[Illustration: "IT WAS FOR ME--YOU WENT. DON'T YOU--DIDN'T YOU KNOW ITWAS--JUST BECAUSE OF YOU--THAT I WANTED THEM--AT--ALL?"]

ONCE TO EVERY MAN

BY

LARRY EVANS

ILLUSTRATED BY

ANTON OTTO FISCHER

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS :: NEW YORK

Copyright, 1913, by

The Metropolitan Magazine Company. 

Copyright, 1914, by

The Metropolitan Magazine Company. 

Copyright, 1914, by

The H. K. Fly Company. 

TO

MINE OWN PEOPLE

ILLUSTRATIONS

 "It Was for Me--You Went. Don't You--Didn't You Know It Was--Just Because of You--That I Wanted Them--At--All?" _Frontispiece_ "Hold Me Tight--Oh! Hold Me Tighter! for They Forgot Me, Too, Denny; They Forgot Me Too!" 53 "Dryad, It's All Right--It's Always Been All Right--With Us! They Lied--They Lied and They Knew They Were Lying!" 85 "What You Need, Gentlemen, Is a Trifle Wider Readin'--Just a Trifle! for You Ain't Bein' Well Posted on Facts!" 149

ONCE TO EVERY MAN

CHAPTER I

The most remarkable thing about the boy was his eyes--that is, if anyman with his spread of shoulder and masculine grace of flat muscledhips could be spoken of any longer as a boy, merely because his yearshappened to number twenty-four. 

They, however--the eyes--were gray; not a too light, off-color, gleaming gray, but more the tone of slate, deep when one chancedto find oneself peering deep into them. And they were old. Anyspontaneity of youth which might have flashed from them at onetime had faded entirely and left a sort of wistful sophistrybehind, an almost plaintive hunger which made the pity of hisshoulder-stoop--still mercifully only a prophecy of what the nexttwenty years of toil might leave it--an even more pitiful thing. Hissheer bigness should have been still unspoiled; instead it wasalready beginning to lose its rebound; it was growing imperceptiblyslack, like the springy stride of a colt put too soon to heavyharness. 

Late afternoon was giving way to nightfall--a long shadowed twilightthat was heavy with the scent of spring in spite of the scatteredpatches of wet snow that still lurked in the swamp holes. As the boystood, facing toward the east and the town that sprawled in thehollow, his great, shoulder-heavy body loomed almost like a paintedfigure against the cool red background of the horizon. Even in spiteof the pike-pole which he grasped in one hand and the vividlycheckered blanket coat that wrapped him, the illusion was undeniable. Stripped of them and equipped instead with a high steeple-crowned hatand wide buckled shoes, his long half-saddened face and lean bodymight have been a composite of all the Puritan fathers who hadwrestled with the rock-strewn acres behind him, two hundred years andmore before. 

Denny Bolton was waiting--Young Denny, the townsfolk preferred to callhim, to distinguish him from Old Denny of the former generation. Somehow, although he had never mentioned it to anybody, it seemed tohim that he had always been waiting for something--he hardly knew justwhat it was himself--just something that was drearily slow in thecoming. 

His home, the farmhouse of the Boltons, for which the stragglingvillage of Boltonwood below had been named, was nearest of all theoutlying places on the post route, yet last of all to be served, forwhen the rural delivery had been established they had begun deliveryat the other end of the circle. Young Denny had never been able tounderstand quite why it was so--but it was, for all that. And withthe minister, too, it happened, although not so often, for theminister of Boltonwood called at almost every door on his rounds andstayed longer at each, so sometimes for months at a time he never gotaround to the shabby place on the hill at all. But the boy believedthat he did understand this and often he smiled to himself over it, without any bitterness--just smiled half wistfully. He lived alone inthe tumble-down old house and did his own cooking and--well, even amost zealous man of the gospel might have beamed more heartily uponbetter cooks than was Denny, without any great qualms of conscience. 

One other reason existed, or at least Young Denny imagined that itdid, but whenever he stopped to think about it--a thing he had come todo more and more often in the last few months--he never smiled. Instead, his lips straightened until the wistful quirk at the cornersdisappeared into a straight line and his eyes smouldered ominously. 

There was a select circle of white-haired old men--the village oldguard--which sat in nightly session about the fat-bellied oldwood-stove in the Boltonwood Tavern. It convened with the firstsnowfall of the winter and broke up long after the ice had gone out inthe spring; and this circle, when all other topics had been whippedover at fever heat, until all the zest of bitter contradiction wasgone from them, always turned at last with a delightful sort ofunanimity to the story of the night when Old Denny had died--theBolton of the former generation. 

An almost childish enthusiasm tinged their keen relish for the tale. They squirmed and puckered their wrinkled old faces and shiveredconvulsively, just as a child might have shivered over a Bluebeardhorror, as they recalled how Old Denny had moaned in agony one momentthat night, and then screamed horribly the next for the old stonedemijohn that always stood in the corner of the kitchen. Theyremembered, with an almost astonishing wealth of detail, that he hadfrothed at the mouth and blasphemed terribly one instant, and thenwept, in the very same breath--wept hopelessly, like the uncouth, overgrown, frightened boy who knelt at the bedside. 

The strangest part of the whole thing was that not one of them hadrealized at the time, or ever recalled since, that Old Denny's eyeswere sane when he wept that night and blurred with madness when hecursed. But then, too, that would have smashed the dramatic element ofthe whole tale to flinters. They never missed a scene or a sob, however, in the re-telling, and they always ended it with an ominoustilt of the head and a little insinuating crook of the neck toward thebattered, weather-torn old house where Young Denny had lived on alonesince that last bad night. It was very much as though they had saidaloud, "He's the next--he'll go just like the rest. "

Perhaps they never really thought of it, and perhaps it was becauseYoung Denny's failure to fulfil their prophecy had really embitteredthem, but the whole village had given the boy plenty of solitude inthe last few years in which to become on terms of thorough intimacywith the demijohn which still occupied its place in the kitchencorner. 

And yet that stone demijohn was almost the only tangible reminderthere was left of the Bolton who had gone before. There were a few inthe village who wondered how, in the three intervening years, the bigsilent, shambling boy had managed to tear from his acres money enoughto clear the place of its debt--the biggest thing by far in hisheritage. Eight hundred dollars was a large sum in Boltonwood--andDenny's acres were mostly rocks. Old Denny would have sold the lastscythe and fork in the dilapidated barn to fill the stone jug, savefor the fact that fork and scythe had themselves been too dilapidatedto find a purchaser. 

But the same scythe had an edge now and a polish where the boy's handshad gripped and swung it, and it took a flawlessly clear-grained pieceof ash to make a shaft that would stand the forkfuls of hay which hisshoulders heaved, without any apparent effort, into the mow. Theclapboards on the house, although still unpainted, no longer whinedin the wind; they were all nailed tight. And still the circle aroundthe stove in the Boltonwood Tavern tilted its head--tilted itominously--as if to say: "Just wait a bit, he'll come to it--wait nowand see!" But the prophecy's fulfilment, long deferred, was makingthem still more bitter--strangely bitter--toward the boy, who stoodalone at sundown watching the road that wound up from the village. 

All this Young Denny knew, not because he had been told, but becausethe part of him that was still boy sensed it intuitively. He was justas happy to be let alone, or at least so he told himself, timeswithout end, for it gave him a chance to sleep. And tonight as hestood at the crest of the hill before the dark house, waiting for OldJerry to come along with the mail, he was glad, too, that his placewas the last on the route. It gave him something to look forward toduring the day--something to expect--for although he rarely received aletter or, to be more exact, never, the daily newspaper was, afterall, some company. And then there were the new farm implementcatalogues and seed books, with their dyspeptic looking fruits andvegetables. They made better reading than nothing at all. 

But it was not the usual bundle of papers which came at the end ofeach week for which Young Denny was waiting. Old Jerry, who drove thepost route, and had driven it as long as Denny could remember, waslate tonight--he was even later than usual for Saturday night--andDenny's hand tightened nervously upon the shaft of the pike-pole as herealized the cause of the delay. 

For many weeks he had heard but little else mentioned on the villagestreets on his infrequent trips after groceries and grain. The wintersledding was over; the snow had gone off a month back with the firstwarm rain; just that afternoon he had made the last trip behind hisheavy team down from the big timber back on the ridges, but duringthat month the other drivers with whom he had been hauling logs sincefall had talked of nothing but the coming event. 

From where he stood, looking out across the valley, Young Denny couldsee the huge bulk of the Maynard homestead--Judge Maynard's great boxof a house--silhouetted against the skyline, and back of it high pilesof timber--framing and sheathing for the new barn that was going up. For Judge Maynard was going to give a barn-raising--an old-fashionedbarn-raising such as the hill country had not seen in twenty years. 

Already Young Denny knew that there were to be two team captains whowould choose from among the best men that the country boasted, thevery pick of strength and endurance and daring. And these, when theword was given, would swarm up with mallet and lock-pin over theirhalf of the allotted work, in the race to drive home the last spikeand wedge into place the last scantling. For days now with a gravesort of satisfaction which he hardly understood himself, Young Dennyhad time after time put all his strength against a reluctant log, skidding timber back on the hillside, and watched the lithe pike-polebend half double under the steadily increasing strain. Somehow he feltvery sure that one or the other of the captains would single him out;they couldn't afford to pass him by. 

But in that one respect only was Judge Maynard's barn-raising to belike those that had passed down into history a score of years back. Every other detail, as befitted the hospitality of the wealthiest manin the hill country, was planned on a scale of magnificence beforeunheard of, and Denny Bolton stood and touched furtively with the tipof his tongue lips that were dry with the glamour of it all. 

It was to be a masquerade--the dance which followed on the wide, cleanfloors--not the kind of a masquerade which the church societies gavefrom time to time to eke out the minister's salary and which, while hehad never attended, Young Denny had often heard described as"poverty-parties, " because everybody wore the oldest of his oldclothes--but a marvelously brilliant thing of hired costumes. It didnot mean so much to him, this last, and yet as he thought of it histight lips twisted into a slow smile and his eyes swung from theirhungry contemplation of the great Maynard house to a little clump ofbrushwood which made a darker blot against the black shadow of thehill from the crest of which the Judge's place dominated thesurrounding country. Little by little Denny Bolton's lean face lostits hint of hardness; the lines that ran from his thin nose to thecorners of his lips disappeared as he smiled--smiled with whimsicalgentleness--at the light that glimmered from a single window throughthe tangled bushes, twinkling back at him unblinkingly. 

There was a tiny cottage behind that light, a little drab cottage of ahalf dozen rooms. It stood, unpainted and unkempt, in a wedge-shapedacre of neglected garden which, between high weeds and uncutshrubbery, had long before gone to straggling ruin. And thatwedge-shaped acre which cut a deep fissure in the edge of theimmaculate pastures of Boltonwood's wealthiest citizen was like abarbed thorn in Judge Maynard's side. 

The latter was not a judge in reality; partly the size of the cashbalance which rumor whispered he carried at the county bank, partlythe fact that he was the only lawyer in that section, had earned himthe title. But every trick of his tricky trade which he could inventhe had brought against the owner of that little, dilapidated cottagein a vain effort to force him to sell. And yet the acre of neglectand ruin still clung like an unsightly burr to the hem of hissmooth-rolling acres. 

The people of Boltonwood were given to calling John Anderson a fool, and not alone because he persisted in his senseless antagonism of aman as great in the township as was Judge Maynard. There was at leastone other reason. It was almost twenty years now since the day whenJohn Anderson had first appeared in the stern old hill town, bringingwith him a frail slip of a woman with great, moist violet-blue eyesand tumbled yellow hair, whose very white and gold prettiness hadseemed to their puritanical eyes the flaunting of an ungodly thing. There was a transparent pallor in her white skin and heavy shadowsbeneath her big dark eyes that made them seem even larger and duskier. A whispered rumor went around that she was not too strong--that it wasthe brisk keen air for which John Anderson had brought her to thehills. 

The little drab cottage had been white then and there was scarcely aday but what the passers-by saw the slender girl, in soft flutteringthings that contrasted painfully with their dingy calico, the thickgleaming mass of hair that crowned her head wind-tossed into her eyes, standing with her face buried in an armful of crimson blossoms in thesame garden where the weeds were now breast high, or running withmad, childish abandon between the high hedgerows. And many a nightafter it was too dark to see they heard the man's heavier bassunderrunning the light treble of her laughter which, to theirsensitive ears, was never quite free from a tinge of mockery. 

CHAPTER II

For a year or more it was like that, and then the day came which, withdawn, found John Anderson changed into a gray-haired, white-faced man, whose eyes always seemed to be looking beyond one, and who spoke butseldom, even when he was spoken to. During the month that followedthat night hardly a person in the village heard a word pass his lips, except, perhaps, those members of the church societies who hadvolunteered to help care for the baby. 

He locked himself up in the small shop which occupied the back room ofthe house and day after day he worked there alone in a deadly quiet, strangely mechanical fashion. Sometimes far into the night they heardthe tap-tap of his mallet as he chipped away, bit by bit, on a slendershaft of white marble, until more than one man in those days shook hishead dubiously and vouchsafed his neighbor the information that JohnAnderson "wa'n't quite right. "

A month passed during which the steady chip-chip scarcely ever ceased;and yet, when the work was finally finished and set up over the freshlittle mound in the grounds behind the church, and they came to standbefore it, they found nothing ready for them to say. For once thetongues of the hillsfolk were sobered into silence. 

It was like her--that slim little white statue--so like her in itspallor and frailty of feature and limb that they only gasped and thenfell to whispering behind their hands at the resemblance. And somehow, too, as they stared, their faces failed to harden as they had alwayshardened before, whenever they rebuked her slim, elfish untidiness, for upon the face of stone, which was the face of his wife, JohnAnderson's chisel had left a fleeting, poignantly wistful smile thatseemed touched with the glory of the Virgin Mother herself. 

They merely stood and stared--the townsfolk--and yet they only halfunderstood, for when it was noised about the street a few days laterthat John Anderson had given up forever his occupation of chiselingtombstones for the bleak Boltonwood cemetery--an occupation which atleast had yielded him a bare living--and had locked himself up in thatback room to "putter with lumps of clay, " he was instantly convictedof being queer in the eyes of the entire thrifty community, evenwithout his senseless antagonism of the Judge in the years thatfollowed to clinch the verdict. 

After the first few weeks that followed that night the village sawless and less of the man who went on living alone in the small whitecottage with only the child to keep him company--the girl-child whomhe had named Dryad, perhaps in a blind, groping hunger for beauty, perhaps in sheer revolt against the myriad Janes and Anns and Marthasabout him. His hair was snow white before she was half grown; he wasan old man, wrinkled of face and vacant of eye, who bent always overthe bench in his back-room shop too engrossed with his work even tonote that, day by day, her face and slim body and tumbled yellow hairgrew more and more like the face which was always smiling up at himfrom the shaping clay or marble. 

Months passed before he opened his lips again for speech. Then hebegan to talk; he began to murmur little, disjointed intimate phrasesof endearment to the stone face growing under his fingers--phrasesthat were more than half unintelligible to strange ears--until as thehabit grew there came long periods, days at a time, when he carried onan uncannily one-sided conversation with the empty air before him, or, as the villagers often hinted, with some one whom his eyes alone couldsee. 

But as the years went by even this novelty lost its spice with longfamiliarity. The cottage at the edge of town went from stragglingneglect to utter ruin, but John Anderson still clung to it with asenseless stubbornness over which they often shook their heads inpity--in heartfelt commiseration for the Judge who had to endure thiseyesore at his very doors, in spite of all his shrewdness or thereputed size of his balance at the County National. 

But if time had dimmed their interest in the father, it had onlyserved to whet their keen curiosity over the girl, who, in theintervening eighteen years, had changed from a half-starved, half-cladchild that flashed through the thickets like a wild thing, into a longslender-limbed creature with wide, duskily violet eyes and shimmering, tumbled hair--a creature of swift, passionate moods who, if they couldonly have known it, was startlingly like the wild things for which hehad named her. 

They were not given to the reading of heathen mythology, the people ofBoltonwood, and so they could not know. But with every passing daythey did realize that Dryad Anderson's fiercely wistful little facewas growing more and more like that of the little statue in thegrounds behind the church--the stone face of John Anderson's frailbride of a year--long since turned a dull, nondescript gray by the sunand weather. 

She had the same trick of smiling with her eyes when there was nomirth lurking in the corners of her full lips, the same full-throatedlittle laugh that carried the faintest hint of mockery in its thrill. Year by year her slim body lost its unformed boyishness in a new softroundness which her long outgrown skirt and too scant little waistfailed completely to conceal. And the hillsfolk were given to shakingtheir heads over her now, just as the generation before had done, forto cap it all--the last straw upon the back of their toleration--DryadAnderson had "took up" with Denny Bolton, Young Denny, the last of hisname. Nothing more was needed to damn her forever in the eyes of thehills people, although they could not have explained just why, even ifthey had tried. 

And Young Denny, waiting there in the thickening dusk before his owndark place, smiled gravely back at that single blinking light in thewindow of the cottage squatting under the hill--he smiled withwhimsical gentleness, a man's smile that softened somehow the hardlines of jaw and lip. It was more than three years now since the firstnight when he had stood and watched for it to flash out across thevalley before he had turned and gone to set a lamp in the dark frontwindows behind him in answer to it. 

