of brightness in the
+surrounding dark.
+
+"Neil," Judith called softly, "Neil, where are you? I saw you come out
+here. I know you're here." The corridor was empty, but several office
+doors opened on it, and on one of them she saw Charlie Brady's name. She
+knocked at it. "You're in there. I know you are. Let me in." She tried
+the door, found it unlocked, and opened it. The room was dark, faintly
+lighted by the street lamps outside the one uncurtained window, where he
+sat with his head in his hands, huddled in a discouraged heap over
+Charlie Brady's desk. Judith came and perched on it triumphantly.
+
+"Running away?" she said.
+
+"It's all I'm good for."
+
+"Look at me."
+
+"I thought you hadn't any dances free."
+
+"I haven't. This is Willard's."
+
+"Go back to Willard.... What did you come here for?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Don't you?" He looked up now, with magic in his eyes and voice, the
+strange magic that came and went, and when it left him Judith could
+never believe it would come again. But it was here. With a little sigh
+she slipped off the desk and into the arms he held out for her, closing
+her eyes.
+
+"I didn't want to dance with you," she whispered; "not with all those
+lights, and before those people."
+
+"No, dear."
+
+"I can't stay very long. They'd miss me."
+
+"I'll let you go when you want to."
+
+"I don't want to. I feel so comfortable--all sleepy, but so wide-awake.
+I never want to go."
+
+Judith, remembering this moment until she carried it into her dreams
+with her, could not have shared it with Natalie. It was a dream already,
+to be wondered at and forgotten by daylight, as she stared across the
+schoolroom at Neil, not a romantic figure at all with his ill-fitting
+suit and his tumbled hair; forgotten until the next moment like it
+came--next in a lengthening series of dream pictures, of moonlight and
+candlelight and faintly heard music, a secret too sweet to share, a
+hidden treasure of dreams.
+
+Certain pictures stood out clearest. In one, she was skating with Neil.
+Willard was giving a chowder party at the Hiawatha Club. This imposing
+name belonged to a rough one-room camp with a kitchen in a lean-to and a
+row of bunks in the loft above, and a giant chimney, with a crackling
+blaze of fire to combat the bleakness of the view through the
+uncurtained windows--Mirror Lake. It was a failure as a mirror that
+day, veiled with snow, and the white birches fringing it showed bare and
+cold among the warm green of spruce and pine.
+
+The camp was built and owned and the canoes and iceboats kept in repair
+in the boathouse, and the cook maintained and replaced when he left from
+loneliness, all by a syndicate with Judge Saxon as president. Forming it
+was one of the last independent social activities of the town before the
+Colonel took charge.
+
+It was bad ice-boating to-day. The wind was fitful, and the boat, a
+graceful and winged thing in full flight, dragged heavily along, looking
+the clumsy makeshift box of unpainted boards that it was. It was a day
+to be towed along on your skates with one hand on the boat. Judith and
+Neil had tired of this and fallen behind.
+
+Close together, but not taking hands, they swung slowly through the
+unpeopled emptiness, leaving a tiny scattering of tracks behind, the
+blue-white ice firm under their feet through a light film of snow. The
+ice-boat was out of sight, the sprightly and unexpurgated ballad of
+"Amos Moss," rendered in the closest of close harmony, could be heard no
+longer, and a heavy silence hung over the lake. The camp lay far behind
+them, a vanishing speck.
+
+"Neil, take me back," Judith directed suddenly.
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"Please. I want some pop-corn.... Neil, I don't like you. You won't
+talk. You're queer to-day."
+
+He did not answer. They cut through the ice in silence. It was rougher
+here. They were near the north end of the lake. There was open water
+there to-day, black water into which a boat might crash and go down; it
+made the water under them seem nearer to Judith, black water with only
+the floor of ice between. She shivered, and Neil broke the silence
+abruptly, his eyes still straight ahead.
+
+"Judith."
+
+"Oh, you can talk then?"
+
+"Judith--do you love me?"
+
+"Don't be silly." Judith spoke sharply. Days at the camp were always a
+trial to her. The crowd, bunched together in a big hay-rack mounted on
+runners, started out noisy and gay, like a party of children, singing,
+groping for apples in the straw, and playing children's games. But at
+night, slipping home under the moon to a tinkle of sleigh-bells, covered
+with rugs two by two, a change would take place: arms would slip around
+waists that yielded after perfunctory protest; in the dark of the woods
+there would be significant whispering and more significant silences;
+Willard would be unmanageable. Judith saw this with alien eyes because
+of Neil, and dreaded it. This that was between them was so much more
+beautiful, not love-making, not real love, only a strange, white dream.
+
+"You don't, then? You don't love me?"
+
+"We're too young."
+
+He did not argue the point. His silence had made her lonely before, now
+it frightened her. She slipped a hand into his, warm through its clumsy
+glove.
+
+"Cross hands. Don't you want to?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But I want to. I'm tired. How limp your hand feels. Hold my hands
+tighter. Neil----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"You don't mind--what I said just now?"
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"That about not loving you."
+
+"That?" He laughed a bitter, lonely sort of laugh, as if she were
+talking about something that happened a long time ago. "You had to say
+it. It's true. I knew it well enough. I just thought I'd ask you."
+
+"Do you want me to very much--want me to love you?"
+
+"Don't talk any more about it."
+
+"Neil, suppose I should marry Willard?"
+
+"I suppose you will."
+
+"You won't mind too much?"
+
+"What call would I have to mind? Who am I? What am I?"
+
+He laughed again, the same hard and bitter laugh, and struck out faster,
+gripping her hands hard, so that it hurt, but looking away from her
+across the dead, even white of the trackless snow. There was a pain not
+to be comforted or reached in his beautiful eyes. It had nothing to do
+with her.
+
+"Neil, wouldn't you care at all?" she said jealously.
+
+"Care?"
+
+"If I married Willard?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"Neil, do you love me?"
+
+He did not answer or seem to hear, and now Judith gave up asking
+questions. Carried along at his side in silence, she listened to the
+muffled creak of the skates on the snow-covered ice, hushed by the
+steady and sleepy sound of it, half closing her eyes. His left arm was
+behind her shoulders now, to support her, and she could feel it there,
+warm and strong. Breathing when he breathed, her heart beating in time
+with his, swinging far to right and left, tense with the stroke or
+yielding deliciously in the recovery, caught in the rhythm of it as if
+some force outside them both were carrying them on like one, and not
+two, and would never let them go, Judith yet felt far away from him.
+
+She was alone in the heart of a snow-covered world, but she was growing
+content to be alone. She looked up at his white, set face with wide and
+fearless eyes, while the lure of unexplored and unseen ice invited them
+all around, and the gray and brooding sky shut them in closer and
+closer.
+
+"Neil," she said softly, not caring now whether he answered or heard, "I
+wish we needn't ever go back. I love to-day."
+
+Not long after this Judith and Neil went snow-shoeing one Saturday
+afternoon by special appointment, an epoch-making event for them. Judith
+did not often walk with him or take him driving when the sleigh was
+entrusted to her. She was not often seen with him. With quartette
+practice and committee work for the dramatic club and other official
+pretexts for the time they spent together, Willard was not jealous yet,
+though the winter was almost over, and the treasury of dreams was
+filling fast.
+
+But this time she made an engagement with Neil as openly as if he were
+Willard, while Natalie listened jealously. She started with him openly
+from the front door, with her mother's disapproving eyes upon them from
+the library window, and Neil proudly carrying her snowshoes, all
+unconscious of the critical eyes. The afternoon began well, but no
+afternoon with Neil could be counted upon to go as it began. Two hours
+later, when they emerged from the Everard woods into the Colonel's
+snow-covered rose garden, they had quarrelled about half a dozen
+unrelated subjects, all equally unimportant in themselves, but suddenly
+important to Neil, who now found further matter for debate.
+
+"What did you bring me in here for?"
+
+"Didn't you know I was?"
+
+"How should I know? I'm no friend of Everard's. I don't know my way
+through his grounds."
+
+"What makes you call him Everard, without any Colonel or Mr.? It sounds
+so--common."
+
+"It's good enough for me. Here, I don't want to go near his house. I
+hate the sight of it."
+
+"But you can't go back by the path. It's too broken up." Judith plunged
+into the dismantled rose arbour. "Come on, if you don't want to see the
+house, take my hand and shut your eyes."
+
+"That's what Green River does," Neil muttered darkly, "shuts its eyes."
+But he followed her.
+
+"The Red Etin's castle," Judith announced; "you know, in the fairy tale:
+
+    "The Red Etin of Ireland,
+        He lived in Ballygan.
+    He stole King Malcolm's daughter,
+        The pride of fair Scotlan'.
+    'Tis said there's one predestinate
+        To be his mortal foe----
+
+Well, you talk as if the Colonel were the Red Etin, poor dear. Oh, Neil,
+look!"
+
+Sinister enough, looming turreted and tall against a background of
+winter woods, its windows, unshuttered still, since the last of the
+Colonel's week-end parties, and curtainless, catching the slanting rays
+of the afternoon sun and glaring malignantly, the house confronted them
+across the drifted lawn.
+
+In the woods that circled the house, denuded of undergrowth, seeming
+always to be edging forlornly closer to the upstanding edifice for
+comfort because it was barren and unfriendly, too, the new-fallen snow
+lay shadowy and soft, clothing the barrenness with grace. Giant pine and
+spruce that had survived his invasion stood up proud and green under the
+crown of snow that lay lightly upon them, as it had lain long ago,
+before the Colonel came. And between woods and house, erasing all trace
+of tortuous landscape gardening, flower-bed and border and path, as if
+it had never been, lay a splendid, softly shining sweep of blue-white
+snow. The Colonel's unbidden guests forgot their quarrel and plunged
+eagerly across the white expanse.
+
+"Catch me," Judith called, but it was Neil, snatching off her toboggan
+cap by its impudent tassel, who had to be caught. It was heavy and
+breath-taking work on the broad, old-fashioned snowshoes which she
+managed with clumsy grace. Judith, short-skirted and trim in fleecy
+white sweater, collar rolled high to the tips of small, pink ears, blond
+curls blowing in the wind, pursued ardently. Neil evaded her like a lean
+and darting shadow, hands deep in the pockets of his old gray sweater,
+cap low over his brooding eyes.
+
+Under the unrelenting glare of the Colonel's windows, and across the
+deserted grandeur of his lawn, the two small and dishevelled figures
+dodged and doubled and retreated, only to grapple and trip each other up
+at last at the foot of the veranda steps, and collapse there, breathless
+and laughing. But their laughter died quickly, and Judith, pulling the
+recovered cap over her wind-tossed curls, watched the brooding gloom
+come back into Neil's eyes as he settled into a sulky heap on the step
+below her.
+
+Her quarrels with Neil were as strange as her beautiful hours with him,
+fed by black undercurrents of feeling that swept and surprised her,
+flaming up suddenly like banked fires. She was hotly angry with him now.
+
+"Neil, I heard what you said about Green River shutting its eyes. It was
+foolish."
+
+"I'd say it to his face." Neil flashed a black look at the bland and
+elegant drawing-room windows, as if he could talk to the Colonel through
+them. "I've got worse than that to say to Everard."
+
+"Then say it to me. Don't hint. I'm tired of hearing you. You're as bad
+as Norah."
+
+"You wouldn't understand."
+
+That is the irresistible challenge to any woman. Judith's eyes kindled.
+Neil slouched lower on the steps, dropping his head in his hands.
+"Everard," he threw out presently, "has bought the Hiawatha Club Camp."
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+"The club was in debt. That's a bad thing for a club or a man to be, if
+the Colonel knows it. And it's a worse thing for a woman."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+He did not explain or raise his head. "I've got a job for the summer
+vacation," he said presently.
+
+"Already? Fine."
+
+"Oh, fine. In the fish market--tend store, drive the cart. And I'm fired
+from the _Record_, Judith."
+
+"Fired?"
+
+"They're going to take on one more man, and pay him real money."
+
+"But you've got the Green River Jottings to do for the Wells _Clarion_."
+
+"And I may get two dollars a month out of it."
+
+"Did you see Judge Saxon again?"
+
+"Last week."
+
+"Why didn't you tell me what he said?"
+
+"I told you what he would say."
+
+"Oh, Neil!"
+
+"The Judge hates to say no, that's why he took time to think it over.
+He'd be a bigger man if he didn't hate to say no. He was right to say no
+to me."
+
+"Then I wouldn't admit it."
+
+"What's it worth to read law in a country law office? The time for
+that's past. He's right. And suppose he took me on, what would it do for
+me? Look at Charlie. Doing hack work and dirty work to pay the rent of a
+place to drink himself to death in. He's got brains enough. He knows law
+enough. He's slaved and starved and got ready for his chance, and his
+chance don't come. Why? Because he's Charlie Brady. Well I'm Neil
+Donovan. I'm Irish, too, what they called me the first time I saw you--a
+paddy."
+
+"That's not the Colonel's fault."
+
+"Who do you think gets the _Record_ job?"
+
+Judith shook her blond head, disdaining to answer, a gathering storm in
+her eyes.
+
+"Chet Gaynor--Mr. J. Chester Gaynor. Lil Burr's brother. Her prize
+brother, the one that's been fired from three prep schools. Everard got
+him a scholarship at the last one."
+
+"Why not? He ought to help his friends. He's a kind man and lots of fun.
+It's not his fault if you don't get on. It's your own fault. You don't
+have to work in a fish market if you don't want to, or sit there and
+sneer at a man who doesn't care what you think of him. Abraham Lincoln
+split rails----"
+
+Judith stopped, amazed. Quite abruptly Neil had ceased to sit on the
+steps and sneer. He was on his feet, hands clenched, thin body tense and
+dangerous, face dead white and eyes blazing, as Judith had never seen
+him before, or only once before, too angry for words, but not needing
+them.
+
+"Neil, do you really hate him? Hate him like that? I never thought you
+meant it. But why--what has he done?"
+
+"Care what I think? If I was any one else--your fool of a Willard--any
+one in this town but me, I'd make him care."
+
+"He's done nothing wrong. Neil, don't. Your eyes look all queer. You're
+frightening me."
+
+"No, he's done nothing wrong, nothing you could get him for. He's too
+careful. He plays favourites. He fools women. He locks the door to every
+chance to get on in this town and he sells the keys. He's got his hand
+on the neck of the town, and he's shutting it tighter and tighter.
+That's all he does. That's all Everard does."
+
+"You can't prove it."
+
+"He takes good care I can't."
+
+"You can't prove a word of it."
+
+"Your father could."
+
+"He's kind to father. He's kind to me."
+
+"You talk like a child."
+
+"Well, you talk like my mother's cook.... Oh, Neil, I didn't mean to say
+that. Forgive me. Where are you going? I didn't mean to say it."
+
+"Let me go."
+
+"You're hurting me."
+
+"I hate you! You're one of them--one of the Everard crowd. I hate you,
+too!"
+
+"What are you going to do?" Her short, panting struggle with him over,
+her wrists smarting from the backward twist that had broken her hold on
+him, she leaned against the veranda rail breathless and stared with
+fascinated eyes. When this quarrel had gone the way of their other
+quarrels, atoned for by inarticulate words of infinite meaning,
+justified by the keen delight of reconciling kisses, Judith was to keep
+one picture from it: Neil as she saw him then, standing over her
+white-faced and angry, ragged and splendid, Neil as she had seen him
+once before.
+
+"May-night!" she cried. "You look the way you did that May-night. I'm
+afraid of you."
+
+"Everard!" He turned from her, and looking at the windows again as if
+the Colonel were behind him, swung back his arm, and sent it crashing
+through the glass of the nearest one--once and a second time. "Oh, you
+don't want me to call him Everard. Colonel Everard!"
+
+"Neil, I'm afraid."
+
+He looked at the fragments of broken glass and at Judith scornfully, but
+the angry light was fading out of his eyes already, the magic light;
+against her will she was sorry to see it go.
+
+"Are you hurt? Did you hurt your hand?"
+
+"What do you care if I did? Don't be afraid, Judy. He can pay for a pane
+of glass or two. He wouldn't care if I burned his house down. Nobody
+cares what I do. I'm a paddy."
+
+Awkward, suddenly conscious of his snowshoes, he shuffled across the
+matched boards of the Colonel's veranda and down the steps, turning
+there for a farewell word:
+
+"I'm going. Don't cry. I'm not worth it. I'm a paddy, from Paddy Lane."
+
+Dream pictures, pleasant or sad, making her cheeks burn in the dark, or
+little secret smiles come when Judith recalled them. Some lived in her
+heart and some faded. Judith did not choose or reject them deliberately.
+They chose or rejected themselves, arranging themselves into an
+intricate pattern of growing clearness. She did not watch it grow. It
+was only when it was quite complete that she would see it, but it was
+growing fast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+
+"You'll find the coffee pot on the back of the stove. I'm washing out a
+few things," said Mrs. Donovan.
+
+Though she kept her five little nephews and nieces in dark-patterned
+dresses or shirts, as the case might be, and encouraged her brother
+Michael to wear flannel shirts, and even limited her eldest niece,
+Maggie Brady, clerking in the Green River Dry Goods Emporium now,
+instead of helping her father in his little store at the Falls, to three
+white waists a week, she was usually washing out a few things.
+
+The contending odours of damp clothes and rank coffee were as much a
+part of the Brady kitchen as the dishes stacked in the sink for Neil to
+wash, or the broken-legged, beautifully grained mahogany card table in
+the warm corner near the stove, where his school books were piled, a
+relic of his dead father's prosperous saloon-keeping days, or the view
+of Larribee's Marsh through the curtainless windows with their torn
+green shades.
+
+The swampy field was the most improvident part of an improvident
+purchase--a brown, tumbledown house, wind swept and cold,
+inconveniently far from the settlement at the Falls and the larger town,
+heavily mortgaged, and not paid for yet, but early on sunny spring
+mornings like this the field was beautiful; level and empty and green,
+the only monotonous thing in that restless stretch of New England
+country, billowy with little hills, and rugged with clumps of trees. A
+boy could people the sunlit emptiness of the field with airy creatures
+of folk-lore, eagerly gleaned in a busy mother's rare story-telling
+moments, or with Caesar's cohorts marching across it, splendid in the
+sun, if he had eyes for them. The only boy who ever had regarded the
+familiar, glinting green of the field with unkindled eyes to-day as he
+sat finishing his lukewarm breakfast. Yet it was Saturday morning, that
+magic time, the last Saturday of his last spring vacation, and he had
+only one more term of school before him.
+
+On this Saturday morning he had an unpleasant errand to do, and he was
+carefully dressed for it, just as he had been dressed for the Lyceum
+declamation contest and ball the night before, but not so effectively,
+for his best black suit showed threadbare in the morning sun, and the
+shine on his shoes was painstakingly applied, and a heavy, even, blue
+black, but they needed tapping. His brown eyes had a big, rather hungry
+look that was unquestionably picturesque, and Miss Natalie Ward would
+have approved of it, if his mother did not, watching him as she trailed
+in and out of the room.
+
+"Making out all right? Don't hurry," she said.
+
+"I'm in no hurry to get there," agreed her son.
+
+"He won't say no to you. He never has yet, and he likes you."
+
+"Oh, he won't say no. Nothing new will happen to me in this town; not
+even that."
+
+Neil's mother paused, balancing her clothes basket against one hip, and
+deftly favouring the string-mended handle, then put it heavily down, and
+leaned on the table and looked at him--a small, tired, pretty woman,
+with gray, far-away eyes that were like no other eyes in Green River,
+and a smile like Neil's.
+
+"Tired?" she said.
+
+"Dog tired."
+
+"Well, you were out till three."
+
+"One. That was Maggie you heard at three. Where was she?"
+
+"That's her business."
+
+"It's Charlie's, if he's going to marry her."
+
+"It's not yours, then. Never mind Maggie. Your uncle and I had a talk
+about you last night."
+
+"Why don't you ask to see my dance order?" He made a defensive clutch
+at his pocket as if she had, and quick colour swept into his cheeks. She
+watched it, and watched it fade, leaving his face tired and sullen, and
+too old for its years. "Uncle!"
+
+"He's been like a father to you."
+
+"I've been two sons to him, then. He's worked me like two. If he grudges
+the time I take off, I can make it up to him. There's been little enough
+of it, and there'll be little more, and there's been little enough
+enjoyment in it, and I'm not ashamed of it. Why don't he spy on his own
+daughter, if he's curious? Why----" This outburst ended as suddenly as
+it began, in a short, sullen laugh as he pushed his empty cup away. "Dan
+thinks he can land something for me with the telephone company. I
+couldn't send money home at first, but I'd be off your hands. Tell that
+to Uncle."
+
+"Would you be with Dan, in Wells?"
+
+"Somewhere outside Wells. It won't be too gay. You needn't be afraid
+I'll go to too many dances."
+
+"Don't glare at me. I'm not your uncle."
+
+"Sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me."
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+He flushed, laughed, and ignored the question, producing a small box and
+offering it. "I got that last night. Don't wipe your hands. They're good
+enough to handle it wet." A gold medal glittered in her hand. He
+observed it without enthusiasm, and noticing that, his mother shut the
+box abruptly.
+
+"Neil, that's the first prize."
+
+"Looks like it. I spoke the Gettysburg address, and they always fall for
+that. Good-bye, I'm off."
+
+"Neil, come back here."
+
+He swung round with his cap doubled under his arm, and stood before her,
+helpless and sullen, hedged about with that sudden dignity which no
+woman creature can break through, but seeming to derive no comfort from
+it. Painful colour mounted to her cheeks, as if the effort of keeping
+him there was all she could manage without the effort of opening
+delicate subjects.
+
+"Neil, I'm worried about you."
+
+"Why? Are you afraid I'll marry beneath me? I won't marry without your
+consent. It's not being done."
+
+"You got three dollars from the _Clarion_ last week."
+
+"Are you afraid I'll try to support a wife on it?"
+
+"It's the most you've made from them. Why weren't you proud of it? Why
+aren't you proud of this prize? A year ago you'd have had me up at one
+to speak your piece to me. There's no life in you, and no pride, and I
+know why."
+
+"Me with so much to be proud of."
+
+"You're good enough for any girl, but----"
+
+"Do you think I don't know my place, with the whole town teaching it to
+me going on eighteen years? I've got no false hopes, and I shan't lose
+my head over any girl. Let me be."
+
+"It's not the town that's taught you your place, it's----"
+
+"Don't you say her name."
+
+"--empty headed and overdressed."
+
+"Go on. Judith Randall don't care what you think of her."
+
+"Can't you even get up enough spirit to stand up for her? You that
+thought you had your fortune all but made when you got the chickens paid
+for, and followed me round the house, telling me how you'd run the town?
+You that could tell what was wrong with the _Record_ editorials, if you
+couldn't pay for a year's subscription to the paper? You----"
+
+"Yes, I come from one of the five lines in Ireland what have a right to
+the O', but you never tell me that unless you've got something else to
+tell me that you're afraid to tell. What is it this time?"
+
+"You come of Irish kings."
+
+"What did Uncle say last night?"
+
+"Well, he's getting to be an old man."
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+His mother did not reply. She avoided his eyes, and made no further
+criticism of him, or of a young lady who was no doubt as indifferent to
+her criticisms as Neil said, since she did not recognize Mrs. Donovan on
+the street.
+
+"Uncle," Neil decided deliberately, "wants me to help in the store. I
+can't go to Wells."
+
+"He can't get on alone now Maggie's gone. We need your board money to
+run the house at all. Dan was wild to get away from Green River, but in
+two years he's got no farther than Wells, and ten dollars a week. I know
+we ought to leave you free to start yourself, if we can't give you a
+start, but----"
+
+"Is that all you want to tell me?"
+
+She put out an unaccustomed arm and pulled him awkwardly close. He came
+obediently, and patted her shoulder stiffly but did not kiss her. "I
+know what this means," she asserted, and showed a rapidly forming
+intention of crying on his shoulder. "It hurts me like it does you."
+
+[Illustration: "'_I know what this means,' she asserted_'"]
+
+"It don't hurt me. I ought to have seen it myself. I ought not to have
+planned to go. It's all right, mother. Is that all?"
+
+"All? It's enough. I was awake half the night planning to break it to
+you."
+
+"You broke it all right. I'll be going." He shook out his crushed
+cap, and adjusted it with dignity, looking at her calmly out of
+impenetrable eyes, like a young prince ending an audience, with more
+power behind him than he knew, kissed her gravely on the cheek with cool
+young lips, and opened the door, and walked off into the sunshine.
+
+"It's the girl," said his mother, but not until the door had closed
+behind him. "No girl is good enough to do what she's done to you." Then
+she selected the frilliest of Maggie's blouses, which had dried while
+she talked, and spread it on the ironing table to sprinkle again.
+
+Neil did not look like a young man crossed in love, or a young man with
+his future wrecked by a word. He did not give a backward glance to the
+little brown house with the sun on its many-paned windows, or seem to
+hear the children's voices from the old barn behind the house--the
+favourite refuge of the little Bradys when they were banished from the
+kitchen--that echoed after him in the clear morning air, shrill and then
+fainter as he left the place behind.
+
+He had settled into his usual pace for this familiar walk--a steady
+stride that you could fit the unmanageable parts of a Latin verb to the
+rhythm of, or the refractory words of a song; but it was not a usual
+day. It was the first warm day of that April, warmer already, with the
+goading urge of spring in the softening air that frets and troubles with
+new desires and a sense of unfitness for them at once, and will not let
+you be. The road, fringed with scattering trees, and wind-swept and
+bleak on winter days, was golden with new sunlight, spongy underfoot,
+but drying under your eyes in the morning sun. The boy's brooding face
+did not change as he walked, but his shoulders straightened themselves,
+and lost their patient look, and his lean young body gave itself more
+gayly to the swing of his pace and looked strong and free, alive with
+the unconscious strength of youth that must be caught and harnessed to
+make the wheels of the world go round before it can be taught what its
+purpose is.
+
+Whether it troubled him or not--his face did not tell--all that his
+mother had hinted was wrong with his world, and more. No outsider had
+ever won a place like Neil's in Green River High School society so far
+as the unwritten history of it recorded. Charlie Brady in his time, and
+Dan after him, had been extra men at big dances, hard worked and
+patronized in school entertainments, more intimate with the boys than
+the girls. Charlie, deep in a secret love affair with Lil Gaynor, had
+still called her Miss in public, and treated her as respectfully as he
+did now that the affair was forgotten and she was Mrs. Burr and one of
+the Everard circle. Charlie and Dan had only looked over impassable
+barriers. Neil had been really inside--included in small, intimate
+parties, like week-ends at Camp Hiawatha, openly favoured by Natalie, if
+not Judith--inside and he would soon be shut out.
+
+There were new signs of it every day. The long, friendly winter, when he
+had been safe in that intimate fellowship, was over. The girls were
+planning their gowns for college commencement dances. Willard came back
+from a week-end at the state university pledged to a fraternity there
+and refusing to discuss minor subjects. God-like creatures in amazing
+neckties condescended to visit him, and Natalie was beginning to collect
+fraternity pins. Rena and Ed were engaged, and under the impression that
+it was a secret, and a place was being made for Ed in the bank. In one
+way or another, the world was opening to all of them, and closing to
+Neil.
+
+And with the spring, the Everards had come back to Green River. The big,
+over-decorated house had not been open a week, but already they pervaded
+the town. Their cars whirled through the splashing spring streets, and
+ladies not upon Mrs. Everard's calling list peered at the passengers to
+see who was in her favour. The Colonel was turning the Hiawatha Club
+into a private camp, and closing it to the town, but nobody protested
+much. He was ordering a complete set of slip covers from the furniture
+department of Ward's Emporium, and the daring group of prominent
+business men who ventured to assail the Colonel's political views and
+private morals sometimes in the little room at the rear of the store
+lacked support from Ward. Neil had the run of the store and hung about
+and listened, but never contributed. Whether these criticisms were
+justified or not, the Everards were back again.
+
+Judith had given up the Lyceum dance for the first of the Everard
+dinners the night before. It was three days since Neil had seen her, and
+he was to see her to-day, but he was showing no impatience for the
+meeting. The end of the world, not the beginning of it, that was what
+spring would mean to him, and that is a graver catastrophe at eighteen
+than at eighty. The boy who was facing it had passed the outlying
+straggle of houses, and had come to the edge of the town, and to the end
+of the long, hilly street that led down past the court-house, straight
+into Post Office Square, the heart of the town. It was still empty of
+traffic at ten, and looked sunny and empty and clean, wide-awake for the
+day. He took his hands out of his pockets, stopped whistling "Amos
+Moss," and hurried down Court-house Hill, stepping in time to the tune
+of it.
+
+A mud-splashed Ford clattered down Main Street, and drew up in front of
+the post-office as Neil reached it with a flourish that would have done
+credit to a more elegant equipage than this second-hand one of the
+Nashes. Two elegant young gentlemen, week-end guests of Willard's and
+duly presented to Neil the night before, ignored his existence, perusing
+a gaudily covered series of topical songs with exaggerated attention on
+the rear seat of the car, but Willard greeted him exuberantly:
+
+"Ah, there, Murph. You don't look like the morning after. Sorry I
+haven't got room for you. We've got other plans. We love the ladies."
+
+"I'm tied up, anyway. So long."
+
+Willard's tone was too patronizing, but he was not to blame, for the
+days when they would exchange intimate greetings at all were numbered.
+As Neil left them one of the elegant guests demanded audibly:
+
+"Who's your friend?"
+
+Neil flushed but did not look back. He had an errand to do in the few
+minutes before his appointment with Judge Saxon. He crossed the street
+to Ward's store.
+
+Ward's Dry Goods Emporium, three stores in one, and literally three
+stores bought out one by one, and joined by connecting doors, though
+they could never be united in their style of architecture, was rather
+dark and chaotic inside, though a brave showing of plate glass across
+the front advertised its prosperity. Luther Ward himself, in his shirt
+sleeves, was looking over a tray of soiled, pale-coloured spats,
+assisted by a tall, full-bodied girl with a sweet, sulky mouth, and a
+towering mass of blue-black hair.
+
+"Hello, Donovan, what's new?" he said, with only a shade more
+condescension than Willard, and distinctly more friendliness.
+
+"Nothing, sir," said Neil with conviction.
+
+"You want to talk to Maggie, here. I won't intrude on a family quarrel,"
+said Mr. Ward, and chuckling heartily at his own mild joke, as he
+generally did, and few others did, disappeared into the furniture
+department, the central one of the three stores, and his favourite. The
+two cousins regarded each other across the tray of spats as if the
+family quarrel were not a joke, but an unpleasant reality.
+
+"You can't come here and take up my time," stated Miss Brady.
+
+"Your time is pretty full--evenings, too. Do you know where Charlie was
+last night?"
+
+"I don't care."
+
+"You ought. He's your second cousin, and goes by the same name as you,
+if you're not in love with him. He was in Halloran's billiard hall."
+
+"If he can't keep himself out of the gutter, I can't keep him out,"
+stated Miss Brady logically.
+
+"Well, don't push him in," her cousin advised, but the light of battle
+had died out of his eyes, leaving them listless. "It's nothing to me. I
+only came to bring you this."
+
+He produced something from an inner pocket and tossed it on the counter,
+something wrapped in a twist of newspaper, which parted as the girl bent
+eagerly over it, something which shone and twinkled alluringly, as she
+straightened it out with caressing fingers and held it up to the
+light--a little necklace of rather ornate design and startling colours,
+crimson stones and green and blue, the gayest of toys.
+
+"Seems to be yours all right."
+
+His cousin, who seemed to have forgotten his existence for one rapt
+moment, remembered it with a start. "Did you show this to your mother?"
+she asked sharply.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well, she don't like to have me spend my money on imitation jewellery."
+Miss Brady delivered this very natural explanation haltingly.
+
+"Do you?"
+
+One of the sudden, vivid blushes which had helped to establish her
+reputation as a beauty overspread Miss Brady's cheek. "I missed it this
+morning and didn't have time to hunt for it, and I was worried. I don't
+want to show it to her. It cost a good deal."
+
+"It must have. They say a ruby's the only stone you can't imitate."
+
+"What do you mean?" Miss Brady's cheeks grew still redder. "Why don't
+you save your big talk for Saxon? You may need it. Why don't you mind
+your own affairs, and leave mine alone?"
+
+"Leave that on the kitchen floor for mother to find and sweep up in a
+broken dust-pan, or one of the kids to show to your father?"
+
+"Why not? Haven't I got a right to do what I want with my own money?
+Haven't I got a right to do what I want with myself? Who are you to
+dictate to me, with the Randall girl making a fool of you? Why----"
+
+"That will be all." Though Miss Brady's voice had been threatening to
+make itself heard throughout all the three stores in one, she stopped
+obediently, looking defiant but frightened, but when her cousin spoke
+again the ring of authority which had shocked her was gone from his
+voice.
+
+"Don't be scared. It's nothing to me what you do, and I shan't talk too
+much. You know me, Mag."
+
+"No, I don't, not lately. You act doped, not half there. I can't make
+you out. If you think--if you suspect----"
+
+"I don't. It's nothing to me. I'm due at Saxon's. Put your glass beads
+away before Ward sees them. Good luck to you."
+
+Miss Brady, standing quite still in one of her carefully cultivated,
+statuesque poses, watched her cousin cross the street and disappear into
+a narrow and shabbily painted doorway there. Then she took his advice,
+and producing a red morocco wrist bag from under the counter, shut the
+necklace into it with a vicious snap, as if she did not derive so much
+pleasure as before from handling it now.
+
+Her cousin climbed the three flights of stairs to Judge Saxon's office.
+The stairs were dingy and looked unswept, and a pane of glass in the
+door of the untenanted suite across the landing from the Judge's was
+broken. Nothing about the Judge's quarters indicated that he was Colonel
+Everard's attorney, a big man in the town before the Everard regime, and
+under it--an unusual combination. His office was shabby outside and in.
+The lettering on the door, Saxon and Burr, Attorneys-at-Law, looked
+newer than it was by contrast, and it was still only six months old.
+Theodore Burr had his delayed junior partnership at last.
+
+The Judge's young client did not pause to collect himself on the worn
+door-mat, as he had done when he first came here on errands like this.
+They were an old story to him now, and so were scenes like the one with
+Maggie, which he had just come through so creditably. He looked quite
+unruffled by it, calm as people are when they have no troubles to
+bear--or when they have borne all they can, and are about to find relief
+in establishing the fact. He knocked and stepped inside.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+
+
+A fire in the air-tight stove in the corner had taken the early morning
+chill from the room and been permitted to burn out, now that the morning
+sun came in warm through the dusty windows, but the room was still close
+and cloudy with wood smoke. At a battered, roll-topped desk in the
+sunniest window Mr. Theodore Burr was struggling with the eccentricities
+of an ancient Remington, and looking superior to it and to all his
+surroundings, but the Judge was nowhere to be seen.
+
+Mr. Burr was a very large, very pink young man, with blond hair which
+would have looked too good to be true on a woman, and near-set,
+green-blue eyes which managed to look vacant and aggressive at the same
+time. He was wearing a turquoise-blue tie which accentuated their
+effectiveness, and he occupied himself ostentatiously with the Remington
+for quite three minutes before he turned his most vacant and aggressive
+look upon his client.
+
+"Well, Donovan?" he said.
+
+Mr. Burr's manner was as patronizing as Mr. Ward's with the
+friendliness left out, but his client was not chilled by it.
+
+"Theodore, where's the Judge?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Burr." The pink young man turned two shades pinker as he made the
+correction. "The Judge is engaged."
+
+"I don't believe it."
+
+Mr. Burr laughed unpleasantly and held up his hand. From the other side
+of a door labelled private--misleadingly, for the Judge's little
+sanctum, where half the town had the privilege of crowding in and
+tipping back chairs and smoking, was the nearest approach to a clubroom
+that the town afforded, now that the Hiawatha Club was no more--muffled
+voices were faintly audible.
+
+"You can talk to me," said Mr. Burr.
+
+"I can, and I can go away and come back when he's not engaged. He said
+he'd see me."
+
+"He's changed his mind. He don't want to see you. I know all about your
+case."
+
+"You've learned a lot in six months."
+
+"Talk like that won't get you anything, Donovan, here or anywhere else,"
+remarked Mr. Burr, reasonably, if somewhat offensively. Admitting it,
+his client dropped into one of the Judge's big office chairs, and sat
+there, fingering his cap as he talked, and looking suddenly beaten and
+tired.
+
+"You're right, Theodore. Well, what's all this you know about my case?"
+
+"Mike Brady sends you here begging when he's ashamed to come himself.
+It's hard on you, Neil."
+
+"My uncle's too busy to come. Is that all you know?"
+
+"I know what you want to-day, and you can't have it."
+
+"What do I want?"
+
+Mr. Burr's manner had become alarmingly official, but his client
+continued to smile at him, and to fold and unfold his cap methodically.
+
+"An extension of time on your uncle's mortgage. The principal is due the
+first of next month. You've kept the Judge waiting twice for the
+interest, the security is insufficient, the bank holds a first mortgage
+on the house, and for fourteen months your uncle has made no payment to
+the Judge whatever."
+
+"Don't rub it in, Theodore."
+
+"This is no laughing matter. Business is business," stated the junior
+partner importantly.
+
+"More like charity, with the Judge, but Uncle isn't holding him up for
+much this time. Uncle's getting on his feet. The Judge never expected
+him to, and I didn't, but the automobiles help. Maggie served tea before
+she went to Ward's, and he's going on with it. His luck has turned.
+He's got the money to pay this year's interest and half the back
+interest that's due, but he wants to keep it and put it into
+repairs--the roof wants shingling, and if we could fix up the storeroom
+for a place to serve tea and ice-cream we could double trade. Then, next
+year----"
+
+"We've heard too much about next year, Donovan."
+
+"Don't get tragic, Theodore. This is a new proposition. I'll go into
+figures with the Judge and prove it to him--don't want to waste them on
+you. But he won't be sending good money after bad this time, like he's
+done too many times. I'm as glad for him as I am for Uncle."
+
+"It can't be done."
+
+"Nonsense, Theodore. I won't wait to see the Judge now, but you tell
+him----"
+
+"It don't make any difference what I tell him. The Judge has made up his
+mind, and he won't change it. You can take it from me as well as him.
+You won't get another dollar of his money, and you won't get another
+month's extension of time. We're done with you."
+
+"I almost believe you mean that, Theodore."
+
+"As I said, the house is insufficient security, but for the sake of the
+dignity of the firm we must protect ourselves----"
+
+"I believe you mean it, and the Judge gave you authority to say it."
+
+"We must go through the form of protecting ourselves and----"
+
+His client laughed. "You don't mean the Judge wants to take over the
+house. That's 'Way Down East stuff. If money's tight with him, we'll pay
+the interest and manage some way, though I don't see how. But the house
+would be no good to him if he took it, and he wouldn't take it if it
+was. I know the Judge. Don't let your imagination get away with you,
+Theodore."
+
+"I'm sorry for you, Donovan."
+
+"You think he's going to take it?"
+
+"I know he is."
+
+"You mean that," his client decided slowly, "and you've got the Judge's
+authority for it, too."
+
+"Take it quietly. It's the best way," urged the junior partner
+helpfully.
+
+"I understand that's your motto, Theodore," said his client, and
+proceeded to take his advice, sitting quite still in the Judge's big
+chair, and fixing a clear-seeing but unappreciative gaze upon the
+immaculate folds of Mr. Burr's turquoise-blue tie. He took the advice
+too literally. The silence grew oppressive and sinister, and as if he
+found it so, Mr. Burr broke into a monologue, disjointed, but made up
+of irreproachable sentiments.
+
+"This is hard on your uncle, Neil, and it's hard on you, but it may be
+the best thing in the end. He's been hiding behind you too long. A
+business that can't stand on its own feet deserves to fail. He can start
+new and start clean. The Judge has been a good friend to you----"
+
+"Don't explain him to me. You don't own him, whoever else does,"
+interrupted the Judge's protege softly.
+
+"What do you mean? If you don't think you're getting a square deal, say
+so."
+
+"Do you want me to weep on your shoulder, Theodore?"
+
+"The Judge is your friend, and," Mr. Burr added handsomely, "I'm your
+friend, too."
+
+His client arose briskly, as if encouraged by this. "Theodore, you don't
+want to tell me what's back of your turning me down?" he asked. "No, I
+thought not. Well----"
+
+"I'm your friend," repeated Mr. Burr, generously if irrelevantly, and
+this time without effect. His client had crossed the room without
+another glance at him, and had his hand on the knob of the Judge's
+office door. His manner still had the composure which Mr. Burr had
+advocated, but his face was very pale, ominously pale, and his brown
+eyes were changed and bright, dangerously bright. To imaginative eyes
+like Mr. Burr's he must have looked suddenly taller.
+
+Mr. Burr was facing an unmistakable crisis, with no time to wonder how
+long it had been forming, or why. He hurried after the boy and caught
+him fiercely if ineffectively by the arm.
+
+"You can't go in there," stated Mr. Burr arbitrarily, all logic
+deserting him. "You can't. You don't know----"
+
+"Oh, I'm not going to knife the Judge," his client explained kindly.
+"I'm only going to find out what's back of this."
+
+"Take it quietly," was the ill-chosen sentiment which suggested itself
+to Mr. Burr. Neil Donovan swung round angrily, and paused to reply to
+it, with fires which the somewhat negative though offensive personality
+of the pink young man could never have kindled alight in his brown eyes.
+
+"Quietly? There's been too much of that in this town. I'm sick of it.
+The only friend I've got who hasn't got one foot in the gutter goes back
+on me for no reason at all, the first time I ask a favour of him that
+don't amount to picking his pockets. The only big man in this rotten
+town who's halfway straight since Everard turned the town rotten begins
+to act like he wasn't straight. What's back of it? I'm going to know.
+Get out of my way, Theodore."
+
+"You don't know who's in there."
+
+"I don't care. I'm going to know." Disposing of the hovering and anxious
+intervention of Mr. Burr, and throwing the door open, he slammed it in
+the pink young man's perturbed face, and stepped alone out of the
+sunshine into the Judge's dim little inner office.
+
+The Judge's friendly littered little room was not so inviting in working
+hours as it was in the hospitable hours of late afternoon. It was like a
+woman seen in evening dress by daylight. But the boy who had invaded it
+so hotly unmasked no conspiracy here. The men at the table near the one
+window, with a pile of official but entirely innocent looking papers
+between them, had every right to be there. They were the Judge and
+Colonel Everard.
+
+The great man looked quite undisturbed by the boy's invasion, glancing
+up at him indifferently from the papers that he was turning over with
+his finely moulded, delicately used hands; he even looked mildly amused,
+but the boy turned to him first instinctively, and not to the Judge, who
+was peering at him with troubled and kindly eyes over the top of his
+glasses.
+
+"I've got to speak to the Judge. I'm sorry."
+
+He stammered out his half-apology awkwardly enough, but the smouldering
+fires were still alight in his brown eyes, tragic fires of cowed and
+rebellious youth. The great man regarded him indifferently for a minute
+and then turned rather ostentatiously to his papers again.
+
+"Judge, I've got to speak to you alone."
+
+"You can't just now, son."
+
+"I've got to."
+
+"Why?"
+
+The Judge's kind, drawling voice was not quite as usual, and his blue,
+near-sighted eyes were not; they were wistful and deprecating, and
+rather tired, a beaten man's eyes, eyes with an irresistible appeal to
+the race that is vowed to lost causes, this boy's race. The boy stepped
+instinctively closer.
+
+"I don't blame you, sir, but I've got to understand this and know what's
+behind it."
+
+"Better go home before you say anything you'll be sorry for, Neil."
+
+"Why did you go back on me?"
+
+"You're taking a sentimental attitude about a business matter. It's
+natural enough that you should. I'm sorry for you, son."
+
+"Why----"
+
+The Judge drew himself up a shade straighter in his chair, and met the
+boy's insistent challenge with sudden dignity, kindly but judicial,
+peculiarly his own, but his flashes of it were not very frequent now.
+
+"Neil," he said deliberately, "I've got nothing to say to you alone.
+I've got nothing to say to you at all that Mr. Burr hasn't said. Is that
+quite clear to you?"
+
+It was entirely clear. The Judge had left no room for uncertainty or
+argument, and the boy did not attempt to argue or even to answer. He
+stood looking uncertainly down at the Judge, as if for the moment he
+could not see anything in the room quite distinctly, the Judge's face,
+with its near-sighted blue eyes and red-gold beard and thinning hair, or
+Colonel Everard's clear-cut profile.
+
+"Better go," said the Judge gently.
+
+"I'd better go," the boy repeated mechanically, but he did not move.
+
+Colonel Everard put down his papers deliberately, and favoured him with
+a glance, amused and surprised, as if he had not expected to find him
+still in the room, and was prepared to forget at once that he was there;
+a disconcerting sort of glance, but the boy's brown eyes met it
+gallantly, and cleared as they looked. They grew bright and defiant
+again, with a little laugh in the depths of them. The ghost of a laugh,
+too, lurked in the boy's low voice somewhere.
+
+"You're right, Judge. I'll go. I'm wasting my time here," he said,
+"asking you who's back of what you've done to me--when I know. I won't
+ask you again, but I'll ask you, I'll ask you both, who's back of
+everything that's crooked or wrong in this town? Little or big, he's
+back of it all; straight back of it, or well back of it, hiding his face
+and pulling the wires. He's to blame for it all, for he's made the town
+what it is.
+
+"He's got his hand on the neck of the town, and got hold of it tighter,
+gradual, so nobody saw it and knocked it off; tighter and tighter,
+squeezing the life out. He never made a gift to the town with one hand
+that he didn't take it back with the other. What the town gets without
+him giving it, he won't let it keep. The whole town's got his stamp on
+it, grafting and lying and putting up a front. The whole town's afraid
+of him. The Judge here, that's the best man in town, don't dare call his
+soul his own. Me, I'm afraid of him, too, and the only reason I dare
+stand up and say to his face what's said behind his back is because I've
+got nothing to lose. It's him, there----"
+
+"Don't, son," muttered the Judge tardily, unregarded, but Colonel
+Everard listened courteously, with a faint, amused smile growing rather
+stiff on his thin lips.
+
+"Him, that's too good to speak to me or look at me, sitting there
+grinning, and reading fine print, making out not to care, he's back of
+it all--him, Everard."
+
+The two men, who had heard him out, did not interrupt him now. It was
+only a passionate jumble of boyish words they had listened to, but
+behind it, vibrating in his tense voice, was something bigger than he
+could frame words to express, something that commanded silence; pain
+forcing its way into speech, long repression broken at last. The dignity
+of it was about him still, though his brown eyes flashed no more
+defiance, and he was only a shabby and hopeless boy walking uncertainly
+to the office door, and fumbling with the handle.
+
+"I'll go out this way," he said. "I've had enough of Theodore. And I've
+had enough of this place. I'll say good morning, gentlemen."
+
+In a prosaic and too often unsatisfactory world, which is not the stage,
+no curtain drops to relieve you of the embarrassment of thinking what to
+say next after a record speech; you have to step out of the limelight,
+and walk somewhere else. Neil Donovan, emerging from the ancient
+building which contained Judge Saxon's office into Post-office Square
+after a brief interval of struggling successfully for self-control in a
+dusty corridor little suited to such struggles, and not even ensuring
+the privacy which is wrongly believed to be necessary for them, had one
+more appointment to keep. He was late for it already. He glanced at the
+town clock and started off hurriedly to keep it.
+
+Back of Court-house Hill another street, starting parallel to Court
+Street, rapidly loses its sense of direction and its original character
+of a business street, wavers to right and left, past a scatter of
+discouraged looking houses, and finally slants off in the general
+direction of the woods at the edge of the town, and the abortive,
+sparsely wooded hill known to generations of picnickers--not the elite
+of the town, but humbler, more rowdy picnickers--as Mountain Rock.
+
+The street never reaches it, but loses itself in a grubby tangle of
+smaller streets, thickly set with small houses, densely and untidily
+populated, the section known at first derisively and later in good faith
+as Paddy Lane. Through the intricate geography of this quarter Colonel
+Everard's only openly declared enemy might have been seen making a hasty
+and expert way ten minutes later; quickly and directly as it permitted
+him to, he approached the base of the hill.
+
+Disregarding more public and usual ways of ascent, he struck straight
+across a stubbly field that lay behind a row of peculiarly forlorn and
+tumbledown houses into a path so narrow that it was hard to see until
+you were actually looking down it, between the twin birches that marked
+the entrance. He followed it to the base of the cliff itself. The belt
+of stunted birches and dusty-looking alders that skirted the cliff was
+broken by an occasional scraggly pine. The boy stopped under one of
+them, leaned against the decaying trunk, produced a letter, and read it.
+
+It was only a pencilled scrawl of a letter, on the roughest of copy
+paper, and so crumpled that he must have been quite familiar with it,
+but he read it intently.
+
+     "Neil," it ran, "I'll meet you Saturday, on top of Mountain Rock,
+     same time and place. I shan't see you till then. I don't want to.
+     You frightened me last night. I don't like you lately. Be nice to
+     me Saturday. JUDITH."
+
+Only a pencilled scrawl, but he knew every word of it by heart, and of
+the burst of excited speech in the Judge's office nothing remained in
+his mind but the general impression that he had made a fool of himself
+there. Perhaps he was too familiar with Judith's letter, for the sting
+he had found there at first was gone from the words. He looked at them
+dully.
+
+"I can't stand much more," he said aloud.
+
+He said it lifelessly, and with no defiance in his eyes, stating only a
+wearisome fact. He had seen the Colonel's face through a kind of red
+mist in the Judge's office, and felt reckless and strong. He did not
+feel like a hero now. He was tired.
+
+He would hardly have cared just now if you had told him that back in
+Judge Saxon's office two men who had not moved from their chairs since
+he left them, and who would not move until several vital points were
+settled, were discussing something he would not have believed them
+capable of discussing at such length and with so much feeling--the
+fortunes of the Donovan family.
+
+He did not care just now for the little sights and sounds of spring that
+were all around him, the cluster of arbutus leaves at his feet, the
+faint, nestling bird noises, sweeter than song, and the stir and rustle
+of tiny, unclassified sounds that were signs of the pulse of spring
+beating everywhere, of change and growth going on whether human beings
+perceived or denied it.
+
+"I can't stand any more," said the boy.
+
+Up the cliff to his right, strewn with pine needles that were brown-gold
+in the sun, a steep and tiny trail led the way to the top of the hill
+and his rendezvous. Now the boy crushed Judith's letter into his pocket,
+turned to the trail with a sigh, and began to climb.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+
+
+"They won't like it, Judith," said Mrs. Randall for the last time, as
+she slipped into her evening coat.
+
+"They? If you mean the Colonel----"
+
+"I do."
+
+Judith, looking up at her mother from the chaise-longue, could not have
+seen the radiant vision that she had adored as a child, when the spring
+and the Everards and the habit of evening dress all returned at once to
+Green River. Mrs. Randall's blue gown was the creation of a Wells
+dressmaker, but lacked the charm of earlier evening frocks, anxiously
+contrived with the help of a local seamstress, when the clear blue that
+was still her favourite colour had been her best colour, when there was
+a touch more pink in the warm white of her complexion, and before the
+tiny, worried line in her broad, low forehead was there to stay. But
+there was no reflection of these changes in her daughter's big, watching
+eyes.
+
+"It will do him good not to like it," said Judith sweetly.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, nothing, Mamma. Is that the carriage? Don't be
+late."
+
+Minna Randall looked down at her daughter in puzzled silence a moment,
+with the little line in her forehead deepening, then slipped to her
+knees beside her with a disregard for her new gown which was unusual,
+and put a caressing hand on her forehead, a demonstration which was more
+unusual still.
+
+"Your head does feel hot," she said, "but to stay away from a dance at
+your age, just for a headache----"
+
+"I went to one last night."
+
+"A high school dance!"
+
+"There won't be any more of them. You needn't grudge it to me." Judith
+buried her face in the cushions, and lay very still.
+
+"But the Colonel really arranged this for you. Dancing bores him. He
+said you ought to be amused."
+
+"He didn't say so to me."
+
+"Are you laughing? I thought you were crying a minute ago." Judith gave
+no further signs of either laughing or crying. "Judith, what does he say
+to you? When you went with him to look at that night-blooming flower
+with the queer name, last week, and were gone so long, what did he talk
+to you about? You heard me. Please answer."
+
+"He's a stupid old thing."
+
+"What did he talk about?"
+
+"I don't remember."
+
+"Judith," Judith's mother stood plucking ineffectively at her long
+gloves, and looking at the motionless white figure, very slender and
+childish against the chintz of the cushions, soft, tumbled hair, and
+hidden face, with a growing trouble in her eyes, "I ought to talk to
+you--I ought to tell you--you're old enough now--old enough----"
+
+Judith turned with a soft, nestling movement, and opened her eyes again,
+deep, watchful eyes that asked endless questions, and made it impossible
+to answer them, eyes that knew no language but their own, the secret and
+alien language of youth. Her mother sighed.
+
+"You're the strangest child. Sometimes you seem a hundred years old, and
+sometimes--you don't feel too badly to stay alone? Mollie would have
+stayed in with you, or Norah."
+
+"No. I would have gone, if I'd known you cared so much, but it won't do
+any good to make yourself late, Mamma. Father's calling," said Judith
+gravely. Still grave and unrelaxed, she returned her mother's rare
+good-night kiss, and watched her sweep out of the room, turning the
+rose-shaded night lamp low as she passed.
+
+There was a hurry of preparation downstairs, her mother's low, fretful
+voice and her father's high and strained one joined in a heated
+argument, and they started still deep in it, for her father did not call
+a good-night to Judith. The street door shut, and she was alone in the
+house. Carriage wheels creaked out of the yard and there was no
+returning sound of them in search of some forgotten thing; a long enough
+interval passed so that it was safe to infer that there would not be,
+but Judith lay as her mother had left her, as still as if her headache
+were really authentic, her questioning eyes on the rose-shaded light.
+
+There was much that might have increased her mother's concern for her in
+her face, if you could interpret it fully; sometimes the eyes suggested
+a fair proportion of the hundred years her mother had credited her with,
+sometimes there was dawning fear in them, and sometimes an inconsequent,
+gipsy light; sometimes her soft lips trembled pitifully, and sometimes
+they smiled. Always it was a lovely face, rose flushed and eager in the
+rosy light, and always something was evident which was enough to account
+for her mother's concern and for more concern than her mother was
+capable of feeling; Miss Judith Devereux Randall was growing up.
+
+Whatever questions occupied her answered themselves in a satisfactory
+way at last, even an amusing way, for her smile had come to stay and
+her eyes were dancing, when she jumped up from the chaise-longue at
+last, turned on more lights, opened closets and bureau drawers all at
+once, dropped various hastily chosen and ill-assorted articles on the
+immaculate counterpane of her bed, and began to dress.
+
+She dressed without a glance into the mirror, and without need of it, it
+appeared, when she stood before it at last, pulling a left-over winter
+tam over rebellious curls which she had made no attempt to subdue. She
+had buttoned herself hastily into the dress she had taken off last, a
+tumbled organdy, and thrown a disreputable polo coat over it, white like
+the cap, but of more prehistoric date, but on her slender person these
+incongruous garments had acquired a harmony of their own, and become a
+costume somehow. It might not have withstood a long or critical
+inspection, but it was not subjected to one. Youth, in its divinely
+suited garb of white, regarded itself with grave eyes for one breathless
+minute, flushed and coquetted with itself for another, and then was gone
+from the mirror. Judith turned off the lights and stole out of the room,
+and downstairs.
+
+There was nothing in the dark and empty house to frighten her. It must
+have been fear of whatever was before her that made her slip so softly
+across the hall, and tremble and stand still when the door chain
+rattled. The door was open at last. With a soft, inarticulate gasp of
+excitement, she stepped out into the May night.
+
+Colonel Everard had an ideal night for the little dance in his garden,
+warm, but with a quiver of new life in the air. The May moon was in its
+last quarter, but lanterns were to supplement it. But the Colonel's
+guest of honour, pausing at the corner of Main Street and looking
+sharply to left and right, and then turning quickly off it, found very
+little light on the narrow and tree-fringed cross-street through which
+she was hurrying now but the moon.
+
+It hung slender and pale and low above the ragged row of little houses,
+and seemed to go with her through the dark, but she took no notice of
+its companionship. The street was deserted, and the tap of her little
+heels sounded disconcertingly loud in the emptiness of it as she hurried
+on, turning from the narrow street into a narrower one.
+
+This street had only one real end; pending the appropriation needed to
+carry it straight through, witheld by agencies which could only be
+connected by guess with Colonel Everard, it led feebly past a few houses
+which were nearly all untenanted and looked peculiarly so to-night, to a
+clump of alders at the edge of an unpenetrated wood lot, where it had
+paused. Just in front of it the girl paused, too.
+
+Her small, white-coated figure was only dimly to be seen in the dark of
+the street; the group in the shadow of the trees was harder to see, but
+it moved; a horse pawed the ground impatiently, the boy in the buggy
+leaned forward and spoke to him. Then Judith started uncertainly toward
+him, and spoke softly, in the arrogant phrasing of lovers, to whom there
+is only one "you" in the world:
+
+"Is that you?"
+
+"Is it you?" the boy's voice came hoarse through the dark. "I thought
+you weren't coming. I waited an hour for you yesterday on the Rock."
+
+"I couldn't help it. I oughn't to be here now, and I almost didn't come,
+but I thought we'd have to-night. Neil, you hurt my hand. Be nice to
+me."
+
+She was standing close beside him now, and they could see each other's
+faces, white and strange in the dark, but the boy's looked whiter, and
+his breath came oddly, in irregular gasps. He held both her hands in
+his, but he did not bend down to her, nor kiss her.
+
+"What makes you look so queer? I don't like you. Be nice to me." There
+was something terribly wrong with the smug little phrases, or with any
+words at all just then, there in the heart of the silent dark, and
+facing the strangeness of the boy's eyes; words failed her suddenly, and
+she pulled her hands away, and hid her face in them. "I won't go with
+you--I'll go home, if you aren't nice to me--if----"
+
+"You can't go home now." There was something in the boy's voice that was
+like the fierce clasp of his hands, something from which it was not so
+easy to escape. "It might be better if you hadn't come, better for both
+of us, but you can't go back now. It's too late. Yes, we'll have
+to-night. Get in, Judith."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN
+
+
+"Get in, Judith."
+
+"I won't go. You can't make me."
+
+The boy did not answer or move. Boy and buggy and horse--Charlie Brady's
+ancient chestnut mare, not such a dignified creature by daylight, but
+high shouldered and mysterious now against the dark of the grove--might
+all have been part of the surrounding dark, they were so still, and
+Judith's little white figure was motionless, too.
+
+Judith stood looking up at the boy for one long, silent minute. Such
+minutes are really longer than other minutes, if you measure them by
+heartbeats, and how else are you to measure them? Strange, breathless
+minutes, that settle grave questions irrevocably by the mere fact of
+their passing, whether you watch them pass with open eyes or are
+helpless and young and vaguely afraid before them; helpless, but full of
+the untaught strength of youth, which works miracles without knowing how
+or why.
+
+"Get in," said the boy, very softly this time, so that his voice just
+made itself heard through the dark; it was like part of the dark,
+caressing and hushed and secret, and not to be denied. With a soft
+little laugh that was attuned to it, Judith yielded suddenly, and
+slipped into the carriage beside him, drawing the robe tight round her,
+and settling into her corner, all with one quick, nestling motion, like
+a bird perching.
+
+"Where are we going?" she said rather breathlessly, "Hurry. Let's go a
+long, long way."
+
+"All right. Don't be frightened, Judith."
+
+"Frightened?"
+
+He did not answer. Charlie's horse, debarred from its destined career by
+bad driving, that broke its wind in its first race, but of sporting
+ancestry and unable to forget it, especially when Charlie's adventures
+in the Green River under-world cheated it of exercise too long, was
+remembering it now, and bolting down the hilly little street, settled at
+last into a jerky and tentative gait with the air of accepting their
+guidance until it could arrange further plans, but remembering its
+ancestry still.
+
+"Splendid," Judith breathed. "Keep off Main Street."