He could never remember just how they had agreed upon that signal--therehad never been any mutual agreement--but every Saturday night sincethat first one, three years back, he had come in from his week's work, ploughing or planting or teaming back in the timber and waited forit to call to him, just at dusk, across the valley. 

His hand went tentatively to his chin, absently caressing his leancheeks as he remembered that day. Late in the afternoon he had found arabbit caught fast in a snare which he had set deep in the thicket, and the little animal had squealed in terror, just as rabbits alwayssqueal, when he leaned and took it from the trap. And when he hadstraightened to his feet with it clutched fast in his arms, to lookfor a club with which to end its struggles quickly, his eyes hadlifted to encounter the stormy eyes of the girl who had flashed upbefore him as silently as a shadow from the empty air. 

Her two small brown fists were tight clenched against her breast; shewas breathing in short irregular gasps as if she had been runninghard. 

At first Denny Bolton had been too amazed to do more than stareblankly into her blazing eyes; then before that burning glare his facebegan to redden consciously and his gaze dropped, wavering from herface to the little blouse so long outgrown that it strained far openacross the girl's round throat, doubly white by contrast below thebrown line where the clear tan ended. 

His glance went down from the fierce little face to the tight skirt, shiny from long wear and so short that the hem hung high above herslim ankles; and from there down to the cracked, broken shoes, string-laced and sized too large for her fine drawn feet. They wereold and patched--the stockings--so thickly darned that there waslittle of the original fabric left, but for all the patches there werestill wide gashes in them, fresh torn by the thorns, through which theflesh beneath showed very white. 

Her face colored, too, as Young Denny's uncomfortable scrutiny passedover her. It flamed painfully from throat to hair and then went verywhite. She tried vainly with one hand to close the gap at her throat, while the other struggled to settle the dingy old skirt a little loweron her childish hips. But her hot eyes clung unwaveringly to the boy'sface. Suddenly she lifted one hand and pointed a quivering finger atthe furry mass palpitating in his arms. 

"What are you going to do with it?" she demanded. 

Young Denny started at the question. The uncompromising directness ofthe words startled him even more than had her first swift, silentcoming. Involuntarily, spasmodically his arms closed until the rabbitsquealed again in an ecstasy of terror. 

"Why, I--I reckon to eat him!" he blurted at last, and then his facegrew hotter than ever at the baldness of the answer. 

It was hard to follow the change that flashed over her face as shebecame conscious of his blundering, clumsy embarrassment. It came tooquickly for that, but the angry light faded from her eyes and herlips began to curve in the faintest of quizzical smiles. She evenforgot the too short skirt and gaping blouse to raise both handstoward him in coaxing coquetry. 

"Please let him go, " she wheedled softly. "Please let him go--forme!"

Young Denny backed away a step from her upturned face and outstretchedhands, grinning a little as he slowly shook his head. It bewilderedhim--puzzled him--this swift change to supplication. 

"Can't, " he refused laconically. "I--I got to have him to eat. "

His voice was calmly final and for no other reason than to learn whatshe would do next, because already the boy knew that the soft creaturethrobbing against him was to have its freedom again. No one, at leastsince he could remember, had ever before smiled and asked Denny Boltonto "do it--for me. " For one flashing instant he saw her eyes flare athis candid refusal; then they cleared again with that same miraculousswiftness. Once more the corners of her lips lifted pleadingly, archedwith guileful, provocative sweetness. 

"Please, " she begged, even more softly, "please--because I ask youto!"

Once more Young Denny shook his head. 

Standing there before his dark house, still smiling vaguely at thelight across the valley his fingers tentatively caressed his leancheeks where her fingernails had bit deep through the skin that day. He never remembered how it had happened--it all came too swiftly forrecollection--but even before he had finished shaking his head thetempting smile had been wiped from her lips, her little face workingconvulsively with rage, before she sprang at him--sprang with lithe, lightning, tigerlike ferocity that sent him staggering back beforeher. 

Her hands found his face and tore deep through the skin before hecould lift his wide-flung arms to protect it. And then, almost beforehe realized what had happened, she stood back, groping blindly awayfrom him until her hands found a birch sapling. She clung to it with adesperately tight clasp as if to hold herself erect. A little spot ofred flecked her own lip where her locked teeth had cut through. Sheswayed a moment, dizzily, the too-tight little waist gaping at herthroat as she struggled for breath. 

"There--there!" she gasped at him voicelessly. "There, " she whisperedthrough her white lips, "now will you let him go?"

And Denny Bolton had stood that afternoon in wondering silence, gazingback into her twitching, distorted face without a word while the bloodoozed from the deep cuts in his cheeks and dripped noisily upon thedry leaves. Once he turned and followed with his eyes the mad flightof the rabbit through the underbrush; and then turned slowly back toher. 

"Why, he's gone already, " he stated with a gentle gravity that wasalmost ponderous. And with a deliberation which he meant more tocomfort than to conciliate: "I--I aimed to let him go, myself, rightfrom the first time you asked me--after a while!"

She cried over him that afternoon--cried not as he had known othergirls to cry, but with long noiseless gasps that shook her thinshoulders terribly. Her eyes swam with great drops that hung from herlashes and went rolling silently down her small face while she washedout the cuts with one sleeve ruthlessly wrenched from her blouse andsoaked in the brook nearby. 

But in almost the same breath while she crooned pityingly over him shebade him--commanded him with a swift, fierce passionate vehemence--totell her that it did not hurt--did not hurt very much! And before shewould let him go that day she made him promise to come back--shepromised herself to set a light in the front window of the shabbylittle cottage to tell him that she had found the plaster--that therewas enough left to close the cuts. 

There had never been any spoken agreement between them, but since thatnight, three years ago, Denny Bolton had learned to watch each weekend, just at dusk, for the signal to appear. From the first their veryloneliness had drawn them together--a childish, starved desire forcompanionship; and as time passed they only clung the closer, each tothe other, as jealously fearful as a marooned man and woman might havebeen of any harm which might come to the one and leave the otherutterly, desolately alone. 

Winter and summer Denny Bolton went every Saturday night, close tonightfall, and waited for her to come, except that now, in the lastfew weeks since the first rumor of the Judge's big barn-raising andmasquerade had gone forth, no matter how early he started or how muchhaste he made, he always found Dryad Anderson there before him. Forweeks no other topic had passed the girl's lips, and with eachrecurring visit to the small clearing hidden back in the thicket nearthe brook the boy's wonder grew. 

Almost from the first day she had decided upon the costume which shewould wear. Night after night she sat and made plans in a tumultuous, bubbling flood of anticipation which he could scarcely follow, for itwas only after long argument that he had sheepishly surrendered andagreed to "dress up" at all; she sat with a picture torn from an oldmagazine across her knees--a color-plate of a dancing girl which shemeant to copy for herself--poring over it with shining eyes, herbreath coming and going softly between childishly curved lips as shedevoured every detail of its construction. 

It was a thing of brilliantly contrasting colors--the picture whichshe planned to copy--a sleeveless waist of dullest crimson and a muchbespangled skirt of clinging, shimmering black. And that skirt hungclear to the ankles, swinging just high enough to disclose the gleamof silken stockings and satiny, pointed slippers, with heels ofabsurdly small girth. 

The boy only half understood the feverish hunger which glowed in DryadAnderson's face, piquantly, wistfully earnest in the dull yellowlantern light as she leaned forward, ticking off each item and itsprobable cost upon her fingers, and waited doubtfully for him to mockat the expense; and yet, at that, he understood far better than anyone else could ever have hoped to comprehend, for Young Denny knew toowhat it was to wait--to wait for something that was drearily slow inthe coming. 

One other thing marked Judge Maynard's proffered hospitality astotally different from all the other half-similar affairs whichBoltonwood had ever known. There were to be invitations--written, mailed invitations--instead of the usual placards tacked up in thevillage post-office as they always were whenever any publicentertainment was imminent, or the haphazard invitations which werepassed along by word of mouth and which somehow they always forgot topass on to the boy who lived alone in the dark house on the hill. There were to be formal, mailed invitations, and Young Denny found ithard waiting that night for Old Jerry, who had never been so latebefore. 

The cool red of the horizon behind him faded to a dusky gray and thedusk thickened from twilight to dark while he stood there waiting, leaning heavily upon the pike-pole, shifting more and more uneasilyfrom one tired foot to the other. He had turned at last to go and seta light in answer to the one which was calling insistently to him fromthe blackness before the Judge's place when the shrill squeal ofcomplaining axles drifted up to him from far down the long hill road. 

Old Jerry came with exasperating slowness that night. The ploddingascent of the fat white mare and creaking buggy was nerve-rackinglydeliberate. Young Denny shifted the shaft of his pike-pole to theother hand to wipe his damp palm against the checkered coat as the rigloomed up ahead of him in the darkness. Old Jerry was complaining tohimself bitterly in a whining, cracked falsetto. 

"'Tain't reg'lar, " the boy heard him whimpering. "'Tain't accordin' tolaw--not the way I figger it, it ain't. The Gov'mint don't expectnobody to work 'til this hour!"

The buggy came to a standstill, with the little, weazened old manleaning far out from the torn leather seat, shading his eyes with oneunsteady hand while he peered into the shadows searching for thebig-shouldered figure that stepped hesitatingly nearer the wheel. There was something birdlike in the brilliancy of the beady littleeyes; something of sparrowlike pertness in the tilt of the old man'shead, perked far over to one side. 

"Still a-waitin', be ye?" he exclaimed peevishly. "Well, it's luckyyou ain't been kept a-standin' there a whole sight longer--half thenight, mebby! You would a-been, only for my havin' an orig'nal systemfor peddlin' them letters that's all my own. It's system does it--butit ain't right, just the same. The Gov'mint don't expect nobody towork more'n eight hours to a stretch, and look at me, two hours lateand I ain't home yet! I'd complain, too--I'd complain to theauthorities at Washington, only--only"--his thin, high-pitched voicedropped suddenly to a furtively conciliating whisper--"only a-course Idon't want to make no trouble for the Judge. "

Denny Bolton cleared his throat and shuffled his feet uneasily, butthis hint for haste was utterly wasted upon Old Jerry. The latterfailed completely to note the strained intensity of the face that wasupturned before him and went on grumbling as he leaned over to fumblein the box beneath the seat. And the tirade continued in an unbroken, half-muffled stream until he straightened laboriously again, the boy'susual weekly packet of papers and catalogues in one hand. 

"No, " he emphasized deliberately, "I wouldn't really go so fur'sthat--I ain't figgerin' on makin' no complaint--not this time. I gottoo much regard for the Judge to try to get him into any hot water. But there wa'n't no real use nor reason in his postin' all theminvitations to once. He could a-begun back a stretch and kinda run 'emin easy, a little to a time, instead of lumpin' 'em this way, and thatwould a-give me----"

Young Denny reached out and took the bundle from the extended, unsteady old hand. His own hands were shaking a little as he broke thestring and fluttered swiftly through the half dozen papers andpamphlets. Old Jerry never skipped a breath at the interruption. 

"But that finishes up the day--that's about the last of it. " Thethin voice became heavily tinged with pride. "There ain't nobody inthe township but what's got his card to that barn-raising bynow--delivered right on the nail! That's my system. " And then, judiciously: "I guess it's a-goin' to be a real fancy affair, too, at that. Must be it'll cost him more'n a little mite before he gitsdone feedin' 'em. They was a powerful lot of them invitations. "

Slowly Denny Bolton's head lifted. He stood and stared into OldJerry's peaked, wrinkled face as if he had only half heard therambling complaint, a strange, bewildered light growing in his eyes. Then his gaze dropped once more, and a second time, far more slowly, his fingers went through the packet of advertisements. Old Jerry wasleaning over to unwind the reins from the whipstock when the boy'shand reached out and stopped him. 

"Ain't there--wasn't there anything more for me--tonight?" Young Dennyinquired gravely. 

Jerry paused impatiently. No other question ever caused him quite suchkeen irritation, for he felt that it was a slur at his reliability. 

"More!" he petulantly echoed the question. "More? Why, you got yourpaper, ain't you? Was you expectin' sunthin' else? Wasn't looking fora letter, now was you?"

Denny backed slowly away from the wheel. Dumbly he stood and lickedhis lips. He cleared his throat again and swallowed hard before heanswered. 

"No, " he faltered at last, with the same level gravity. "No, I wasn'texactly expectin' a letter. But I kind of thought--I--I was justhopin'----"

His grave voice trailed heavily off into silence. Eyes still numblybewildered he turned, leaning forward a little, to gaze out across thevalley at the great square silhouette of Judge Maynard's house on theopposite ridge, while Old Jerry wheeled the protesting buggy andstarted deliberately down the hill. Just once more the latter paused;he drew the fat gray mare to a standstill and leaned a last time farout from the seat. 

"A-course I didn't mean nothin' when I spoke about complainin' againstthe Judge, " he called back. "You know that, don't you, Denny? You knowI was just jokin', don't you?" A vaguely worried, appealing straincrept into the cracked accents. "An' a-course you wouldn't say nothin'about my speakin' like that. I think a whole heap too much of theJudge to even try to git him into trouble--and--and then the Judge--hemight--you understand that I was only jokin', don't you, Denny?"

Young Denny nodded his head silently in reply. Long after the shrillfalsetto grumbling had ceased to drift back up the hill to him hestood there motionless. After a while the fingers that still clutchedthe bundle of circulars opened loosely and when he did finally wheelto cross slowly to the kitchen door the papers and catalogues layunheeded, scattered on the ground where they had fallen. 

He stopped once at the threshold to prop his pike-pole against thehouse corner before he passed aimlessly inside, leaving the door wideopen behind him. And he stood a long time in the middle of the darkroom, staring dully at the cold, fireless stove. Never before had hegiven it more than a passing thought--he had accepted it silently ashe accepted all other conditions over which he had no control--butnow as he stood and stared, it came over him, bit by bit, that he wastired--so utterly weary that the task of cooking his own supper thatnight had suddenly become a task greater than he could even attempt. The very thought of the half-cooked food sickened him--nauseated him. Motionless there in the dark he dragged one big hand across his drylips and slowly shook his head. 

"They didn't want me, " he muttered hoarsely. "It wasn't because theyforgot me before; they didn't want me--not even for the strength of myshoulders. "

With heavy, shuffling steps he crossed and dropped loosely into achair beside the bare board table that stood in front of one dingywindow. A long time he sat silent, his lean chin propped in his roughpalms, eyes burning straight ahead of him into vacancy. Then, littleby little, his great shoulders in the vividly checkered coat began tosag--they slumped downward-until his head was bowed and his face layhidden in the long arms crooked limply asprawl across the table-top. 

Once more he spoke aloud, hours later. 

"They didn't want me, " he repeated dully. "Not even for the work Icould do!"

CHAPTER III

It was very quiet in the front room of the little cottage thatsquatted in the black shadow below Judge Maynard's huge house on thehill. No sound broke the heavy silence save the staccato clip-clipof the long shears in the fingers of the girl who was leaning almostbreathlessly over the work spread out on the table beneath thefeeble glow of the single oil-lamp, unless the faint, monotonousmurmur which came in an endless sing-song from the lips of thestooped, white-haired old figure in the small back room beyond thedoor could be named anything so definite. 

John Anderson's lips always moved when he worked. His fingers, strong and clean-jointed and almost womanishly smooth--the only partof the man not pitifully seared with age--flew with a bewilderingnimbleness one moment, only to dwell the next with a lingeringcaress upon the shaping features before him; and for each caress ofhis finger tips there was an accompanying, vacantly gentle smile oran uncertainly emphatic nod of the silvered head which gave theone-sided conversation a touch of uncanny reality. 

And yet, at regularly recurring intervals, even his busy fingersfaltered, while he sat head bent far over to one side as though hewere listening for something, waiting for some reply. At every suchpause the vacant smile left his face and failed to return immediately. The monotonously inflectionless conversation was still, too, for thetime, and he merely sat and stared perplexedly about him, around thesmall workshop, bare except for the single high-stool that held himand the littered bench on which he leaned. 

There was a foot-wide shelf against each wall of that room, fastenedwaist high from the floor, and upon it stood countless small whitestatues, all slim and frail of limb, all upturned and smiling of lip. They were miraculously alike, these delicate white figures, each witha throat-tightening heartache in its wistful face--so alike in formand expression that they might have been cast in a single mold. Wherever his eyes might fall, whenever he turned in one of thoseendlessly repeated fits of faltering uncertainty, that tiny face wasalways before him, uplifted of lip, smiling back into John Anderson'svacant eyes until his own lips began to curve again and he turned oncemore, nodding his head and murmuring contentedly, to the clay upon hisbench. 

Out in the larger front room, as she hovered over the work spread outbefore her, the girl, too, was talking aloud to herself, not in thetoneless, rambling voice that came from John Anderson's mumblinglips, but in hushed, rapt, broken sentences which were softly tingedwith incredulous wonder. 

The yellow glow of the single lamp, pushed far across the table fromher, where the most of its radiance was swallowed up by the gloom ofthe uncurtained window, flickered unsteadily across her shining, tumbled hair, coloring the faintly blue, thinly penciled lines beneathher tip-tilted eyes with a hint of weariness totally at variance withthe firm little sloping shoulders and full lips, pursed in a childishpout over a mouthful of pins. 

The hours had passed swiftly that day for Dryad Anderson; and the lastone of all--the one since she had lighted the single small lamp in theroom and set it in the window, so far across the table from her thatshe had to strain more and more closely over her swift flashingscissors in the thickening dusk--had flown on winged feet, even fasterthan she knew. 

Twice, early in the evening she had laid the long shears aside andrisen from the matter that engrossed her almost to the exclusion ofevery other thought, to peer intently out of the window across thevalley at the bleak old farmhouse on the crest of the opposite ridge;and each time as she settled herself once more in the chair, hunchedboyishly over the table edge, she only nodded her bright head inutter, undisturbed unconsciousness of the passage of time. 

"He's late getting home tonight, " she told herself aloud, after shehad searched the outer darkness in vain for any answering signal, butthere was not even the faintest trace of troubled worry in her words. She merely smiled with mock severity. 

"He's later than he ought to be--even if it is his last week back inthe hills. Next week I'll have to make him wait----"

Her vaguely murmured threat drifted away into nothingness, leftunfinished as she rose and stood, hands lightly bracketed upon herhips, scrutinizing the completed work. 

"There, " she went on softly, sighing in deep relief, "there--that'sdone--if--if it will only fit. "

She removed the cluster of pins from her mouth and unfastened the longstrip of newspaper from the section of the old black skirt which shehad ripped apart that afternoon for a pattern. It was far tooshort--that old skirt--to duplicate the long free lines of thebrilliant red and black costume of the dancer beside her elbow on thetable, but Dryad Anderson's shears, coasting rapidly around the edgeof the worn cloth, had left a wide margin of safety at the hem. 

The critical frown upon her forehead smoothed little by little whileshe lifted cautiously that long strip of paper pattern and turned withit dangling from one hip to walk up and down before the tilted mirrorat the far end of the room, viewing her reflected image from everypossible angle. Even the thoughtful pucker at the corners of her eyesdisappeared and she nodded her small head with its loosened mass ofhair in judicious satisfaction. 

"I do believe that's it, " the hushed voice mused on, "or, if it isn't, it is as near as I can ever hope to get it. If--if only it doesn't sagat the heels--and if it does I'll have to----"

Again with a last approving glance flung over one shoulder themurmured comment, whatever it might have been, was finishedwordlessly. Her fingers, in spite of their very smallness as strongand straight and clean-jointed as those of the old man bent doubleover his bench in the back room, lingered absently over the folding ofthat last paper pattern, and when she finally added it to the top ofthe stack already folded and piled beside the lamp her eyes had becomevelvety blank with preoccupation. 

From early afternoon, ever since the Judge himself had whirled up tothe sagging gate at the end of their rotting boardwalk and clamberedout of his yellow-wheeled buckboard to knock with measured solemnityat the front door, Dryad had been rushing madly from task to task andpausing always in just such fashion in the midst of each to standdreamily immobile, everything else forgotten for the moment in aneffort to visualize it--to understand that it was real, after all, andnot just a cobweb fabric of her own fancy, like the dreams she wasalways weaving to make the long week days pass more quickly. 

It was more than a few years since the last time Judge Maynard haddriven up to the gate of that old, drab cottage; and now standingthere with one slim outstretched hand lovingly patting the bundle ofpaper patterns which represented her afternoon's work, she smiled withgentle derision for the mental picture she had carried all those yearsof the wealthiest man in Boltonwood. 

The paternal, almost bewildering familiar cordiality with which he hadgreeted her and the pompously jovial urgency of the invitation whichhe had come to deliver in person, urging acceptance upon her becauseshe "saw entirely too little of the young folks of the town, " washardly in accord with the childish recollection she had carried withher, year after year, of a purple faced, cursing figure who leanedover the rickety old fence that bounded the garden, shook his fists inJohn Anderson's mildly puzzled face and roared threats until he had tocease from very breathlessness. 

A far different Judge had bowed low before her that afternoon when sheanswered the measured summons at the door--a sleek, twinkling, unctuously solicitous, far more portly Judge Maynard--and DryadAnderson, who could not know that he had finally come to agree withthe rest of the village that he might "catch more flies with molassesthan with vinegar, " and was ordering his campaign accordingly, flushedin painful memory for the half-clad, half-starved little creature thathad clung to John Anderson's rusty coat-tails that other day andglared black, bitter hate back at the man beyond the fence. 

Leaning against the table there in the half light of the room, a slowsmile curled back the corners of her lips, still childishly quizzicalin contrast with that slim roundness of body which was losing itsboyish litheness in a new slender fullness that throbbed on thethreshold of womanhood. She smiled deprecatingly as she lifted onehand to search in the breast of the blouse that was always just enoughoutgrown to fail of closing across her throat, and drew out the thingwhich the Judge had delivered with every possible flourish, barely afew hours back. 

Already the envelope was creased and worn with much handling, but thesquare card within, thickly, creamily white, was still unspotted. Asif it were a perishably precious thing her fingers drew it withinfinite care from its covering, and she leaned far across the tableto prop it up before her where the light fell brightest. Pointed chincupped in her palms, she lay devouring with hungry eyes the words uponits polished surface. 

"---- requests the pleasure of, " she picked up the lines which shealready knew by rote; and then, "Miss Dryad Anderson's company, " inthe heavy sprawling scrawl which she knew must have come from theJudge's own pen. 

Suddenly her two hands flashed out and swept the card up to crush itagainst her with passionate impetuosity. 

"Oh, you wonderful thing!" she crooned over it, a low laugh that washalf a sob bubbling in her throat. "You wonderful thing! And to thinkthat I've had you all the afternoon--almost all day--and he's had towait all this time for his to come. He's had to wait for Jerry tobring his with the mail--and Jerry is so dreadfully slow at times. "

Lingeringly, as though she hated to hide it, her fingers thrust thecard back inside its envelope. And she was tucking it away in its warmhiding place within the scant fullness of the white blouse when theclock on the wall behind her began to beat out the hour with a noisywhir of loosened cogs. 

"Hours and hours, " she murmured, counting the strokes subconsciously. 

And then as the growing total of those gong strokes beat in upon herbrain, all the dreamy preoccupation faded from her face. The littlecompassionate smile which had accompanied the last words disappearedbefore the swift, taut change that straightened her lips. She whirled, peering from startled eyes up at the dim old dial, refusing tobelieve her own count; and as she stood, body tensely poised, gazingincredulously at the hands, she realized for the first time how fastthe hours had flown while she bent, forgetful of all else, over herpaper patterns. 

The table rocked dangerously as she crowded her body between it andthe windowsill and, back to the light, stood staring with her facecupped in her hands out into the blackness. Far across the valley thedilapidated farmhouse on the ridge showed only a blurred blot againstthe skyline. 

Minutes the girl stood and watched. The minutes lengthened interminablywhile the light for which she waited failed to show through thedark, until a dead white, living fear began to creep across her face--afear that wiped the last trace of childishness from her tightenedfeatures. 

"He's late, " she whispered hoarsely. "It's the last week, and it'sjust kept him later than usual!"

But there was no assurance in the words that faltered from her lips. They were lifelessly dull, as though she were trying to convinceherself of a thing she already knew she could not believe. 

As long as she could she stood there at the window, doggedly fightingthe rising terror that was bleaching her face; fighting the dreadwhich was never quite asleep within her brain--the dread of that oldstone demijohn standing in the corner of the kitchen, which for allher broken pleading Young Denny Bolton had refused with a strange, unexplained stubbornness to remove--until that rising terror drove heraway from the pane. 

One wide-flung arm swept the stack of neatly folded patterns in arustling storm to the floor as she pushed her way out from thenarrow space between table edge and sill. The girl did not heedthem or the lamp, that rocked drunkenly with the tottering table. She had forgotten everything--the thick white square of cardboard, even the stooped old man in the small back room--in the face of theoverwhelming fear that reason could not fight down. Only thepeculiarly absolute silence that came with the sudden cessation of hisdroning monotone checked the panic haste of her first rush. With onehand clutching the knob of the outer door she turned back. 

John Anderson was sitting twisted about on his high stool, gazingafter her in infantile, perplexed reproach, his long fingers claspedloosely about the almost finished figure over which he had beentoiling. As the girl turned back toward him his eyes wandered down toit and he began to shake his head slowly, vacantly, hopelessly. A lowmoaning whimper stirred her lips; then the hand tight-clenched overthe knob slackened. She ran swiftly across to him. 

"What is it, dear?" Her voice broke, husky with fright and pity. "Tell me--what is the matter? Won't it come right tonight?"

With shaking hands she leaned over him, smoothing the shining hair. Atthe touch of her fingers he looked up, staring with pleadinguncertainty into her quivering face before he shook his head. 

"It--it don't smile, " he complained querulously. His fingers gropedlightly over the small face of clay. "I--I can't make it smile--likethe rest. "

Sudden terror contorted the thin features, a sheer ecstacy of terroras white-lipped as that which marred the face of the girl who bentabove him. 

"Maybe I've forgotten how she smiled!" he whispered fearfully. "MaybeI'll never be able to----"

Dryad's eyes flitted desperately around the room, along the shelvesladen with those countless figures--all white and finely slender, allupturned of face. Again a little impotent gasp choked her; then, eyesfilling hotly at that poignantly wistful smile which edged the lips ofeach, she stooped and patted reassuringly the trembling hands beforeshe stepped a pace away from him. 

"You've not forgotten, dear. Why, you mustn't be frightened like that!We know, you and I, don't we, that you never could forget? You're justtired. Now, that's better--that's brave! And now--look! Isn't this theway--isn't this the way it ought to be?"

Face uptilted, bloodless lips falling apart in the faintest of pallidsmiles, she swayed forward, both arms outstretched toward him. And asshe stood the wide eyes and straight nose and delicately pointed chinof her colorless face took line for line the lines of all those, chalky white, against the wall. 

For a moment John Anderson's eyes clung to her--clung vacant withhopeless doubt; then they glowed again with dawning recollection. He, too, was smiling once more as his fingers fluttered in nervous hasteabove the lips of the clay face on the bench before him, and almostbefore the girl had stepped back beside him he had forgotten that shewas there. 

"Marie!" she heard him murmur. "Marie, why, you mustn't be afraid!We'll never forget--you and I--we never could forget!"

Even while she waited another instant those plastic earthen lips beganto curl--they began to curve with hungry longing like all the rest. Hewas talking steadily now, mumbling broken fragments of sentences whichit was hard to understand. Her hand hovered a moment longer over hisbowed head; once at the door she paused and looked back at him. 

"It's only for a little while, " she promised unsteadily. "I--I have togo--but it's only for a little while. I'll be back soon--so soon! Andyou'll be safe until I come!"

He gave no sign that he had heard, not even so much as a liftedglance. But as she drew the door shut behind her she heard him pickup the words, caressingly, after her. 

"You'll be safe, Marie, " he whispered. "It'll be only for a littlewhile, now. You'll be safe till I come. " An ineffably peaceful smileflickered across his face. "We couldn't forget--why, of course, wecouldn't forget--you and I!"

With the short black skirt lifted even higher above her ankles thatshe might make still more speed, Dryad turned into the dark path thattwisted crookedly through the brush to the open clearing beside thebrook and from there on to the black house on the hill. 

She ran swiftly, madly, through the darkness, with the wild, panic-stricken, headlong abandon of a hunted thing, finding the narrowtrail ahead of her by instinct alone. Only once she overran it, butthat once a low hanging branch, face high, caught her full across theforehead and sent her crashing back in the underbrush. Just once sheput one narrow foot in its loosely flapping shoe into the deep crevicebetween two rocks and gasped aloud with the pain of the fall thatracked her knees. When she groped out and steadied herself erect shewas talking--stammering half incoherent words that came burstingjerkily from her lips as she tore on. 

"Help me . . . In time . . . God, " she panted, "Just this once . . . Get tohim . . . In time. Lord, forgive . . . Own vanity. Oh, God, please intime!"

Small feet drumming the harder ground, she flashed up the last riseand across the yard to the door of that unlighted kitchen. Her handsfelt for the latch and failed to find it; then she realized that itwas already open--the door--but her knees, all the strength suddenlydrained from them at the black quiet in that room, refused to carryher over the threshold. She rocked forward, reaching out with one handfor the frame to steady herself, and in that same instant the man wholay a huddled motionless heap across the table top, moved a little andbegan to speak aloud. 

"They didn't want me, " he muttered, and the words came with muffledthickness. "Not even for the strength of my shoulders. "

She took one faltering step forward--the girl who stood there swayingin the doorway--and stopped again. And the man lifted his head andlaughed softly, a short, ugly rasping laugh. 

"Not even for the work I could do, " he finished. 

And then she understood. She tried to call out to him, and the wordscaught in her throat and choked her. She tried again and this time hervoice rang clear through the room. 

"Denny, " she cried, "Denny, I've come to you! Strike a light! I'mhere, Denny, and--oh, I'm afraid--afraid of the dark!"

Before he could rise, almost before his big-shouldered body whirled inthe chair toward her, her swift rush carried her across to him. Sheknelt at his knees, her thin arms clutching him with desperatestrength. Denny Bolton felt her body shudder violently as he leanedover, dumb with bewilderment, and put his hands on her bowed head. 

"Thank God, " he heard her whispering, "thank God--thank God!"

But far more swiftly than his half numbed brain could follow she wason her feet the next instant, tense and straight and lancelike in thegloom. 

"Damn 'em, " she hissed. "Damn 'em--damn 'em--damn 'em!"

His fingers felt for and found a match and struck it. Her face wasworking convulsively, twisted with hate, both small fists liftedtoward the huge house that crowned the opposite hill. It made himremember that first day when he had looked up, with the rabbitstruggling in his arms, and found her standing there in the thicketbefore him, only now the fury that blazed in her eyes was not for him. There was a rough red welt across her forehead only half hidden by thetumbled hair that cascaded to her waist, torn loose from its scantfastenings by the whipping brush. And as he stood with the flame ofthe flickering match scorching his fingers, Denny Bolton rememberedall the rest--he remembered the light that still burned unanswered inthe window across the valley. He bowed his head. 

[Illustration: "HOLD ME TIGHT--OH! HOLD ME TIGHTER! FOR THEY FORGOT ME, TOO, DENNY; THEY FORGOT ME TOO!"]

"I--I forgot, " he faltered at last. "I did not know it was so late. Imust have been--pretty tired. "

Slowly the girl's clenched hands came away from her throat while shestared up into his face, brown and lean and very hard and bitter. Theashen terror upon her own cheeks disappeared with a greater, growingcomprehension of all that lay behind that dully colorless statement. For just a moment her fingers hovered over the opening at the neck ofher too small blouse and felt the thick white card that lay hiddenwithin, before she lifted both arms to him in impulsive compassion, trying to smile in spite of the wearily childish droop at the cornersof her lips. 

"I know, Denny, " she quavered. "I--I understand. " Her arms slipped uparound his neck. "Hold me tight--oh, hold me tighter! For they forgotme, too, Denny; they forgot me, too!"

As his arms closed about her slim body she buried her bright headagainst the vividly checkered coat and sobbed silently--greatnoiseless gasps that shook her small shoulders terribly. Once, after along time, when she held his face away to peer up at him throughbrimming eyes, she saw that all the numb bitterness was gone fromit--that he had forgotten all else save her own hurt. 

"Why, you mustn't feel so badly for me, " she told him then, warmlytremulous of mouth. "I--I don't mind now, very much. Only"--her voicebroke unsteadily--"only I did want to go just once where all theothers go; I wanted them to see me just once in a skirt that's longenough for me--and--and to wear stockings without any patches, andsilk, Denny, silk--next to my skin!"

CHAPTER IV

At her first swift coming when she had cried out to him there in thedark and run across to kneel at his knees, a dull, shamed flush hadstained his lean cheeks with the realization that, in his own greatbitterness he had failed even to wonder whether she had beenforgotten, too. 

Now as his big hand hovered over the tumbled brightness of her hair, loose upon his sleeve, that hot shame in turn disappeared. After thequivering gasps were all but stilled, he twice opened his lips as ifto speak, and each time closed them again without a word. He wassmiling a faint, gravely gentle smile that barely lifted the cornersof his lips when she turned in his arms and lifted her face once moreto him. 

"We don't mind very much, " she repeated in a half whisper. "Dowe--either of us--now?"

Slowly he shook his head. With effortless ease he stooped and swungher up on one arm, seating her upon the bare table before the window. Another match flared between his fingers and the whole room spranginto brightness as he touched the point of flame to the wick of thelamp bracketed to the wall beside him. 

She sat, leaning forward a little, both elbows resting upon her slimknees, both feet swinging pendulum-like high above the floor, watchingwith a small frown of curiosity growing upon her forehead, while hestooped without a word of explanation and dragged a bulky package fromthe table and placed it beside her. Then she sighed aloud, an audiblesigh of sheer surprise after he had broken the string and drawn asidethe paper wrapper. 

Just as they had seemed in the picture they lay there under her amazedeyes--the pointed, satiny black slippers of the dancing girl, withtheir absurdly slender heels and brilliant buckles, and filmystockings to match. And underneath lay two folded squares ofshimmering stuff, dull black and burnished scarlet, scarce thickerthan the silk of the stockings themselves. 