+
+"Yes."
+
+The ancient vehicle, well oiled, but rattling faintly still, swung
+alarmingly close to one street corner lamp-post and then another. Judith
+nestled almost out of sight in her corner. Neil leaned forward,
+gripping the reins with an ungloved hand that whitened at the knuckles,
+his dark eyes looking straight ahead. His brooding eyes and quiet mouth,
+and even the whiteness of his face had something unfamiliar about them,
+something that did not all come from the unhealthy light of the street
+lamps, something strange but unaccountably charming, too. Judith had no
+eyes for it just then.
+
+"This is silly. I ought not to have come. Who's that?"
+
+"Nobody. Just a tree. Sit still. We'll go under the railroad bridge and
+out over Grant's Hill. There won't be any more lights."
+
+"It looked like some one."
+
+"What do you care?"
+
+"It looked like your cousin Maggie."
+
+"She's at home in bed. She was tired to-night."
+
+"Oh. Well, it looked like her. It was silly to come. I never shall come
+again."
+
+As if this were not a new threat, or had for some reason lost it terrors
+to-night, the boy did not contradict her. They had left track and
+railroad bridge behind now, darker blots against the surrounding dark,
+with the lights of the station showing faintly far down the track. They
+were passing the last of the houses that straggled along the
+unfashionable quarter above the railroad track. Most of the houses here
+were dark now. In the Nashs' windows the last light puffed suddenly out
+as they went by.
+
+Down in the town behind them other sleepy little lights were burning
+faintly, or going out, but ahead of them the faintly moonlit road looked
+wide-awake. It was an alluring road. It dipped into wooded hollows, it
+broke suddenly into arbitrary curves and windings but found its way out
+again, and kept on somehow, and gradually lifted itself higher and
+higher toward the crest of the hill five miles away that you reached
+without ever seeming to climb it, to be confronted all at once with the
+only real view between Wells and Green River.
+
+"I used to think Grant's Hill was the end of the world," said Judith
+softly. "Maybe it is. It's funny I can say things like that to you, when
+you only laugh and won't answer. Listen. Isn't it still, so still it
+almost makes a noise."
+
+It was very still. You could feel the pulse of the night here. There was
+a whisper and stir of life in the rustling trees when the road crossed
+some belt of woods; there was a look of blind, creeping life about the
+clustering shadows in stretches of moonlight, and the low-hanging moon
+above the dark fields they passed was a living thing, too, the most
+alive of all. Judith stirred in her corner, and turned and looked at
+it.
+
+"It's sweet," she said. "And it's ours. It's still May. But we can't
+wish on the moon now; it's too late. And I don't want to wish, I'm so
+comfortable. Aren't you? Well, you needn't answer, then, and you needn't
+hold my hand." She had felt for a hand that avoided hers. With a sleepy,
+satisfied laugh, like a petted kitten purring, she settled herself
+again, with her head against an unresponsive shoulder, and pulled an
+unresponsive arm round her waist.
+
+"You aren't as soft as the cushions--not nearly. You're pretty hard, but
+I like you. I was afraid to come, but now----"
+
+"Now what?"
+
+"There's nothing to be afraid of. I'm so happy. There's nobody in the
+world but you and me. Neil, I'm going to sleep."
+
+"All right. Shut your eyes, then, and don't keep staring at me. What
+makes your eyes so bright?"
+
+[Illustration: "'_Shut your eyes_'"]
+
+"You."
+
+"Shut your eyes."
+
+"All right. Nobody but you and me."
+
+They were really alone in the world now, alone in the heart of the
+night. Their little murmur of talk, so low that they could just hear it
+themselves, had been such a tiny trickle of sound that it did not quite
+break the silence, and now it had died away. Asleep or awake, the
+girl was quite still, with her cheek pressed against the boy's shoulder,
+and her long-lashed eyes tight shut. The horse carried them over the
+moonlit road at a rate of speed that did not seem possible from its
+strange, loping gait. The effect of it was uncanny.
+
+Boy and girl and queer, high-shouldered horse, darkly silhouetted in the
+moonlight, lost to sight in the shadows of tall trees that looked taller
+in the dark, and then coming silently into view again, were like dim,
+flitting shadows in the night; like peculiarly helpless and
+insignificant shadows, restless and purposeless. The moon, soft and far
+away and still, seemed more alive than they did, and more competent to
+adjust their affairs.
+
+They required adjusting. That was in the watching brightness of the
+girl's eyes, fluttering open once or twice, only to close quickly again,
+in the tenseness of the boy's arm around her, in the set of his
+shoulders and lift of his stubborn young chin, in the very air that he
+breathed uneasily, the soft, disturbing air of the May night. It was not
+a boy and girl quarrel that was before them: it was something more. It
+was the strangest hour that had come to them in their secret treasury of
+strange hours that were touched with the glamour of black magic and
+swayed by laws they did not know. It might be the darkest hour. It was
+the test hour.
+
+There is no sure and easy way through such hours. If they faced theirs
+unprepared and afraid, so must the rest of the world, the part that is
+older and counted wiser. But this could have been no comfort just then
+to the boy and girl in the antiquated buggy, under the untroubled gaze
+of the wishing moon.
+
+They were almost on the crest of the hill now. One long, upward slant of
+road led straight to it, bare of trees, and silvery in the moonlight. At
+the foot, and just at the edge of a thick belt of woods, the boy pulled
+up as if to rest his horse for the gradual ascent. At his left, hardly
+visible at all to-night unless you stopped your horse to look for it, a
+narrow and overgrown road led off through the trees. Tightening the arm
+that held her cautiously, the boy looked down at the face against his
+shoulder, the faint, half-smile on the lips, and the lightly closed
+eyes.
+
+The girl did not move. Her cap had slipped off, and one small, bare hand
+clutched the fuzzy white thing tight, as a sleeping child's hand might
+have closed on some favourite toy. Her hair showed silvery blond and
+soft against his dark coat. With a quick, hungry motion, the boy dropped
+his head and kissed it lightly. Then, gripping the reins with a
+firmness that no present activity of the animal called for, he left
+Green River's only noteworthy view without a backward glance, and turned
+his horse into the road through the woods.
+
+For the next few minutes he had no attention to spare for Judith,
+suspiciously quiet in his arms. He could not see her face. It was black
+dark under the trees, dark as if it had never been light. The track was
+wider than it looked, but also rougher. The trees grew close. Branches
+that he brushed aside sprinkled dew into his face. The buggy creaked out
+vain protests and useless warnings. Finally moonlight showed at the end
+of the black tunnel, and the horse, which had been encountering its
+difficulties in resourceful silence, made a faint, snorting comment
+which sounded relieved, and presently, with unexpected jauntiness, swung
+into the road again.
+
+It was technically a road, and it was the wreck of a very good road, but
+it was not in much better shape than the track they had reached it by.
+Aspiring amateurs had sketched it and camera fiends haunted it in their
+day. It was Colonel Everard's favourite bridle path, which naturally
+prevented repairs upon it. But before the railroad went through it had
+been Green River's only link with a wider world. Now a better built but
+more circuitous road had replaced it, designed for motoring. No motors
+ever penetrated here, and few carriages. It was left to the ghosts of
+ancient traffic, if they ventured here. The glancing moonlight under the
+close-growing trees might have been full of them to-night.
+
+But the boy was not looking for ghosts or interested in the history of
+the road or its charm, as he hurried his high-shouldered horse along it,
+still responding jauntily. He squared his chin more stubbornly than
+ever, and muttered encouragingly to the horse, and reached for his
+battered whip. Round this corner, beyond this milestone, the stage
+drivers used to make up time when the mail was late. A generous mile of
+almost level road curved ahead of Neil into the moonlight, a fairly
+clean bit of going even now. Judith and Neil were on the old coaching
+road to Wells.
+
+Neil reached for his whip, but did not take it out of the socket. A
+small hand closed over his. The head on his shoulder did not move, but
+dark eyes, watchful and deliberate, opened and looked up at him quietly.
+
+"Now," said a cool little voice, "you can take me home."
+
+"You're awake?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Then why----"
+
+"I waited to see where you were going, and what you were going to do,"
+explained Judith simply. They were covering the banner stretch of road
+at a rate the old stage drivers had never emulated. Judith pushed Neil's
+arm away, and sat straight and looked at him. Her cheeks were gloriously
+flushed with the quick motion, and her soft, tumbled hair had broken
+into baby curls round her forehead, but her eyes were a woman's dark,
+unforgiving eyes. Neil gave her one furtive glance, and looked away.
+
+"I told you to take me home," she said.
+
+He made a muttered reply, inarticulate, so that it would have been hard
+to tell whether it was really addressed to Judith or the horse, and bent
+forward over the reins.
+
+The colour deepened in Judith's cheeks, her soft lips tightened into a
+straight line that was like her mother's mouth. Her cool, unhurried
+voice was like her mother's, too: "I knew when we started out I'd have
+trouble with you. Now I don't intend to have any more. I don't want to
+have to tell you again. Take me home."
+
+She had adopted the tone which Green River's self-made gentlewomen like
+Mrs. Theodore Burr mistakenly believed to be effective with servants.
+The boy beside her gave no sign that it was effective with him. He spoke
+softly to the horse again, and flicked at it coaxingly with the whip.
+
+"Neil, I am sorry for you," Judith stated presently, with no sympathy
+whatever in her judicial young voice. "I have been awfully good to you."
+
+"Good!"
+
+"Yes, good. I--had to be. Because I knew we didn't have much time. I
+knew--this--would have to stop some day. I knew it and you knew it, too.
+You always knew it. Well, I've been trying to tell you for a long time
+that it had got to stop. I tried, but you wouldn't let me. We're both
+getting older, too old for this, and I'm going away next year. And some
+things have happened to me, just lately--last week--that made me think.
+I've got to be careful. I've got to take care of myself. This has got to
+stop now--to-night. I wanted to tell you so. That's why I came;
+because----"
+
+"I know why you came."
+
+"Don't be cross. Be good, and turn round now, and take me home. Neil,
+I'm not sorry, you know, for--anything. Ever since that first night at
+the dance you've been so sweet to me. I'm not sorry. Are you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"How funny your voice sounds. Why don't you turn round?"
+
+He had no explanation to offer. The buggy plunged faster through the
+dark, and Judith braced herself in her corner.
+
+"Neil, turn round. Don't you hear me?"
+
+He gave no sign of hearing. The horse swung gallantly into a bit of road
+where the stage drivers had never been in the habit of hurrying, a
+tricky bit of road, with overhanging rocks jutting out just where you
+might graze them at sudden turns, and with abrupt dips into precipitous
+hollows. One stretched dark ahead of them now. Judith caught her breath
+as they plunged into it, and clutched Neil's arm. He laughed shortly,
+and did not shake off her hand. She pulled at his wrist and shook it.
+
+"Upset us if you want to. We'd go together," he urged, with a logic not
+to be questioned. "Together, and that suits me, Judy."
+
+"Neil, turn round. Neil!" Judith's voice was shrill with sudden terror
+repressed too long, but she struggled to make it steady and cold again,
+in one last effort at control.
+
+"Who do you think you are, Neil Donovan? I tell you to take me home."
+
+He did not even turn to look at her. He was getting the horse down the
+rocky slant of dimly lit road with a patience and concentration which
+there was nobody to appreciate just then. Judith collapsed into her
+corner. There was a faint sound of helpless crying from her, then
+silence as she choked back the tears; silence, and an erect, stubborn
+figure showing oppressively big and dark between Judith and the moon.
+
+"Neil, I'm sorry.... Neil, I can't stand this," came a muffled voice.
+"Please speak to me."
+
+They were on level ground again, and the horse was disposed to make the
+most of it. The boy pulled her into a jolting walk which was not the
+most successful of her gaits, but represented a triumph for him just
+now, and then he turned abruptly to Judith, gathering both her hands
+into his free hand and gripping them tight.
+
+"I'll talk to you now," he said. "It's time I told you. Judith, you and
+I are not going back."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE
+
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"We're not going back," he repeated deliberately.
+
+"We are!" flashed Judith.
+
+"We're not going back. We're never going back."
+
+Judith drew back and stared at him, her hands still in his, and the boy
+stared back with a look that matched her own in his big, deeply lit,
+dark eyes. White faces, with angry, dark eyes, were all that they could
+see clearly, though they were crossing a patch of road where a ragged
+gap in the trees let some of the moonlight through; white faces like
+strangers' faces.
+
+They were only a boy and girl jolting through the woods in the night in
+a rattletrap buggy behind a caricature of a horse, but what looked out
+of their angry eyes and spoke in their tense young voices was greater
+than the immediate issue of their quarrel, and older and wiser than they
+were; as old as the world. Ancient enemies were at war once more. A man
+and a woman were making their age-old fight for mastery over themselves
+and each other.
+
+"Never, Judy."
+
+"Where are we going, then?"
+
+"What difference does it make?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"To Wells. We can make it by morning. I've got the mortgage money with
+me."
+
+"Your uncle's?"
+
+"Yes. What difference does that make? That, or anything? We'd go if we
+hadn't any money at all. We'd have to. Oh, Judith----"
+
+"You don't know what you're saying. Take me home. What are you laughing
+at?"
+
+"You. You sounded just like them, then, giving me orders--just like your
+whole rotten crowd, but you're through with them now, and you're through
+ordering me about and making a fool of me. I've been afraid to say my
+soul was my own. It wasn't, I guess. But we're all through with that.
+We're through, Judith."
+
+"Yes, of course. Of course we're through. It's all right. Everything's
+all right, Neil dear."
+
+"Everything's all wrong, and I know whose fault it is now: it's your
+fault. Maybe I only had one chance in a hundred to get on, but one
+chance is enough, and I was taking it. You made me ashamed to take it. I
+was ashamed to do the work that was all I could get to do, and I had my
+head so full of you I couldn't do any work. Maggie's better than I am.
+She don't sit around with her hands folded and wait for Everard to get
+tired of her. And the whole town don't laugh at her. The whole town
+don't know----"
+
+"Neil, I said I was sorry. Please don't."
+
+"You've got the smooth ways of them all, but it's too late for that
+between us, Judy. Smooth, lying ways."
+
+"We can't go to Wells, Neil dear. What could we do there? Think."
+
+"I'm sick of thinking. I'd get work maybe. I don't know. I don't care.
+Judith----"
+
+"We can't. Not to-night, Neil. Wait."
+
+"I'm sick of waiting. I've got nothing to gain by it. I've done all the
+waiting I could. I've stood all I could. You're the only thing I want in
+the world, and I couldn't wait for you any longer if I could get you
+that way--and I wouldn't get you. I'd lose you."
+
+"Not to-night. To-morrow, if you really want me to go. To-morrow,
+truly."
+
+"You're lying to me, and I'm tired of it."
+
+"No, Neil--Neil dear."
+
+"You're lying."
+
+"How dare you say that! I hate you!"
+
+"That's right. We'll talk straight now. It's time."
+
+"I hate you. Don't touch me. You're going to take me home--you
+must--and I'm never going to speak to you again. I think you're crazy.
+But I'm not afraid of you--I'm not afraid."
+
+The low-keyed, hurrying voices broke off abruptly. There was no sound in
+the buggy but Judith's rapid breathing, more and more like sobs, but no
+tears came. The two faces that confronted each other were alike in the
+gloom, white and angry and very young; alike as the faces of enemies are
+when they measure each other's strength in silence. It was a cruel,
+tense little silence, but the sound that broke it was more cruel. It was
+dry and hard and had nothing to do with his own conquering laugh, that
+the girl knew, but it came from the boy.
+
+"How dare you laugh at me. I hate you!" Judith's voice came hoarse and
+unrecognizable.
+
+A hand caught blindly at the reins; another hand closed over it. Then
+there was silence again in the buggy, broken by panting sounds and
+little sobs. At the end of it Judith, forced back into her corner and
+held there, was really crying now, with hysterical sobs that hurt, and
+hot tears that hurt, too.
+
+"Let me go," she panted. "I hate you! You've got to let me go."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"I'm going home. I'm going to get out and walk home."
+
+"Ten miles?"
+
+"I'd walk a hundred miles to get away from you."
+
+"You'd have to walk farther to do that." The dry little laugh cut
+through the dark again, and Judith struck furiously at the arm that held
+her.
+
+"I hate you!" she sobbed.
+
+"No."
+
+"Oh, I do--I do----"
+
+"I don't care." The boy's voice sounded light and dry, like his laugh.
+"I don't care. Kiss me."
+
+"I won't! I won't! I'll never speak to you again. I'll never forgive
+you."
+
+"Lying to me--fooling me; taking me up and dropping me like Everard does
+to women.... You're no better than he is. You're one of his crowd, but
+you're through with them.... Lying to me, when you do care. You do."
+
+"I hate you!"
+
+"Ah, no, you don't."
+
+Little bursts of confused speech, all they had breath for and more,
+disconnected, not always understood, not always articulate, but always
+angry, came from them, with intervals of silent, panting struggle
+between. The two young creatures in the buggy were struggling in earnest
+now. The struggle was clumsy, like most really significant ones; sudden
+and clumsy and blind. The two figures swayed aimlessly back and forth.
+The boy and girl were both on their feet now. The boy had dropped the
+reins. Both arms held the girl. Her pinioned arms fought to free
+themselves.
+
+"Judith, you don't hate me. Say it--say it."
+
+[Illustration: "'_Judith, you don't hate me? Say it--say it_'"]
+
+The two shadowy figures were like one now, but the girl's arms were
+free, pushing the boy away, striking at him impotently.
+
+"You needn't say it. I know. You had to come to-night. You couldn't stay
+away. You don't hate me. You never will. You couldn't. I'm crazy about
+you. You're the only thing that matters, if we should die the next
+minute. Everything's all wrong, and it's not my fault or yours.
+Everything's wrong, and this is wrong, too, but I don't care and you
+don't. Do you? Do you?"
+
+"Neil, let me go. I can't breathe."
+
+"I love you."
+
+"Let me go."
+
+The shadow figures swayed and then were still. The girl's arms dropped.
+The little, one-sided struggle was over. There was a long, tired sigh,
+and then silence; silence, and one shadow face bending hungrily over the
+other shadow face. "Judith," the boy whispered breathlessly, "do you
+hate me now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you want me to let you go? Do you want me to take you home?"
+
+"Yes," came the same answering whisper, the faintest and most uncertain
+of whispers, but two arms, gently freeing themselves, found their way to
+his shoulders, two hands locked behind his head and drew it gently down,
+until the two shadow faces were close once more, and lips that were not
+shadow lips met and clung together; not shadow lips, but hungry and warm
+and alive--untaught but unafraid young lips, ready for kisses that are
+no two alike and can never come again--wonderful kisses that blot
+everything out of the changing world but themselves.
+
+"Judith"--the boy lifted his head at last, and looked down at the face
+against his shoulder, pale and small, but with all the colour and light
+and life that night had taken from the world and hidden, burning
+undimmed in the awakening eyes--"you don't want me to take you home? You
+don't--care what happens?"
+
+"No."
+
+He could hardly hear her low whisper, but her face was answer enough,
+even for a boy who could not know what had touched it with new beauty,
+but had to guess, as his own heart and the night might teach him.
+
+"No, I don't care. I don't care."
+
+"Judith, you do love me?"
+
+"Yes. Oh, yes."
+
+"You're so sweet," he whispered, "I feel as if I'd never kissed you
+before--or seen you before. I love you, Judith."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I love you and I don't want to hurt you. You know that, don't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But nothing's going to take you away from me now."
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"I don't want to hurt you."
+
+"I tell you, I don't care what happens. I--don't--care."
+
+"Judith!"
+
+Once more her hands drew him close; shy hands, groping uncertainly in
+the dark, and shy lips kissed him. It was the coolest and lightest of
+kisses, but it was worth all the others, if the boy knew how much it
+promised--more than all her broken speech had promised, more than any
+spoken words.
+
+Judith herself did not know, but some instinct older than she was made
+her whisper: "Be good to me. Will you be good to me?"
+
+"Yes, Judith."
+
+The boy answered her small, shaken whisper solemnly, as if he were
+taking a formal and irrevocable vow, but there was no one to listen to
+it here, and bear witness to it as irrevocable. The girl did not answer
+him. Suddenly shy, breathing quickly, and trying to laugh, she slipped
+out of his arms.
+
+The boy let her go. Some time before the trailing reins had been caught
+up and twisted twice round the whip socket. He had done this
+instinctively, he could not have told just when. He bent down and
+untwisted them now, rather slowly and awkwardly, not looking at Judith.
+Then he sat down stiffly beside her.
+
+"You're tired," he said, with new gentleness in his voice. He put an arm
+loosely round her waist in the manner of an affectionate but
+inexperienced parent, and her head dropped on his shoulder. "Very
+tired?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Judith, I'm sorry."
+
+"No, I'm sorry. How could I be so horrid? What made me? Did I hurt you,
+dear, with my hands?"
+
+"You couldn't hurt me."
+
+"Neil, you know what you said just now?"
+
+"Never mind what I said."
+
+"You said you didn't want anything to take me away from you. Well, if it
+did, if anything did take me away from you--now, I'd----"
+
+"What, dear?"
+
+"I'd never forgive you. I couldn't. I'd despise you." This warning came
+in a low, uncertain voice, wasted, as countless warnings have been
+wasted on wiser masculine ears than the boy's. "Look at our moon up
+there. It's glad, I guess--glad about you and me. Why don't you listen
+to me?"
+
+"I'm thinking, Judith. I've got to think."
+
+"You look very nice when you think. Your eyes look so big and still. You
+look--beautiful. I could really sleep now, I guess."
+
+"All right, dear."
+
+"But I don't want to. I'm too happy. How late is it?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Well, it's late. We couldn't get home now before awfully late--two or
+something. And the road's so narrow here, we couldn't turn round. We
+couldn't go home if we wanted to. Could we?"
+
+"Not very well, dear."
+
+"I'm glad.... Neil."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Are you thinking now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You do look beautiful. I don't know just why. I never saw you look just
+like this before; kind, but years older than I am, and miles away.
+Neil----"
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"Neil, don't think any more. Just love me.... I love you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN
+
+
+Colonel Everard's little party was quite successful enough without the
+guest of honour. At least, it would have seemed so to Judith, if she
+could have looked in upon it just before midnight. A distinguished guest
+of the Colonel's had made an ungrateful criticism of the inner circle,
+on parade for his benefit only the week before at Camp Hiawatha, which
+was elaborately rebuilt now, and rechristened Camp Everard. He
+complained that the Colonel's parties were too successful.
+
+"Too many pretty women," he said, "or they work too hard at it--dress
+too well, or talk too well--don't dare to let down. You need more
+background, more men like Grant. You need to be bored. You can't have
+cream without milk. You can't take the essentials of a society and make
+a whole society out of them without adulterating them. It won't last.
+That's why Adam and Eve didn't stay in the garden. They couldn't--too
+much tension there. They needed casual acquaintances, and you need
+background. You can't get on without it."
+
+"We do," said his host.
+
+The distinguished critic was far away from the Colonel's town to-night,
+but the Colonel's party was all that he had complained of; the thing he
+had felt and tried to account for and explain was here, as it was at all
+the Colonel's parties, though a discreet selection of outsiders had been
+admitted to-night; the same sense of effort and tension, of working too
+hard, of a gayety brilliant but forced--artificial, but justifying the
+elaborate processes that created it by its charm, like some rare
+hothouse flower.
+
+You saw it in quick glimpses of passing faces thrown into strong relief
+by the light of the swinging lanterns, and then dancing out of sight;
+you heard it in strained, sweet laughter, and felt it in the beat of the
+music, and in the whole picture the party made of itself in the garden,
+the restless, changing picture, but this was not all--it was in the air.
+You could close your eyes and breathe it and feel it. It was unusually
+keen to-night, real, like a thing you could actually touch and see.
+
+You lost the keen sense of it if you looked too closely for signs of it.
+If you overheard bits of talk, they were not always clever at all, or
+even entirely gay. Worried lines showed under elaborate makeup in the
+women's faces, as if Cinderella had put on white gloves to hide smutty
+fingers; indeed, though they were trained to forget it and make you
+forget it, they were only so many Cinderellas, after all. Seen too
+closely, there was a look of strain about some of the men's faces.
+
+There was a reason for this look to-night, besides the set of reasons
+which the gentlemen of the Colonel's circle always had for looking
+worried; living beyond their incomes, living in uncertainty of any
+income at all, and other private reasons, different in each case, but
+all quite compelling; there was a reason, and the Colonel's guest of the
+week before was connected with it. Others would follow him soon, secret
+conferences would take place unrecorded, the Colonel's private telephone
+wire would be busy, and the telegrams he received would be
+frequent and not intelligible to the casual reader. These were the
+months before election, when the things that were going to happen began
+to happen. Their beginnings were obscure. The man in the street talked
+politics, but the man with his hands in the game kept still. Even when
+they slipped away to the smoking-room, or gathered at the edge of the
+lawn in groups of two and three that scattered as their host approached,
+the Colonel's guests were not discussing politics to-night.
+
+No tired lines were permitted to show in Mrs. Randall's face. Her fresh,
+cool prettiness was of the valuable kind that shows off best at the
+height of the evening, when other women look tired. If she was aware of
+the fact and made the most of it, overworking her charming smile and
+wide-open, tranquil eyes, you could not blame her. It was not the time
+or place to overlook any weapons you might have. Whatever duties or
+privileges belonged to the Colonel's inner circle, you had to take care
+of yourself if you were part of it, and you learned to; that was evident
+from her manner. It seemed easy for her to-night. Just now she was
+sharing a bench and an evening cloak with Mrs. Burr, smooth, dark head
+close to her fluffy, blond one, and smiling into her face confidingly,
+as if all that lady's purring, disconnected remarks were equally
+agreeable to her.
+
+"We miss Judy so much," she said sweetly.
+
+"I can see just how much, dear," said Judith's mother more sweetly
+still.
+
+"And it's so long since she's been here."
+
+"She has her school work to do. She's just a child. She's not well
+to-night."
+
+"But I got the idea he meant this to be her evening."
+
+"He did."
+
+"There he is." The third person singular, unqualified, could mean only
+one gentleman to the ladies of the Colonel's circle, and that gentleman
+was passing close to them now, though he seemed unconscious of the
+fact. He was guiding Mrs. Kent through an old-fashioned waltz with
+elaborate precision. His concentration upon the performance increased as
+he passed them, and he did not look away from his partner's face, though
+it was not absorbingly attractive just now. The piquant profile had a
+blurred look, and the cheeks were flushed under the daintily calculated
+touch of rouge. Mrs. Burr turned to her friend with a faint but
+relentless light of amusement in her narrowed eyes.
+
+"Edie's had just one cocktail too many."
+
+"Yes." They ignored the more obvious fact that the Colonel had. The
+evening had reached the stage when he always had.
+
+"He hasn't danced with you many times, Minna dear."
+
+"I'm tired of dancing, but don't let me keep you here, Lil."
+
+"I haven't seen him dance with you at all."
+
+"He hasn't yet."
+
+"No?" said Mrs. Burr, very casually.
+
+"No. Lil, I think Ranny wants you. He's wandering about, looking vague."
+
+"Don't you want me, dear? Well, Ranny always wants me."
+
+Mr. Randolph Sebastian, discovering her suddenly, gave exaggerated proof
+of this as he carried her off. If the Colonel's secretary had really
+been recruited from a dance hall, he had profited by what he saw there,
+and showed it in every quick, graceful turn he made. His partner was the
+type of woman that dancing might have been invented to show off; it gave
+her lazy, graciously built body a reason for being, and put a flicker of
+meaning into her shallow eyes so that she was not floridly pretty any
+longer, but beautiful. This was peculiarly apparent when she danced with
+Mr. Sebastian. She seemed to have been created for the purpose of
+dancing with him; it could not have been more apparent if their
+elaborate game of devotion to each other had been real, and they were
+really lovers.
+
+Mrs. Clifford Kent, suddenly appearing alone, slipped into Mrs. Burr's
+empty place. Her dance with the Colonel was over. "My Lord's in fine
+form to-night," she confided without preliminary. "We're going to play
+blind-man's buff after the duchess goes home." The duchess was Mrs.
+Grant, the Honourable Joe's wife, still the first lady of Green River,
+but the younger women were beginning to make fun of her discreetly
+behind her back. "He told me the tiger story." This represented a
+triumph. Getting the Colonel's smoking-room stories at first hand
+instead of second hand, from their husbands, was the only form of
+rivalry about which these ladies were frank with each other. "I got it
+out of Cliff first, anyway. He said he couldn't tell me, but he did. I
+made him. Where was Harry last night?"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Cliff had a crowd of men locked into his den until two, talking. Didn't
+Harry know about it?"
+
+"What were they doing?"
+
+"Just talking. The Colonel and I don't know who else. I heard two
+strange voices, and I didn't hear Harry's voice. Didn't Harry know?"
+
+"I suppose so. What did they talk about?"
+
+"Campaign stuff--prohibition or something. Cliff wouldn't tell me."
+
+"Was Teddy Burr there?"
+
+"I didn't hear him. What do you care?"
+
+"I don't care."
+
+"If Harry didn't know, I ought not to have told you, but I can't help it
+now."
+
+"Edith, don't go. Wait."
+
+"I can't. I have this next with my Lord, too. I'm going to sit it out in
+the library and meet him inside. The duchess is getting jealous.
+Besides, there comes the dragon." Judge Saxon, looking shabby and old
+and tired, was making a circuitous way toward them. "Let me go. Oh,
+darling--" she put her small, flushed face suddenly close to her
+friend's to ask the question, and after it, fluttered away without
+waiting for the answer, leaving the echo of her pretty, empty laugh
+behind--"why didn't Judith come? What's the real reason? Has anybody
+been making trouble for her here? Never mind. You needn't tell me.
+Good-bye."
+
+Mrs. Randall closed her eyes and pressed two fingers against her temples
+for a moment, and then looked up with almost her usual welcoming smile
+at Judge Saxon, who had come close to her, and stood looking down at her
+keenly with his kind, near-sighted, blue eyes.
+
+"Hiding?" he said. "Tired?"
+
+"Not hiding from you. Take care of me."