The faint, vaguely self-conscious smile went from Denny Bolton's lipswhile he stood and watched her bend and touch each article, one byone--the barest ghost of contact. Damp eyes glowing, lips curled halfopen, she lifted her head at last and gazed at him, as he stood withhands balanced on his hips before her. 

A moment she sat immobile, her breath coming and going in soft, fluttering gasps, and looked into his sober, questioning face; thenshe turned again and picked up one web-like stocking and held itagainst her cheek, as hotly tinted now beneath its smooth whiteness asthe shining scarlet cloth beside her. 

He heard her murmur to herself little, broken, incoherent phrases thathe could not catch. 

"Denny, " he heard her whisper, "Denny--Denny!"

And then, with the tiny slippers huddled in her lap, her hands flashedout and caught his face and drew it down against the too-small whiteblouse, open at the throat. 

"Man--man, " she said, and he felt her breast rise and fall, rise andfall, against his cheek. "Man, you didn't understand! It--it wasn'tthe clothes, Denny, but--but I'm all the gladder, I think, becauseyou're so much of a man that you couldn't, not even if I tried ahundred years to explain. "

He drew the chair at the side of the table around in front of her anddropped into it. With a care akin to reverence he lifted one slipperand held it outstretched at arm's length upon his broad palm. 

"I--I hadn't exactly forgotten, tonight, " he told her. "I'd watchedfor the light, and I meant to bring them--when I came. " His steadyeyes dropped to her slim, swinging feet. "They're the smallest theyhad in any shop at the county-seat, " he went on, and the slow smilecame creeping back across his face. "I crossed over through the timberlate last night, after we had broken camp, and I--I had to guess thesize. Shall we--try them on?"

She reached out and snatched the small thing of satin and leather awayfrom him with mock jealous impetuosity, a little reckless gurgle ofutter delight breaking from her lips. 

"Over these, " she demanded, lifting one foot and pointing at thethickly patched old stocking above the dingy, string-tied shoe. "You--you are trying to shame me, Denny--you want to make me confessthey are too small!"

Then, almost in the same breath, all the facetious accusation left herface. Even the warm glow of wonder which had lighted her wet eyes gaveway to a new seriousness. 

"No one has ever told me, " she stated slowly, "but I know it is so, just the same. Somehow, because it was to be the first party I hadever attended--or--or had a chance to attend, I thought it must be allright, just once, for you to buy me these. There was no one else tobuy them, Denny, and maybe I wanted to go so very much I made myselfbelieve that it was all right. But there isn't any party now--for us. And--and men don't buy clothes for women, Denny--not until they'remarried!"

Her face was tensely earnest while she waited for the big man beforeher to answer. And Young Denny turned his head, staring silently outof the opposite window down toward the village, dark now, in thevalley below. He cleared his throat uncertainly. 

"Do they?" She was leaning forward until her hair brushed his own. "Dothey, Denny?" A rising inflection left the words hanging in midair. 

"I don't know just what the difference is, " he began finally, hisvoice very deliberate. "I've often tried to figure it out, and neverbeen quite able to get it straight"--he nodded his head again towardthe sleeping village--"but we--we've never been like the rest, anyhow. And--and anyway, " he reached out one hand and laid it upon her knees, "we're to be married, too--when--when----"

With swift, caressing haste she lifted the slippers that lay cradledin her lap and set them back inside the open package. Lightly sheswung herself down and stood before him, both hands balanced upon hisshoulders. For just the fraction of a moment her eyes lifted over hishead, flickering toward the stone demijohn that stood in the far, shadowy corner near the door. Her voice was trembling a little whenshe went on. 

"Then let me come soon, Denny, " she begged. "Can't it be soon? Oh, I'mgoing to keep them!" One hand searched behind her to fall lightly uponthe package upon the table. "They're--they're so beautiful that Idon't believe I could ever give them back. But do we have to wait anylonger--do we? I can take care of him, too. "

Vehemently she tilted her head toward the little drab cottage acrossunder the opposite hill. 

"He hardly ever notices when I come or go. I--I want to come, Denny. I'm lonesome, and--and--" her eyes darkened and swam with fear as shestared beyond him into the dusky corner near the door, "why can't Icome now, before some time--when it might be--too late?"

He reached up and took her hands from his shoulders and held them infront of him, absently contemplating their rounded smoothness. Shebent closer, trying to read his eyes, and found them inscrutable. Thenhis fingers tightened. 

"And be like them?" he demanded, and the words leaped out so abruptlythat they were almost harsh. "And be like all the rest, " hereiterated, jerking his head backward, "old and thin, and bent andworn-out at thirty?" A hard, self-scathing note crept into the words. "Why, it--it took me almost a month--even to buy these!"

He in turn reached out and laid a hand upon the bundle behind her. Butshe only laughed straight back into his face--a short, unsteady laughof utter derision. 

"Old?" she echoed. "Work! But I--I'd have you, Denny, wouldn't I?"Again she laughed in soft disdain. "Clothes!" she scoffed. And then, more serious even than before: "Denny, is--is that the only reason, now?"

The gleam that always smoldered in Denny Bolton's eyes whenever heremembered the tales they told around the Tavern stove of Old Denny'slast bad night began to kindle. His lips were thin and straight and ascolorless as his suddenly weary face as he stood and looked back ather. She lifted her hands and put them back upon his shoulders. 

"I'm not afraid--any more--to chance it, " she told him, her lipstrembling in spite of all she could do to hold them steady. "I'm neverafraid, when I'm with you. It--it's only when I'm alone that it growsto be more than I can bear, sometimes. I'm not afraid. Does it--doesit have to stay there any longer, in the corner, Denny? Aren't we sureenough now--you and I--aren't we?"

He stopped back a pace--his big body huge above her slenderness--steppedaway from the very nearness of her. But as she lifted her arms to himhe began to shake his head--the old stubborn refusal that hadanswered her a countless number of times before. 

"Aren't we?" she said again, but her voice sounded very small andbodiless and forlorn in the half dark room. 

He swung one arm in a stiff gesture that embraced the entire valley. 

"They're all sure, too, " his voice grated hoarsely, "They're all sure, too--just as sure as we could ever be--and there's a whole town ofthem!"

She was bending silently over the table, retying the bundle, when hecrossed back to her side, a lighted lantern dangling in one hand. 

"I don't know why myself, " he tried to explain. "I only know I've gotto wait. And I don't even know what I'm waiting for--but I know it'sgot to come!"

She would not lift her head when he slipped his free arm about hershoulders and drew her against him. When he reached out to take thepackage from her she held it away from him, but her voice, halfmuffled against his checkered coat, was anything but hard. 

"Let _you_ carry them?" she murmured. "Why--I wouldn't trust them toany other hands in the world but my own. You can't even see themagain--not until I've finished them, and I wear them--for you. "

With head still bowed she walked before him to the open door. Butthere on the threshold she stopped and flashed up at him herwhimsically provocating smile. 

"Tell me--why don't you tell me, Denny, " she commanded imperiously, "that I'm prettier than all the others--even if I haven't the prettyclothes!"

When the ridges to the east were tinged with the red of a rising sun, Denny Bolton was still sitting, head propped in his hands, at thetable before the window, totally oblivious to the smoking lamp besidehim, or to anything else save the square card which he had found lyingthere beneath the table after he had taken her back across the valleyto John Anderson's once-white cottage. He rose and extinguished thesmoking wick as the first light of day began to creep through theroom. 

"---- requests the pleasure of Miss Dryad Anderson's company, " herepeated aloud. And then, as he turned to the open door and the workthat was waiting for him, in a voice that even he himself had neverbefore heard pass his lips:

"And she could have gone--she could have, and she didn't--justbecause----"

His grave voice drifted off into silence. As if it were a perishablyprecious thing, he slipped the square card within its envelope andbuttoned the whole within his coat. 

CHAPTER V

As far back as he could remember Denny could not recall a single daywhen Old Jerry had swung up the long hill road that led to hislonesome farmhouse on the ridge at a pace any faster than a crawlingwalk. Nor could he recollect, either, a single instance when he hadchanced to arrive at that last stop upon the route much before dark. 

And yet it was still a good two hours before sundown; only a fewminutes before he had driven his heavy steaming team in from thefields and turned toward the ladder that mounted to the hayloft, whenthe familiar shrill complaint of ungreased axles drifted up to himfrom the valley. 

With a foot upon the first rung Young Denny paused, scowling in mildperplexity. He had crossed the next moment to the open double doors, as the sound floated up to him in a steadily increasing volume, andwas standing, his big body huge in its flannel shirt, open at thethroat, and high boots laced to the knees, leaning loosely at easeagainst the door frame, when the dingy rig with its curtains flappingcrazily in the wind lurched around the bend in the road and camebouncing wildly up the rutty grade. 

The boy straightened and stiffened, his head going forward a little, for the fat old mare was pounding along at a lumbering gallop--a pacewhich, in all the time he had watched for it, he had never beforebeheld. Old Jerry was driving with a magnificent abandon, his handsfar outstretched over the dash, and more than that, for even fromwhere he stood Denny could hear him shouting at her in his thin, cracked falsetto--shouting for still more speed. 

A rare, amused smile tugged at the corners of Young Denny's lips as hecrossed the open yard to the crest of the hill. But when the groaningbuggy came to a standstill and Old Jerry flung the reins across themare's wide back, to dive and burrow in frantic haste under the seatfor the customary roll of advertisements, without so much as a glancefor the boy who strode slowly up to the wheel, that shadow of a smilewhich had touched his face faded into concerned gravity. He hesitateda moment, as if not quite certain of what he should do. 

"Is there--there isn't any one sick, is there?" he asked at last, halfdiffidently. 

The little, white-haired old man in the buggy jerked erect withstartling, automatonlike swiftness at that slow question. For a momenthe stood absolutely motionless, his back toward the speaker, his headperked far over to one side as though he refused to believe he hadheard correctly. Then, little by little, he wheeled until hisstrangely brilliant, birdlike eyes were staring straight down intoDenny's upturned, anxious face. And as he stared Old Jerry'scountenance grew blankly incredulous. 

"Sick!" he echoed the boy's words scornfully. "Sick!"

His grotesquely thin body seemed to swell as he straightened himself, and his shrill squeak of a voice took on a new note of pompousimportance. 

"I guess, " he stated impressively, "I reckon, Denny, you ain't heardthe news, hev you?" He chuckled pityingly, half contemptuously. "Ireckon you couldn't've, " he concluded with utter finality. 

The old, sullenly bewildered light crept back into Young Denny's grayeyes. He shifted his feet uneasily, shaking his head. 

"I--I just got back down from the timber, three days ago, " heexplained, and somehow, entirely unintentionally, as he spoke the slowstatement seemed almost an apology for his lack of information. "Iguess I haven't heard much of anything lately--up here. Is it--is itsomething big?"

Old Jerry hesitated. He felt suddenly the hopeless, overwhelmingdearth of words against which he labored in the attempt to carry thetidings worthily. 

"Big!" He repeated the other's question. "Big! Why, Godfrey 'Lisha, boy, it's the biggest thing that's ever happened to this town. It--it's terrific! We'll be famous--that's what we'll be! In a weekor two Boltonwood'll be as famous as--as--why, we'll be as famous asthe Chicago Fair!"

He broke off with a gasp for breath and started fluttering madlythrough the paper which he had wrenched from Young Denny's bundle ofclosely wrapped mail, until he found the page he sought. 

"There 'tis, " he cried, and pointed out a lurid headline that ran halfacross the head of the sporting section. "There 'tis--or leastwisethat's a part on it. But they's more a-comin'--more that that won't bea patch to! But you just take a look at that!"

Young Denny took the paper from his hand with a sort of soberpatience, and there across the first three column heads, following thedirection of Old Jerry's quivering forefinger, he found his firstinkling of the astounding news. 

"Jed The Red wins by knockout over The Texan in fourteenth round, " ranthe red-inked caption. 

Word by word he read it through, and a second time his grave eyes wentthrough it, even more painstakingly, as though he had not caught at asingle reading all its sensational significance. Then he looked upinto the seamed old face above him, a-gleam and a-quiver withexcitement. 

"Jed The Red, " the boy said in his steady voice. "Jed The Red!" Andthen, levelly: "Who's he?"

Old Jerry stared at him a moment before he shook his head hopelesslyand collapsed with a thud upon the torn seat behind him, in an excessof disgust for the boy's stupidity which he made no effort toconceal. 

"Jed who?" he mimicked, his voice shrill with sarcasm. "Now what intime Jed would it be, if 'twa'n't Jeddy Conway--our own Jeddy Conwayfrom this very village? What other Jed is there? Ain't you got nomemory at all, when you ought to be proud to be able to say that youwent to school with him yourself, right in this town?"

Again Young Denny nodded a silent agreement, but Old Jerry's feverishenthusiasm had carried him far beyond mere anger at his audience'sapparent lack of appreciation. 

"And that ain't all, " he rushed on breathlessly, "not by a lot, itain't! That ain't nothin' to compare with what's to come. Why, rightthis minute there's a newspaper writer down to the village--he's fromNew York and he's been stayin' to the Tavern ever since he come inthis morning and asked for a room with a bath--and he's goin' towrite up the town. Yes sir-e-e--the whole dad-blamed town! Picturesof the main street and the old place where Jeddy went to school, like as not, and--and"--he hesitated for an instant to recall theexact phrasing--"and interviews with the older citizens whorecognized his ability and gave him a few pointers in the game whenhe was only a little tad. That's what's to follow, and it's comin'out in the New York papers, too--Sunday supplement, colors, maybe, and--and----"

Sudden recollection checked him in the middle of the tumbled flow ofinformation. Leaning far out over the dash, he put all his slightweight against the reins and turned the fat white mare back into theroad with astonishing celerity. 

"Godfrey, but that makes me think, " he gasped. "I ain't got no time tofritter away here! I got to git down to the Tavern in a hurry. He'llbe waitin' to hear what I kin tell him. "

The thin, wrinkled old face twisted into a hopeful, wheedling smile. 

"You know that, don't you, Denny? You could tell him that there wa'n'tnobody in the hills knew little Jeddy Conway better'n I did, couldn'tyou? It--it's the last chance I'll ever git, too, more'n likely. 

"Twice I missed out--once when they found Mary Hubbard's husbanda-hangin' to his hay mow--a-hangin by the very new clothes-line Mary'djust bought the day before and ain't ever been able to use since onaccount of her feelin' somehow queer about it--and me laid up to homesick all the time! Everybody else got their names mentioned in thearticle, and Judge Maynard had his picture printed because it was theJudge cut him down. 'Twa'n't fair, didn't seem to me, and me older'nany of 'em. 

"And 'twas just the same when they found Mrs. Higgins's Johnny, whohad to go and git through the ice into the crick just the one week inall the winter when I was laid up with a bad foot from splittin'kindling. I begun to think I wasn't ever goin' to git my chance--butit's come. It's come at last--and I got to cut along and be there!"

Once more he leaned over the dash and slapped the old mare's back withthe slack of the lines. 

"Git there, you, " he urged, and the complaining buggy went lurchingdown the rough road at the same unheard of pace at which it hadascended. Halfway down the hill, after he had lifted the mare from hershuffling fox-trot to a lumbering gallop, Old Jerry turned back for alast shouted word. 

"He'll be anxious to git all I can tell him, don't you think?" theshrill falsetto drifted back to the boy who had not stirred in histracks. "No article would be complete without that, would it? Andthey's to be pictures--Sunday paper--and--maybe--in colors!"

There was an odd light burning in Denny Bolton's eyes as he stood andwatched the crazy conveyance disappear from view. The half hungry, half sullen bewilderment seemed to have given place to a newconfusion, as though all the questions which had always been bafflinghim had become, all in one breath, an astounding enigma which clamoredfor instant solution. Not until the shrill scream of the ungreasedaxles had died out altogether and his eyes fell once more to the vividstreak of red that ran across the top of the sheet still clutched inhis hand did Young Denny realize that Jerry had even failed to leavehim the rest of his mail--the bulky package of circulars. 

He was smiling again as he turned and went slowly toward the back doorof the house, but somehow, as he went, the stoop of his big shouldersseemed to have even more than the usual vague hint of weariness intheir heavy droop. He even forgot that the hungry team which he hadstabled just a few minutes before was still unfed, as he dropped uponthe top step and spread the paper out across his knees. 

"Jed The Red wins by knockout over The Texan in fourteenth round, " heread again and again. 

And then, with a slow forefinger blazing the way, he went on throughthe detailed account of the latest big heavyweight match, from thefirst paragraph, which stated that "Jed Conway, having disposed of TheTexan at the Arena last night, by the knockout route in the fourteenthround, seems to loom up as the logical claimant of the whiteheavyweight title, " to the last one of all, which pithily advised thepublic that "the winner's share of the receipts amounted to twelvethousand dollars. "

It was all couched in the choicest vocabulary of the ringside, andmore than once Young Denny, whose literature had been confinedchiefly to harvesters and sulky plows, had to stop and decipherphrases which he only half understood at first reading. But that lastparagraph he did not fail to grasp. 

It grew too dark for him to make out the small type any longer and theboy folded the paper and laid it back across his knees. With his chinresting upon one big palm he sat motionless, staring out beyond hissprawling, unpainted sheds toward the dim bulk of his hilly acres, with their jagged outcroppings of rock. 