+
+"Minna," he decided, "you little girls aren't so nice to me unless
+you're in wrong somehow and feel sorry for yourselves. What's the
+matter? Where's Harry?"
+
+"Inside somewhere. Don't ask me any more questions. I've answered all I
+can to-night."
+
+"All right. I'll just sit here and enjoy the view and keep the other
+boys away."
+
+The view was hardly one to promote unmixed enjoyment. The two settled
+into a friendly silence in their corner, broken by an occasional quiet
+word in the Judge's intimate, drawling voice. Around them the temper of
+the party was changing, and a series of little signs marked the general
+change. More men crowded into the smoking-room between dances, and they
+stayed longer. Mrs. Grant left first according to her established
+privilege, and a scattering of other guests followed her. Nobody seemed
+to miss them or to be conspicuously happier without them. There was a
+heavy, dull look about the passing faces, a heaviness and staleness now
+about the whole atmosphere of the party, and this, like the unnatural
+excitement which it followed, and like the light, endless fire of
+inconsequent, malicious chatter, always the same, whether it meant
+nothing or meant real trouble brewing, was an essential part of all the
+Colonel's parties, too.
+
+The Judge regarded the change with faraway eyes, as he talked on in the
+wistful voice that goes with talking your own private language openly to
+people who cannot answer you in it.
+
+"Don't need the moon, do we, with those lanterns? But it was here first,
+and will be a long time after, and it's a good moon, too; quite
+decorative for a moon."
+
+"I hate it," said Mrs. Randall, with a personal vindictiveness not
+usually directed against natural phenomena. The Judge took no immediate
+notice of it. More guests had gone. In a cleared circle in the heart of
+the lanternlight Mrs. Kent was performing one of the more expurgated
+and perfunctory of her dances for the benefit of the select audience
+that remained, to scattered, perfunctory applause. The motif of it was
+faintly Spanish.
+
+"Paper doll," commented the Judge, "that's all that girl is. You and
+Harry are the best of them, Minna. They're a faky lot, all of
+them--about as real as a house of cards. It looks big, but it will all
+tumble down if you pull one card out--only one card. The devil of it is
+to know which card to take hold of, and who's to pull it out if you
+haven't got the nerve? I haven't. I'm too old. But it's a comfort to
+think of it. Don't you agree with me?"
+
+"I didn't really hear you."
+
+"Minna, I've known you since you were two. Can't you tell me what's the
+matter? You're frightened."
+
+She looked at him for a minute as if she could, turning a paling face to
+him, with the mask off and the eyes miserable, then she tried to laugh.
+
+"Nothing's the matter. Nothing new."
+
+"Well, there's enough wrong here without anything new," said the Judge,
+rebuffed but still gentle. "I won't trouble you any longer, my dear.
+There comes Harry."
+
+Mrs. Randall's husband, an unmistakable figure even with the garden and
+the broad, unlighted lawn between, stood in the rectangle of light that
+one of the veranda windows made, slender and boyish still in spite of
+the slight stoop of his shoulders, and then started across the lawn
+toward the garden.
+
+His wife got rather stiffly to her feet and waited, looking away from
+the lighted enclosure, over the low hedge, at the lawn. Her eyes were
+dizzy from the flickering lights. She could not see him clearly, and the
+figure that followed him across the lawn was harder to see.
+
+It was a man's figure, slightly taller than her husband's. The man had
+not come from the veranda windows, or from the house at all, he had
+slipped round one corner of the house, stood still in the shelter of it,
+seeming to hesitate there, and then plunged suddenly across the lawn at
+a queer little staggering run. Twice she saw him stand still, so still
+that she lost sight of him under the trees, as if he had slipped away
+through the dark.
+
+In the garden Mrs. Kent's performance was over, and the game of
+blind-man's buff was beginning. It was a novelty, and acclaimed even at
+this stage of the evening. Lillian Burr's shrill laugh and Edith Kent's
+pretty, childish one could be heard through the other sounds. They were
+trying to blindfold the Colonel, who struggled but laughed, too, looking
+somehow vacuous and old, with his longish, white hair straggling across
+his forehead. No one in the garden but Minna Randall had attention to
+spare for an arriving guest, expected or unexpected.
+
+Which was he? He was out of sight again, but this time she had seen him
+reach the edge of the lighted enclosure. Was he gone, or waiting
+outside, or had he stepped under the trellis of the rose arbour, to
+appear suddenly at the end of it and among them? Instinctively she kept
+her eyes upon it, though her husband had already passed through. She was
+watching for the figure that it might frame next.
+
+"Harry," she said to her husband, who had seen her and elbowed his way
+to her, and stood beside her, looking pale and tired like herself in the
+lanternlight and not boyish at all, "who was that man? Who was it
+following you?"
+
+He paid no attention to her question. He did not seem to hear it. He put
+a hand on her arm, and she could feel that it trembled.
+
+"Oh, Harry, what is it?" she said. "I've had such a horrible evening.
+I'm so afraid."
+
+"Don't be afraid, Minna," he said very gently, "but you must come to the
+telephone. Norah's calling you. She's just come home. She wants to tell
+you something about Judith."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN
+
+
+"Judith?" Mrs. Randall took her husband's news quietly, with something
+that was almost relief in her face, the relief that comes when a
+gathering storm breaks at last, and you learn what it is you have been
+afraid of, though you must go on being afraid. "What is it? Is she ill,
+Harry?"
+
+"Come and talk to Norah."
+
+"No, we'll go straight home."
+
+"But she's not there, Minna. That's all Norah'll say to me, but she's
+got some idea where she is, and says she'll tell you. Judith isn't
+there."
+
+"It must be nearly morning."
+
+"It's two."
+
+"It was after nine when we started."
+
+"Minna, didn't you hear what I said?"
+
+Mrs. Randall's face had not changed as she heard; it looked
+unchangeable, like some fixed but charming mask that she wore. The lips
+still smiled though they had stiffened slightly, and she watched the two
+women's attempts to blindfold the Colonel--unaided now, but hilariously
+applauded by the circle around her--with the same mild, interested eyes,
+wide-set and Madonna calm.
+
+"I tell you, Judith's not there. What does Norah know? Why don't you do
+something? Where is she?... My God, look at them. What are they doing
+now? Look at Everard."
+
+Mrs. Burr had drawn the knot suddenly tight in the white scarf she was
+manipulating, and slipped out of the Colonel's arms and out of reach. He
+followed, and then swung round and stumbled awkwardly after Edith Kent,
+who had brushed past him, leaving a light, challenging kiss on his
+forehead, and was further guiding him with her pretty, empty laugh. The
+game of blind-man's buff was under way.
+
+Crowding the garden enclosure, swaying this way and that and threatening
+to overflow it, a pushing, struggling mass of people kept rather
+laboriously out of one another's way and the Colonel's, not so much
+amused by the effort as they were pretending to be; people with heavy
+and stupid faces who had never looked more irrevocably removed from
+childhood than now that they were playing a children's game.
+
+In the heart of the crowd, now plunging ahead of it, now lost in it, the
+first gentleman of Green River disported himself. His white head was
+easy to follow through the crowd, and the thing that made you follow it
+was evident even now--much of his old dignity, and the charm that was
+peculiarly his; you saw it in an occasional stubborn shake of his
+beautifully shaped head, in the grace of the hand that caught at some
+flying skirt and missed it. He was the first gentleman of Green River
+still, but he was something else.
+
+His white hair straggled across his forehead moist and dishevelled, and
+his face showed flushed and perspiring against the white of the scarf.
+The trailing ends of the scarf flapped grotesquely about his head, and
+the high, splendidly modelled forehead was obscured and the keen eyes
+were hidden. The beauty of the face was lost, and the mouth showed thin
+lipped and sensual. The Colonel was really a stumbling, red-faced old
+man.
+
+"Look at him. That's what she's seen. This was Judith's party. That's
+what we've hung on in this town for till it's too late to break loose.
+We never can get away now. We can't----"
+
+"Keep still, Harry. Do you want to be heard? Did any one hear you at the
+telephone? Keep still and come home."
+
+"You're right. You're wonderful. You don't lose your nerve."
+
+"I can't afford to, and neither can you. Come---- Oh, Harry, look. I saw
+him following you. What does he want? What's the matter? What is he
+going to do?"
+
+Mrs. Randall had adjusted her cloak deliberately, and turned to pilot
+her husband out of the garden, slipping a firm little hand through his
+arm. Now she clung to him and stood still, silent after her little fire
+of excited questions. The entrance to the garden was blocked. An
+uninvited and unexpected guest was standing there.
+
+His entrance had been unheralded, and his welcome was slow to come. The
+crowd had closed in round the Colonel, with Edith Kent caught suddenly
+in his arms, and giving a creditable imitation of attempting to escape.
+Interested silence and bursts of laughter indicated the progress of it
+clearly, though the two were entirely out of sight. Nobody saw the
+newcomer except the Randalls.
+
+He stood in the entrance to the rose arbour, clutching at the trellis
+with one unsteady hand, and managing to keep fairly erect, a slightly
+built, swaying figure, black-haired and hatless. He kept one hand behind
+him, awkwardly, as a shy boy guards a favourite plaything. He was
+staring into the crowd in the garden as if he could see through into the
+heart of it, but had not the intellect just then to understand what he
+saw there.
+
+It was the man Mrs. Randall had seen lurking in the shadow of the trees,
+but he was no mysterious stranger, though here in the light of the
+lanterns she hardly recognized him as she looked at his pale, excited
+face; it showed an excitement quite unaccounted for by the perfectly
+obvious fact that he was drunk, and entirely unconnected with that fact.
+Here and there on the outskirts of the crowd some one turned and saw
+him, too, and stared at him. They all knew him. He was Neil Donovan's
+cousin, the discredited young lawyer, Charlie Brady.
+
+He did not speak or move. He only stood still and looked at them with
+vague, puzzled eyes, and lips that twitched as if he wanted to speak,
+but standing so, he had the centre of the stage. He could not command
+it, he had pushed his way into it doggedly, uncertain what to do first,
+but he was there. One by one his audience had become conscious of it,
+and were confronting him startled and uncertain, too. Young Chester
+Gaynor elbowed his way to the front, but stopped there, grinning at the
+invader, restrained perhaps by a lady's voice, which was to be heard
+admonishing him excitedly.
+
+"Don't you get hurt, dear."
+
+"How did he get here? Why can't somebody get him out?" other excited
+ladies inquired.
+
+"Get Judge Saxon," directed Mr. J. Cleveland Kent's calm and
+authoritative voice.
+
+"Get Sebastian. Where is the fellow? Is he afraid?" demanded the
+Honourable Joe from the extreme rear. Some one laughed hysterically. It
+was Mrs. Burr. The laugh was quickly hushed, but the new guest had heard
+it, though no other sound seemed to have impressed him. He laughed, too,
+a dry, broken ghost of a laugh, as cracked and strange as his voice,
+which he now found abruptly.
+
+"Lillie," he called. "Hello, Lillie dear."
+
+Mrs. Burr was not heard to reply to this affectionate greeting, but he
+hardly paused for a reply. His light, high, curiously detached sounding
+voice talked on with a kind of uncanny fluency.
+
+"Lillie," he urged cordially, "I heard you. I know you're there. Come
+out and let's have a look at you. I don't see anything of you lately.
+You're too grand for me. I don't care. I'm in love with a prettier girl.
+But you used to treat me all right, Lillie dear, and I treated you
+right, too. I never told. A gentleman don't tell. And you were straight
+with me. You never double-crossed me, like you and the dago Sebastian do
+to Everard. Everard! That's who I want to talk to. Where is he?"
+
+At the mention of the name his wavering gaze had steadied and
+concentrated suddenly on the centre of the group in the garden, and now,
+while he looked, the crowd parted. Pushing his way through, the Colonel
+faced his uninvited guest.
+
+The great man was not at his best. His most ardent admirer could hardly
+have claimed it. He had pulled the muffling scarf down from his eyes,
+but was still tearing at the knot impatiently. Mrs. Kent had come
+fluttering ineffectively after him, catching at his arm. He struck her
+hands away, and pushed her back, addressing her with a lack of ceremony
+which outsiders were not often permitted to hear him employ toward a
+member of his favoured circle.
+
+"Keep out of this, Edith, and you keep quiet, Lil. You girls make me
+sick," he snapped. "Half the trouble in this town comes because you
+can't learn to hold your tongues. You'd better learn. You're going to
+pay for it if you don't, and don't you lose sight of that. Well, Brady,
+what does this mean? What can I do for you?"
+
+The ring of authority was in his voice again, as if he had called it
+back by sheer will power. He had stepped forward alone, and stood
+looking up at his guest, still framed in the sheltering trellis, and his
+blurred eyes cleared and grew keen as he looked, regarding him
+indifferently, like some refractory but mildly amusing animal. His
+guest's defiant eyes avoided his, and the ineffective, swaying figure
+seemed to shrink and droop and grow smaller, but it was a dignified
+figure still and a dangerous one. There was the snarling menace of
+impotent but inevitable rebellion about it, of men who fight on with
+their backs against the wall; a menace that was not new born to-night,
+but the gradual growth of years, just the number of years that the
+Colonel had spent in Green River.
+
+"I'm sorry, sir," stammered his guest.
+
+"Then apologize and get out."
+
+"I can't."
+
+"I think you'll find you can, Brady."
+
+"I can't. I've got to ask you a few questions."
+
+They seemed to be slow in framing themselves. There was a little pause,
+the kind of pause that for no apparent reason deprives you for the
+moment of any desire to move or speak. The unassuming figure of the
+young man under the trellis stood still, swaying only slightly from side
+to side. A deprecating smile appeared on his lips, as if his errand were
+distasteful to him and he wished to apologize for it. Gradually the
+smile faded and the eyes grew steady again and unnaturally bright. He
+held himself stiffly erect where he stood for a moment, took a few
+lurching steps forward, paused, and then plunged suddenly across the
+garden toward Colonel Everard.
+
+It would have been hard to tell which came first, the little, stumbling
+run forward, the Colonel's instinctive move to check it, the stampede
+of the devotees of the time-honoured game of blind-man's buff, acting
+now with a promptness and spontaneity which they had not displayed in
+that game, Lillian Burr's hysterical scream, the snarling words from the
+Colonel that silenced it, or the quick flash of metal. It had all
+happened at once. But now, in an amphitheatre of scared faces, as far
+behind as the limits of the garden enclosure would allow, Mr. Brady and
+his host stood facing each other alone, and the Colonel, now entirely
+himself, with the high colour fading out of his cheeks, was looking with
+cool and unwavering eyes straight into the barrel of Mr. Brady's
+revolver.
+
+It was a clumsy, old-fashioned little weapon. Brady's thin hand grasped
+it firmly, as if some stronger hand than his own were steadying his. He
+laughed an ineffective laugh, like a boastful boy's, but there was a
+threat in it, too.
+
+"What have you got to say for yourself? I'll give you a chance to say
+it," he stated magnanimously, "but you shan't say a word against her.
+She was always a good girl. She is a good girl. What have you done with
+her? Where is she?"
+
+"You don't make yourself altogether clear, Brady," said the Colonel
+smoothly.
+
+"Where's Maggie?"
+
+"Maggie?" The Colonel's eyes swept the circle of his guests
+deliberately, as if to assure himself that no lady of that name was
+among them.
+
+"Maggie. You know the name well enough." The sound of it seemed to give
+the lady's champion new courage; it flamed in his eyes, hot, and quick
+to burn itself out, but while it lasted, even a gentleman who had
+learned to face drawn revolvers as indifferently as the Colonel might do
+well to be afraid of him. "Maggie's missing. I'm going to find her.
+That's all I want of you. I won't ask you who's worked on her and made a
+fool of her. I won't ask you how far she's been going. But I want her
+back before the whole town knows. I want to find her and find her quick.
+She's a good girl and a decent girl. She's going to keep her good name.
+She's coming home."
+
+"Commendable," said the Colonel, not quite smoothly enough. His guest
+was past listening to him.
+
+"Maggie. That's all I want. You're getting off easy. Luck's with you.
+I've stood a lot from you, the same as the town has. It will stand a lot
+more, and I will. Get Maggie back. Get her back and give her to me and
+leave her alone, and I'll eat out of your hand and starve when you don't
+feed me, the same as the rest"--he came two wavering steps nearer, and
+dropped his voice to a dry quaver meant to be confidential, a grotesque
+and sinister parody of a confidence--"the rest, that don't know what I
+know."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I won't tell. Don't be afraid. A gentleman don't tell, and there's
+nobody that can but me. Young Neil don't know. The luck's with you, sir,
+just the same as it always was."
+
+"I've had enough of this. Get home, Brady," cried the Colonel, in a
+voice that was suddenly wavering and high, like an old man's, but his
+guest only smiled and nodded wisely, beginning to sway as he stood, but
+still gripping the clumsy revolver tight.
+
+"Just the same as it was when old Neil Donovan died."
+
+"Get home," shrilled the Colonel again, but his guest pursued the tenor
+of his thoughts untroubled, still with the look of an amiably disposed
+fellow-conspirator on his weak face, a maddening look, even if his words
+conveyed no sting of their own.
+
+"Neil Donovan," he crooned, "my father's own half-brother, and a good
+uncle to me, and a gentleman, too. He sold rum over a counter, but he
+was a gentleman, for he didn't talk too much. A gentleman don't tell."
+
+But the catalogue of his uncle's perfections, whether in place here or
+not, was to proceed no further. The audience pressed closer, as eager
+to look on at a fight as it was to keep out of one. There was a new and
+surprising development in this one. The two men had closed with each
+other, and it was not the half-crazed boy who had made the attack, but
+the Colonel himself.
+
+It was a sudden and awkward attack, and there was something stranger
+about it still. The Colonel was angry. He had tried to knock the weapon
+out of the boy's hand, failed, and tried instinctively, still, to get
+possession of it, but he was not making an adequate and necessary
+attempt to disarm him, he was no longer adequate or calm. He was angry,
+suddenly angry with the poor specimen of humanity that was making its
+futile attempt at protest and rebellion, as if it were an equal and an
+enemy. His face was distorted and his eyes were dull and unseeing. His
+breath came in panting gasps, and he made inarticulate little sounds in
+his throat. He struck furious and badly directed blows.
+
+It was a curious thing to see, in the heart of the great man's admiring
+circle, at the climax of his most successful party of the year. It did
+not last long. The two struggling figures broke away from each other,
+and the boy staggered backward and stood with the revolver still in his
+hand. He was a little sobered by the struggle, and a little weakened by
+it, pale and dangerous, with a fanatic light in his eyes. Some one who
+had an eye for danger signals, if the Colonel had not, had made his
+unobtrusive way forward, and joined him now. He was not the most
+formidable looking of allies, but he stood beside them as if he had a
+right to be there, and the Colonel turned to him as if he recognized it.
+
+"Hugh, you heard what he said?" he appealed; "you heard?"
+
+"Judge, you keep out of this," Brady called, "keep out, sir."
+
+Judge Saxon, keeping a casual hand on his most prominent client's arm,
+stood regarding Mr. Brady with mild and friendly blue eyes. He had quite
+his usual air of being detached from his surroundings, but benevolently
+interested in them.
+
+"Charlie," he said, as if he were recognizing Mr. Brady for the first
+time at this critical moment, and deriving pleasure from it. "Why,
+Charlie," his voice became gently reproachful, but remained friendly,
+too. "Everard, this boy don't mean a word he says," he went on, with
+conviction, "he's excited and you're excited, too. This is a pretty poor
+time for you to get excited, Everard."
+
+"You're right, Hugh," muttered the Judge's most prominent client
+thickly; "you're right. Get him away. Get him home."
+
+"He's a good boy," pronounced the Judge.
+
+It was not the obvious description of Mr. Brady just at that moment.
+There was only friendly amusement in the Judge's drawling voice and
+shrewd eyes, but back of it, unmistakably there, was something that made
+every careless word worth listening to. Mr. Brady was resisting it. His
+face worked pitifully.
+
+"Judge, I told you to keep out. I don't want to hurt you."
+
+"Thanks, Charlie."
+
+"Every word I say is God's truth, Judge."
+
+The Judge did not contradict this sweeping statement. He was studying
+Mr. Brady's weapon with some interest. "Your uncle's," he commented,
+pleased. "Why, I didn't know you still owned that thing, Charlie."
+
+"I want Maggie. I want----"
+
+"I'll tell you what you want," offered the Judge, amicably, "you want to
+hand that thing to me, and go home."
+
+Mr. Brady received this suggestion in silence, a silence which left his
+audience uncertain how deeply he resented it. Indeed, they were
+painfully uncertain, and showed it. Bits of advice reached the Judge's
+ears, contradictory, though much of it sound, but he took no notice of
+it. He only smiled his patient and wistful smile and waited, like a man
+who knew what would happen next.
+
+"Hand it to me," he repeated gently.
+
+"I won't, Judge." Mr. Brady's weapon wavered, and then steadied itself.
+His thin body trembled. The fanatic light in his eyes blazed bright. The
+excitement which had gripped him, too keen to last long, reached its
+climax now in one last burst of hysterical speech.
+
+"He's a liar and a thief," he asserted, uncontradicted. He was not to be
+contradicted. There was a dignity of its own about the hysterical
+indictment, grotesque as it was, an unforgettable suggestion of truth.
+"He's a thief and a murderer, too. I don't have to tell what I know.
+Everybody knows. You all know, all of you, and you don't dare to tell.
+He's murdering the town."
+
+The high, screaming voice broke off abruptly. Mr. Brady, still with the
+echo of his big words in his ears and apparently dazed by it, stood
+looking blankly into the Judge's steady and friendly eyes.
+
+"I can't--I won't----" he stammered.
+
+"Hand it to me," said the Judge, as if no interruption had occurred. For
+a moment the boy before him looked too dull and dazed to obey or to
+hear. Then, as suddenly as if some unseen hand had struck it out of his,
+the revolver dropped to the ground, and he collapsed, sobbing
+heartbrokenly, into the Judge's arms.
+
+He was a heroic figure no longer. The alien forces that made him one
+had deserted him abruptly, and he looked unworthy of their support
+already, only an inconsiderable creature of jangled nerves and
+hysterical speech, which would be discredited if you looked at him, even
+if it still echoed in your ears. The Judge, holding him and quieting
+him, looked allied with him, humble and discredited, too. The relieved
+audience hung back for a moment, taking in the full force of the
+picture, before it broke ranks to crowd round the Colonel and offer him
+belated support. The Colonel said a few inaudible words to Judge Saxon,
+and then turned from him and his protege with the air of washing his
+hands of the whole affair. He looked surprisingly unruffled by it, even
+stimulated by it. The interruption to his party was over.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It ended as it had begun, the most successful party of the year. Mr.
+Brady's invasion was not the first unscheduled event which had enlivened
+a party at the Birches. There was more open and general speculation
+about the fact that the Randalls left immediately after, did not linger
+over their good-nights, and were obviously not permitted by their host
+to do so.
+
+Mrs. Randall, leaning back in her corner with her hand tight in Harry's,
+and her long-lashed eyes, that were like Judith's, tightly shut, showed
+the full strain of the evening in her pale face. She was a woman who did
+not look tired easily, but she was also a woman who could not afford to
+look tired.
+
+There was no appeal or charm about her pale face now, only a naked look
+of hardness and strain. Her husband, staring straight ahead of him with
+troubled eyes, and his weak, boyish mouth set in a hard, worried line,
+spoke rapidly and disconnectedly not of Judith, or the Colonel's ominous
+coldness to him, but of Mr. Brady.
+
+"Maggie's a bad lot," he was explaining for approximately the fifth time
+as they whirled into the drive and under their own dark windows. "She
+always was. Everard isn't making away with the belle of Paddy Lane. Not
+yet. He's not that far down. But that dope about old Neil Donovan----"
+
+"Oh, Harry, hush," his wife said, "here we are. What do you care about
+Brady?"
+
+"Nothing," he whispered, his arm tightening round her as he lifted her
+down. "I don't care about anything in the world but Judith."
+
+"Neither do I. Not really," she said in a hurried, shaken voice that was
+not like her own, "you believe that, don't you, Harry?"
+
+He did not answer. Gathering up her skirts, she followed him silently to
+the front of the house, single file along the narrow boardwalk, not yet
+taken up for the summer, creaking loudly under their feet.
+
+"Look," she whispered, catching at his arm. The front of the house was
+dark except for two lights, a flickering lamp that was being carried
+nearer to them through the hall, and a soft, shaded light that showed at
+a bedroom window. The window was Judith's. He fumbled for his key, but
+the door opened before them. Norah, her forbidding face more militant
+than ever in the flickering light of the kerosene hand-lamp she held,
+her white pompadour belligerently erect, and her brown eyes maliciously
+alight, peered at them across the door chain, and then gingerly admitted
+them.
+
+"It's a sweet time of night to be coming home to the only child you've
+got," she commented, "why do you take the trouble to come home at all?"
+
+It was a characteristic greeting from her. If it had not been, Mrs.
+Randall would not have resented it now. She clutched at the old woman's
+unresponsive shoulder.
+
+"Where is she?" she demanded breathlessly.
+
+"Judith is it you mean?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"How should I know how she spends her evenings? At some of the girls'
+to-night. Rena Drew's maybe. I don't know. It's a new thing for you to
+care. She was late in, and it's no wonder I was worried. She's like my
+own to me. But she needs her sleep now. You'd better go softly
+upstairs."
+
+"Do you mean she's here?"
+
+"What is it to you?" Norah, one bony hand clutching the newel post as if
+it were a negotiable weapon of defense, and her brown eyes flashing as
+if she were capable of using any weapon for Judith, barred the way up
+the stairs.
+
+"I tell you, she needs her sleep, poor lamb--poor lamb," she said, "and
+you're not to go near her to-night. You're to promise me that. But she's
+here fast enough. My lamb is safe at home in her own bed."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN
+
+
+On an afternoon in June a year later than the interrupted party at the
+Everards' a young man sat at Mr. Theodore Burr's desk in Judge Saxon's
+outer office. It was still technically Mr. Burr's desk, but the young
+man looked entirely at home there. A litter of papers which that
+fastidious gentleman would never have permitted himself now covered it,
+and the air was faintly scented with the smoke of a cigarette widely
+popular in Green River, but not with devotees of twenty-five-cent
+cigars, like Mr. Burr. The bulky volume open on the desk was thumbed and
+used as Mr. Burr had never used any book that looked or was so heavy.
+The book was Thayer on Constitutional Law, and the young man dividing
+his attention between it and Main Street under his window flooded with
+June sunshine was Neil Donovan.
+
+He divided his attention unequally, as Main Street late on that sunny
+afternoon might persuade the most studious of young men to do. The
+square was crowded--crowded, it is true, much as a busy street on the
+stage is crowded, where the same overworked set of supers pass and
+repass. The group of bareheaded girls now pacing slowly by arm in arm
+under the window were returning from what was approximately their fourth
+visit that afternoon to the post-office, the ice-cream parlours, the new
+gift shop and tea-room, or some kindred attraction. The Nashes' new
+touring car, driven by the prettiest girl in Willard's June house party,
+under the devoted instruction of Willard himself, was whirling through
+the shopping district for at least the third time.
+
+However, it was an imposing pageant enough, though the boy at the window
+did not appear to find it so, regarding it with approving but grave
+eyes, and returning Mr. Nash's flourishing salute unsmilingly--a brave
+pageant of gay and flimsy gowns, of youth returning to the town, and
+movement and colour, and June fairly begun.
+
+June so far was like other Junes in Green River. Colonel Everard and the
+season of social and political intrigues were here. Rallies in the town
+hall would soon begin. Men with big names in state politics would make
+speeches there, while the Colonel presided with his usual self-effacing
+charm, which did not advertise the known fact that he was a bigger power
+in the state than any of them. The good old question of prohibition was
+the chief issue, as usual; discreet representatives of the people
+would, according to a catch phrase at the capital, vote for prohibition,
+and then go round to the best hotel and get drunk; and discreet
+politicians, like the Colonel, would make money out of both these facts
+in their own way.
+
+Behind the closed door of Judge Saxon's office low-keyed, monotonous
+voices were talking, and a secret conference was going on. Troubled
+times were here again for those deep in the Colonel's councils. They
+were never sure of a permanent place there, but always on the watch for
+one of his sudden changes of front, which threatened not only his
+enemies but his friends. But he had recovered and held their confidence
+before, and he could this year.
+
+All scandals of the year before were decently hidden. Maggie Brady was
+missing and continued to be missing. By this time it was the general
+verdict that she had always been bound to come to a bad end, and Charlie
+Brady to drink himself to death. Nobody interrupted his attempts to do
+so. His drunken outburst of speech had echoed a growing sentiment in the
+town, but it grew slowly, for under its thin veneer of sophistication
+Green River was only a New England town still, conservative and slow to
+change.
+
+Green River had not changed much in a year, but Neil Donovan's fortunes
+had. Nobody knew the full history of the change except Neil, but others
+could have thrown sidelights upon it, among them Mrs. Randall's second
+maid, Mollie. On the morning after that same party of the Colonel's,
+which Mr. Brady attended so unexpectedly, and Judith did not attend,
+Mollie opened the Randalls' door to an early caller.
+
+Even in curl papers, she was usually too much for the young man now on
+the doorstep. He was in the habit of looking at his boots and addressing
+them instead of her, and Mollie quite understood that, for they were
+shabby boots. They looked shabbier than ever to-day, and so did his
+shiny coat, but his eyes were steady and clear, and there was clear
+colour in his cheeks, as if he had had the only restful and well-earned
+sleep in Green River.
+
+"Miss Judith," he said.
+
+"Not at home," said Mollie, in a manner successfully copied from French
+maids in the ten, twenty, thirties.
+
+"Nonsense. Her curtains aren't up," replied the young man who was
+usually made speechless by it.
+
+"She's asleep," conceded Mollie, in a manner more colloquial but also
+more forbidding. "She don't want to see you."
+
+Mollie was incapable of interpreting Judith's wishes, but the young man
+was not; his smile conveyed this, though it was friendly enough. "When
+Miss Judith gets up, tell her----"
+
+"I tell you she don't want to see you," snapped Mollie in a tone any
+French maid would have deplored. "She don't want to see anybody."
+
+"Tell her that I'll call again at three this afternoon," directed the
+young man calmly, and completed his disturbing effect upon Mollie by
+turning and walking briskly away without a backward glance, and without
+his usual air of self-consciousness when her eyes were upon him. He
+carried his shabby coat with an air, and held his head high, and swung
+out of sight down the sleepy little street as if he were the only
+wide-awake thing in the whole sunny, sleepy town.
+
+It was a disconcerting moment for Mollie or any lady properly conscious
+of her power, and sorry to see a sign of it disappear, even the humblest
+of signs. It would still have been disconcerting, if she could have
+foreseen that Judith would not receive this young man alone, either at
+three that afternoon, or for many afternoons. The young man was not
+overawed by Mollie. That was established once and for all. He would
+never be overawed by her again. She slammed the door rather viciously.
+
+"Keep quiet there," said Norah, appearing inopportunely, as her habit
+was, with a heavily laden breakfast tray. "She needs her rest. But
+she's awake. She rang. You can take this up and leave it outside her
+door. Who was talking to you?"
+
+"Well, I don't know what's come to him," Mollie complained. "Who does he
+think he is? Did anybody leave him a fortune over night? It was the
+Donovan boy."
+
+A few minutes after Neil's encounter with Mollie, when Mr. Theodore Burr
+admitted him listlessly after his third knock at Judge Saxon's door, he
+could see no evidence that any one had left the Donovan boy a fortune
+over night, but did note a change in him. There was something
+appealingly grave and sedate about his face, as if a part of its youth,
+the freakish, unconquerable laughter of it, that had defied and
+antagonized Mr. Burr, were gone forever, burned away, somehow, in a
+night. It was a look Mr. Burr was to grow well used to in the next few
+months. Perhaps the unaccountable affection he was to feel for the boy
+in the course of them was born then and there.
+
+Neil emerged from the Judge's private office after a briefer talk than
+usual, and the Judge did not escort him to the door in his accustomed,
+friendly fashion. Mr. Burr did, and made him clumsy and unwonted
+confidences there.
+
+"The old man's not quite fit to-day," he said. "I ought to have told
+you. It's a poor time to get anything out of him. Been shut up there by
+himself doping out something. Won't say two words to me."
+
+"Then he must be in a bad way, Theodore," said the boy, with the ghost
+of his old, mocking smile, which Mr. Burr somehow did not find annoying
+at all.
+
+"Look here, Neil," he surprised himself by saying, "I like you. I always
+did. You deserve a square deal. You're too good for the Brady gang.
+You're too good for the town. If there was anything I could do for
+you----"
+
+"Maybe there is, Theodore," the boy turned in the corridor to say.
+"Cheer up. You'll have a chance to see. I'm coming to work for the
+Judge, I start in next week."
+
+"But the Judge turned you down." Mr. Burr's brain struggled with the
+problem, thinking out loud for the sake of greater clearness, but too
+evidently not achieving it. "The Judge likes you, too, but he couldn't
+take you in if he wanted to. He talked of it, but gave it up. He'd be
+afraid to. Everard----"
+
+"I start in next week," repeated Mr. Donovan.
+
+"But what did you say to him?" demanded Mr. Burr. "What did he say to
+you? How did you dare to ask him again?"
+
+"I didn't ask him. Don't worry, Theodore. I haven't been trying any
+black magic on the Judge. I don't know any. Maybe I'll learn some. I'm
+going to learn a good deal. I've got to. Nobody knows how much. Even the
+Judge don't know. I'm coming to work for the Judge, that's all, but I
+didn't ask him." Mr. Burr, listening incredulously, did not know that
+this was a faithful if condensed account of his talk with the Judge and
+more, the key to much that was to happen to this pale and determined
+young man, the secret of all his success. He gave it away openly, and
+without pride:
+
+"I just told him so."
+
+Neil started in the next week. If Mr. Burr watched his young associate
+somewhat jealously at first in the natural belief that a boy who had
+changed the course of his life in a five-minute interview would do
+something equally spectacular next, and if the Judge, who had said to
+him at last, "Well, it's my bad morning, son, and your good morning, so
+you get your way, but you're climbing on a sinking ship, and remember I
+told you so. And I'll tell you something else. It will be poor pickings
+here for all of us, and I'm sorry, but I'm the sorriest for you," was
+inclined to follow him furtively over the top of his spectacles with a
+look that held all the pathetic apology of age to youth in his kind,
+near-sighted eyes, this was only at first.
+
+Colonel Everard, returning a few weeks later from one of his sudden,
+unexplained absences from town, and making an early morning visit to his
+attorney, was admitted by a young man whom he recognized, but pretended
+not to.
+
+"Who are you?" he inquired, "the office boy?"
+
+"Just about that, sir," the young man admitted, as if he had no higher
+ambition, but the Judge, entering the room with more evidence of
+beginning the day with the strength that the day required, than he had
+been showing lately in his carriage and look, put a casual hand on the
+boy's shoulder, and kept it there.
+
+"The last time we discussed enlarging my office force, you didn't
+advocate it, Everard," he said rather formally.
+
+"So you aren't discussing it with me now?"
+
+"Do you think you'd better discuss it?"
+
+"Do you?"
+
+"I think you are in no position to discuss it. You've been recently
+furnished with much more important material to discuss. I haven't seen
+you since your garden party, have I?"
+
+"No." Both men seemed to have forgotten the boy's existence, but now the
+Colonel recalled it, and apparently without annoyance, and flashed a
+disarming smile at him, giving up gracefully, as he always did if he was
+forced to give up at all. "Well, you're right, Hugh. You're always
+right. Do as you please. But this boy's got a temper of his own
+and--quite a flow of speech. Runs in his family, evidently. Properly
+handled, these are assets, but----"
+
+"I'm sorry, sir," Neil found himself stammering. "I shouldn't have
+spoken to you as I did that day. I'm sorry."
+
+"Next time be sure of your facts." The voice was friendly, almost
+paternal, but it held an insidious challenge, too, and for one betraying
+moment all the native antagonism that was really there flashed in the
+Colonel's eyes. Few enemies of his had been permitted to see it so
+clearly. It was a triumph for Neil, if a barren one. "Be very sure."
+
+"I will, sir," said Neil deliberately, but very courteously. Then the
+Colonel disappeared into the private office with his arm about his
+trusted attorney's shoulders, and the young man for whose sake his
+attorney had openly defied him for the first time in years began to
+empty the office waste-baskets.
+
+The winter weeks in the Judge's office passed without even moments of
+repressed drama like this. There was little to prove that they were the
+most important weeks of his life to Neil. At first they were lonely
+weeks. Mr. Burr, unusually prompt, reached the office one crisp
+September morning in time to find him staring out of the window at a
+straggling procession passing on its way up the hill to the schoolhouse,
+hurrying on foot in excited groups, or crowded into equipages of varying
+sizes and degrees of elegance, properly theirs or pressed into service.
+
+"First day of school," said Neil, and did not need to explain further,
+even to Mr. Burr. From to-day on new faces would look out of the
+many-paned windows of the old, white-painted building. New voices would
+sing in the night on their way home from barge rides and dances. There
+were to be new occupants of the seats of the mighty; a new crowd would
+own the town. The door of the country of the young was shut in this
+boy's face from to-day, and that is always a hard day, but it was
+peculiarly hard in Green River, where the country of the young was the
+only unspoiled and safe place to live. And there were signs of a private
+and more personal hurt in the boy's faraway eyes.
+
+"What's that letter?" said Mr. Burr.
+
+"Seed catalogue."
+
+"Don't she write to you every day?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Is she too proud, or did she forget all about you? She'll have
+time to, away half the summer, and not coming home for vacations. She
+won't see you till next June."
+
+"If you mean Judith Randall," her late class-mate replied in a carefully
+expressionless voice, "why should she write to me, and why shouldn't she
+forget all about me?" There was a faint, reminiscent light in his eyes,
+as if he were not seriously threatened with the prospect, but it died
+away quickly, and his face grew very grave.
+
+"I'm a business man now, Theodore."
+
+"You are," said his newest friend, "and we couldn't keep house without
+you now. You're in a class by yourself."
+
+This was true. Neil did not take his big chance at life as other boys
+equally in need of it would have done. He did not lose his head. He
+showed no pride in it. Green River, soon seeing this, rewarded him in
+various ways, each significant in its own fashion. Nondescript groups
+round the stove in his uncle's little store ceased to look for signs
+that he felt superior to them, and welcomed him as before, restoring to
+him his privilege of listening to talk that was more important than it
+seemed, public sentiment uncoloured and without reserve, the real voice
+of the town. Mrs. Saxon, of the old aristocracy of the town, with
+inborn social prejudices stronger than any acquired from the Everards,
+broke all her rules and invited him to Sunday-night supper.
+
+"The boy's not spoiled," his old friend Luther Ward said to the Judge
+approvingly. "He knows his place."
+
+"That's the surest way to climb out of it," said Judge Saxon, advisedly,
+for it was the Judge who had the closest and most discerning eyes upon
+Neil Donovan's career. Listlessly at first, because he had looked on at
+too many uphill and losing fights against the world, but later with
+interest, forced from him almost against his will, he watched it grow.
+
+To a casual observer the boy would have seemed to be fitting himself not
+for an ornament to the legal profession, but for the office boy Colonel
+Everard had called him, but he would have seemed a willing office boy.
+He spent hours uncomplainingly looking up obscure points of law for some
+purpose nobody explained to him. He devoted long, sunny afternoons to
+looking up titles connected with some mortgage loan which nobody gave
+him the details of, and he seemed satisfied with his occupation, and
+equally satisfied to devote a morning to plodding through new-fallen
+snow delivering invitations to some party of Mrs. Saxon's.
+
+When he was actually studying, he lost himself in the Judge's
+out-of-date reference books, as if they contained some secret as vital
+as the elixir of youth, and might yield it at any moment. Mr. Burr, at
+first ridiculing pupil and course of instruction alike, and with some
+show of reason, began shamefacedly and afterward openly to give him what
+benefit he could from the more modern education which had been wasted
+upon him. Between his two teachers the boy arrived at conclusions of his
+own. Neil was studying law by the old method which evolved so many
+different men of letters and keen-witted lawyers, a method obsolete as
+the Judge's clothes, but Neil gave allegiance to it ardently, as if it
+had been invented for him.
+
+"What do you get out of this?" the Judge demanded, coming upon Neil late
+one afternoon, poring over the uninspired pages of Mr. Thayer by the
+fading light. "What do you hope to get?"
+
+"All there is in it," said the boy simply, and without oratorical
+intent.
+
+"Suppose you do pass your bar examinations. What then? What will you do
+with it?"
+
+"I'll wait and see then. I had to begin somewhere."
+
+"Why?" said the Judge, and as he asked the question, the answer to it,
+which he had once known so well and forgotten, looked at him in the
+boy's pale face and glowing eyes, the great answer not to be silenced,
+youth, and the wonderful, wasteful urge of youth. "Don't you know this
+town's sick?" he demanded abruptly. "It's dirty. You can't clean it up.
+Don't you ever try. Don't you stir things up. Don't you dig in too deep.
+I suppose you know the town's got no room for you?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I know."
+
+"Where do you expect to end?" the Judge began irritably, "in the
+poorhouse? You're so damn young," he grumbled. "It's a good thing I
+didn't know you when I was young. I'd have listened to you then."
+
+"You will now, sir," said the boy, and the Judge did not contradict him,
+but instead, under shy pretence of groping for the switch of the desk
+lamp, found the boy's hand and gripped it.
+
+"You're a good boy," he remarked irrelevantly. "Mind what I said, and
+don't dig in too deep."
+
+The Judge did not explain whose secrets he hoped to protect by this
+vague warning. Probably he could not have explained. It was one of those
+instinctive pronouncements which shape themselves in rare moments when
+two people are close and mean more than either of them know. Certainly
+if the key to any secret was to be found within the Judge's dingily
+decorated walls or in his battered safe, or learned from his partner,
+the boy had exceptional opportunities to unearth it. Theodore Burr's
+intimacy with Neil developed rapidly. He stuck to it obstinately, in
+spite of his wife, showing more independence about it than he had in
+years. The two had tramped and snow-shoed together through long winter
+hours of intimate talk and more intimate silence, and they found the
+first Mayflowers of the year together. Only the week before he had
+committed the crowning indiscretion of giving up a poker game at the
+Everards' to go shooting with Neil.
+
+The Judge, in the strenuous days of Colonel Everard's summer campaign,
+had no time to observe the growth of this intimacy or to think much
+about Neil, but he might have been interested in a snatch of talk in the
+Brady kitchen one evening, if he could have overheard it, more
+interested than Mrs. Donovan, who did not remember it long.
+
+Her son was an hour late for supper, but she was used to that, for now
+that he was on his feet the house revolved around him. She served him,
+and then sat watching him with her hands folded, and the new dignity
+that had come with his first bit of success straightening her tired
+shoulders, and the look of age and pain that had been growing there
+since Maggie disappeared widening her soft, deep eyes. He had dropped
+wearily into his chair, and he ate almost in silence, but she was used
+to that, too.
+
+Outside the short, June twilight was over, and a pattering summer rain
+had begun to fall. Neil's dark hair was damp with it and clung to his
+forehead in close curls. Once, passing his chair, she smoothed it with a
+hand that was work hardened but finely made and could touch him lightly
+and shyly still. Her son pulled her suddenly close, and hid his face
+against her.
+
+"What is it?" she asked, softly and not too soon as she stood still and
+held him. "What's wrong, then? Where have you been?"
+
+"Nothing's wrong. Nothing new. I went round to Theodore Burr's, but I
+left there at five. I didn't mean to be late home or make work. But I
+had a hunch to look in at Halloran's. I thought I'd find Charlie there.
+I did, and I had to get him home."
+
+"Taking your strength," said Mr. Brady's aunt, unfeelingly but
+truthfully, "a good-for-nothing----"
+
+"That's not the worst thing he does."
+
+"What is, then?"
+
+"Talking."
+
+"He don't mean anything by that."
+
+"Sometimes he does. Sometimes he tells you things that you never
+suspected and you don't believe him at first, but you find they're true;
+things that have been locked up in his addled brain so long that they're
+out of date, and you don't know how to profit by them or handle them,
+but they're true--all true."
+
+"Neil, you don't half know what you're saying. You're tired."
+
+Mrs. Donovan released herself abruptly to get the tea-pot from the
+stove. Her son, who had been talking in a low, monotonous voice, more to
+himself than her, watched her with dazed eyes that slowly cleared.
+
+"I guess you're right," he said. "I didn't mean to frighten you. Charlie
+was no more loose mouthed to-day than he always is. I got hold of
+nothing new, but I have hold of more than I can handle, and I'm tired
+and I'm scared, and there's only one of me."
+
+But Mrs. Donovan preferred her own interpretation of the situation, as
+most ladies would have. She made it tactfully, keeping her eyes away
+from him, busy with the tea-pot. "You're young, and it's June. Neil, the
+children walked round with the Sullivan girl to take home the wash to
+the Randalls'. They had some talk with Norah there. Judith will be home
+this week."
+
+She had mentioned the much-debated name in a voice which she kept
+indifferent, but she flashed a quick, apprehensive glance at him. She
+was quite unprepared for its effect upon him. He only laughed, and then
+his face sobered quickly, and his eyes grew lonely and tired again.
+
+"Judith," he said, "you think that's my trouble, mother. Well, I'm not
+so young as I was last June." Then he began with considerable relish to
+drink his tea.
+
+"You're contrary and close mouthed, but you're only a boy like all other
+boys," said Mrs. Donovan, sticking to her point, "and you're a good son
+to me."
+
+The boy who had made this rare and abortive attempt at confidences only
+the night before showed no need of repeating it as he gazed out of the
+Judge's window. He looked quite competent to bear all his own troubles
+alone, and a generous share of other people's, though somewhat saddened
+by them. Perhaps his mother's diagnosis of him was correct. He leaned
+his chin on his hands and stared out of the window like any dreaming
+boy, as if it was. But the winter that had passed so lightly over Green
+River had left traces of its own upon him. His profile had a clearer,
+more sharply outlined look. The lines at the corners of his mouth were
+firmer though they were no deeper, and the mouth was still a boy's
+mouth, red-lipped and lightly closed. But the dreaming eyes were a
+man's, dreaming still, but alert, and ready to banish dreams.
+
+The afternoon light was fading fast. It was not so easy now to read the
+fine print of Mr. Thayer's notes, and the boy made no further pretence
+of trying to. He let Mr. Thayer slip to the floor, and stretched himself
+in his chair with a sigh of relief. The sounds of talk in the Judge's
+room had grown fainter and more intermittent and finally ceased. The
+Judge, still deep in conference with them, had left with his guests by
+the private door. The boy was alone in the office.
+
+Gradually, as he sat there, the bright pageant of the busy little street
+had dimmed. It made a softer and mellower picture, a blend of delicate
+colours in the slant mellow light, and it was not so busy now. There
+were fewer passers-by, and they hurried and did not loiter past. It was
+almost supper-time. Willard Nash, not joy riding now, but dispatched
+reluctantly alone on some emergency errand, flashed by in his car, and
+disappeared up Main Street.
+
+Beyond the double row of shops the upper section of the street was
+empty. The maples, in full leaf now and delicately green, shadowed the
+upward slant of smooth road alluringly. Touched with golden afternoon
+light, and half hidden by the spreading green, the old, solidly built
+houses planted so heavily in the midst of their well-kept lawns had new
+and unguessed possibilities. Any one of them just then might have
+sheltered a fairy princess. The one that did was just within range of
+the boy's grave, patient eyes, a protruding porch, disproportionately
+enlarged and ugly, a sweep of vividly green lawn stripped bare of the
+graceful, dishevelled growth of lilac and syringa bushes that had graced
+it before Mrs. Randall's day.
+
+Not from that house, but from somewhere beyond it, a car flashed into
+view and cut smoothly and quickly down through the street, almost
+deserted now. The boy followed it idly with his eyes. The low-built,
+graceful lines of it held them. It approached, and slowed down directly
+under the windows, and the boy leaned forward and looked.
+
+It was stopping there. It was one of the Everard cars, as the trim lines
+and perfection of detail would have shown without the English
+chauffeur's familiar, supercilious face. The car had only one occupant,
+a slender young person in white. She slipped quickly out, and
+disappeared into the dingy entrance hall below.
+
+She had not seen the boy at the window. He stood still now in his
+corner, and waited. The tap of her feet was light even on the old
+creaking stairs, but he heard. She knocked once and a second time, and
+then threw open the door impatiently, saw who was there, and stopped
+just inside the door, and looked at him.
+
+Her white dress and big, beflowered hat looked as cool and as new as
+June itself. They did not make the dingy room look dingier, they made
+you forget it was dingy. Her soft, befrilled skirts fluffed and flared
+in the brave and bewildering mode of the moment. Skirts, small shoes
+that were built to dance, not to walk, the futuristic blend of flowers
+in her hat, and the girdle, unrelentingly high and futuristic of colour,
+too, that gave her waist an unbelievably slender look, were all in the
+dainty and sophisticated taste of a sophisticated young lady, and under
+the elaborate hat there was a sophisticated young face. It looked
+smaller and more faintly pink. The small chin was more prominent. But
+she still had the wide, reproachful eyes of a child. They regarded the
+boy unwinkingly. One hand went behind her, found the knob of the door,
+and closed it mechanically, but the eyes did not leave his face.
+
+He stepped uncertainly forward, and stopped.
+
+"Well, Judith," he said, in a voice that held all the authority Judge
+Saxon's assistant had acquired in the long year of his service and more,
+"Well?" and then, in a voice that held no authority at all, but was
+suddenly husky and small: "Oh, Judith, won't you speak to me?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN
+
+
+"Judith," Neil said.
+
+Neil's visitor flashed a quick glance round the dim office, empty except
+for the lean young figure that confronted her. It was a hunted glance,
+as if she really meant to turn without speaking and pick up her
+beruffled skirts, and run away down the dusty stairs, but she did not
+run away. Suddenly quite herself, recovering by tapping some emergency
+reserve of strength as only ladies can, but as most of them can, even
+the most amateurish and beruffled of ladies, she crossed the room to
+him.
+
+She came deliberately, with an impressive flutter of hidden silk. She
+was smiling a faint half-smile, sweet but indefinably teasing, and
+holding out a daintily gloved hand. It touched Neil's lightly and
+impersonally, not like a girl's warm hand at all, but like the hand of a
+society forever beyond his reach, held out patronizingly to this boy
+beyond its pale, only to emphasize the distance between them.
+
+"How do you do?" she murmured, formally but sweetly.
+
+"How do you do?" the boy stammered. "Judith, oh, Judith, I----"
+
+He broke off, staring helplessly into her eyes. They were dark and
+accusing and grave, and a heartache shadowed the depths of them, the
+lonely and infinite heartache of youth, when you cannot measure your
+pain or argue it away, but must suffer and suffer instead. But the boy
+was too miserable just then to read it there.
+
+"Judith," he began, "don't you care any more? Why wouldn't you read my
+letters? Why wouldn't you let me explain? Won't you let me now? I can,
+Judith."
+
+Still smiling, not taking the trouble to interrupt him, she waited for
+him to finish, and as she waited and smiled, he had suddenly nothing
+more to say. Judith was so slender and white and still as she stood
+there. All the outraged dignity of an offended schoolgirl was helping to
+make this overwhelming little effect of hers, and every trick of poise
+and carriage that she had acquired in a year, and something else,
+something that shamed and silenced the boy as no tricks could have done,
+and made her pathetic little show of injured dignity real. A woman's shy
+soul was reaching out for every defence it had to protect itself; a
+woman's new-born, bewildered soul looked out of Judith's beautiful,
+grieved eyes.
+
+It was very still in the office. Outside an automobile horn sounded
+aggressively, once and again, and Judith gave the boy an amused,
+apologetic glance.
+
+"Parks is in a hurry," she said. "He ought not to do that. The Colonel
+wouldn't like it. But I won't keep him waiting. I'm going out to the
+Camp for supper. Father and mother are there already. I stopped for the
+Judge, but he doesn't seem to be here. He is walking out to the Camp, I
+suppose. I'm--glad to have seen you." Her voice choked perilously over
+this irreproachable sentiment, then steadied and modulated itself
+according to the instructions of the highly accredited elocution teacher
+of which she had enjoyed the benefit for a year. "Good-night."
+
+Again she put out her cool little hand, but this time the boy's hand
+closed on it tight.
+
+"Judith," he began, his words coming fast, the contact seeming to
+release all that had been storing itself up in his lonely heart for a
+year. Once released, it came tumbling out incoherently, with the lilting
+brogue of the ragged little boy that he used to be singing through it,
+and the breathless catch in his voice that is the supremest eloquence
+for the kind of words that he had to say. But Judith gave no sign of
+being moved by it, and while she listened, a hard look, too unrelenting
+for any eloquence to reach, was growing in her eyes.
+
+"Judith, you're so sweet, so sweet; sweeter than you were last
+year--sweeter than you ever were before. I didn't know anybody could be
+sweeter, even you. I was so lonely. I wanted you so, and now you've
+come. Everything will be all right, now you've come. And you came
+straight here. You knew I was here, and you came because you knew. You
+came straight to me."
+
+"I came for the Judge," she corrected him gravely.
+
+"But you knew I was here."
+
+"I knew you were working for the Judge, but I didn't think you'd be here
+so late in the afternoon. I didn't come to see you. I didn't want to.
+Why should I? But I'm glad you are doing so well. Good-night, Neil."
+
+"Good-night," he muttered mechanically, checked once more in spite of
+himself.
+
+But as he spoke, he felt her hands, both in his now, and held tight,
+tremble and try softly at first, and then in sudden panic, to pull
+themselves away. Her voice, that had been so grave and cool, with no
+echo of the excitement that was in his, failed her now, though she kept
+her wide-open eyes bravely upon him. She was afraid of him, this young
+lady who was making such elaborate attempts to hide it, this young lady
+not of his world, and so anxious to prove it to him, this calm stranger
+with Judith's eyes. She was very much afraid, and she could not hide it
+any longer.
+
+"Let me go," she tried to say.
+
+"Judith," he dropped her hands obediently, but his arms reached out for
+her and caught her and held her close, "you didn't come for the Judge.
+You came to see me."
+
+"No. No."
+
+Her face was hidden against his shoulder. Her voice came muffled and
+soft. Neil paid no further attention to it. "No," it insisted faintly.
+"Let me go." Then it insisted no more, and the boy laughed a soft,
+triumphant little laugh.
+
+"You did come to see me, and you love me. You love me and I love you.
+You were angry, of course. Of course you sent back my letters. But
+you're going to listen to me now. You're going to let me explain. I
+couldn't that night. I couldn't talk any more. I didn't dare. I had to
+keep hold of myself. I had to get you home. And I did, dear. I turned
+round and took you home, and I got you home--safe. You're going to
+listen? And not be angry any more? You won't, will you? You
+won't--dear?"
+
+Her face was still out of sight, and her white figure was motionless in
+his arms. She did not relax there, but she did not struggle. She looked
+very slender and helpless so. Her futuristic hat had slipped from its
+daring and effective adjustment, and fallen to the Judge's dusty floor,
+where it lay unregarded. The silvery blond head against his shoulder was
+changed like the rest of her, a mass of delicately adjusted puffs and
+curls, but in the fast-fading light he saw only the soft, pale colour of
+her hair and the tender curve of her throat. He kissed it reverently and
+lightly, once only, and then his arms let her go.
+
+"You're so sweet," he whispered; "too sweet for me. But you're mine,
+aren't you? Tell me you are. And you forgive me for--everything? Tell
+me, Judith."
+
+She seemed in no hurry to tell him. She faced him silently, her white
+dress whiter than ever in the fading light, and her face big eyed and
+expressionless. He waited reverently for her answer, and quite
+confidently, picking up the elaborate hat mechanically, and then
+smoothing the ribbons tenderly, and pulling at the flowers, as he
+realized what he held.
+
+"Poor little hat," he said softly, with the brogue coaxing insinuatingly
+in his voice. "Poor little girl. I didn't mean to frighten you. And I
+didn't mean to--that night.... Judith!"
+
+It was undoubtedly Judith who confronted him, and no strange lady now.
+It was as if she had been waiting for some cue from him, and heard it,
+and sprung into life again, not the strange lady, not even the girl of
+the year before, but a long-ago Judith, the child who had come to his
+rescue on a forgotten May night, the child of the moonlit woods, with
+her shrill voice and flashing eyes. She was that Judith again, but grown
+to a woman, and now she was not his ally, but his enemy. She snatched
+the beflowered hat away, and swung it upon her head with the same
+reckless hand that had swept the lantern to the ground in her childish
+defence of him. Her eyes defied him.
+
+"That night," she stormed, "that night. Don't you ever speak of that
+night to me again. I never want to hear you speak again. I never want to
+see you again. I'll never forgive you as long as I live. I hate you!"
+
+"Judith, listen to me," begged the boy. "Listen. You must."
+
+But the girl who swept past him and turned to confront him at the door
+was past listening to him. Words that she hardly heard herself, and
+would not remember, came to her, and she flung them at him in a
+breathless little burst of speech that hurt and was meant to hurt. The
+boy took it silently, not trying to interrupt, slow colour reddening his
+cheeks, his eyes growing angry then sullen. The words that Judith used
+hardly mattered. They were futile and childish words, but because of the
+blaze of anger behind them, that had been gathering long and would go on
+after they were forgotten, they were splendid, too.
+
+"I hate you! I don't belong to you. I don't belong to anybody. I'm not
+like anybody else. Nobody cares what I do, and I don't care. I don't
+care. Nobody ever takes care of me or knows when I need it. Well, I can
+take care of myself. I'm going to now. I never want to belong to
+anybody. If I did, it wouldn't be you."
+
+"Judith, stop! You'll be sorry for this."
+
+"If I am, it's no business of yours. It's nobody's business but mine."
+
+"You'll be sorry," the boy muttered again, and this time the girl did
+not contradict him or answer. Her shrill little burst of defiance was
+over, and with it the sullen resentment that had crimsoned the boy's
+face as he listened began to die away. He was rebuffed and thrown back
+upon himself. His heart would not open so easily again. It would be a
+long time before it opened at all. But he did not resent this. He only
+looked baffled and puzzled and miserable, and the girl staring mutely at
+him from the doorway with big, starved eyes, looked miserable, too. She
+would be angry again. All the hurt pride and anger that had been
+gathering in her heart for a year was not to be relieved by an
+unrehearsed burst of speech. It had been sleeping in her heart. It was
+all awake now, and she would be angrier with the boy and the world than
+ever before, angrier and more reckless. But just now her anger was
+blotted out and she was only miserable. In the gloom of the office there
+was something curiously alike about the two tragic young faces.
+
+The two were alone together there, but they had never been farther
+apart. There was a whole world between them, a lonely world, where
+people all speak different languages, and understand each other only by
+a miracle, and most of them are so used to being alone that they forget
+they once had a moment of first realizing it. But when it was upon them,
+it was a bitter moment. These two young creatures were both living
+through it now. They looked at each other blankly, all antagonism gone.
+
+"You won't listen?" said the boy wonderingly, admitting defeat. "You
+won't forgive me?"
+
+"No," said Judith pitifully. "I can't."
+
+Neil looked at her forlornly, but did not contest this. He came meekly
+forward, not trying to touch her again, and opened the door for her.
+
+"Well, good-night," he said. "Good-night, dear."
+
+"Good-bye," Judith said. "Good-bye, Neil."
+
+Then, jerking her flaunting hat into adjustment with trembling fingers,
+and shaking out her befrilled skirts with a poor little imitation of her
+earlier airs and graces, she slipped out into the corridor, groped for
+the dusty stair rail, and clutched at it with a new disregard for her
+immaculate whiteness, and disappeared down the stairs.
+
+In the street below the last of the afternoon light still lingered,
+reflected from the polished windows of the bank building, and faintly
+illuminating the half-deserted square, but the sun was just going down
+behind the court-house roof, a big, crimson ball of vanishing light.
+Judith, appearing below in the doorway, stood regarding it deliberately
+for a minute, ignoring the chauffeur's discreet manifestations of
+impatience, and then made herself comfortable deliberately in the
+Colonel's car.