"Twelve thousand dollars!" He muttered the words aloud, under hisbreath. Eight hundred in three years had seemed to him an almostmiraculous amount for him to have torn from that thin soil withnothing but the strength of his two hands. Now, with a bitterness thathad been months in accumulating, it beat in upon his brain withsledgelike blows that he had paid too great a price--too great a pricein aching shoulders and numbed thighs. 

Methodically, mechanically, his mind went back over the days when hehad gone to school with Jed Conway--the same Jed The Red whom thewhole town was now welcoming as "our own Jeddy, " and the longer hepondered the greater the problem became. 

It was hard to understand. From his point of view comprehension wasimpossible, at that instant. For in those earlier days, when anybodyhad ever mentioned Jed Conway at all, it had been only to describe himas "good for nothing, " or something profanely worse. Young Dennyremembered him vividly as a big, freckle-faced, bow-legged boy withred bristly hair--the biggest boy in the school--who never played butwhat he cheated, and always seemed able to lie himself out of histhievery. 

But most vividly of all, he recalled that day when Jed Conway haddisappeared from the village between sundown and dawn and failed toreturn. That was the same day they discovered the shortage in the oldwooden till at Benson's corner store. And now Jed Conway had comehome, or at least his fame had found its way back, and even Old Jerry, whipping madly toward the village to share in his reflected glory, had, for all the perfection of his "system, " failed to leave the verybundle of mail which he had come to deliver. 

For a long time Young Denny sat and tried to straighten it out in hisbrain--and failed entirely. It had grown very dark--too dark for himto make out the words upon it--when he reached into the pocket of hisgray flannel shirt and drew out the card which he had found lying uponthe kitchen floor that previous Saturday night, after he had lightedDryad Anderson on her way home through the thickets. But he did notneed, or even attempt, to read it. 

"And it took me a month, " he said aloud to the empty air before him, "almost a month to save fifteen dollars. "

He rose at the words, stiffly, for the chill air had tightened hismuscles, and stood a moment indecisively contemplating the lightswhich were beginning to glimmer through the dusk in the hollow, beforehe, too, took the long road to the village down which Old Jerry hadrattled a scant hour or two before. 

CHAPTER VI

The Tavern "office" was crowded and hazy with acrid blue smoke. Behindthe chairs of the favored members of the old circle, who always sat innightly conclave about the stove, a long row of men lounged againstthe wall, but the bitter controversies of other nights were still. Instead, the entire room was leaning forward, hanging breathlesslyupon the words of the short fat man who was perched alone upon theworn desk, too engrossed even to notice Young Denny's entrance thatnight. 

The boy stood for a moment, his hand still clasping the knob behindhim, while his eyes flickered curiously over the heads of the crowd. Even before he drew the door shut behind him he saw that JudgeMaynard's chair was a good foot in advance of all the others, directlyin front of the stranger on the desk, and that the rest of the roomwas furtively taking its cue from him--pounding its knee and laughingimmoderately whenever he laughed, or settling back luxuriouslywhenever the Judge relaxed in his chair. 

Subconsciously Young Denny realized that such had always been therecognized order of arrangement, ever since he could remember. TheJudge always rode in front in the parades and invariably deliveredthe Fourth of July oration. Undisputed he held the one vantage pointin the room, but over his amply broad back, as near as he dared lean, bent Old Jerry, his thin face working with alternate hope and halffearful uncertainty. 

Denny Bolton would have recognized the man on the desk as the"newspaper writer" from New York from his clothes alone, even withoutthe huge notebook that was propped up on his knees for corroborativeevidence. From the soft felt hat, pushed carelessly back from hisround, good-natured face, to the tips of his gleaming low shoes, thenewcomer was a symphony in many-toned browns. And as Young Dennyclosed the door behind him he went on talking--addressing the entirethrong before him with an easy good-fellowship that bordered onintimate _camaraderie_. 

"Just the good old-fashioned stuff, " he was saying; "the sort of thingthat has always been the backbone of the country. That is what I wantit to be. For, you see, it's like this: We haven't had a champion whocame from our own real old Puritan stock in years and years likeConway has, and it'll stir up a whole lot of enthusiasm--a whole lot!I want to play that part of it up big. Now, you're the only ones whocan give me that--you're the only men who knew him when he was aboy--and right there let's make that a starter! What sort of ayoungster was he? Quite a handful, I should imagine--now wasn't he?"

The man on the desk crossed one fat knee over the other, tapping aflat-heeled shoe with his pencil. He tilted the brown felt hat alittle farther back from his forehead and winked one eye at the Judgein jovial understanding. And Judge Maynard also crossed his knees, tucked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets, and winked back withequal joviality. 

"Well, ye-e-s, " he agreed, and the agreement was weightily deliberate. "Ye-e-s, quite a handful was Jeddy. "

One pudgy hand was uplifted in sudden, deprecatory haste, as though hewould not be misunderstood. 

"Nothing really wrong, of course, " he hurried to add with oratoricalemphasis. "Nothing like that! There never was anything mean or sneakingabout Jeddy, s'far as I can recollect. Just mischievous--mischievousand up and coming all the time. But there were folks, " Judge Maynard'svoice became heavy with righteous accusation--"it's always that way, you understand--and there were folks, even right here in Jeddy's ownvillage, who used to call him a bad egg. But I--I knew better!Nothing but mischievousness and high spirits--that's what I alwaysthought. And I said it, too--many's the time I said----"

The big shouldered boy near the door shifted his position a little. He leaned forward until he could see Judge Maynard's round, red face alittle more distinctly. There was an odd expression upon DennyBolton's features when the fat man in brown lifted his eyes from hisnotebook, eyes that twinkled with sympathetic comprehension. 

"----That it was better a bad egg than an omelette, eh?" heinterrupted knowingly. 

The Judge pounded his knee and rocked with mirth. 

"Well, that's just about it--that's just about as near as words couldcome to it, " he managed to gasp, and the circle behind him rocked, too, and pounded its knee as one man. 

The man on the desk went on working industriously with his pencil, even while he was speaking. 

"And then I suppose he was pretty good with his hands, too, even whenhe was a little shaver?" he suggested tentatively. "But then I don'tsuppose that any one of you ever dreamed that you had a world'schampion, right here at home, in the making, did you?"

The whole room leaned nearer. Even the late comer near the door forgothimself entirely and took one step forward, his narrowing gray eyesstraining upon the Judge's face. 

Judge Maynard again weighed his reply, word for word. 

"We-e-ll, no, " he admitted. "I don't believe I can say that Idownright believed that he'd make a world's champion. Don't believe'sI could truthfully state that I thought that. But I guess there isn'tanybody in this town that would ever deny but what I did say more thanonce that he'd make the best of 'em hustle--ye-e-s, sir, the very bestof 'em, some day!"

The speaker turned to face the hushed room behind him, as if tochallenge contradiction, and Young Denny, waiting for some one tospeak, touched his dry lips with the tip of his tongue. But nocontradiction came. Instead Old Jerry, leaning across the Judge'sbroad back, quavered breathlessly. 

"That's jest it--that's jest as it was--right to a hair. It was systemdone it--system right from the very beginning. And many's the time theJudge says to me--says he----"

Old Jerry never finished, for Judge Maynard lifted one handmajestically and the little white-haired old man's eager corroborationdied on his lips. He shrank back into abashed silence, his lipsworking wordlessly. 

"As I was saying, " the Judge then proceeded ponderously, "I recognizedhe had what one could call--er----"

"Class?" the man on the desk broke in again with his engaging smile. 

"Well, yes, " the other continued, "or, as I was about to call it, talent. From the very first that was very apparent, but then, ofcourse, a man in my position in the community could scarcely have beenthe one to encourage him openly. But he was pretty good, even as alittle shaver! Why, there was nothing among the boys that he wouldn'ttackle--absolutely nothing! Size, sir, never made any difference tohim--not a particle. Jeddy Conway fight----!"

Again he turned to the close-packed circle behind him as if mere wordswere too weak things to do the question justice. And this time as heturned his eyes met squarely those of the gray-shirted figure that wasstaring straight back at him in a kind of fascination. For onedisconcerted instant Judge Maynard wavered; he caught his breathbefore that level scrutiny; then with a flourish of utter finality hethrew up one pudgy hand. 

"There's one of 'em right now, " he cried. "There's Young Denny Bolton, who went to school with him, right here in this town. _Ask him_ if JedConway was pretty handy as a boy! Ask him, " he leered around the room, an insinuating accent that was unmistakable underrunning the words. Then a deep-throated chuckle shook him. "But maybe he won'ttell--maybe he's still a little mite too sensitive to talk about ityet. Eh, Denny--just a little mite too sensitive?"

Denny Bolton failed to realize it at that moment, but there was a newquality in the Judge's chuckling statement--a certain hearty admissionof equality which he had only a second before denied to Old Jerry'seager endeavor to help. The eyes of the fat man in brown liftedinquiringly from the notebook upon his knees and followed thedirection of the Judge's outstretched finger. He was still grinningexpansively--and then as he saw more clearly through the thick smokethe face which Judge Maynard was indicating, the grin disappeared. 

Little by little Young Denny's body straightened until the slightshoulder stoop had entirely vanished, and all the while that his gazenever wavered from the Judge's face his eyes narrowed and his lipsgrew thinner and thinner. The confused lack of understanding was gone, too, at last, from his eyes. He even smiled once, a fleeting, mirthless smile that tugged at the corners of his wide mouth. For themoment he had forgotten the circle of peering faces. The room was verystill. 

It was the man on the desk who finally broke that quiet, but when hespoke his voice had lost its easily intimate good-fellowship. He spokeinstead in a low-toned directness. 

"So you went to school with Jed The Red, did you?" he asked gravely. "Knew him when he was a kid?"

Slowly Denny Bolton's eyes traveled from the Judge's face. His lipsopened with equal deliberation. 

"I reckon I knew him--pretty well, " he admitted. 

The eyes of the man in brown were a little narrower, too, as he noddedthoughtfully. 

"Er--had a few set-to's with him, yourself, now and then?"

He smiled, but even his smile was gravely direct. Again there was aheavy silence before Young Denny replied. 

Then, "Maybe, " he said, noncommittally. "Maybe I did. "

The throbbing silence in that room went all to bits. Judge Maynardwheeled in his chair toward the man on the desk and fell to poundinghis knee again in the excess of his appreciation. 

"Maybe, " he chortled, "maybe he did! Well--I--reckon!"

And, following his lead, the whole room rocked with laughter in whichall but the man in brown joined. He alone, from his place on the desk, saw that there was a white circle about the boy's tight mouth as YoungDenny turned and fumbled with the latch before he opened the door andpassed quietly out into the night. He alone noticed, but there was thefaintest shadow of a queer smile upon his own lips as he turned backto the big notebook open on his knees--a vaguely unpleasant smile thatwas not in keeping with the rotund jollity of his face. 

For a moment Denny Bolton stood with his strained white face turnedupward, the roar in the room behind him beating in his ears; then heturned and went blindly up the road that wound toward the bleak houseon the hill--he went slowly and unsteadily, stumbling now and again inthe deep ruts which it was too dark for him to see. 

It was only when he reached the crest of the hill, where Old Jerry hadfailed to remember to leave him his mail that afternoon, that herecalled his own failure to feed the team with which he had beenploughing all day back in the fields. And in the same blind, automaticfashion he crossed and threw open the door of the barn. 

The interior was dark, blacker even than the thick darkness of thenight outside. Young Denny, muttering to himself, forgot to strike alight--he even forgot to speak aloud to the nervous animals in thestalls until his fingers, groping ahead of him, touched somethingsleek and warm and brought him back to himself. Then, instinctively, although it was too late, he threw up one big shoulder to protect hisface before he was lifted and hurled crashing back against the wall bythe impact of the heavy hoofs that catapulted out of the blackness. Amoment the boy stood, swayed sickeningly, and sank to his knees. Thenhe began to think clearly again, and with one hand clasped over thegreat, jagged gash which the glancing iron shoe had laid open acrosshis chin, he reached up and found a cross beam and dragged himselferect. 

"Whoa, Tommy, whoa boy!" he soothed the dancing horse. "Steady, it'sonly me, boy!" he stammered, and supporting himself against the wallhe groped again until he found the feedbin and finished his day'swork. 

It was even darker in the bare kitchen when he lurched dizzily throughthe door. Once as he was feeling his way along the wall, searching fora light, his feet stumbled on a hard rounded object against thewainscoting, and as it toppled over its contents ran with a sloppinggurgle over the floor. 

Then his fingers found the light. Holding himself with one hand, helifted the little lamp with its blackened chimney from its bracket andraised it until it illuminated his features reflected in the smallsquare mirror that hung against the wall. For a long time he stood andlooked. The blood that oozed from the ugly bruise upon his chin wassplashing in warm drops to the floor; his face was paper white, andstrangely taut and twisted with pain, but the boy noticed neither theone nor the other. Straight back into his own eyes he stared--staredsteadily for all that his big shoulders were swaying drunkenly. Andfor the first time that he could ever recollect Young Denny Boltonlaughed--laughed with real mirth. 

He placed the smoking lamp upon the bare board table and turned. As ifthey could still hear him--the circle about the Tavern stove in thevalley below--he lifted both hard fists and tightened them until theheavy muscles beneath his shirt bunched and quivered like livethings. 

[Illustration: "DRYAD, IT'S ALL RIGHT--IT'S ALWAYS BEEN ALL RIGHT--WITHUS! THEY LIED--THEY LIED AND THEY KNEW THEY WERE LYING!"]

"Size never made any difference to him?" he repeated the Judge's wordaloud, with a drawling interrogation. "Size never made any differenceto him?"

He laughed again, softly, as if there were a newly discovered humorabout it all which must be jealously guarded. 

"It never had to make any difference, " the drawling voice went on, "itdidn't have to--because Jed Conway was always the biggest boy in theschool!"

His nostrils were dilating, twitching with the thin, sharp odor of theoverturned demijohn which was rising and thickening in the room. Hiseyes fell and for the first time became conscious of it lying there athis feet. And he stooped and picked it up, lifting it between bothhands until it was level with his face--until it was held at arm'slength high above his head. Then his whole body snapped forward andthe glass from the broken window pane jingled musically on the flooras the jug crashed out into the night. 

Young Denny stood and smiled, one side of his chin a gash of crimsonagainst the dead white of his face. Again he lifted his fists. 

"He never whipped me, " he challenged the lights in the hollow, "henever whipped me--and he never tried but once! I--I--ain't neverbeen--whipped--yet!"

There had been no sound to herald her coming as she darted up to thedoor. Reeling giddily there in the middle of the room, he had not evenheard the one low cry that she choked back as she stopped at thethreshold, but he half turned that moment and met the benumbed horrorof Dryad Anderson's eyes. Minute after minute he merely stood andstared back at her stupidly, while bit by bit every detail of hertransformation began to penetrate his brain, still foggy with theforce of the blow that had laid his chin wide open. Her tumbled hairwas piled high upon her head; she was almost tall with the addedheight of the high-heeled satin slippers; more slender than ever inthe bespangled clinging black skirt and sleeveless scarlet waist whichthe old cloak, slipping unheeded from her shoulders, had disclosed. 

As his brain began to clear Young Denny forgot the dripping blood thatmade his white face ghastly, he forgot the stinging odor of the brokendemijohn, thick in the room--forgot everything but Judge Maynard'sface when the latter had looked up and found him standing at theTavern door. He knew now what the light was that had lurked in theirshifty depths; it was fear--fear that he--Young Denny--might speak upin that moment and disclose all the hypocrisy of his suave lies. Heeven failed to see the horror in the eyes of the girl before him. Sudden, reckless laughter rang from his lips. 

"Dryad, " he cried out. "Dryad, it's all right--it's always been allright--with us! They lied--they lied and they knew they were lying!"

She shrank back, as if all the strength had been drained from herknees, as he lurched unsteadily across toward her and reached outhis arms. But at the touch of his hands upon her shoulders the powerof action came rushing back into her limbs. She shuddered andwhirled--and shook off his groping fingers. Her own hands flashed outand held his face away from her. 

"Don't you touch me!" she panted huskily. "Oh, you--you--don't youeven dare to come near me!"

He tried to explain--tried to follow her swift flight as she leapedback, but his feet became entangled in the cloak on the floor andbrought him heavily to his knees. He even tried to follow her aftershe had been swallowed up in the shadows outside, until he realizeddully that his shuffling feet would not go where his whirling headdirected them. Once he called out to her, before he staggered back tothe kitchen door, and received no answer. 

With his hands gripping the door frame he eased himself down to thetop step and sat rocking gently to and fro. 

"S'all right, " he muttered once, his tongue thick with pain. "S'alwaysbeen all right!"

And he laughed aloud, a laugh of utter confidence in spite of all itsunsteadiness. 

"Twelve thousand dollars, " he said, "and--and he never whipped me! Henever could--not the best day he ever lived!"

CHAPTER VII

Denny Bolton never quite knew at what hour of that long black night hereached the final decision; there was no actual beginning or ending orlogical sequence to the argument in the back of his brain which led upto it, to crystallize into final resolve. 