+
+She sat there proudly erect, a dainty, aloof little lady. She seemed to
+have recovered her high estate upon entering it, and become a princess
+beyond Neil's reach once more. Watching her gravely from the Judge's
+window, he could not see the angry tears in her eyes or the reckless
+light in them.
+
+Little preliminary pants and puffs came from the car, discreetly
+impatient, as if they voiced all the feelings that the correct Parks
+repressed. He relieved them with one blatant flourish of sound from the
+horn, and swung the car grandly across the square, round the corner, and
+out of sight. Judith was gone, and she had not once looked up at the boy
+in the window.
+
+She had not even seen another cavalier, who dashed out of a shop and
+tried to intercept and speak to her, but was just too late; Mr. Willard
+Nash, thrilled by his first sight of her, ready to return to his old
+allegiance at a word, and advertising the fact in every line of his
+forlorn fat figure as he stood alone on the sidewalk gazing wistfully
+after the vanished car.
+
+The boy at the window did not waste his time in this way. Judith was
+gone, and with her the spell that had held him mute and helpless, and he
+was a man of affairs once more. He was not a very cheerful man of
+affairs to-night. He was not singing or whistling to himself, as he
+usually did, but he moved competently enough about the room, entering
+the Judge's private office with its smell of stale tobacco smoke and
+group of chairs, so confidentially close that they looked capable of
+carrying on the conference their late occupants had begun without help
+from them. He rearranged this room, giving just the straightening
+touches to the jumble of papers on the desk that the Judge permitted,
+and no more, and putting the outer office in order, too.
+
+By his own desk he paused, fingering Mr. Thayer's thumbed pages
+absently. He had no attention to spare for them just then, or for the
+graver questions that had absorbed him just before Judith came. They
+would soon claim him again. They awaited him now, but out in the
+gathering dark that he watched from the darkening office something else
+waited, too.
+
+His heart ached with it, but it beat harder and stronger for it, and new
+strength to meet old issues came pulsing from it, as if he were awake
+again after a year of sleep. He was grieved and miserable, but he was
+awake. For his mother was right: he was only a boy like other boys; he
+was young and it was June, and whether she was kind or unkind, Judith
+Randall was back in Green River.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Judith, whirled along the fast-darkening road between close-growing
+pines, dulling from green to black, and birches, silver against them,
+looked for the welcoming lights of Camp Everard through a mist of angry
+tears.
+
+She shed them decorously, even under cover of the dark; she was still a
+dainty and proud little lady, with nothing about her to advertise
+conspicuously that she was crying, or why. But her little gloved hands
+were closing and unclosing themselves, her lips were trembling in spite
+of her, and there was a hunted look in her eyes as she turned them
+toward the dark woods, as if her quarrel with Neil were not her only
+trouble. The tears that she controlled so gallantly were a protest
+against a world only half understood and full of enemies whose alien
+presence she was just beginning to feel.
+
+But Neil, as she had just seen him, was enough to occupy the mind of
+such a young lady, or a much older one. The look in his eyes as he stood
+holding open the Judge's door for her was a highly irritating one for
+any lady to meet. He was older and wiser than she was, no matter what
+she could say or do to hurt him; he was stronger than she was, and
+patiently waiting to prove it to her; that was what Neil's eyes were
+saying.
+
+They said it first when he left her at her own door without a good-night
+on that strange May night a year ago; when she stood looking up at him
+changed and alien and silent, with the May moon behind him, that had
+brought her bad fortune instead of good, still dim and alluring with
+false promises above the shadowy elms in the little street, and they
+looked down at her just so--Neil's grave, unforgettable, conquering
+eyes. They were eyes that followed you to-night, when you tried to
+forget them and look at the dark woods and fields; eyes that looked at
+you still when you closed your own.
+
+But Judith would not look at them. The eyes were lying to her. Neil was
+not really wise or kind. He was cruel. He had hurt her and slighted her,
+and she was through with him.
+
+"Parks, can't you go faster?" she said suddenly, in her clear little
+voice. "It's so late, and I'm hungry and cold."
+
+"It's bad going through here, Miss," the chauffeur said.
+
+They were turning into a narrow mile or so of road that sloped gradually
+down through a series of arbitrary curves and bends to the lake and the
+camp, a changed and elaborate structure now, overweighted with verandas
+and uncompromisingly lit with new electric lights. But the road was one
+of the things that the Colonel did not improve when he changed the
+public camp into a private one. It was unchanged and unspoiled, a
+mysterious wood road still, alluring now in the gloom.
+
+Judith's own people were waiting for her there at the end of that road.
+They were all the people she had. Willard and schooltime and playtime
+were more than a year behind her; they were behind her forever. She
+could never go back to them. She had never really been part of them. She
+had forced herself into a place there, but she had lost it now, and it
+could never be hers again.
+
+These were her people. They were strange to her still, but she had grown
+up breathing the feverish air that they breathed, and with little
+whispers of hidden scandal about her. Judith was alone between two
+worlds: one was closed to her, and she was before the door of another,
+where she did not know her way. She was really alone, as she had told
+Neil, more alone than she knew; a lonely and tragic figure, white and
+small in the corner of the big car.
+
+But she was not crying now. She dabbed expertly at her eyes with an
+overscented scrap of handkerchief and sat up, looking eagerly down the
+dark road. She could catch far echoes of a song through the still night
+air, faint echoes only, but it was a song that she knew, a gay little
+song, and it came from a place where people were always kind and gay. It
+was like a hand stretched out to her through the dark, a warm hand, to
+beckon her nearer, and then draw her close. She leaned forward and
+listened and looked.
+
+There was the camp, the first glimpse of it, though soon a dip of the
+road would hide it again. It was an enchanting glimpse, a far,
+low-lying flicker of light. And there, just by the big, upstanding
+boulder where the road turned abruptly, she saw something else. She saw
+it before Parks did, as if she had been watching for it. It was a man's
+figure that started forward, came to the edge of the road, and waited.
+The man looked more than his slender height in the shadow, but his
+light, quick walk was unmistakable. It was Colonel Everard.
+
+"Stop, Parks," Judith said, with new authority in her voice.
+
+He stood waiting for her silently, without any greeting at all, and she
+slipped her hand into his and stepped out and stood beside him.
+
+"Go on," he said to the chauffeur. "It's too rough here for the car.
+It's easier on foot. Miss Randall will walk with me."
+
+The car, skilfully manipulated along the steep, zigzag road, but a
+clumsy thing at best here in the woods, and an artificial and ugly
+thing, lumbered away, breaking through outreaching branches. Judith
+watched it out of sight. Then and not till then she turned to her host.
+
+"Aren't you going to speak to me?" the great man inquired respectfully,
+as if her intentions deserved the most serious consideration.
+
+"Yes," said Judith serenely, unflattered by it.
+
+"What are you going to say?"
+
+"What do you want me to say?"
+
+"I want you to shake hands with me."
+
+A hand touched his lightly. It drew quickly away, but it was a confiding
+little hand.
+
+"You don't seem surprised to see me."
+
+"I'm not," said Judith.
+
+"But you're glad to see me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It's stuffy inside, and they've got a fire in the billiard room and
+won't leave it. I wanted----"
+
+Judith laughed and let him draw her hand through his arm as they began
+to grope their way down the road. "You wanted to meet me."
+
+She made the correction triumphantly and confidently, as she would have
+made it to Willard. All this was coquetry, as she and Willard understood
+it, and it was an old game to her, and a childish game, but there was
+something strangely exciting about the fact that the Colonel understood
+it, too, and condescended to play at it. It was more exciting than usual
+to-night.
+
+"Why should I want to meet you?" he said.
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Why weren't you downstairs last night when I came to see your father?"
+
+"I was tired."
+
+"You weren't running away from me?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And you won't ever run away from me?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You're afraid of me."
+
+"Am I?"
+
+"Aren't you?"
+
+"I don't know," said Judith. "Look, there's the moon."
+
+It was low above the trees, rising solemn and round and slow. It looked
+reproachful and grave, like Neil's eyes. It was looking straight at
+Judith. Judith turned her eyes sternly away. What was the Colonel
+saying? Something that did not sound like Willard at all, or like the
+Colonel, either. Nobody had ever spoken to her in just that voice
+before. It was a choked, queer voice. But Judith smiled up at him and
+listened, tightening the clasp of her hand on his arm.
+
+"Don't be afraid of me. Don't ever be afraid.... You're so sweet
+to-night."
+
+"No, I won't," said Judith defiantly, straight to the round, accusing
+moon. "I won't be afraid."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
+
+
+"I don't like the look of you," said Mrs. Donovan.
+
+"Then you're hard to please." Neil turned at the foot of the steps to
+say, trying to smile as he said it. "Harder than I am. I do like the
+look of you."
+
+The Donovans, mother and son, were both quite sufficiently attractive to
+the eye at that moment. This was the second day of September, and also
+the second day of the county fair in Madison, five miles away--the big
+day of the fair, and Neil's uncle had been up at dawn to escort the
+younger Bradys there in a borrowed rig, and in the company of at least
+half Green River in equipages of varied style and state of repair. Neil
+had slept late, breakfasted sketchily, and dined elaborately alone with
+his mother. Now the long, still, sunny afternoon was half over, and she
+stood in the kitchen door, watching him start for town.
+
+The kitchen, newly painted this year, looked empty and unnaturally neat
+behind her, but friendly and lived in, too, with the old, creaking
+rocker pulled to an inviting angle at the window overlooking the marsh,
+and a sofa under the other window, its worn upholstery covered freshly
+with turkey-red; one splash of clear colour, sketched in boldly, just in
+the corner where it satisfied the eye. Her neighbours did not take this
+humble fabric seriously for decorative purposes; indeed, they would not
+have permitted a sofa in the kitchen at all, but her neighbours were not
+of her gracious race. They could not wear a plain and necessary white
+apron like the completing touch to a correct toilette assumed
+deliberately. Mrs. Donovan could, and she did to-day. Also her brown
+hair, dulled to a softer, more indefinite brown by its sprinkling of
+white, rippled softly about her low forehead, and her dress was faded to
+a tender, vague blue like the blue of her eyes. Her eyes, almost on a
+level with Neil's as she stood on the step above him, had the charm that
+was peculiarly their own to-day, cloudy as they were with the faraway
+look of a race that believes in fairies, but warm and human, too, with
+an intimate mother look of concern for Neil.
+
+Neil met it steadily, not a sullen boy as he would have been under that
+questioning a year ago, not resenting it at all, but keeping his secrets
+deliberately. It had always been hard for her to make him answer
+questions. It was not even easy for her to ask them now.
+
+"You don't sleep," she began.
+
+"Neither do you, if you've been catching me at it," reasoned her son
+correctly.
+
+"You work too hard." She had made an accusation that he could not deny,
+so he only smiled his quick, flashing smile. "You won't even take a day
+to yourself."
+
+"I'll have the office and most of the town to myself this afternoon.
+I'll have to go. I've got something special to look into."
+
+"Where's Charlie?" she demanded at once.
+
+"Oh, he's not troubling me to-day. He's safe at Madison with his new
+mare. He'll break loose there, then come home and repent and stay
+straight for weeks and make no trouble for me. He's due to break loose.
+He's been good too long--too good to be true. He was in fine form last
+night." Mr. Charlie Brady's cousin grinned reminiscently.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"He gave me quite a little side talk on good form in dress and diction.
+Charlie claims I won't make an orator, and he don't like my taste in
+ties."
+
+"Who does he think he is?" flashed Mr. Brady's aunt indignantly.
+
+"Who do you think he is?" her son inquired unexpectedly. "For whatever
+you think, that's me. I'm no better than Charlie."
+
+"Charlie?" Mrs. Donovan gasped, and then plunged into an indignant
+defence of her son, not pausing to take breath.
+
+"You?" she began. "You that's planted firm on the ladder and right-hand
+to the Judge already, and him getting older every day, and Theodore Burr
+just kept on in the office because Everard's after Burr's wife. So he
+is, and the town knows it, and Theodore'll wake up to it soon. A fine
+partner Theodore is for the Judge, poor boy, but he's a good boy, too,
+though none too strong in the head; Lil Burr is a good girl, too, and
+she'd make a good wife to Theodore if she could be left to herself.
+She'd make it up with Theodore, as many a girl has done that's got more
+for her husband to forgive than Lil.
+
+"Poor Lil. Her head's high above me now, but the time was she cried on
+my shoulder; crying for Charlie, she was, before ever Charlie took up
+with Maggie and Lil with Theodore; when the four of them were all young
+together, and the one as good as the other. Young they were, and the
+hearts of them young--wild, doubtful hearts. Many's the time Lil would
+come to me then, here in this same kitchen, and go down on her knees,
+her that was tall and a fine figure of a girl, and cling onto me, crying
+her heart out; crying she was for all the world like--like----"
+
+Mrs. Donovan checked herself abruptly with shrewd eyes upon her son.
+
+"Like young things do cry, and tell you their troubles in tears, not
+words." She ended somewhat vaguely, and came quickly back to her main
+subject again.
+
+"You that can walk into the big rally next week and sit with the men
+that count, and whisper and talk to them, and hold your head high, with
+nothing against you, and will be sitting up on the platform soon, with
+the best of them, and be mayor yet, like Everard's going to be, or
+governor, maybe--you to compare yourself with Charlie, if he is my
+half-sister's own son. He's a drunken good-for-nothing. He's got no
+spirit in him if he'll stay here at all, where he's ashamed himself and
+make a show of himself. How is it he's able to stay? Where does he get
+the money he spends? This town don't pay it to him. Who does?"
+
+"What put that into your head?" her son asked sharply.
+
+"There's talk enough of it, and there'll be more. The whole town will be
+asking soon."
+
+"The town asks a lot of questions it don't dare hear the answers to,"
+said Neil softly, unregarded. His mother returned to her grievance:
+
+"You to be likening yourself to Charlie."
+
+"When Charlie was twenty-five," Neil began slowly, "he was where I will
+be then, or better. The Judge was a friend to him, too, and the Judge
+was a better friend then to have. Charlie was setting up for himself,
+well thought of. My own father trusted him. When I was a boy and not
+grown, Charlie was a son to him, and more. He was a better spoken lawyer
+than I'll ever make, quick and smooth with his tongue, and he was fine
+appearing, and put up a better front than I do. I've gone part of the
+road that Charlie went. What will stop me from going the whole road?
+What's beat Charlie is strong enough to beat me.... Don't look so
+scared, mother. I don't want to scare you. I only want you to be fair to
+Charlie."
+
+"His heart's broke," she conceded, melting. "He's nothing with Maggie
+gone."
+
+"His heart's broke, but that's not what beat him," her son stated with
+authority. "He was beat before."
+
+"When?"
+
+"He was beat," Neil stated deliberately, "when Everard moved to Green
+River."
+
+This was a sweeping statement, but Neil did not qualify it. He dropped
+the subject and stood silent, turning absent eyes upon the green expanse
+of marshy field that had been the starting-place of all his dreams when
+he was a dream-struck, gazing boy. His mother's eyes followed his,
+growing cloudier and soft as if even now she could read them there.
+
+"Rests your eyes," Neil said, after a minute; "looks pretty, too, in the
+sun. It's a pretty green. We'll drain it, perhaps, by the time I'm mayor
+or governor. It might pay. I'll be going now."
+
+"Neil, when did you see her last?" asked his mother suddenly.
+
+"See who?" he muttered, and then flushed, and straightened himself, and
+met her eyes bravely.
+
+"I saw Judith yesterday," he said, "on Main Street, and--she cut me."
+
+"Did she walk past you?"
+
+"No, she wouldn't do that. She pretended not to see me, but she saw me,
+all right. She passed me in an automobile."
+
+"Whose?"
+
+"One of Everard's."
+
+"Was he with her?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Neil," his mother began a little breathlessly, "I want to tell you
+something. I've said hard things to you, and they weren't deserved. I
+know it now, and I'm sorry. I want to take them all back. I've said hard
+things about Judith Randall."
+
+She hurried on, afraid of being stopped, but he made no move to stop
+her. He listened courteously, his face not changing.
+
+"Neil, she's not what I thought. There's no harm in her. There's no
+pride in her. She's just lonesome. She's just a young, young girl. She's
+sweet-spoken and sweet-faced. Neil, from all I hear----"
+
+"You didn't hear all this direct from--Judith, then?"
+
+"Judith?" she hesitated, flashing a questioning glance at him. "Is it
+likely? How would I get the chance? But from all I hear, she's too good
+for Everard and the like. And she's not safe with them. She needs----"
+
+"What?" interrupted her son gravely, with the air of seeking information
+on a subject quite strange to him and rather distasteful. But she tried
+to go on.
+
+"--Judith needs--any one that's fond of her, any one that she's fond of,
+to be good to her now. I've seen her, and it's in the eyes of her. No
+man ever knows just what a woman is grieving for, but that's all one if
+he'll comfort her when she's grieving. She needs----"
+
+Neil's eyes were expressionless. She sighed and put her two hands on his
+shoulders. "Have it your own way," she said. "I'll say no more."
+
+Neil caught at one of the hands on his shoulders and kissed it.
+
+"For one thing," he said, "Judith or any girl needs a mother with a
+heart in her--like I've got, but you're the one in the world. I'm
+going."
+
+But he did not go at once. Standing beside her, suddenly awkward and
+shy, he first gave her the confidence that she could not force from him,
+all in one generous breathless burst of words.
+
+"Mother, Charlie's not the only one with his heart broke. But
+heart-break isn't the worst thing I've got to bear. There's something
+else. I can't tell you. I'd rather bear it alone. I've got to.
+Good-bye."
+
+Then he left her standing still in the door, shading her cloudy blue
+eyes with one small hand and looking after him. He swung into the dusty
+road and, keeping his head high and his eyes straight ahead, undazzled
+by the sharp sunlight of mid-afternoon on the long stretch of unshaded
+way, passed out of sight toward Green River.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
+
+
+Neil turned into Post-office Square just on the stroke of four. The
+square was as empty and strange to the eye as his mother's kitchen,
+though this was the rush hour of the day in that business centre upon
+ordinary days, when the fair had not emptied the town.
+
+A solitary Ford of prehistoric make stood before the post-office, and
+even that was just cranking up. It lurched dispiritedly off, leaving a
+cloud of dust behind. A dejected-looking group of children hung about
+the door of the ice-cream parlour, and appeared to lack the initiative
+to enter in. Half the shops were shut. In the big show-window of the
+central section of Ward's Emporium Luther Ward, usually on parade and
+magnificently in charge of his shop and his staff of employees at this
+time of day, stood in his shirt sleeves, embracing an abnormally slender
+lady in a mauve velveteen tailored suit.
+
+At first glance he seemed to be instructing her in the latest dance
+steps, but on a nearer view the visible part of her proved to be wax,
+and the suit was ticketed nineteen-fifty. He jerked her into place,
+turned and saw Neil, and hailed him cheerfully, waving him round to the
+main entrance door, where he joined him, still wiping his brow.
+
+"If you want a thing well done, do it yourself," he said, explaining his
+late exertions with the air of believing the explanation was original
+with him and did credit to his intellect. "What are you here for,
+brother? Isn't Madison good enough for you?"
+
+"No," Neil said. "Not with the big race called off."
+
+"Called off? How's that?"
+
+"Because you weren't there, Luther."
+
+Mr. Ward gave a gratified laugh at this graceful compliment, and
+descended to facts.
+
+"I'm too old for horse racing. It's my boy's turn. He went over with
+Willard Nash's crowd to-day. Why didn't you?" Mr. Ward demanded
+severely.
+
+"Oh, Willard asked me all right. He's quite strong for me now." Mr. Ward
+had doubted this, being on the watch for slights to Neil and resenting
+them, though he never made an effort to prevent them. This was the usual
+attitude of Neil's more influential friends.
+
+"Willard's a shrimp," said Mr. Ward gruffly. "And I like you," he added
+in a burst of frankness. "I always did like you, Neil. You've pulled
+yourself up by your boot-straps, and I hope you hang on to them tight.
+There's nobody better pleased than I am. Oh, I got a rig and sent all
+the help from the store over to the fair to-day," he added, turning
+quickly to impersonal subjects.
+
+"You always do treat them right."
+
+"Well, this wasn't my idea. I got it from the Colonel." A look of
+harmless but plainly evident pride came into Mr. Ward's open and ruddy
+countenance as he mentioned the great man's name. It was only the week
+before that he had received his first dinner invitation from the
+Everards. It came at the eleventh hour and did not include his wife, but
+he was dazzled by it still. "You know what he's doing? Closing his
+house, practically, for all three days of the fair, and sending all the
+help on the place over there--two touring cars full. It's a fine thing
+for them. They're high-class help and don't have it any too interesting
+down here. Anybody that says he's not democratic don't know the Colonel.
+This town don't half know him yet."
+
+"You're right," Neil put in softly.
+
+"Democratic," declaimed Mr. Ward, "and public spirited. Look at the
+fountain he's going to put up in the square. Look at the old Grant house
+going to be fitted up for a library. Look at him running for mayor, when
+he's been turning down chances at bigger offices for years--willing to
+stay here and serve for the good of the town. There's talk against him
+more than ever this year. I know that. It amounts to an indignation
+meeting when the boys get together at Halloran's. Well, failures hate a
+successful man, and their talk don't count. It will die down. But I hate
+to hear of it. For the Colonel's put this town on the map. He's not
+perfect, but who is? And suppose he does have a good time his own way?
+We've got a right to--all of us. It's a free country."
+
+Mr. Ward delivered this last sentiment with touching faith in its force
+and freshness, and waved a plump hand of invitation toward the little
+private office back of the main section of his store, where he had
+developed his unfailing eloquence of speech upon subjects of public
+interest, and liked best to practise it. But Neil, himself listened to
+with growing deference by the groups that forgathered there, was not to
+be lured to that sanctum to-day. Speaking hastily and vaguely of work to
+be done, he escaped from his good friend and across the street to Judge
+Saxon's office.
+
+He climbed the stairs heavily, and did not linger before the door to
+picture the sign changed to "Saxon, Burr, and Donovan," as he had done
+more times than he cared to admit. The office was not a thing to be
+proud of as a step up in life for him to-day; it was a place to be alone
+in, as men feel alone and safe in the place that is their own because
+they have worked there.
+
+Showing this in every move, Neil locked the door, threw off his cap, and
+dropped into the broken-springed chair at the desk that was nominally
+Theodore Burr's, but really his. He groped mechanically for the handle
+of the drawer where he usually rested his feet, found it hard to open,
+gave up the attempt and, leaning back without its support, stared at Mr.
+Burr's ornate, brass-mounted blotter with unseeing eyes.
+
+Sitting there, he was no longer the boy who had the privilege of
+intimate talk with prominent citizens like Mr. Ward and valued it; or
+the boy who had laughed at his mother's anxiety so bravely. He was not
+even the boy that he used to be, sullen, but rebellious, too. To-day for
+the first time he was something worse, a defeated boy. The long minutes
+dragged like hours, and he sat through them as he would have sat through
+hours, silent and motionless, losing run of time and acknowledging
+defeat.
+
+For there was something that this boy wanted, and had always wanted, as
+he could never want other things, even success or love, as a boy or a
+man can want one thing only in one lifetime. It was a remote and
+preposterous dream that he had, a dream that nobody else in Green River
+was foolhardy enough to cherish long, but this boy belonged to the race
+of poets and dreamers, the race that must sometimes dream true, because
+it always dreams. His dream had taken different forms: sometimes he saw
+himself doing desperate things, setting fire to a house that he knew and
+hated, striking a blow in the dark for which nobody thanked him, but the
+issue was always the same, and the dream never left him. He was to find
+Green River a new master. He was to save the town. That was his dream.
+It had never left him till now.
+
+He was only a lean, tense boy, crouched over a battered desk and staring
+out of the window at a country street with absent, beautiful eyes, but
+he was living through a tragic hour; the terrible hour that poets and
+dreamers know when they lose hold upon their dreams. Measured by
+minutes, this hour was not long. Neil passed a hand across his forehead
+and sat up, reaching for his cap in a dazed way, for he was not to be
+permitted to hide longer from his trouble here. The plump and personable
+figure of Mr. Theodore Burr was crossing the square and disappearing
+into the door below. His unhurried step climbed the stairs. Neil opened
+the door to him.
+
+"Hello, stranger. Why aren't you at Madison?" Neil said.
+
+"I didn't go," said Mr. Burr lucidly. "Where are you going? I don't want
+to drive you away from here."
+
+"Oh, just out. I was going anyway."
+
+"You don't invite me. I don't blame you. I'm poor company, and I've got
+business to attend to here."
+
+"No!"
+
+"Why shouldn't I have business here?" snapped Mr. Burr.
+
+"You should, you should, Theodore. Say"--the question had been troubling
+Neil subconsciously all the time he sat at the desk--"what's wrong with
+that lower drawer? I can't open it."
+
+"It's locked."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"That," said Mr. Burr with dignity, "is my private drawer--for private
+papers."
+
+"Papers!" Mr. Burr's private papers were known to consist chiefly of a
+file of receipted bills and a larger file of unreceipted bills, both
+kept with his usual fastidious neatness. "What papers?"
+
+"That's my business. I've got some rights here, if I am a figurehead.
+I've got some privileges."
+
+"Sure. Don't you feel right to-day, Theodore?"
+
+"That," said Mr. Burr, "is my business, too."
+
+Neil stared at his friend. Mr. Burr was faultlessly groomed, as always,
+his tie was of the vivid and unique blue that he affected so often, and
+a very recent close shave had acted upon him as usual, giving him a pink
+and new-born appearance, but his eyes looked old and tired, as if he had
+not slept for weeks and had no immediate prospect of sleeping, and there
+were lines of strain about his weak mouth. He was not himself. Even a
+boy preoccupied with his own troubles could not ignore it.
+
+"Don't you feel right?" Neil said. "Don't you want me to do something,
+Theodore?"
+
+"Yes. Get out of here. Leave me alone," Mr. Burr snapped angrily.
+
+"Sure," said Neil soothingly.
+
+Suddenly Mr. Burr gripped Neil's reluctant, shy, boy's hand, kept it in
+his for a minute in silence, and then abruptly let it go, pushing Neil
+toward the door.
+
+"Don't begrudge me one locked drawer when you'll own the whole place
+some day," he said, with all the dignity that his fretful burst of
+irritation had lacked. "I'd like to see that day. You're a good boy,
+Donovan."
+
+"You're not right. You've got a grouch. Come with me and walk it off,"
+Neil said uneasily, but he did not press the invitation, and his friend
+had little more to say. His silence was perhaps the most unusual thing
+about his behaviour, which was all out of key to-day. Neil remembered
+afterward that just as he closed the door upon Mr. Burr and his
+vagaries, shutting them at the same time out of his mind, Mr. Burr,
+sitting rather heavily down in the broken-springed desk chair, was
+bending and stretching out a faultlessly manicured, slightly unsteady
+hand toward the locked drawer of the desk.
+
+Neil stepped out into the street with a cautious eye upon the Emporium
+across the way, but no portly form was in sight there now, and no hearty
+voice hailed him. He crossed the square and turned north, walking
+quickly, soon leaving the larger houses behind, and then the smaller
+houses above the railroad track, always climbing gradually as he walked.
+Finally, at the entrance to an overgrown road that led off to his left,
+and at the highest point of his long and slow ascent, he turned and
+looked back at the town.
+
+The town that Colonel Everard had put on the map hardly deserved the
+honour, seen so in a glitter of afternoon light, with the long, sloping
+hill leading down to it, and the white tower of the church pointing high
+above it, a cozy huddle of houses at the foot of the hill. It looked
+unassuming and sheltered and safe, only a group of homes to make a
+simple and sheltered home in. The boy looked long at it, then turned
+abruptly and plunged into the road before him.
+
+It led straight across a shallow belt of fields and deep into the woods.
+Only a cart-track at first, it soon lost itself here in a path, and the
+path in turn grew fainter and became a brown, alluring ghost of a path.
+It was hard to trace, but this was ground that Neil knew, a favourite
+haunt of his, though few other boys ventured to trespass here. The woods
+were part of the Everard estate.
+
+Neil had found his first May flowers here on the first spring that he
+was privileged to give them to Judith. Last year she had helped him look
+for them here. His errand here was not so pleasant to-day. The brown
+path did not really lead to the heart of the woods as it seemed to. It
+was not so long as it looked. It was a fairly direct short cut to the
+Everard house.
+
+The boy followed it quickly, with no eyes for the dim lure of the woods
+to-day.
+
+"You've beat me," he muttered once to himself; "I'll have a look at
+you."
+
+Soon the woods were not so thick. They fell away around him, carelessly
+thinned at first, littered with fallen trees and stumps, but nearer the
+house combed out accurately by the relentless processes of landscape
+gardening, and looking orderly and empty. The little path vanished
+entirely here. Ahead of Neil, through a thin fringe of trees, was the
+Colonel's rose garden; beyond it, the broad stretch of lawn and the
+house, bulky and towered and tall.
+
+Neil broke through the trees and stood and looked at it, straight ahead,
+seen through the frame of the trellised entrance to the garden,
+upstanding and ugly and arrogant.
+
+"You've beat me," he said to the Colonel's house. "You've beat me; you
+and him. I hate you!"
+
+His voice had a hollow sound in the empty garden. Garden and lawn and
+house had the same look that the whole deserted town had caught to-day;
+the look of suddenly empty rooms where much life has been, a breathless
+strangeness that holds echoes of what has happened there, and even hints
+of what is to happen; haunted rooms. It is not best to linger there.
+Neil turned uneasily toward the path again.
+
+He turned, then he turned back, stood for a tense minute listening, then
+broke through the rose garden and began to run across the lawn. Very
+faint and small, so that he could not tell whether it was in a man's
+voice or a woman's, but echoing clearly across the deserted garden, he
+had heard a scream from the house.
+
+It came from the house somewhere, though as Neil ran toward it the house
+still looked tenantless. The veranda was without its usual gay litter of
+cushions and books and serving trays. At the long windows that opened on
+it all the curtains were close drawn--or at all but one.