He merely sat there in the open door of his half-lighted kitchen, swaying a little from side to side at first, giddy with the pain ofthat crashing blow that had laid open his chin; then balancing, motionless as the thick shadows themselves, in a silence that wasunbroken save for the creaking night noises about him and the rhythmicsplash of the warm drops that fell more and more slowly from thegaping, unheeded wound, he groped back over the succession of eventsof that afternoon and night, reconstructing with a sort of doggedpatience detail after detail which was waveringly uncertain ofoutline, until with the clearing of his numbed brain they stood outonce again in sane, well-ordered clarity. And as they gradually tookshape again each detail grew only more fantastically unbelievable. 

It seemed ages since he had stood against the closed door of theTavern office and seen Judge Maynard turn and falter before hisunsuspected presence--days and days since he had stood there andwatched that round moon-like face flush heavily with the first shockof surprise, and realized that the startled light in the shifty eyesof Boltonwood's most prominent citizen was part fear, part appeal, that he, Denny Bolton, whose name in the estimation of that samevillage stood for all that was at the other extreme, would confirm andsupport his barefaced lying statement. It was more than merelyfantastic; and yet, at that, sitting there in the dark, Young Dennystill found something in the recollection that was amusing--far moreamusing than he had imagined anything so simple ever could be. 

And already, although it was scarcely hours old, the rest of it, too, was tinged with an uncanny unreality that was not far removed from thebodiless fabric of nightmare itself: Those great, catapulting hoofswhich had thundered against him from the darkness and beaten him back, a half-senseless heap, against the barn wall; the blind, mad rage, asmuch a wildly hysterical abandonment of utter joy as anything else, which had surged through him when, with the stinging odor of theoverturned jug in his nostrils, he had stooped and straightened andsent the old stone demijohn, that had stood sentinel for years in thecorner near the door, splintering its way through the window into thenight; and, last of all, the sick horror of the girl's face as sherecoiled before him came vividly before his eyes, and his own strangeimpotence of limb and lip when he had tried to follow and found thathis feet would not obey the impulse of his brain, tried to explainonly to find that his tongue somehow refused at that moment to voicethe words he would have spoken. 

That was hardest of all to believe--most difficult to visualize--andhe would not give it full credence until he had reached out behind himin the dark and found the bit of a cloak which, slipping from hershoulders, become entangled in his stumbling feet and brought himcrashing to his knees. The feel of that rough cloth beneath his handwas more than enough to convince him, and swiftly, unreasonably, theold bitter tide of resentment began to creep back upon him--bitterresentment of her quick judgment of him, which like that of thevillage, had condemned in the years that were past, even without ahearing. 

"She thought, " he muttered slowly aloud to himself, "she thought Ihad--" He left the sentence unfinished to drift off into a longbrooding silence; and then, many minutes later: "She didn't even waitto ask--to see--to let me tell her----"

One hand went tentatively to the point of his chin--his old, vaguelypreoccupied trick of a gesture--and the wet touch of that open woundhelped to bring him back to himself. A moment longer he sat, tryingto make out the stained figures that were invisible even though heheld them a scant few inches from his eyes, before he rose, stretchinghis legs in experimental doubt at first, and passed inside. And oncemore he stood before the square patch of mirror on the wall, with thesmall black-chimneyed lamp lifted high in one hand, just as he hadstood earlier that same night, and scanned his own face. 

All trace of resentment left his eyes as he realized the ghastlypallor of those features--all the ragged horror of that oozing weltwhich he had only half seen in that first moment when he was clingingto consciousness with clenched teeth. It was not nice to look at, andthe light that replaced that sudden flare of bitterness was so newthat he did not even recognize it himself at first. 

It was a clearer, steadier, surer thing than he had ever known themto reflect before; all hint of lost-dog sophistication was gone; eventhe smile that touched his thin, pain-straightened lips wasdifferent somehow. It was just as whimsical as before, and just ashalf-mirthless--gentle as it always had been whenever he thought atall of her--but there was no wistful hunger left in it, and littleof boyishness, and nothing of lurking self-doubt. 

"Why, she couldn't have known, " he went on then, still murmuringaloud. "She couldn't have been expected to believe anything else. I--I'm not much to look at--just now. "

He even forgot that he had tried to follow her--forgot that her cloakhad thrown him sprawling in the doorway. 

"I ought to have told her, " he condemned himself. "I shouldn't havelet her go--not like that. "

In the fullness of this new certainty of self that was setting hispulses hammering, he even turned toward the sleeping town, thicklyblanketed by the shadows in the valley, in a sudden boyish burst ofgenerosity. 

"Maybe they didn't mean to lie, either, " he mused thoughtfully. "Maybethey haven't really meant to lie--all this time. They could have beenmistaken, just as she was tonight--they certainly could have beenthat. "

He found and filled a basin with cold water and washed out the cutuntil the bleeding had stopped entirely. And then, with the paperwhich that afternoon's mail had brought--the sheet with the astoundingnews of Jed The Red, which Old Jerry prophesied would put Boltonwoodin black letters on the map of publicity--spread out on the tablebefore him, he sat until daybreak poring over it with eyes that werefilmed with preoccupation one moment and keenly strained the next tomake out the close-set type. 

Not long before dawn he reached inside his coat and brought out a bitof burnished white card and set it up in front of him against thelamp. There was much in the plump, black capitals and knobby script ofJudge Maynard's invitation which was very suggestive of the manhimself, but Young Denny failed to catch the suggestion at thatmoment. 

He never quite knew when that decision became final, nor what themental process was which brought it about. Nor did he even dream ofthe connection there might have been between it and that square ofcardboard lying in front of him. Just once, as the first light camestreaking in through the uncurtained window beside him, he nodded hishead in deliberate, definite finality. 

"Why, it's the thing I've been waiting for, " he stated, somethingclose akin to wonder in his voice. "It's just a man's size chance. I'dhave to take it--I'd have to do that, even if I didn't want to--formyself. "

And later, while he was kindling a fire in the stove and methodicallypreparing his own breakfast, he paused to add with what seemed to beabsolute irrelevance:

"Silk--silk, next to her skin!"

There were only two trains a day over the single-track spur roadthat connected Boltonwood with the outer world beyond the hills; onewhich left at a most unreasonably inconvenient hour in the earlymorning and one which left just as inconveniently late at night. Denny Bolton, who had viewed from a distinctly unfavorable angleany possible enchantment which the town might chance to offer, settled upon the first as the entirely probable choice of the short, fat, brown-clad newspaper man, even without a moment's hesitation toweigh the merits of either. And the sight of the round bulk of thelatter, huddled alone upon a baggage truck before the desertedBoltonwood station-shed, fully vindicated his judgment. 

It was still only a scant hour since daybreak. Heavy, low-hangingclouds in the east, gray with threatening rain, cut off any warmththere might have been in the rising sun and sharpened the raw wind toa knifelike edge. The man on the truck was too engrossed with thethoughts that shook his plump shoulders in regularly recurring, silentchuckles, and a ludicrously doleful effort to shut off with upturnedcollar the draft from the back of his neck, to hear the boy'sapproaching footsteps. He started guiltily to his feet in the verymiddle of a spasmodic upheaval, to stand and stare questioningly atthe big figure whose fingers had plucked tentatively at his elbow, until a sudden, delighted recognition flooded his face. Then hereached out one pudgy hand with eager cordiality. 

"Why, greetings--greetings!" he exclaimed. "Didn't quite recognize youwith your--er--decoration. " His eyes dwelt in frank inquisitivenessupon the ragged red bruise across Young Denny's chin. "You're themember who stood near the door last night, aren't you--the one whodidn't join to any marked degree in the general jubilee?"

Young Denny's big, hard hand closed over the outstretched pudgy whiteone. He grinned a little and slowly nodded his head. 

"Thought so, " the man in brown rambled blithely on, "and glad to seeyou again. Glad of a chance to speak to you! I wanted most mightily toask you a few pertinent questions last night, but it hardly seemed afitting occasion. "

He tapped Young Denny's arm with a stubby forefinger, one eyeliddrooping quizzically. 

"_Entre nous_--just 'twixt thee and me, " he went on, "and not forpublication, was this Jeddy Conway, as you knew him, all that youreminent citizenry would lead a poor gullible stranger to believe, orwas he just a small-sized edition of the full-blown crook he happensto be at the present stage of developments? Not that it makes anydifference here, " he tapped the big notebook under his arm, "but I'mjust curious, a little, because the Jed The Red whom I happen to knowis so crooked nowadays that his own manager is afraid to place a beton him half the time. See?"

Denny smiled comprehendingly. He shifted his big body to a morecomfortable and far less awkward position. 

"I see, " he agreed. 

Somehow, where it would have been an utter impossibility to havespoken lightly to him the night before, he found it very easy now tounderstand and meet half way the frivolity of the fat, grinning manbefore him. 

"Well, when he left town about eight years ago, his going was just atrifle hasty. He--he took about everything there was in thecash-drawer of Benson's store with him--except maybe a lead slug ortwo--and there are some who think he only overlooked those. "

The gurgle of sheer delight that broke from the lips of the man inbrown was spontaneously contagious. 

"Just about as your servant had it figured out last night, " he fairlychirped. Then he slipped one hand through the crook of Denny's elbow. "I guess I'll have to take a chance on you. It's too good to keep allto myself. " He led the way back to the empty truck. "And you ought tobe safe, too, for judging from the sentiments that were expressedafter you left last night, you--er--don't run very strong with thiscommunity, either. "

Again he paused, his eyelid cocked in comical suggestion. Instead ofnarrowing ominously, as they might have twelve hours before, Denny'sown eyes lighted appreciatively at the statement. He even waited aninstant while he pondered with mock gravity. 

"I reckon, " he drawled finally, "that I'll have to confess that I'venever been what you might call a general favorite. "

The newspaper man's head lifted a little. He flashed a covertlysurprised glance at the boy's sharp profile. It was far from being thesort of an answer that he had expected. 

"No, you certainly are not, " he emphasized, and then he opened theflat notebook with almost loving care across his knees. 

Young Denny, with the first glimpse he caught of that very first page, comprehended in one illuminating flash the cause of those muffledchuckles which had convulsed that rounded back when he turned thecorner of the station-shed a moment before; he even remembered thathalf-veiled mirth in the eyes of the man who had sat balanced upon thedesk in the Tavern office the night before and understood that, too. For the hurriedly penciled sketch, which completely filled the firstpage of the notebook, needed no explanation--not even that of thesingle line of writing beneath it, which read:

"I always said he'd make the best of 'em hustle--yes, sir, the verybest of 'em!"

It was a picture of Judge Maynard--the Judge Maynard whom Young Dennyknew best of all--unctuous of lip and furtively calculating of eye. For all the haste of its creation it was marvelously perfect indetail, and as he stared the corners of the boy's lips began to twitchuntil his teeth showed white beneath. The fat man grinned with him. 

"Get it, do you?" he chuckled. "Get it, eh?"

And with the big-shouldered figure leaning eagerly nearer he turnedthrough page after page to the end. 

"Not bad--not bad at all, " he frankly admired his own handiwork atthe finish. "You see, it was like this. I've been short on anythinglike this for a long time--good Rube stuff--and so when Conway camethrough in his match the other night it looked like a providentialopportunity--and it certainly has panned up to expectations. "

Once more he turned to scan the lean face turned toward him, far moreopenly, far more inquisitively, this time. It perplexed him, bewildered him--this easy certainty and consciousness of power whichhad replaced the lost-dog light that had driven the smile from his ownlips the night before when he had followed Judge Maynard's beckoningfinger. 

Hours after the enthusiastic circle about the Tavern stove haddissolved he had labored to reproduce that white, bitter, quiveringface at the door, only to find that the very vividness of his memorysomehow baffled the cunning of his pencil. There had been more thanmere bitterness in those curveless, colorless lips; something morethan doubt of self behind the white hot flare in the gray eyes. Now, in the light of day, his eyes searched for it openly and failed tofind even a ghost of what it might have been. 

"No, " he ruminated gently, and he spoke more to himself than theother, "you don't stand deuce high with this community. You're waydown on the list. " He hesitated, weighing his words, suddenly a littledoubtful as to how far he might safely venture. "I--I guessyou've--er--disappointed them too long, haven't you?"

The blood surged up under Young Denny's dark skin until it touched hiscrisp black hair, and the fat man hastened to throw a touch ofjocularity into the statement. 

"Yep, you've disappointed 'em sorely. But I've been monopolizing allthe conversation. I can't convince myself that you've come down heremerely to say me a touching farewell. Was there--was there somethingyou wanted to see me about in particular?"

It was the very opening for which Denny had been waiting--the openingwhich he had not known how to make himself, for his plan for procedureby which he was to accomplish it was just as indistinct as hisresolution had been final. He nodded silently, uncertain just how tobegin, and then he plunged desperately into the very middle of it. 

"I thought maybe you could tell me if this was true or not, " he said, and he drew from his pocket the paper which bore the account of JedThe Red's victory over The Texan. A hint of a frown appeared upon theforehead of the man in brown as he took the folded sheet and readwhere Denny's finger indicated--the last paragraph of all. 

"The winner's share of the receipts amounted to twelve thousanddollars, " was its succinct burden. 

He read it through twice, as if searching for any puzzling phrase itmight contain. 

"I certainly can, " he admitted at last. "I wrote it myself, but it'sno doubt true, for all that. Not a very big purse, of course, butthen, you know, he isn't really championship calibre. He's just asecond-rate hopeful, that's all. It seems hard to find a real onethese days. But why the riddle?" he finished, as he handed back thepaper. 

"Why, I thought if it was true maybe I'd ask you to tell me if I--howI could get a chance at him. "

The boy's explanation was even more flounderingly abrupt than hisformer question had been, but his eyes never wavered from thenewspaper man's face. The latter laid his notebook upon the truck withexaggerated care and rose and faced him. 

"Another!" he lamented in simulated despair. But the next moment allthe bantering light went from his face, while his eyes flashed inlightning-like appraisement over Denny's lean shoulder-heavy body, from his feet, small and narrow in spite of the clumsy high boots, tohis clean-cut head, and back again. There was a hint of businesslikeeagerness in that swift calculation of possibilities. The boy shiftedconsciously under the scrutiny. 

"It isn't that he never was able to whip me--even when he was a kid, "he tried to explain. "It--it's because I don't believe, somehow, thathe ever could. "

All the strained eagerness disappeared from the face of the pudgy manin brown. He laughed softly, a short little laugh of amusement at hisown momentary folly. 

"Whew!" he murmured. "I'm getting to be just as bad as all the rest!"

He felt in a pocket for a card and scribbled an address across itsback. A trace of good-natured familiarity--the first hint ofsuperiority that had marked his manner--accompanied his gesture whenhe extended it in one hand. It savored of the harmless humoring of achildish vagary. 

"If you ever did chance to get as far from home as that, there's a manat that address who'd fall on your neck and weep real tears if youhappened to have the stuff, " he said. "But just one additional word. Maybe I've led you astray a bit. Just because I said that Jed The Redis a second-rater, don't think for a moment that he fights like aschoolboy now. He doesn't--nothing like that!"

He gazed for another second at the boy's thin, grave face, so like, inits very thinness and gravity, all that a composite of its Puritanforbears might have been. And as he became suddenly conscious of thatresemblance he reversed the card, a whimsical twist touching his lips, and wrote above his own name, "Introducing the Pilgrim, " and put it inthe outstretched hand. 

"Any idea when you expect to make a start?" he inquired with anelaborate negligence that brought the hot color to the boy's cheeks. But again, at the words, he caught, too, a glimpse of the unshakencertainty that backed their gray gravity. 

"Tomorrow, I reckon. It'll take me all of today to get things fixed upso I can leave. I'll take this train in the morning. And they--theyought to have told you at the hotel that it's always a half-hourlate. "

Young Denny rose. 

"Surely--surely, " the chubby man agreed. "Nothing like getting awaywith the bell. And--er--there's one other thing. Of course if it's alittle private affair, I'll bow myself gracefully out, but I doconfess to a lot of curiosity concerning that small souvenir. " Hiseyes traveled to the red welt across the boy's chin. "May I inquirejust how it happened?"

Denny failed to understand him at first; then his finger lifted andtouched the wound interrogatively. 

"This?" he inquired. 

The man in brown nodded. 

"Last night, " the boy explained, "I--I kind of forgot myself andwalked in on the horses in the dark, without speaking to them. I'dforgot to feed before I went to the village. One of them's youngyet--and nervous--and----"

The other scowled comprehendingly. 

"And so, just for that, they both went hungry till you came to in themorning and found yourself stretched out on the floor, eh?"

Again Young Denny puzzled a moment over the words. He shook his headnegatively. 

"No-o-o, " he contradicted slowly. "No, it wasn't as bad as that. Knocked me across the floor and into the wall and made me pretty dizzyand faint for a little while. But I managed to feed them. I--I'dworked them pretty hard in the timber last week. "

The man in brown puckered his lips sympathetically, whistling softlywhile he considered the damage which that flying hoof had done, andthe utter simplicity of the explanation. 

"I wonder, " he said to himself, "I wonder--I wonder!" And then, almostroughly: "Give me back that card!"

Young Denny's eyes widened with surprise, but he complied without aword. The man in brown stood a moment, tapping his lips with thepencil, before he wrote hastily under the scribbled address, cockedhis head while he read it through, and handed it back again. 