+
+As Neil reached the house he saw that the middle window was thrown high
+and the long, pale-coloured curtain was dragged from its rod and
+dangling over the sill. Just then he heard a second scream from the
+house. It was so choked and faint that he barely heard it. Neil ran up
+the steps and slipped through the open window into the Everards'
+library.
+
+Little light came through the curtained windows. The green room,
+sparsely scattered with furniture in summer covers of light chintz that
+glimmered pale and forbidding, looked twice its unfriendly length in the
+gloom. There was a heavy, dead scent of too many flowers in the air. On
+a table across the room a bowl of hothouse hyacinths, just overturned,
+crushed the flowers with its weight and dripped water into the sodden
+rug.
+
+Neil, at the window looking uncertainly into the half-dark room, saw the
+bowl and the white mass of crushed flowers, and then something else,
+something that shifted and stirred in a far corner of the room. He saw
+it dimly at first, a dark, struggling group. There were two men in it.
+
+One was a man who had screamed, but he was not screaming now. It would
+hardly have been convenient for him to scream, for the other, the
+smaller and slighter man of the two, was clutching him by the throat,
+gripping it with a hand that he could not shake off as the two figures
+swayed back and forth.
+
+"Who's there?" Neil cried.
+
+Nobody answered him. Nobody needed to, for just then the two men who
+seemed to be fighting swung into the narrow strip of light before the
+uncurtained window and he could see their faces. He could see, too, that
+they were not fighting now, though they had seemed to be. The bigger man
+was choked into submission already. No sound came from him and he hung
+limp and still in the little man's hold. Just in the centre of the strip
+of light the little man relaxed his grip, and let him fall. He dropped
+to the floor in a limp, untidy looking heap, and lay still there, with
+the light full on his face, closed eyes and grinning mouth. The man was
+Colonel Everard, the man who stood over him was Charlie Brady.
+
+As Neil looked Brady dropped on his knees beside the Colonel, felt for
+his heart, and found it. He knelt there, motionless, holding his hand
+pressed over it and peering intently into his face. Presently he got to
+his feet deliberately, gave a deep sigh of entire content with himself,
+and looked about him. Then and not until then he saw Neil. He saw him
+without surprise, if without much pleasure, it appeared.
+
+"You're late," he remarked.
+
+"You drunken fool," Neil began furiously, then stopped, staring at his
+cousin. Whatever the meaning of this exhibition was, Charlie was not
+drunk. The excitement that possessed him was excitement of some other
+kind. It possessed him entirely, though it was under control for the
+moment. His muscles twitched with it. His shoulders shifted restlessly.
+His hands closed and unclosed. His eyes were strangely lit, and there
+was an absent, exalted look about them. Whatever the excitement, it was
+strong--stronger than Charlie. Neil, his eyes now used to the
+half-light, could see no weapon in the room, dropped on the floor or
+discarded. Mr. Brady, normally a coward in his cups and out of them, had
+attacked his enemy with his bare hands.
+
+"Charlie, what's got you?" Neil said. "What's come to you?"
+
+"What's come to him, there?" Charlie said, in a voice that was changed,
+too, and was as remote and as strange as his eyes, a low voice, with the
+deceptive, terrible calm of gathering hysteria about it.
+
+"Look what's come to him," the voice went on. "Don't he deserve it, and
+worse? How did I find him to-day when I broke in through the window
+there? At his old tricks again. There was a woman with him in the
+library there, when he came out to me. He locked the door. She's there
+now. Neil, you'd better get away from here. I don't know what you're
+doing here, but you'd better go, and go quick."
+
+He had given this advice indifferently. He made his next observation
+indifferently, too, with his furtive, absent eyes on the library door.
+
+"I've killed him."
+
+"What's got you? Are you crazy?"
+
+"No--not now. You'd better go. I want to take a look in there first. The
+key's in the door."
+
+"Charlie, come back here."
+
+The note of command that he was used to responding to in his young
+cousin's voice reached and controlled Mr. Brady even now; he obeyed and
+swung round and stood still, looking at Neil. Neil's dark eyes, just
+above the level of his own, and so like them, were unrecognizable now.
+They were dull with anger, and they were angry with him.
+
+"What's the matter?" he quavered. "What's the matter, Neil?"
+
+Between the two cousins, as they stood facing each other, the Colonel
+lay ominously still. The cruel eyes did not open, and the distorted
+mouth did not change.
+
+"Look! You can see for yourself. Feel his heart," Mr. Brady offered, but
+his cousin's dark, disconcerting eyes did not leave his face. "What's
+the matter, Neil? What are you going to do?"
+
+"I'm going to make you talk out to me," Neil said. "You'll tell me
+what's got you, and why you did this, which will be the ruin of you and
+me, too, but first you'll tell me something else. You'll tell me what
+you've hid from me for a year, you who can tell me the truth when you're
+drunk and lie out of it when you're sober, till you've worn me out and
+I'm sick of trying to get the truth from you. I'll be getting it now too
+late, but I'll get it. Have you or have you not been living on this
+man's money?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Was it hush money?"
+
+"Yes," Mr. Brady said. "Neil, I'll tell you everything. You've guessed
+most of it, but I'll tell you the rest. I can prove it. I can prove
+everything I know. I did take hush money. It was dirty money, but I
+didn't care. I didn't care what happened. I didn't care till to-day."
+
+"To-day?"
+
+"I got--a letter."
+
+"Go on," Neil said.
+
+As he spoke Mr. Brady's face began suddenly to change, lighting again
+with that strange excitement which had gripped him, revived, and burning
+through its thin veneer of control. His eyes blazed with it, and his
+voice shook with it. He waved a trembling hand toward the library door.
+A sound had come from the library, the faintest of sounds, a low,
+frightened cry. It was like the ghost of a cry, but he heard. Neil heard
+it, too, and was at the door before him, trying to unlock it, fumbling
+with the key.
+
+"She's there yet," Mr. Brady cried; "whoever she is. Well, she'll be the
+last of them. I had a letter, I tell you, a letter from Maggie. She's
+coming home, what's left of her--what he's left of her--Everard. I never
+thought he was to blame. I said he was, but I was talked out of it. If
+I'd thought so, if I'd suspected it, would I have touched a penny of his
+dirty money? But she's coming home. Maggie's coming home."
+
+For the moment Neil was not concerned with the fact. Graver revelations
+might have passed over him unheeded. The key had turned at last. Then
+Neil felt the door being pushed open from inside. He stepped back and
+waited. The door opened cautiously for an inch or two, then swung
+suddenly wide. Standing motionless, framed in the library door, was
+Judith.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINETEEN
+
+
+The two cousins, Mr. Brady shocked into sudden silence, stood with
+Colonel Everard's unconscious body behind them, unregarded, like any
+other bulky and motionless shape in the dim room, and stared at the girl
+who had come from the locked library.
+
+"Not you," Neil's voice said dully. "Not here."
+
+But the girl was Judith.
+
+Bare-headed, slender in soft-falling white, she stood in the library
+door with both hands behind her, clasping her big, limp hat by its
+flaring brim. Her lightly poised, blond head was fluffy with small,
+escaping curls, her clear-coloured cheeks were warmly flushed, and
+between her red, slightly parted lips her breath came too quickly, but
+softly, still. A sheer, torn ruffle trailed from her skirt. One
+rose-coloured bow hung from her girdle awry and crushed, and looked the
+softer for that, like a crumpled flower.
+
+About her dress and her whole small self there was a drooping and
+crumpled look. It was the look of a child that has played too hard.
+Surely the most incongruous and pathetic little figure that had ever
+appeared from a room where a distressed or designing lady was suspected
+of hiding, she stood and returned Neil's look, but there was blank panic
+in her eyes.
+
+They turned from Neil to Mr. Brady, wild eyed and pale beside him, to
+the disordered room, and back to Neil again, with no change of
+expression at all. They were wide and dilated and dark, intent still on
+some picture that they held and could not let go. Judith came an
+uncertain step or two forward into the room, stiffly, as if she were
+walking in her sleep, and stood still.
+
+"Neil, what did you come here for?" she said. "I'm glad you came."
+
+Her voice was sweet and expressionless, like her eyes, and though she
+had called Neil by name, she looked at him as if she had never seen him
+before. One small hand reached out uncertainly, pulled at his sleeve,
+and then, as he made no move to take it, dropped again, and began to
+finger the big hat that she held, and pluck at the flowers on it, but
+her eyes did not leave his face.
+
+"Will they stand for this?" Mr. Brady was demanding incoherently behind
+them, "as young as this? Will the town stand it? No. And they won't
+blame me now. They can't. It was coming to you--you----"
+
+He was in the grip of his own troubles again, and breaking into little
+mutterings of hysterical speech, which he now addressed directly to
+Colonel Everard, standing over him and not seeming to feel the need of
+an answer. It was an uncanny proceeding. The girl and boy did not watch
+it. They were seeing only each other.
+
+"Judith," Neil began stumblingly, "what were you doing there? What's
+frightened you so? What you heard out here? That's all that frightened
+you, isn't it? Isn't it? But what made you come here alone like this?
+Didn't you know---- Oh, Judith----"
+
+He stopped and looked down at her, saying nothing, but his eyes were
+troubled and dark with questions that he did not dare to ask. There was
+no answer to them in Judith's eyes, only blank fear. As Neil looked, the
+fear in Judith's eyes was reflected in his, creeping into them and
+taking possession there.
+
+"Oh, Judith," he whispered miserably. "Oh, Judith."
+
+Judith seemed to have heard what he said to her from far away, and to be
+only faintly puzzled by it, not interested or touched. Her eyes kept
+their secrets under his questioning eyes. They defied him. She was not
+like his little lost sweet-heart found again, but a stranger and an
+enemy, one of the people he hated, people who intrigued and lied, but
+were out of his reach and above him, and were all his enemies.
+
+The boy's world was upsetting. Nothing that had happened to him in that
+room or ever had happened to him before had shaken it like that minute
+of doubt that he lived through in silence, with the strain of it showing
+in his pale face, and Charlie's voice echoing half heard in his ears. He
+drew back from Judith slightly as they stood. He was trembling. Judith's
+face was a blur of white before his eyes, then he could not see it--and
+then, as suddenly as it had come, his black minute was over.
+
+"Take me away. I don't want to stay where he is any more. Is he dead?"
+Judith said, and she slipped her hand into Neil's.
+
+Judith's voice was as lifeless and strange as before, and the hand in
+his was cold, but it was Judith's own little clinging hand, and the
+boy's hand closed on it tight. He stood still, feeling it in his, and
+holding it as if the poor little cold hand could give him back all his
+strength again. He looked round him at the dim room and its motionless
+owner and Charlie as if he were seeing them clearly for the first time.
+He was not angry with Charlie any longer. He was not angry at all. He
+drew a deep, sobbing breath of relief, dropped his dark head suddenly
+and awkwardly toward Judith's unresponsive hand and kissed it, and then
+very gently let it go.
+
+"Judith, you're you," he said, "just you, no matter what happens, and
+nothing else matters; nothing in the world, as long as you are you."
+
+Judith only smiled her faint half smile at him, as if she guessed that
+some crisis had come and passed, but did not greatly care.
+
+"Take me away," she repeated patiently. "I thought there'd be other
+people here. He said so. But I've come here alone before, only he was
+different to-day. He was different."
+
+"Don't tell me. I don't want to know. I won't ever ask you again. I
+never ought to have asked you. It's all right, dear. It's all right."
+
+"I didn't know people were like that--anybody, ever. I just didn't
+know----"
+
+"Don't, dear," said Neil sharply. The small, bewildered voice that held
+more wonder and pain than her words broke off, but her bewildered eyes
+still wondered and grieved. Neil's arms went out to her suddenly and
+drew her close, holding her gently, and hiding her small, pathetic face
+against his shoulder.
+
+"Don't," he whispered. "I'll take care of you. I'm going to take care of
+you. Nobody's going to hurt you any more."
+
+"Neil, I just didn't know. I didn't know."
+
+"It's all right. I'm going to take you away. Just wait, dear. I'm going
+to take care of you."
+
+He spoke to her softly, saying the same thing over and over, as if he
+were quieting a frightened child. She was quiet in his arms like a
+frightened and tired child in any arms held out to it. One arm had
+slipped round his neck and clung to him. She drew long choking breaths
+as if she were too tired to cry. Gradually they stopped, but the arm
+round his neck only clung tighter.
+
+"Don't leave me," she whispered.
+
+"No, I'm not going to. I'm going to take care of you. You know that,
+don't you, Judith?"
+
+"Yes. Neil?"
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"Neil." Still in his arms, because she felt safe and protected there,
+Judith lifted her head and looked at him, and into her sweet, dazed
+eyes, full of a terror that she could not understand, came a faint flash
+of anger. This boy who held her so safe and comforted was her enemy,
+too. Long before the ugly accident of what had happened behind the
+library doors he had been her enemy, and he was her enemy now, though
+she needed his protection and took it. Their quarrel was not over.
+"Neil, I don't forgive you. I'm never going to forgive you."
+
+"All right, dear."
+
+"And I hate you. You know that, don't you? I hate you."
+
+"Yes, dear, I know it. We aren't going to talk about that now. Let me
+go."
+
+Both arms were round him now. Judith let him draw them gently apart and
+down, and drew back from him. The anger was gone from her eyes. She
+watched him wide eyed and still, as children watch the incomprehensible
+activities of grownups, or devoted but jealous dogs watch them.
+
+"Don't leave me," she said. "You're sweet to me." Then she gave a sharp,
+startled little cry.
+
+"Neil," she begged, "don't touch him. I don't want you to touch him.
+What are you going to do?"
+
+The light had not had time to dim or shift perceptibly in Colonel
+Everard's big room while so much was settling itself for Neil and
+Judith. The Colonel still lay with the pale shaft of afternoon light on
+his unconscious face. Now the boy was kneeling beside him. He slipped a
+strong, careful arm under his shoulders, and bent over him, touching him
+with quick, sure hands. He ignored Mr. Brady, who stood crying out
+incoherent protests beside him, and finally put a shaking hand on his
+shoulder.
+
+Neil shook it off, and rose and stood facing his cousin.
+
+"I thought so," he said, with a short laugh. "You had me going at first,
+Charlie, when I came in here and saw what a pretty picture you made. I
+believed you. I thought you had killed him. I might have known things
+like that don't happen in Green River."
+
+Neil put both hands on his cousin's shoulders and looked at him. Mr.
+Brady was not an attractive sight at that moment. The excitement that
+had held and swayed him was leaving him now, and he looked shaken and
+weak. An unhealthy colour purpled his cheeks, and his sullen eyes glared
+vindictively, but could not meet Neil's eyes.
+
+"Don't laugh at me," he muttered. "Don't you dare to laugh at me."
+
+"Going to beat me up, too?" his cousin inquired. "Poor old Charlie!
+Let's hope your friend there will laugh at you when he talks this over
+with you. He'll come out of this all right, but he'll be in a better
+temper if he has a doctor here. I'll 'phone for one."
+
+"What do you mean? I've killed him. I'm glad I killed him."
+
+His cousin laughed again. "Killed him? The man's no more dead than you
+are. You've knocked him out, that's all. But you didn't kill him. Is
+that the 'phone over there?"
+
+A desk telephone on a big Louis Quinze table at one end of the room, the
+instrument masked by the frilly skirts of a French mannequin, perhaps
+the only lady who had ever been permitted to be insipid in that room and
+to stay there long, answered Neil's question by ringing faintly, once
+and again. Neil started toward it, but did not reach it. Mr. Brady had
+flung himself suddenly upon him in a last burst of feverish strength,
+which he dissipated recklessly by shrieking out incoherent things, and
+striking misdirected blows.
+
+Neil parried them easily, caught his thin arms and held them at his
+sides. Keeping them so, he forced him against the edge of the flimsy
+table and held him there and looked at him.
+
+"You shan't answer that 'phone," Mr. Brady cried, in a last futile burst
+of defiance. "You shan't stop me. You shan't interfere. I'll kill him, I
+tell you, and you shan't answer that 'phone. You shan't----"
+
+Mr. Brady's voice died away, and he was silent under his cousin's eyes.
+
+"Through?" said Neil presently.
+
+"Yes," he muttered.
+
+"Do you mean it?"
+
+Mr. Brady nodded sullenly.
+
+"You've made a fool of yourself?"
+
+Mr. Brady nodded again.
+
+"Neil," he got out presently, "I can make it up to you. I haven't been
+square with you, but I can. I will. You don't know----"
+
+"You've done talking enough. Will you go now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You'll quiet down and go to mother's and stay there till I come?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Neil let him go.
+
+"Maybe I'll finish up your friend for you myself, Charlie, after you
+leave here," he offered. "I've thought of it often enough. Now I come
+here and fight for him instead of fighting against him. I fight with
+you. Poor old Charlie. Murder and sudden death! I tell you, things like
+that don't happen in Green River."
+
+Neil stopped talking suddenly. The telephone at his elbow had rung
+again, this time with a sharp, sudden peal, peremptory as an impatient
+voice speaking. Neil caught it up, jerked off the simpering lady by her
+audacious hat, and answered.
+
+At once, strangely intimate and near in that room where the three had
+been shut in for the last half hour alone and away from the rest of the
+world while it went on as usual or faster, a man's voice spoke to him.
+It was almost unrecognizable, so excited and hoarse, but it was Luther
+Ward's.
+
+"Hello," Neil said. "Hello. Yes, this is Everards'. No, he can't come to
+the 'phone. He--what? What's that?"
+
+Neil stopped and listened breathlessly. Mr. Brady, slinking head down
+from the room, turned curiously to stare at him, and Judith, slipping
+across the room like a little white ghost, drew close to him and felt
+for his hand. Neil took her hand, this time with no response of heart or
+nerves. He had put down the telephone, replacing the receiver
+mechanically, but Luther Ward's voice still echoed in his ears.
+
+It had spoken to an uncanny accompaniment of half-heard voices, rattling
+unintelligibly in the room where Ward was, the prosaic, tobacco-scented
+room that Neil knew so well.
+
+"Tell Everard to come," Ward's voice had said. "He's to come down here,
+to Saxon's office. I'm there now. Theodore Burr has shot himself. Yes,
+shot himself. He won't live through the night. Who's this talking to me?
+Neil Donovan, it's you. What are you doing at Everard's? Never mind.
+Come down here yourself. Come straight down. Theodore's conscious, and
+talking, and he's been asking for you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY
+
+
+Green River was getting ready for the rally in Odd Fellows' Hall. It was
+six o'clock on the evening of the seventeenth of September, and "Grand
+rally, Odd Fellows' Hall, September Seventeenth at eight-thirty," had
+been featured for weeks in the Green River _Record_, on the list that
+with a somewhat arrogant suggestion of prophetic powers possessed by the
+_Record_ was headed "Coming Events." It was always a scanty list,
+especially in the fall, when ten, twenty, thirty companies began to play
+larger centres, and church lawn parties and circuses could no longer
+appear on it. Sometimes not more than six events were to come in a gray
+and workaday world. But six were enough to announce. Even a true prophet
+is not expected to see all the future, only to see clearly all that he
+sees, and the _Record_ did that.
+
+This rally was important enough to be listed all by itself, and it did
+not need the adjective grand. It was The Rally.
+
+It was Green River's own--a local, almost a family, affair. No
+out-of-town celebrities were to be imported this time, to be listened
+to with awe and then wined and dined by the Colonel safe from the
+curious eyes of the town. This time old Joe Grant was to preside, as he
+had done as a matter of course on all such occasions when he was the
+acknowledged head of the town in political and financial matters, in the
+old days of high-sounding oratory and simpler politics that were gone
+forever, but were not very long ago. Judge Saxon, an old timer, too, and
+better loved than the Honourable Joe, had declined the honour of
+presiding, but had the authentic offer of it, his first distinction of
+the kind for years.
+
+It was a local but very important occasion. It was Colonel Everard's
+first official appearance as candidate for mayor. It was to be a very
+modest appearance. No more time was allotted for his speech than for
+Luther Ward's. He was putting himself on a level with Luther and the
+Judge and the Honourable Joe and identifying himself at last with local
+politics. The evening emphasized the great man's condescension in
+accepting this humble office and honouring Green River. Even with the
+scandal of Theodore Burr's suicide unexplained still and only two weeks
+old, interest centred on the rally. It was a triumph for the town.
+
+Green River was almost ready. Dugan's orchestra was engaged for the
+evening, instead of a rival organization from Wells, which the Colonel
+often imported upon private and public occasions. Jerry Dugan was
+getting old, too, like the Judge and the Honourable Joe. He had not lost
+the peculiar wail and lilt from his fiddling, but he had made few recent
+additions to his repertoire. Just now the band concert in front of Odd
+Fellows' Hall was winding up with his old favourite: "A Day on the
+Battlefield."
+
+It had the old swing still, contagious as ever. Loafers in front of the
+hall shuffled their feet in time to it. Moon-struck young persons
+hanging two by two over the railings of the bridge to gaze at the water
+straightened themselves and listened. An ambitious soloist lounging
+against the court-house fence across the square began to whistle it with
+elaborate variations, at the inspiring moment when "morning in the
+forest" had bird-called and syncopated itself into silence, and actual
+fighting, and the martial music of the charge began.
+
+High and lilting and shrill, it hung in the still night air, alive for
+the hour, challenging the echoes of dead tunes that lingered about the
+square, only to die away and be one with them at last; band music,
+old-fashioned band music, blatant and empty and splendid, clear through
+the still night air, attuned to the night and the town.
+
+"Good old tune. Gets into your feet," Judge Saxon said, while his wife
+adjusted his tie before the black walnut mirror in their bedroom, but
+his unusual tribute to the tune was perfunctory to-night, and his wife
+ignored it, wisely taking this moment of helpfulness to plunge him
+suddenly and briskly into a series of questions which she had been
+trying in vain for some time to get the correct answers to.
+
+"Hugh," she said, "why wouldn't you take the chair to-night?"
+
+"You were the only thing I ever tried to take away from Joe Grant and
+got away with it, Millie," the Judge explained gallantly.
+
+"Don't you think this rally is like old times? Don't you want to see the
+town stand on its own feet again, instead of being run from outside?"
+
+"I do, Millie."
+
+Mrs. Saxon made her next point triumphantly, connecting it with the
+point before by some obscure logic known only to ladies.
+
+"Hugh, a father could not do more for Lillian Burr than the Colonel has
+since poor Theodore went. The house full of flowers, calling there
+himself every day and twice a day, though she won't see him; but Lillian
+won't see any one. The Colonel's been ailing himself, too, but he
+wouldn't put off the rally and disappoint the town. And the new library
+will open this fall, and there's talk that he's giving an organ to the
+church. Hugh, don't you think Theodore's death may have sobered him?
+Don't you think this may be the beginning of better things? Don't you
+think----"
+
+"I think you're making a butterfly bow. I don't like them," said the
+Judge, with the ingenuous smile that somehow closed a subject. She
+sighed, but changed her attack.
+
+"Turn round now. I want to brush you. Hugh, what has happened to Neil
+Donovan?"
+
+"What do you mean, happened to him?" snapped the Judge, and then added
+soberly, "I don't know, Millie. I wish I did."
+
+"An Irish boy can get just so far and no farther."
+
+"How far, Millie?"
+
+"Don't be flippant, Hugh. There's something strange about Neil lately.
+He didn't speak three times at the table last time he came to supper
+here. He looks at me as if he didn't know who I was when I speak to him
+on the street sometimes. There's no life in him. He's like Charlie and
+all the rest of them--giving out just when things are going his way;
+that's an Irish boy every time."
+
+"When things are going his way? When his best friend has just shot
+himself?"
+
+"I didn't refer to that, Hugh," said Mrs. Saxon with dignity.
+
+"No?"
+
+"I referred to Neil's family affairs, and the fact that Colonel Everard
+has taken him up."
+
+"Maggie home and behaving herself and no questions asked, Charlie
+shipped to Wells, and Neil going shooting twice with the Colonel?"
+
+"Three times, Hugh."
+
+"And that's what you call things going his way."
+
+"Hugh, why should those two spend any time together at all? They hate
+each other, or I always thought so--that is, if a man like the Colonel
+could hate a boy like Neil. What does he want of Neil now? What does
+Neil want of him?"
+
+"They don't tell me, Millie."
+
+"But it's queer. It frightens me, Hugh. It's as queer as----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Everything," Mrs. Saxon said, goaded into an exaggeration foreign to
+her placid type, "everything, lately. You refusing to preside to-night.
+Lillian Burr shutting herself up in this uncanny way. It is uncanny,
+even if she is in trouble. Minna Randall taking to church work, and
+sewing for hours at a time, and taking long drives with her husband.
+They haven't been inside the Colonel's doors for weeks. Their second
+girl told our Mary that they have refused five invitations there in the
+last month. It's my idea that he gave that last stag dinner because he
+couldn't get Minna or Edith there, or any woman. Why should his own
+circle turn against him, just when he's doing real good to the town? And
+it's not only his own circle that's against him. I was matching curtains
+at Ward's when Sebastian came in to-day, and Luther Ward was barely
+civil to him--the Colonel's own secretary. What's wrong with the town,
+Hugh? Can't it be grateful to the Colonel, now when he really deserves
+it?"
+
+"Don't worry about what Everard deserves. He's not likely to get it,
+Millie."
+
+Again the Judge was closing the subject, and this time his wife had no
+more to say. She gave his threadbare, scrupulously pressed coat a final
+pat and jerk of adjustment, and stood off and looked at him.
+
+"You'll do," she said, "now go along. The music's stopping. It won't
+look well if you're late."
+
+She turned off the flickering gas jet above the marble-topped bureau
+abruptly, but not before the Judge had caught the gleam of tears in her
+eyes.
+
+"Why girl," he said, and came close to her and slipped an arm round her
+plump, comfortable waist. "You're really troubled."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And vexed with me for not helping you."
+
+"Yes."
+
+He had drawn her toward a front window of the big, square room. The
+Judge and his wife stood by it quietly, looking down through a triangle
+of white, starched curtains at the glimmering, sparsely lit length of
+street below, and straightening out their difficulties in darkness and
+silence, as all true lovers should, even lovers at fifty, as these two
+were fortunate enough to be.
+
+"Millie, I don't want to tease you," the Judge said. "I'll tell you
+anything you want to know."
+
+"I've been so worried," she wept comfortably against his shoulder. "I'm
+so afraid."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I feel as if something--anything might happen. I--oh, you'll only
+laugh. I can't just tell you, Hugh."
+
+"I'll tell you," said the Judge.
+
+He hesitated and then went on slowly, speaking more to himself than to
+her.
+
+"Women hate change. That makes them dread it, even when it's not coming.
+You're dreading it, but it's not coming now, dear. There's feeling
+against Everard. You're right, but you exaggerate it. It's instinctive
+and unformulated. It hasn't gone far and won't go any farther. He won't
+let it. The rally and the library and this new democracy stuff, stag
+dinners to Ward's crowd and all, are part of a campaign to stop it. The
+campaign will succeed. Everard's own crowd won't quarrel with him. They
+can't afford to. Everard has pulled through worse times than this. I've
+helped him myself, and I shall help him again.
+
+"There'll be no change, Millie. Things will go on just the way they are.
+I've lived the best years of my life believing that it was best they
+should, and if I'm wrong, I'm too old to change my mind. I've said
+somebody had to own the town, and it might as well be Everard. I've said
+the Burrs and Kents and Randalls, and old Joe Grant's young wife with
+their parties and drinks and silly little love affairs, were playing too
+hard, but doing no real harm, planting their cheap, fake smart set here
+in Green River where it don't belong. Now poor Theodore Burr's dead.
+That don't look like play. Harry Randall's so deep in debt to the bank
+for what Everard's let him borrow that he has to stay on there at three
+thousand a year, though he's been offered twice that in Wells. Everard
+won't let him go. And the best I can say about myself in the years I've
+worked for Everard is that I've kept my hands clean, if I have had to
+keep my eyes shut, but I can say that to you, Millie."
+
+"It does look like old times down there," he went on softly, after a
+minute. "The street and the lights are the same. And it sounds like old
+times. It was from a rally in the hall that I first went home with you,
+Millie. Remember? I was just a boy then, but I wish I was half the man I
+was then, to-night." He heard a murmur of protest, and laughed. "But I
+do, Millie. I--wouldn't be helping Everard."
+
+"Oh, Hugh!"
+
+"Don't worry. Everard will pull through all right. Look at the Randalls
+over there, starting for the hall. Leave your windows open, Millie, and
+you'll soon hear them all cheering for Everard. The moon won't rise till
+late, but it will be full to-night. Listen, the band's going into the
+hall now."
+
+The Judge rested his cheek for a moment against his wife's soft, smooth
+hair, the decorous, satisfying caress of a decorous generation, then he
+raised his head with a long, tired sigh.
+
+"I wish I was young," he said. "I wish I was young to-night."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I wish I was young," the Judge had said, with a thrill and hunger that
+was the soul of youth itself in his voice. At the moment when he said
+it, a boy who had the privilege that the Judge coveted, and was not
+enjoying it just then, was leaning against the court-house railing, and
+watching Green River crowd into Odd Fellows' Hall.
+
+Another boy had pushed his way across the square to his side, and was
+not heartily welcomed there, but was calmly unconscious of it.
+
+"Some night, Donovan," he remarked.
+
+"Some night, Willard," Neil agreed gravely.
+
+"Going in? Good for three hours of hot air?"
+
+"I'm not going. No."
+
+"Good boy. Say--" Mr. Willard Nash lowered his voice as he made this
+daring suggestion--"we'll go around to Halloran's, and get into a little
+game."
+
+His invitation was not accepted.
+
+"Jerry Dugan's not dead yet," observed Willard presently.
+
+Strains of a deservedly popular waltz tune, heard from inside the hall,
+gave faint but unmistakable proof of this. Willard kept time with his
+feet as he listened, paying the tune the tribute of silence, a rare one
+from him. Standing so, the two were sharply contrasted figures, though
+the flickering lamps in the square threw only faint light here, and
+showed them darkly outlined against the railing, as they leaned there
+side by side. Pose, carriage, every movement and turn of the head were
+different, as different as a bulky and overgrown child is from a boy
+turning into a man.
+
+"Some night," Willard repeated, unanswered, but unchilled by it, "and
+some crowd."
+
+The hall had been filling fast. Though the waltz still swung its faint
+challenge into the night, so much of Green River had responded to it
+already that now it was arriving only by twos and threes. But the groups
+still followed each other fast under the big globe of light at the
+entrance door, gayly shaded with red for the occasion, and up the bare,
+clattering stairs to the floor above, and the hall.
+
+Willard was right, more right than he knew. There was a crowd up there,
+a crowd as Willard did not understand the word; a crowd with a tone and
+temper of its own and a personality of its own. It was subject to laws
+of its own and could think and feel for itself, and its thoughts and
+feelings were made up of the brain stuff of every person in it, but
+different from them all. It was a newly created thing, a new factor in
+the world, and like all crowds it was born for one evening, to live for
+that evening only, and do its work and die.
+
+Upstairs behind closed doors, such a crowd was forming; getting ready to
+think its own thoughts and act and feel, and so many houses, little and
+big, had emptied themselves to contribute to it, so many family
+discussions like the Saxons' had gone on as a prelude to it, that you
+might fairly say the crowd up there was Green River.
+
+Willard, watching the late arrivals and commenting upon them to Neil,
+still an uncommunicative audience, was vaguely stirred.
+
+"This gets me," he conceded. "There's something about old Dugan's music
+that always gets me. For two cents, I'd go in. I sat through a patent
+medicine show there last week, because I didn't have the sense to stay
+away. It always gets me when there is anything doing in the hall.
+And--" he paused, heavily testing his powers of self-analysis, "it gets
+me," he brought out at length, "more to-night than it ever did before.
+It--gets me."
+
+"Look, there's Joe Grant," Willard went on. "This is his night, all
+right. Look at the bulge to that manuscript case, and the shine to his
+hair. He mixes varnish with his hair dye, all right. I said, look at
+him."
+
+"I'm looking."
+
+"Well, you don't do much else. What's eating you to-night? Say, will you
+go in if I will?"
+
+An inarticulate murmur answered him.
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"No."
+
+"All right. Well, what do you know about that? Look there."
+
+"I'm looking."
+
+The latest comers were crowding hurriedly into the entrance hall by this
+time, and with them, a slender, heavily veiled figure had slipped
+quickly through the door and out of sight.
+
+"Was that Lil?" Willard said. "Lil Burr?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She wouldn't come here; I don't believe it."
+
+"I know it."
+
+"How?"
+
+"She told me."
+
+"What was she doing, talking to you? Why, she won't talk to anybody.
+She----"
+
+"You'll be late at Hallorans'."
+
+"Aren't you coming?"
+
+"No."
+
+"But you said you would. I don't want to go if you don't. I don't half
+like to leave you here, you act so queer to-night. What makes you act
+so? What's eating----"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+Willard detached himself from the railings and regarded his friend,
+suddenly breathless with surprise, and deeply grieved. Nothing. The
+word, harmless in itself, had been spoken so that it hit him like an
+actual blow, straight from the shoulder. Neil, shifting so that the
+light showed his face, was returning his look with the sudden,
+unreasoning anger that we feel toward little sounds that beat their slow
+way into our consciousness at night, to irritate us unendurably at last.
+
+"Go," he urged, "go along to Halloran's. Go anywhere."
+
+"Well, what do you know about that?" began Willard, offended, and then
+forgave him. There was a look in Neil's pale face that commanded
+forgiveness. It was pale and strained with a trouble that had nothing to
+do with Willard, and Willard was respectful and inarticulate before it.
+
+"That's all right," Willard muttered, "that will be all right. I'll go."
+
+Neil took no notice of this promise. Up in the hall the waltz had
+swelled to a high, light-hearted climax, heady and strained, like the
+sudden excitements that sweep a crowd. It came clear through the open
+windows, making one last appeal to the boy below to come up and be part
+of what was there. And just then a small closed car swept down through
+the empty square and stopped. Two men stepped out, and paused in the
+doorway under the red-shaded light.
+
+One was the Colonel's secretary, waiting on the step beyond range of
+the light, a tall, shadowy figure, and the other, who stood with the
+light on his face, was Colonel Everard.
+
+He was still pale from his week of illness, but his keen eyes and
+clear-cut profile were more effective for that. He stood listening to
+the sounds from upstairs, and he smiled as he listened. He turned at
+last and looked out across the square as if he could feel Neil's eyes
+upon him and were returning their look, and then turned away and
+disappeared up the stairs.
+
+"Neil," Willard was announcing uneasily, "I think a lot of you. I'd do a
+lot for you. If you're in wrong, any way, if----"
+
+Willard broke off, rebuffed. Neil did not even look at him. He stood
+staring at the lighted doorway where the Colonel had stood and smiled,
+as if he could still see him there. He was a creature beyond Willard's
+world, as he looked, but unaccountably fascinating to Willard. Willard
+regarded him in awed silence.
+
+Now Dugan's music had stopped. Some one above shut a window with a
+clatter that echoed disproportionately loud. Then there was silence up
+there, tense silence, and the call of the silence was harder to resist
+than the music. The boy by the court-house railing could not resist it.
+He pushed away Willard's detaining hand, and without a word to him or
+another glance at him, was across the square and through the red-lighted
+door, and running up the stairs.
+
+"What do you know about that?" Willard demanded, in vain. "What do you
+know----"
+
+Willard, certainly, knew nothing, and gave up the attempt to understand,
+with a sigh.
+
+A little later the vantage point of the court-house fence was
+unoccupied. Of the two boys who had occupied it, one was making a
+belated and rather disconsolate way toward Halloran's--the one who would
+be boasting to-morrow that he had spent the last fifteen minutes with
+Neil Donovan. The other boy stood listening outside the closed doors of
+the hall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was half an hour later and it had been an important half-hour in Odd
+Fellows' Hall, that uneventful but vital time when the newly made
+creature that is the crowd is passive, gathering its forces slowly,
+getting ready to fling the weight of them into one side of a balance
+irrevocably, if it has decisions to make; the most important half-hour
+of the evening if you were interested in the psychology of crowds. The
+Honourable Joe Grant was not. He would have said that the first speech
+dragged and the half-hour had been dull. Dull or significant, that
+half-hour was over, and Green River was waking up. In the listening
+hush of the hall the big moments of the evening, whatever they were to
+be, were creeping nearer and nearer. Now they were almost here.
+
+The Honourable Joe had just introduced Luther Ward and heavily resumed
+his seat. He sat portly and erect and entirely happy behind the
+thin-legged, inadequate looking table that held a water pitcher, his
+important looking papers, and his watch. The ornately chased gold watch
+that had measured so many epoch-making hours for Green River was in
+public life again, like the Honourable Joe. He fingered it
+affectionately, wiped his forehead delicately from time to time with a
+purple silk handkerchief, followed Mr. Ward's remarks with unwavering
+brown eyes, and smiled his benevolent, public-spirited smile. This was
+his night indeed.
+
+Behind the Honourable Joe, on the stage in a semicircular row of chairs
+were the speakers of the evening, and before him was Green River.
+
+The badly proportioned little hall was not at its best to-night. It was
+too brightly lit and the footlights threw an uncompromising glare upon
+the tiny stage. Red, white, and blue cheesecloth in crude, sharp
+colouring draped windows and stage, making gay little splashes of colour
+that emphasized the dinginess of the room. Only the Grand Army flag,
+borrowed and draped elaborately above the stage, showed faded and thin
+against the brightness of the cheesecloth, but kept its dignity and kept
+up its claim to homage still. And the ugliness of the room was a thing
+to be discounted and forgotten, like some beautiful, full-blooded
+woman's tawdry, and ill-chosen clothes, because this room held Green
+River.
+
+Green River, filling the little room to over-flowing, standing in the
+rear of the room, crowding every available inch of space on benches,
+window sills, and an emergency supply of camp chairs, impressive as that
+much sheer bulk of humanity, crowded between four walls, becomes
+impressive, and impressive in its own right, too; Green River
+represented as it was, with all the warring, unreconciled elements that
+made the town.
+
+For they were all here, Paddy Lane, and the Everard circle, and the
+intermediate stages of society, the Gaynors and other prosperous farmers
+and unprosperous farmers and their wives, from the outskirts of the
+town, and citizens a cut above them both, like the Wards, were all
+represented here. Mrs. Kent, hatless and evening coated, was elbowed by
+a lady from Paddy Lane, hatless because she had no presentable hat, and
+wearing a ragged shawl. These two were side by side, and they had the
+same look on their faces. There was something of it now on every face
+in the room. It was a look of listening and waiting.
+
+It was on every face, and it grew more intense every minute that Luther
+Ward's speech droned on, though it was only a dry, illogical rehash of
+political issues that could not have called that look into any face. It
+was as if the audience listened eagerly through it because every word of
+it was bringing them nearer to something that was to follow. What was
+it? What did Green River want? What was it waiting for? Green River
+itself did not know, but it was very near.
+
+Perhaps it was coming now. This might well be the climax of the evening.
+No more important event was scheduled. Luther Ward, looking discontented
+with his performance, but relieved to complete it, had sunk into his
+chair to a scattered echoing of applause, and the next speaker was
+Colonel Everard.
+
+The Honourable Joe was rising to introduce him. The little introductory
+speech was a masterpiece, for, though the Colonel had edited every word
+of it, it was still in the Honourable Joe's best style, flowery and
+sprinkled with quotations.
+
+"I will not say more," it concluded magnificently, "of one whose life
+and work among you can best speak for itself, and who will speak for
+himself now, in his own person. I present to you the Republican
+candidate for mayor, Colonel Everard."
+
+And now the Honourable Joe had bowed and smiled himself into his seat,
+and the great man was on his feet, and coming forward to the centre of
+the stage. The first real applause of the evening greeted him, not very
+hearty or sustained, but prompt at least. He looked like a very great
+man indeed, as he stood acknowledging it, his most effective self, a
+strong man, though so lightly built, erect and pliant of carriage, a man
+with infinite reserves of power and dignity. He was smiling, and his
+smile was the same that the boy by the court-house fence had seen, a
+tantalizing smile of assurance and charm and power, as if he were master
+of himself and the town.
+
+This was his moment, planned for and led up to for weeks, but Colonel
+Everard was slow to take advantage of it. He stood still, with his eyes
+toward the rear of the hall. As he stood so, heads here and there turned
+and looked where he was looking. Presently all Green River saw what the
+Colonel saw. A boy was pushing his way toward the front of the hall--a
+boy who had slipped quietly inside the doors unnoticed fifteen minutes
+before, and came forward now just as quietly, but held their eyes as he
+came. Now he had reached the stage, and he broke through the barrier of
+goldenrod that fenced the short flight of steps, crushing the flowers
+under his feet, and now he was on the stage confronting Colonel Everard.
+It was Neil Donovan.
+
+"Sit down," he said to the great man. "They're not going to listen to
+you. They're going to listen to me."
+
+After that he did not wait to see if the great man took his amazing
+advice. He came forward alone, and spoke to Green River. He was not an
+imposing figure as he stood there, only a lean, eager boy, with dark,
+flashing eyes, and a face that was very pale in the glare of the
+footlights. He hardly raised his tense, low-pitched voice as he spoke,
+but Green River heard.
+
+"You're going to listen to me."
+
+And it was true. Green River was going to listen. In the middle of the
+hall, where the chief delegation from Paddy Lane was massed, a ripple of
+excitement promised the boy support. It was seconded by a muttering and
+shuffling of feet on the rear benches, devoted to the youth of the town.
+From here and there in the hall there were murmurs of protest, too,
+dying out one by one, and ceasing automatically, like the whispered
+consultation that went on behind him on the stage.
+
+But the boy did not wait for support or regard interruptions. He did not
+need to. The audience was his in spite of them, and he knew it and they
+knew it. Whatever he had to say, important or not, it was what they had
+been waiting for; that was what the evening had been leading to, and it
+was here at last. Pale and intent, the boy looked across the footlights
+at Green River. The audience was his, but he had no pride in the
+triumph. He began haltingly to speak.
+
+"It will do no good to you or me, but you're going to listen. I've got a
+word to say about Everard.
+
+"He's sucked your town dry for years and you know it. He's had the pick
+of your men and used their brains and their youth, and he's had the pick
+of your women. If there are any of you here that he's got no hold on,
+it's because you're worth nothing to him. He's got the town. Now he's
+driven one of your boys to his death.
+
+"'I can't beat him.' That's what Theodore Burr said to me the night he
+died. 'They won't blame him for this. I want to die because I don't want
+to live in the world with him, but I'll do no harm to him by dying, only
+to Lily and me. They won't blame him. You can't beat Everard.'
+
+"Well, you don't blame Everard. He's got you where you don't blame him,
+whatever he does. You shut your eyes to it. He's got you. You know all
+this and you shut your eyes. Now I'll tell you some things you don't
+know. Everard's been trying for weeks to bribe me to keep my mouth shut,
+like he bribed Charlie for years. He might have saved his breath and his
+money. I can't hurt him, whether I keep my mouth shut or not. You won't
+blame him. You'll let him get away with this, too. But you're going to
+know."
+
+The boy came closer still to the footlights and leaned across them,
+pausing and deliberately choosing his words. The pause, and the look in
+his dark, intent eyes as he stood there challenged Green River and dared
+it to interrupt him. But it was too late to interrupt, too late to stop
+him now. And behind him in the place of honour in the centre of the row
+of chairs on the stage, one man at least was powerless to stop him:
+Colonel Everard, who listened with a set smile on his lips, and a set
+stare in his eyes.
+
+"He's the man that broke Maggie Brady's life to pieces," Neil's low
+voice went on. "Everard's the man. He got her away from town. He filled
+her head with him and set her wild and she had to go. When he was tired
+of her, he left her in a place he thought she'd be too proud to come
+back from. She was proud, but he's broken her pride, and she crawled
+back to us. The prettiest girl in the town, she was, and you all knew
+that, and my sister and more to me----" he broke off abruptly, and
+laughed a dry little laugh that echoed strangely in the silent room. His
+voice sounded dry and hard as he went on.
+
+"He broke Maggie's life, but what's that to you, that give him a chance
+at your women, knowing well what he is, and leave them to take care of
+themselves with him, your own women that are yours to take care of,
+daughters and wives? It's nothing to you, but you're going to know it,
+and you're going to know this. I had it straight from Theodore Burr the
+night he died.
+
+"Everard's going to sell you out at the next election, the whole of
+you--his own crowd, too. He's been planning it for months. He's worked
+prohibition for all it's worth to him; worked for it till the state went
+dry, and then he's made money for you that are in it with him, and more
+for himself, protecting places like Halloran's that sell liquor on the
+quiet, and the smuggling of liquor into the state. Well, he's made money
+enough that way, and it's getting risky, and now he sees a way to make
+more and let nobody in on it. He's going to sell out to the liquor
+interests and work against prohibition, and the big card he'll use will
+be exposing Halloran's and the secret traffic in liquor, and all the
+crowd that's been buying protection from him. There's a big campaign
+started already, and big money being spent. There'll be big money in it
+for him. There'll be arrests made here and a public scandal. He's going
+to sell the town.
+
+"Maybe that interests you some. Maybe it gets you. It won't for long.
+He'll crawl out of it and lie out of it and talk you and buy you back to
+him. Well, I know one thing more, and he can't lie or crawl out of it.
+My father could have put him behind bars any time in twenty years. He's
+a common thief.
+
+"It was when he was seventeen, and studying law first, back in a town up
+state that's not on the map or likely to get there, and he was called by
+a name there that wasn't Everard. He was seventeen, but he was the same
+then as now; he had the same will to get on and the power to, no matter
+who he trampled on to get there, and the same charm that got men and
+women both, though they didn't trust him--got them even when he was
+trampling on them and they knew it. It got him into trouble there with
+two girls at once. One was the girl that gave him his start, the chance
+to go into her uncle's office. He was the biggest man in the town. Older
+than Everard, this girl was, and teaching in the school he went to, when
+she fell in love with him and brought him home to her town and gave him
+his chance. He was tired of her, and she was where it was bound to come
+out soon how things were with them, and so was the other girl, a girl
+that he wasn't tired of, the daughter of the woman where he boarded. He
+tried to get her to go away with him. She wouldn't go and she wouldn't
+forgive him, but the town was getting too hot for him, and he had to go.
+
+"He had to go quick and make a clean getaway and he wanted a real start
+this time. He had to have money. That was a dead little town. There was
+only one place he could get money enough, in the little hotel there. It
+was the only bank they had. The keeper of it used to cash checks and
+make loans. Everard was lucky, the same then as now. There was almost
+five thousand dollars in the safe in the hotel office the night he broke
+into it, and that was enough for him. He had a fight with the hotel
+clerk, but he got away with the money, and he got away from the town.
+
+"The clerk was his best friend in town--never trusted him, but fell for
+him the same as the girls and lent him money and listened to his
+troubles--and fell for him again when he ran across him again, years
+later, here in Green River. Everard told him he'd sent the money back,
+and he kept the secret. He never took hush money for it like Charlie. He
+said Everard ought to have his chance, and was straight now. But he fell
+for Everard again, that's what happened. Everard had him, the same as
+the rest of you.
+
+"The clerk was my father."
+
+The boy's voice broke off. There was dead silence in the hall. Green
+River had been listening almost in silence, and did not break it now.
+Presently the boy sighed, shrugged his thin shoulders as if they were
+throwing off an actual weight, and spoke again, this time in a lifeless
+voice, with all the colour and drama wiped out of it, a voice that was
+very tired.
+
+"That's all," he said. "That's back of him, with his fine airs and his
+far-reaching schemes and his big name in the state. You've stood for a
+crook. Will you stand for a common criminal, a common thief? Now you
+know and it's up to you. That's all."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later a boy was hurrying through the dark along the road to the
+Falls.
+
+He was almost home. Green River lay far behind with its scattered,
+sparsely strewn lights. The flat fields around him and the unshaded road
+before him, so bleak by day, were beautiful to-night, far reaching and
+mysterious. Above them, flat looking and unreal, remote in a coldly
+clouded sky, hung the yellow September moon.
+
+"I've done for myself," the boy was saying half out loud, as if the
+faraway moon could hear. "I've lost everything now. I've done for
+myself."
+
+The boy was sure of this, but could have told little more about the
+events of the evening. He remembered listening outside the hall doors
+until he was drawn inside in spite of himself, and listening there until
+something snapped in his brain, and suddenly the long days of
+repression, of vainly wondering what to do with his hard-won knowledge,
+were over, and he was pouring it all out in one jumbled burst of speech.
+He had no plan and no hope of doing harm to his enemy by speaking. He
+had to speak.
+
+After he had spoken he remembered getting down from the stage and out of
+the hall somehow. He remembered the crushed goldenrod, slippery under
+his feet. Against a background of blurred, unrecognizable faces, he
+remembered a tall, black-garbed figure that rose to its feet swaying and
+then steadying itself. It was Lilian Burr. Less clearly he remembered a
+wave of sound from the hall that followed him as he hurried away across
+the square. It was not like applause. He did not know or care what it
+meant. After that, he remembered only the cool dark of the September
+night as he walked through it aimlessly at first, and then turned toward
+home.
+
+"I've lost everything," he had said, and it must be true. How could he
+face the Judge again? How could he go on living in Green River? This
+was what all his long-cherished dreams had come to; a scene that Charlie
+might have made, and disgrace in the eyes of the town. He had lost
+everything.
+
+Yet strangely, as he said it, he knew that it was not true. Whatever he
+had lost, he had better things left. He had those free and splendid
+minutes of speaking out his heart. They could not be taken from him. The
+freedom and relief of them was with him still. And he had the road firm
+under his feet, and the clean air blowing the fever out of his brain,
+and the strength of his own young body, clean strength, good to feel as
+he walked through the night. And along the dark road before him,
+familiar as it was, and worn so many times by discouraged feet, the
+white track of moonlight beckoned him, clean and new. It was a way that
+might lead anywhere--to fairy-land, to success, to the end of the world.
+
+Now the boy made the turn in the road that brought him within sight of
+home. Faint lights twinkling from it, intimate and warm, invited him as
+never before. Was his mother waiting up for him? Home itself, lighted
+and intimate and safe, was enough to find waiting. His heart gave a
+strange little leap that hurt, but was keen pleasure, too. Almost
+running, he covered the last bit of road, crossed the grassy front yard
+and then climbed the creaking front steps, and stood for a minute that
+was unendurably long, fumbling with the door.
+
+The door was unlocked and gave suddenly, opening wide, and he stood on
+the threshold of the kitchen. The lights he had seen were in the
+sitting-room beyond. In this room there was only moonlight. It came
+through the window that looked out on the marshy field, the fairies'
+field. Surely there must be fairies there to-night, out in the empty
+green spaces, flooded with moonlight. But the fairies were not all in
+the field, there was one in the room. Neil could see it.
+
+The old rocking chair stood in the moonlit window. It was holding two,
+his mother, and some one else--the fairy, golden haired and white robed
+and slender, and close in his mother's arms. As he stood and wondered
+and looked, a board creaked under his feet. It was the faintest of
+sounds, but a fairy's ears are keen, and the fairy heard, and stirred,
+and turned in his mother's arms.
+
+Now Neil could see her face. It was flushed and human and warm, and in
+her eyes, opening grave and deep, was a look that was the shyest but
+surest of welcomes. The welcome was all for Neil, and the fairy was
+Judith.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
+
+
+A boy and a girl sat on the doorsteps of the Randall house.
+
+It was almost a year since the night of the rally. It was an evening in
+late May--late, but it was May, and the fairies' month still. There was
+a pleasant, shivery chill in the air. A far sprinkling of stars made the
+dark of the still, windless night look darker and warmer and safer to
+whisper in. The big horse-chestnut tree at the corner of the syringa
+hedge was only a darker blot against the surrounding dark, and the slope
+of faintly lit street on the other side of the hedge looked far away,
+with the dark sweep of lawn between. It was a night for the fairies, or
+for the girl and boy, and that was quite as it should be, for it was
+their first together for months.
+
+Judith and Neil sat discreetly erect on the steps, undoing what those
+months apart had done with little bursts of shy speech, and long, shy
+silences that helped them more. In the longest and shyest silence their
+hands had groped for each other once, met as if they had never touched
+before, and clung together for a minute as if they never meant to let
+go, but Judith kept firmly to impersonal subjects still.
+
+"You did it all," she said. "Things do happen so fast when they happen.
+Just think, this time last year he was like a king!"
+
+"Everard?"
+
+"Yes. Do you remember how I used to be cross when you called him that,
+and wouldn't say Colonel? How childish that was!" Judith patronized her
+dead self, as a young lady may, with her twentieth birthday almost upon
+her.
+
+"You weren't childish."
+
+"What was I?"
+
+"Just what you are now."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Wonderful." Neil chose his one adequate word, from the tiny vocabulary
+of youth, small because few words are worthy to voice the infinite
+dreams of it. "Wonderful."
+
+"No, I'm not wonderful. You are. That dreadful old man, and every one
+knew he was dreadful and wouldn't do anything about it till you----"
+
+"Bawled him out? That's all I did, you know, really. It was a kid's
+trick. He lost out because it was coming to him anyway. Poor Theodore
+saw to that. He turned the town against Everard when he killed himself.
+It wasn't turning fast, but it was turning. I did give it a shove and
+make it turn faster, but I didn't even have sense enough to know I had
+until the day after the rally, when the Judge sent for me and told me. I
+didn't dare go near him until he sent for me, and I thought he had sent
+for me to fire me."
+
+"But you broke up the rally. They were dead still in the hall until you
+left, and then they went crazy, calling for you, and all talking at
+once, talking against you, some of them, till it really wasn't a rally
+any more, but just like a mob. Oh, I know. The Judge tells me, every
+time I go to ride with him, and when he came on to the school last
+winter and saw me there, he told me all over again. Father has never
+half told me. He hates to talk about the rally or the Colonel either,
+but I don't care, he and mother are both so sweet to me lately--just
+sweet.
+
+"So it was just like a mob, and then poor Mrs. Burr got up and tried to
+speak, and they got quiet and listened, and she said "Every word the boy
+says is true and more--more----" just like that, and then she got faint
+and had to stop, and then the Judge took hold. That's what he says he
+did, took hold, and he says it was time, because they might have tarred
+and feathered the Colonel if he hadn't. I don't suppose they would, but
+I wish I could have seen the Judge take hold. I love him."
+
+"Don't you love anybody else?"
+
+Judith ignored this frivolous interruption, as it deserved.
+
+"And so your work was done, though you didn't know it and ran away. And
+the Judge says you are a born orator, Neil. That you've got the real
+gift, the thing that makes an audience yours. I don't know just what he
+means, but I know you've got it, too. You're going to be a great man,
+Neil."
+
+"I didn't do anything."
+
+"You're the only man in town who thinks that, then, or has since that
+night. He--Everard--was done for the minute you stepped on the stage,
+the Judge says. Only they managed it decently, the Judge and the few
+that kept their heads. They announced that Colonel Everard was
+indisposed and couldn't speak, and the Judge took him home. He really
+was ill next day. There's something wrong with his horrid heart. And
+that gave him a good excuse not to run for mayor, he gave that up
+himself. And in a few days the Judge and Luther Ward went to him and
+told him what else he had to do, and he did it. He had to resign from
+everything, everything he was in charge of or was trustee of, or had
+anything to do with, and get out of town. If he'd do that, they wouldn't
+make any scandal or bother him afterward, but let him start new. And
+they gave him six months to do all that decently and save his face. Why
+did he have to do it decently? Why couldn't they tar and feather him? I
+wish they had. I wish----"
+
+"Wish something else, Judith. Something about us."
+
+"What do you mean by us?"
+
+"You and me."
+
+"Isn't it splendid the Judge is going to be president of the bank?" said
+Judith hastily.
+
+"Splendid," said a future president of the Green River Bank, who was
+occupying the step beside her.
+
+"And isn't it nice that poor Mrs. Burr is going to marry Mr. Sebastian,
+even if she does have to move away from Green River? I like people to be
+happy, don't you?"
+
+"No. No, I don't. Not other people. I don't care whether they are happy
+or not, and I don't want to talk about them, only about you and me."
+
+"If you don't like the way I talk, I'll keep still," Judith said, in a
+severe but small voice, but a small hand groping for his softened the
+threat, and a soft, sudden laugh as his arm slipped round her atoned for
+it entirely. Then there was silence on the steps, a long, whispering,
+wonderful silence. Long before Judith spoke again all the work of the
+lonely months was undone. And the low whispers that the two exchanged
+conveyed no further information about Colonel Everard.
+
+But there was no more to tell. The master of Green River was master no
+longer and the end of all the intricate planning and scheming that had
+made and kept him master was a story that Judith could tell in a few
+careless sentences and forget. If she had seen and guessed some things
+that she could not forget, in the strange little circle that had found a
+place for her, she would never see them again. That order was gone from
+the town forever, with the man who had created it, and beside her on the
+steps was the boy who could make her forget it, and see beyond the long,
+hard years between. And, as she almost could guess, in these magic
+minutes when she could dream and dream true, that boy was the future
+master of Green River.
+
+Judith sighed, and stirred in his arms.
+
+"Are you happier now?" she whispered.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But you're going to be great. You are, really."
+
+"I am if you want me to. Judith, how long does your father think you and
+I ought to wait?"
+
+"I don't know. You can ask him. He likes you better than me. He always
+wanted me to be a boy.... Neil, I want to tell you something. Keep your
+arm like that, but don't look at me."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It's about what you don't like me to talk about."
+
+"Everard?"
+
+"Yes, and it's about something dreadful, that day in his library when I
+was alone with him, and you came. He--frightened me."
+
+"Never mind, dear, now."
+
+"He frightened me but that was--all. I wasn't hurt or anything. I just
+didn't know he--anybody--could look the way he was looking, or act the
+way he was acting, and then I felt sick all over. I was afraid. But he
+was just trying to kiss me, of course, and I wasn't going to let him,
+the horrid old man. So I think now it was silly to be frightened. Was
+it?"
+
+"No, it wasn't silly, dear."
+
+"I'm glad. And Neil--I want to tell you something else. It's about--that
+night--in the buggy, on the old road to Wells, you know, when you were
+going to elope with me and changed your mind."
+
+"When I frightened you so. Oh, Judith."
+
+"You didn't--frighten me," said a very small voice indeed. "You----"
+
+"What, dear?"
+
+"Made me want you--want to go away with you. I never felt like that
+before, all waked up and different and--happy. Oh, you didn't frighten
+me. I wasn't angry because you tried to take me away. It was because you
+brought me back."
+
+"Don't you know why I brought you back?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why, because I loved you. I didn't love you till then, not really; not
+till that minute in the carriage. I know just what minute. When you let
+me kiss you, and didn't mind any more. Then I knew about--love. I never
+knew before, but I'll never forget again. It isn't just wanting people,
+it's taking care of them, and not hurting them. Waiting till you can
+have things--right. So I wanted to have you right and be fit for you,
+and after that night I went to work and I wouldn't be stopped, not by
+anything in this town or the world. Oh, Judith, why don't you speak to
+me? It isn't much use to talk. You don't understand."
+
+"I--do."
+
+"You're crying!"
+
+She was crying, and she did understand. Before this unexpected,
+beautiful proof of it, the boy was reverent and half ashamed, as if a
+woman's tears were a sacred miracle invented for him. He held her hand
+timidly and pressed it. Presently she drew it away, and suddenly she was
+not crying, but laughing, a low, full-throated laugh as wonderful to
+him as her tears.
+
+"I told you, you did it all," she said softly. "Well, you didn't. Neil,
+there's what did it all. Because, if you only go on believing in things
+and being sweet and true and not afraid, and--wishing, then everything
+will come right. It's got to, just because you want it to. So there's
+what did it all and made us so happy, you and me. I love it. Love it,
+Neil."
+
+Neil looked where Judith was looking. Above the horse-chestnut tree, so
+filmy and faint that the stars looked brighter than ever, so pale that
+it was not akin to the stars, but to the dark beyond, where adventures
+were, so friendly and sweet that it could make the wish in your heart
+come true, hung a new-risen silvery crescent of light.
+
+"But it's only the moon," Neil said.
+
+"It's--the wishing moon," said Judith.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected
+without note. Some illustrations have been relocated for
+better flow.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WISHING MOON***
+
+
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