The belated train was whistling for the station crossing when hethrust out his pudgy white hand in farewell. 

"My name's Morehouse, " he said, "and I've been called 'Chub' by myimmediate friends, a title which is neither dignified nor reverend, and yet I answer to it with cheerful readiness. I tell you thisbecause I have a premonition that we are to meet again. And don't losethat card!"

Young Denny's fingers closed over the outstretched hand with a gripthat brought the short, fat man in brown up to his toes. Long afterthe train had crawled out of sight the boy stood there motionlessbeside the empty truck, reading over and over again the few scrawledwords that underran the line of address. 

"Some of them may have science, " it read, "and some of them may havespeed, but, after all, it's the man that can take punishment who getsthe final decision. Call me up if this ever comes to hand. "

Which, after all, was not so cryptic as it might have been. 

CHAPTER VIII

That drearily bleak day which was to witness the temporary passing ofthe last of the line of Boltons from the town which had borne theirname longer even than the oldest veteran in the circle of regularswhich nightly flanked the cracked wood-stove in the Tavern officecould recall, brought with it a succession of thrills not second evento those that had been occasioned by the advent of the plump newspaperman from the metropolis, and all his promised works. 

And yet, so far as he himself was concerned, Young Denny Bolton wastotally oblivious, or at least apparently so, to the very audible humof astonishment which ripped along behind them when they--he and JudgeMaynard of all men--whirled down the main street of the village thatmorning through the gray mist already heavy as fine rain, to stop witha great flourish of glittering harness buckles and stamping of hoofsbefore the post-office doors. 

It was the busiest hour which the straggling one-story shops alongthe unpaved thoroughfare knew, this one directly following theunshuttering of the specked, unwashed show-windows, known distinctlyas "mail time"--a very certain instant when Old Jerry's measuredpassage from the office doors to his dilapidated rig at the edge ofthe boardwalk heralded the opening of the general delivery windowwithin. 

It was Old Jerry's hour--the one hour of the day in which his starvedappetite for notoriety ever supped of nourishment--that moment whenthe small knot of loiterers upon the sidewalk, always, face for face, composed of the same personnel as the unvarying nightly circle aboutthe Tavern stove, gave way before him and the authority of the"Gov'mint" which he personified. 

Since that first morning, years back, which had hailed his initialappearance with the mail bags slung over one thin shoulder, he hadmade the most of that daily entrance upon the stage of publicity. There was always a haughty aloofness in his eyes that killed any wordof greeting upon the lips of these same beholders with whom, a fewhours later, he was to sit and wrangle in bitterest intimacy; acertain brisk importance of step which was a palpable rebuke to theirpurposeless unemployment. 

Just once this haughty reserve had been assailed. It happened thatsame first morning when Old Dave Shepard, white of head and womanishlymild of voice, alike the circle's patriarch and most timid member, hadstepped forward and laid one unsteady hand upon his arm, someembarrassed word of congratulation trembling on his lips. Old Jerry'sbearing upon that one occasion had precluded for all time thepossibility of its recurrence. He had stepped back a pace, out ofreach of those detaining fingers, and fastened the offender with astare of such baleful resentment that the latter drew off in pitifulhaste for self-effacement. And Jerry's words on that one occasion werestill current history. 

"I warn you, Mister Shepard, " he had shrilled, "that it's a state'sprison offense to interfere with a Gov'mint official in theperformance of his duty--and if you've got any complaints to makethey'll have to be set down reg'lar in writin', so's I can give 'emdue consideration!"

Dating from that day Old Jerry's daily appearance had taken on, atleast in the eyes of the Tavern regulars, a ceremonious importancethat demanded their personal attendance, and although it still lackeda few moments of the hour for which they were waiting, a roll-callwould have found their number complete when the yellow-wheeledbuckboard of Boltonwood's most important citizen, with its strangelyassorted pair of passengers, flashed into view. Denny Bolton wastotally oblivious to the stir which their appearance created, but ifhe was too engrossed with other things to be aware of the breathlesshush which followed it, the huge, moon-faced man who occupied the seatof the buckboard with him was conscious of it all to a degreesufficient for both. 

From the moment when he had himself answered the summons at the frontdoor of his great, boxlike house on the hill, and found Young Dennystanding there, Judge Maynard had sensed a sensation. With unerringjudgment he read it in the very carriage of the big-shouldered boybefore him, who for the first time in his life failed to uncover hishead, with a due amount of reverence, in the presence of the town'sgreat man. 

Perhaps with his mind set upon other things that morning Young Dennyforgot it, perhaps there was an even deeper reason for his remissness, but the Judge, while he stood and listened to the boy's tersely shortexplanation of his errand, was himself too taken up with otherthoughts to note the omission. He was already formulating the roundedsentences with which he would introduce the subject that night to thecircle in the Tavern office. 

There was much of the dramatic in the whole situation--much thatneeded only proper staging and elaboration to make of it a tremendoustriumph, a personal triumph, the extent of which he began to foreseewith Denny's opening words. And the greater became his consciousnessof Denny Bolton's strange new bearing, the clearer he saw all thepossibilities of the situation. 

To cap it all, the one big, irrefutable fact about which hecould build his climax was there all ready before him, ripe forexploitation. It was with an actual effort of the will that theJudge held his brain sufficiently attentive to the boy's words tograsp the reason for his early morning visit, in the face of thefascination which that great, ragged bruise across Denny's chin hadfor him. Properly displayed, properly played up, the possibilitiesof that raw, unbandaged wound were incalculable, and the Judgestarted almost guiltily from his greedy scrutiny of it to a suddenrealization that the boy before him had paused in his recital andwas waiting in almost insulting self-possession for a reply. 

Many men and some few women had rung boldly at the Judge's front dooror, more often, tapped timidly at the entrance in the rear of thehouse, all bent upon the same errand. For it was a country-wide secretthat no one had ever been turned away from those doors with a refusal. If any of those same visitors ever awakened to a realization that theterms of their bargain were far harder to bear than a refusal mighthave been, they nursed that knowledge in secret. 

The Judge was a first mortgage financier, and he scanned each newaddition to his already extensive collection with all the elaboratecare which a matcher of precious stones might have exercised in theassembling of a fabulous priced string of pearls. It was his practiceto scrutinize each transaction from every possible angle, in everydegree of light and shade, but in his eagerness that morning he forgotto don for Denny the air of gracious understanding that was halfpaternal, half deprecating, which he always wore to set the othersmore at their ease. He even forgot to clear his throat judicially whenhe asked the boy before him if he had considered sufficiently thegravity of such a step as the placing in pawn of the roof thatsheltered him and the ground that gave him food. It may have beenbecause Young Denny, as he stood quietly waiting for his answer, cameunder neither classification--he was neither pitifully timid nor morepitifully bold--that the Judge omitted the usual pompous formula, ormerely that in his eager contemplation of the boy's hurt face heforgot for once his perfectly rehearsed part. 

No preoccupation, however, marred the businesslike statement of histerms, but even while he named the amount which he was willing to riskupon Young Denny's arid, rocky acres, and the rate of interest whichhe felt compelled to demand, his brain was racing far ahead of thematter in hand. It was the Judge himself who engineered the halfhour's delay which resulted in the fullest possible audience for theirappearance that morning. While he had never attended it himself, except now and then by chance, he knew too well the infallibility ofthat little knot of regulars who watched Old Jerry's daily departureto have any fears that the first of that day's many thrills would gounseen or unsung. And he timed their arrival to a second. 

Old Jerry was in the doorway, ready for his straight-backed descent ofthe worn steps, when Judge Maynard pulled his smooth gaited pair to arestive standstill before the office and gave the reins into YoungDenny's keeping. The throng of old men upon the sidewalk was at thepoint of opening ranks to allow him to pass through to his tatteredbuggy, which stood at the roadside, a bare half-length ahead of theJudge's polished equipage. And now those same ranks broke in wilddisorder and then closed tighter even than before, while they shiftedand struggled for a better view. 

They forgot the ceremonious solemnity of the moment and the little, birdlike figure upon the top step trying not to show too plainly uponhis face a sense of his own importance--they forgot everything but theportend of the scene which the Judge was handling in so masterful afashion. 

The latter's descent from his seat to the ground was deliberate, evenfor him; his silent nod to those wide-eyed, loose-jawed old men uponthe sidewalk was the very quintessence of secretive dignity, and yethad he taken up his position there on the corner of the unevenboardwalk and cried aloud his sensation, like a bally-hoo advertisingthe excellence of his own particular side-show, he could not haveequaled the results which the very profundity of his silenceachieved. 

There was a momentous promise in his gravity, a hint of catastrophe inthe tilt of his head. Like two receding waves the tight ranks openedbefore him, clearing a path for his heavy-footed advance to thepost-office doors--a lane of bulging eyes and clicking tongues such asOld Jerry in all his days had never provoked. And the latter stoodthere stock still in the middle of the entrance, too dazed at first tograsp the whole meaning of the situation, until he, too, was sweptaside, without so much as a glance or a word, by one majestic sweep ofthe Judge's hand. 

Old Jerry's sparrowlike, thinly, wistful face flamed red, and thenfaded a ghastly white, but no one seemed conscious at that moment ofthe ignominy of it all. It was hours later that they recalled it andrealized that they had looked upon history in the making. No onenoticed the old man's faltering descent of the steps, or saw that hepaused in his slow way to the buggy to turn back and stand lookingabout him in a kind of bewildered desperation. For the gaze of all hadswung from the Judge's broad, disappearing back to the face of the boywho was sitting in the buckboard, totally unconscious of that batteryof eyes, smiling to himself. 

He even chuckled aloud once--Young Denny did--a muffled, reasonlesssort of a chuckle, as if he did not even know they were there. It wasalmost as though he were playing straight into the Judge's own plan, for the effect of the mirth upon the group on the walk was electrical. It sent a shiver of anticipation through it from end to end. And then, like the eyes of one man, their eyes swung back again from the raggedbruise across the boy's chin to meet the Judge as he reappeared. 

Yet not one of them so much as dared to whisper the question thatwas quivering upon the lips of all and burning hungrily in theirfaded eyes. Once more the wide lane opened magically for him--butagain Judge Maynard's measured progress was momentarily barred. Curiosity may have prompted it, and then again it may have been thathe was betrayed by the very fury of his desperate, eleventh houreffort to assert his right to the center of that stage--the rightof long-established precedent--yet even those two long files ofold men gasped aloud their dismay at his temerity when Old Jerrythrust his way forward and planted himself for a second timesquarely in the great man's path. 

Half way from the office doors to the yellow-wheeled buckboard, in thevery middle of the walk, he stood and stretched out a tentativelyrestraining hand, just as mild-voiced, white-haired Dave had doneyears before. And in his high, cracked falsetto, that was tremulouslybitter for all that he struggled to lift it to a plane of easyjocularity, he exclaimed:

"Now see here, Jedge; what's the meanin' of all this? You ain't turnedkidnapper, hev you?"

There came a heavy hush, while the Judge stood and stared down at thethin face trying to smile confidently up at him--a hush that enduredwhile Judge Maynard swept him from head to foot with one shrivelingglare and then walked around him without a word--walked around himjust as he might have walked around the hitching post at the roadside, or any other object that chanced to bar his way! And this time OldJerry's face twitched and went whiter even than before. 

Nobody laughed, not even after the yellow-wheeled buckboard with itsstrangely assorted pair of passengers had sped from sight toward thecounty seat and a legal adjustment of still another mortgage on theBolton acres. Not a word was spoken until Old Jerry, too, hadclambered silently into his own creaking buggy and crawled slowly offup the hill, with a squealing accompaniment of ungreased axles. 

And even then, in the argument which began with a swirl of conjectureand ended, hours later, in a torrent of bitter personalities farthestof all from the first question under consideration, they avoided amention of that regrettable incident just as for some time after itsoccurrence they avoided each other's eyes, as if they felt somehowthat theirs was, after all, the real guilt. 

Upon one point alone did they agree; they were unanimous that if YoungDenny Bolton's bearing that morning--the angle at which he held hischin, and the huge cut that adorned it, and his causeless mirth--wasnot entirely damning, it was at least suspicious enough to requiremore than a little explanation. But that verdict, too, was none otherthan the very one which the Judge had already planned for them. 

CHAPTER IX

Old Jerry drove his route that morning in a numbed, trancelikefashion; or, rather, he sat there upon the worn-out leather seat withthe reins looped over the dash, staring straight ahead of him, andallowed the fat old mare to take her own pace. It was she who made thecustomary stops; he merely dug absent-mindedly beneath the seatwhenever she fell to cropping grass at the roadside, and searchedmechanically for the proper packet of mail. And twice he was calledback to correct mistakes which he admitted were his own with anhumbleness that was alarming to the complainant. In all the days ofhis service he had never before failed to plead extenuatingcircumstances for any slip that might occur--and to plead with muchheat and staccato eloquence. But then, too, in all those years no dayhad ever equalled the bitter awakening of that morning. 

As he reviewed it all, again and again, Old Jerry began to understandthat it was not the public rebuff which had hurt so much; for therewas that one of the night previous, when the Judge had cut him off inthe middle of his eager corroboration of Jed The Red's history, whichhad not left a trace of a sting twelve hours later. It was more thanwounded vanity, although hurt pride was still struggling for a placein his emotions against a shamed, overwhelming realization of his owntrifling importance, which could not hold its own against the firstinterloper, even after years of entrenchment. Judge Maynard's firstthrill had been staged without a hitch; he had paved the way for thepersonal triumph which he meant to achieve that night, but he hadaccomplished it only at a cost--the loyalty of him who had been, afterall, his stanchest supporter. 

From that moment Old Jerry's defection from the ranks must be dated, for it was in those bitter hours which followed the yellow-wheeledbuckboard's early morning flight down the main street that the old manwoke to the fact that his admiration for the Judge was made ofanything but immortal stuff. He weighed the Judge in the balance thatmorning, and half forgot his own woe in marveling at the discrepancieswhich he discovered. 

Self-deceit may or may not be easy of accomplishment. Maybe it ismerely a matter of temperament and circumstance, after all. But it isa certainty that the first peep at one's own soul is always the moststartling--the most illuminating, always hardest of all to bear. Andonce stripped of that one garment of grandeur, which he had conjuredout of his own great hunger for attention, Old Jerry found aruthless, half-savage joy in tearing aside veil after veil, until hefound himself gazing straight back into the eyes of his ownspirit--until he saw the pitiful old fraud he really was, naked therebefore him. 

Just as well as though he had been a party to it he understood theJudge's crafty exhibition of Young Denny's maimed face that morning;he knew without a trace of doubt just what the Judge, in his ominoussilence, had meant to insinuate, and what the verdict would be thatnight around the Tavern stove. What he could not understand quite waswhy all of them were so easy to convince--so ready to believe--whenonly the night before they had sat and heard the Judge's recital ofJed The Red's intimate history for the benefit of the newspaper manfrom the metropolis which, to name it charitably, had been anythingbut a literal translation of facts. 

Groping back for one single peg upon which to hang the fabric of theiroft-reiterated prophesy was alarmingly profitless. There had beennothing, not even one little slip, since Old Denny Bolton's passing onthat bad night, years before. And from that realization he fell topondering with less leadenness of spirit upon what the real factscould be which lay behind Young Denny's sudden transformation. Forthat also was too real--too evident--for any eyes to overlook. 

It was not until long after the hour which witnessed the return flightof the yellow-wheeled buckboard through the village street, leavingbehind an even busier hum of conjecture than before, that he awoke toa realization that his opportunity for a solution of the riddle was atleast better than that of the wrangling group that had turned traitorbefore the post-office steps. 

Long before he reached the top of the grade that ran up to the bleakhouse alone on the crest, he was leaning out of his seat, trying topenetrate the double gloom of rain and twilight; but not until he hadreined in his horse was he positive that there was no shadowy figurestanding there waiting for his arrival. 

He could not quite understand the sensation which the boy's absencewaked in him at that instant. Days afterward he knew it had beenlonesomeness--a rather bewildering loneliness--for no matter what hisreception chanced to be along the way, Young Denny's greeting had beeninfallibly regular. 

And another emotion far less difficult to understand began to stirwithin him as he sat motionless for a time scanning the shapeless bulkof the place, entirely dark save for a single light in the rear room. For the first time he saw how utterly apart from the rest of the townthose unpainted old farm buildings were--how utterly isolated. Thetwinkling lights of the village were mere pin-points in the distance. Each thick shadow beneath the eaves of the house was blacker than hehad ever noticed before. Even the soft swish of the rain as it seepedfrom the sodden shingles, even the very familiar complaint of loosenails lifted by the wind under the clapboards, set his heart pumpingfaster. All in an instant his sensation-hungry old brain seized uponeach detail that was as old as he himself and manufactured, rightthere on the spot, a sinister something--a something of unaccountabledread, which sent a delightful shiver up and down his thin, bony, oldback. 

For a while he waited and debated with himself, not at all certainnow that he was as keen for a solution of the riddle of that cutwhich had adorned Young Denny's chin as he had been. And yet, evenwhile he hesitated, feeding his imagination upon the choicest ofpremonitory tit-bits, he knew he meant to go ahead. He was magnifyingthe unfathomed peril that existed in his erratic, hair-trigger oldbrain alone merely for the sake of the complacent pride whichresulted therefrom--pride in the contemplation of his own intrepiddare-deviltry. 

He could scarcely have put into words just what reception he hadimagined was awaiting him; but, whatever it might have been, YoungDenny's greeting was full as startling. A worn, dusty, shapelessleather bag stood agape upon the table before the window, and DennyBolton paused over the half-folded garment in his hands to wheelsharply toward the newcomer as the door creaked open. 

For one uncomfortable moment the old adventurer waited in vain for anylight of welcome, or even recognition, to flash up in the boy's steadyscrutiny. Then the vaguest of smiles began to twitch at the corners ofDenny's lips. He laid the coat back upon the table and stepped forwarda pace. 

"Hello!--Here at last, are you?" he saluted. "Aren't you pretty latetonight?"

Old Jerry swallowed hard at the cheery ease of the words, but hisfluttery heart began to pump even faster than when he had sat outsidein the buggy debating the advisability of his further advance. Thatwarning premonition had not been a footless thing, after all, for thisself-certain, vaguely amused person who stood steadily contemplatinghim was not the Denny Bolton he had known twenty-four hoursbefore--not from any angle or viewpoint. 

Behind the simulated cheer of his greeting there was something elsewhich Old Jerry found disturbingly new and hard to place. In hisperplexity the wordless accusation that morning had been correct atthat. And Young Denny was smiling widely at him now--smiling openly. The old man shuffled his feet and shifted his gaze from the open woundupon the boy's face as though he feared his suspicion might be read inhis eyes. Then he answered Denny's question. 

"I--I cal'late I be late--maybe a little, " he admitted. 

Denny nodded briskly. 

"More than a little, " he corrected. "I expected you to be along evenearlier today! An hour or two, at least. "

Even while he was speaking Young Denny turned back to the packing ofthe big bag on the table. Old Jerry stood there, still shifting fromone foot to the other, considering in growing wonder that silentpreparation, and waiting patiently for a further explanation of whatit meant. At last, when he could no longer endure the suspense, hebroke that silence himself. 

"Packin' up for a little trip, be you?" he ventured mildly. 

There was no progress made or satisfaction gained from Young Denny'sshort nod. Again the little man bore it as long as he was able. 

"Figurin' on bein' gone quite a spell?" he ventured again. 

And again the big-shouldered figure nodded a silent affirmative. OldJerry drew himself up with an air of injured dignity at thatinhospitable slight; he even took one step backward toward the door;but that one step, in the face of his consuming curiosity, was as faras he could force himself to go. 

"I--I kinda thought you might be leavin'. Why, I--kinda suspicioned itthis morning when I seen you ridin' townward with the Jedge. "

The boy stuffed the last article into the bulging bag and turned. OldJerry almost believed that the lack of comprehension in Young Denny'seyes was real until he caught again that hint of amusement behind it. But when Denny started toward him suddenly, without so much as a word, the old man retreated just as suddenly, almost apprehensively, beforehim. 

"You say you was expectin' me, " he faltered unsteadily, "but--but ifthere wa'n't anything special you wanted to see me about, I--I reckonI better be joggin' along. I just kinda dropped in, late's it was, totell you there wa'n't no mail, and to say--to tell you----"

He stopped abruptly. He didn't like the looks of Denny Bolton's eyes. They were different than he had ever seen them before. If theirinscrutability was not actually terrifying, Old Jerry's activeimagination at that moment made it so. And never before had he notedhow huge the boy's body was in comparison with his own weazened frame. He groped stealthily behind him and found the door catch. The cooltouch of the metal helped him a little. 

"I--I may be a trifle late--jest a trifle, " he hurried on, "but I beenhustlin' to git here--that is, ever sense about five o'clock, orthereabouts. There's been something I been wantin' to tell you. I--Ijest wanted to say that I hoped it wa'n't anything I might have saidor--or kinda hinted at, maybe, nights down to the Tavern, that's druvyou out. That's a mighty mean, gossipy crowd down there, anyway, always kinda leadin' a man along till he gits to oversteppin' hisselfa little. "

It was the first declaration of his own shortcomings that he had evervoiced, an humble confession that was more than half apology born ofthat afternoon's travail of spirit; but somehow it rang hopelesslyinadequate in his own ears at that minute. And yet Young Denny's headcame swiftly forward at the words; his eyes narrowed and he frowned asthough he were trying to believe he had heard correctly. Then helaughed--laughed softly--and Old Jerry knew what that laugh meant. Theboy didn't believe even when he had heard; and his slow-drawled, half-satirical question more than confirmed that suspicion. 

"Wasn't at all curious, then, about this?" he inquired, with awhimsical twist to the words. 

He touched his chin with the tips of his fingers. Old Jerry'streacherous lips flew open in his eagerness, and then closed barelyin time upon the admission that had almost betrayed him. 

He was sorry now, too, that he had even lingered to make his apology. That disturbing glint was flaring brighter than ever in Young Denny'seyes. Merely because he was afraid to turn his back to pass out, OldJerry stood and watched with beadily attentive eyes while the boycrossed and took a lantern from its peg on the wall behind the stoveand turned up the wick and lighted it. That unexplained preparationwas as fascinating to watch as its purport was veiled. 

"You must be just a little curious about it--just a little bit?" Dennyinsisted gravely. "I thought you'd be--and all the others, too. That'swhy I was waiting for you--that and something in particular that I didwant to ask you, after I'd made you understand. "

If the first part of his statement was still tinged with mirth, thesecond could not possibly have been any more direct or earnest. Without further explanation, one hand grasping his visitor's thinshoulder, he urged him outside and across the yard in the direction ofthe black bulk of the barn. The rain was still coming down steadily, but neither of them noticed it at that moment. Old Jerry would havebalked at the yawning barn door but for that same hand which wasdirecting him and urging him on. His apprehension had now turned toactual fright which bordered close on panic, and he heard the boy'svoice as though it came from a great distance. 

"----two or three things I'd like to have you understand and getstraight, " Denny was repeating slowly, "so that--so that if I askedyou, you could see that--someone else got them straight, too. "

Old Jerry was in no mental condition to realize that that laststatement was untinged by any lurking sarcasm. He was able to think ofbut one thing. 

The hand upon his shoulder had loosened its grip. Slowly the littleman turned--turned with infinite caution, and what he considered was avery capable attitude of self-defense. And for a moment he refused tobelieve his own eyes--refused to believe that, in place of the threatof sudden death which he had expected, Young Denny was merely standingthere before him, pointing with his free hand at a dark, almost dampstain upon the dusty woodwork behind the stalls. It flashed throughhis brain then that Denny Bolton had not merely gone the way of theother Boltons--it was not the jug alone that had stood in the kitchencorner, but something far worse than that. 

"I got to humor him, " he told himself, although he was shiveringuncontrollably. "I got to keep a grip on myself and kinda humor him. "And aloud, in a voice that was little more than a whisper, hemurmured:

"What--what is it?"

"Couldn't you guess--if you had to?"

Denny made the suggestion with appalling calm. Old Jerry clenched histeeth to still their chattering. 

"Maybe I could--maybe I could;" and his voice was a little stronger. "I--I'd say it was blood, I reckon, if anyone asked me. "

Without a word the boy set the lantern down and walked across the barnto lay one hand upon the flank of the nervous animal in the neareststall. 

"That's what it is, " he stated slowly; and again he touched the woundon his chin gingerly. "From this, " he went on. "I came in last nightto feed--and I--I forgot to speak to Tom here, and it was dark. He--helaced out and caught me--and that's where I landed, there against thewall. "

The servant of the "Gov'mint" nodded his comprehension--he nodded itvolubly, with deep bows that would have done credit to a dancingmaster, lest his comprehensions seem in the least bit veiled withdoubt. He even clicked his tongue sympathetically, just as the plumpnewspaper man had done. 

"Quite a tap--quite a tap!" he said as soothingly as his uncertaintongue would permit; but he took care to keep a safe distance betweenhimself and his guide when Denny stooped and lifted the lantern andled the way outside. 

Now that he was free from that detaining hand upon his shoulder, hecontemplated the advisability of a sudden dash for the buggy andflight behind the fat white mare. Nothing but the weakened conditionof his own knees and a lack of confidence in her ability to carry himclear kept him from acting instantly upon that impulse. And then thesummoning voice of the great blurred figure which had been zigzaggingacross the grass before him checked him at the very moment ofdecision. 

Young Denny had stopped beside a sapling that stood in a direct linewith the kitchen window, and was pointing down at a heap of brokencrockery that lay at its foot. 

"And if anyone was to ask you, " he was deliberately inquiring, "whatdo you suppose you would say that had been?"

Old Jerry knew! He knew without one chance for doubt; but never beforehad the truth seemed more overwhelmingly dreadful or surcharged withperil. A dozen diplomatic evasions flashed through his mind, and wereall condemned as inadequate for that crisis. He knew that candor washis safest course. 

"Why, I--I'd say it looked mighty like a--a broken jug, " he quavered, with elaborate interest. "Jest a common, ordinary jug that's kindagot broke, somehow. Yes, sir-e-e, all broke up, as you might say!"

His shrill cackle of a voice caught in his throat, and grew husky, andthen broke entirely. Even Young Denny, absorbed as he was in hismethodical exhibition of all the evidence, became suddenly aware thatthe little figure beside him was swallowing hard--swallowing withgreat, noisy gulps, and he lifted the lantern until the yellow lightfell full upon the twitching face below him, illuminating everyfeature. And he stared hard at all that the light revealed, for OldJerry's face was very white. 

"Jest a little, no-account jug that's got busted, " the shrill, bodiless voice went chattering on, while its owner recoiled from thelight. "Busted all to pieces from hittin' into a tree!" And then, reassuringly, on a desperate impulse: "But don't you go to worryin'over it--don't you worry one mite! I'm goin' to fix it for you. OldJerry's a-goin' to fix it for you in the morning, so's it'll be justas good as new! You run right along in now. It's kinda wet outhere--and--and I got to be gittin' along toward home. "

Absolute silence followed the promise. Young Denny only lowered thelantern--and then lifted it and stared, and lowered it once more. 

"Fix it!" he echoed, his voice heavy with wonder. "Fix it?"

Then he noted, too, the chattering teeth and meager, trembling body, and he thought he understood. 

"You'd better come along in, " he ordered peremptorily. "You come alonginside. I'll rake up the fire and you can warm up a bit. I--I didn'tthink, keeping you out here in the rain. Why, you'll feel better afteryou've had a little rest. You ought not to be out all day in weatherlike this, anyway. You're too--too----"

He was going to say too old, but a quick thought saved him. Old Jerrydid not want to accompany him; he would have done almost anything elsewith a light heart; but that big hand had fallen again upon hisshoulder, and there was no choice left him. 

Young Denny clicked the door shut before them and pulled a chair upbefore the stove with businesslike haste. After he had stuffed thefire-box full of fresh fuel and the flame was roaring up the pipe, heturned once more and stood, hands resting on his hips, staring down atthe small figure slumped deep in its seat. 

"I didn't understand, " he apologized again, his voice very sober. "I--I ought to have remembered that maybe you'd be tired out and wet, too. But I didn't--I was just thinking of how I could best showyou--these things--so's you'd understand them. You're feeling betternow?"

Furtively, from the corners of his eyes, Old Jerry had been watchingevery move while the boy built up the fire. And now, while Denny stoodover him talking so gravely, his head came slowly around until hiseyes were full upon that face; until he was able to see clearly, therein the better light of that room, all the solicitude that had softenedthe hard lines of the lean jaw. It was hard to believe, after all thathe had passed through, and yet he knew that it could not bepossible--he knew that that voice could not belong to any man who hadbeen nursing a maniacal vengeance behind a cunningly calm exterior. 

There was no light of madness in those eyes which were studying himso steadily--studying him with unconcealed anxiety. Old Jerry couldnot have told how it had come about; but there in the light, withfour good solid walls about him, he realized that a miracle hadtaken place. Little by little his slack body began to stiffen;little by little he raised himself. Once he sighed, a sigh ofdeeper thankfulness than Young Denny could ever comprehend, forYoung Denny did not know the awfulness of the peril through whichhe had just passed. 

"Godfrey" he thought, and the exclamation was so poignantly realwithin him that it took audible form without his knowledge. "Godfrey'Lisha, but that was a close call! That's about as narrer a squeak asI'll ever hev, I reckon. "

And he wanted to laugh. An almost hysterical fit of laughterstraggled for utterance. Only because the situation was too preciousto squander, only because he would have sacrificed both arms beforeconfessing the terror which had been shaking him by the throat, was heable to stifle it. Instead, he removed his drenched and battered hatand passed one fluttering hand across his forehead, with just theshade of unsteadiness for which the affair called. 

"Yes, I'm a-feelin' better now, " he sighed. "Godfrey, yes, I'm a sightbetter already! Must 'a' been just a little touch of faintness, maybe. I'm kinda subject to them spells when I've been overworked. And I hevbeen a little mite druv up today--druv to the limit, if the truth'stold. Things ain't been goin' as smooth's they might. Why--why, theyain't nobody'd believe what's been crowded into this day, even if Iwas to tell 'em!"

He filled his lungs again and shoved both feet closer to the ovendoor. 

"But that fire feels real nice, " he finished; "real nice andcomfortin', somehow. And maybe I could stop just a minute. " The oldhungry light of curiosity was kindling again, brighter than everbefore, in the beady little eyes. "As you was remarkin', back astretch, you'd been a-waitin' for me to come along. Was they--was theysomething you wanted to see me about?"

CHAPTER X

The perplexed frown still furrowed Young Denny's forehead. He feltthat the fire had wrought a most remarkably swift cure of all that hehad feared, but the anxiety faded from his eyes. White head perkedforward, balanced a little on one side, birdlike, Old Jerry waswaiting for him to pick up the thread which had been broken so long. And now it was the big-shouldered boy who faltered in his words, uncertain just how to begin. 

"I--I don't know just how to ask you, " he started heavily. "I'm--I amgoing away. I'm figuring on being gone quite a while, I think. First, just after I had decided to go, some time last night, I made up mymind to ask you to take care of the stock till I came back. I thoughtmaybe it wouldn't be too hard for you--with you coming by at night, anyhow. There's just the one cow and the team, and the hens to feed. And then I--I got to thinkin' that maybe, too, you'd be able to dosomething else for me, if I sort of explained how things were. There--there wasn't anyone else I could think of who'd be likely towant to do me a favor. "

He paused and licked his lips. And Old Jerry, too, furtively touchedhis with the tip of his tongue. He was waiting breathlessly, but hemanaged to nod his head a little, encouragingly, as he leaned closer. 

"And that was what I was really waiting for, " the slow voice went onponderously. "I saw this morning--anybody could have seen--what theJudge meant them all to believe along the street when we drovethrough. Somehow things have changed in the last twelve hours. I sortof look at some things differently than I did, and so it was funny, just funny to watch him, and I'm not so blind that I don't know whathis story will be tonight down at the Tavern. Not that I care whatthey say, either. But there is some one who couldn't help believin'it--couldn't believe anything else--after what happened last night. "He stopped, groping for words to finish. "And so I--I waited for youto come, " he went on lamely. "I took you outside and showed you how itreally happened, so that--so that you could tell _her_--the truth. "

He nodded over his shoulder--nodded once out across the valley in thedirection of John Anderson's small drab cottage huddled in the shadowunder the hill. And now, once he had fairly begun, all the diffidence, all the self-consciousness went from his voice. It was only big andlow and ponderous, as always, as he went back and told the old man, who sat drinking it in, every detail of that night before, when hehad stooped and risen and sent the stone jug crashing through thewindow--when he had turned, with blood dripping from his chin, to findDryad Anderson there in the doorway, eyes wide with horror andloathing. Not until he had reached that point did Old Jerry move orhint at an interruption. 

"But why in time didn't you tell her yourself?" he asked then. "Whydidn't you explain that old Tom hit you a clip out there in thedark?"

Young Denny's face burned. 

"I--I tried to, " he explained simply. "I--I started toward her, meaning to explain, but I tripped, there on the threshold, and wentdown on my knees. I must have been a little sick--a little giddy. Andwhen I got up again she--she was gone. "

Old Jerry nodded his head judicially. He sucked in his lips from sheerdelight in the thrill of it all, and nodded his head in profoundsolemnity. 

"Jest like a woman--jest like a woman, a-condemnin' of a man without abit of mercy! Jest like 'em! I ain't never been enticed yet intogivin' up my freedom; but many's the time I've said--says I----"

The boy's set face checked him; made him remember. This was no mimicthing. It was real; too real to need play-acting. And with thatthought came recollection. All in a flash it dawned on him that thiswas no man-created situation; it must have something greater than thatbehind it. 

That morning had seen his passing from the circle to which he hadbelonged as long as the circle had existed. All through that drearyday he had known that he could never go back to it. Just why he couldnot say, but he felt that that decision was irrevocable. And for thatwhole day he had been alone--more utterly, absolutely alone than hehad ever been in his whole life--yet here was a place awaiting him, needing him. For some reason it was not quite so hard to look straightback into the eyes of that soul which he had discovered that day; itwasn't so hard, even though he knew it now for the pitiful old fraudit really was. 

His thin, leathery face was working spasmodically. And it wasalight--aglow with a light that came entirely from within. 

"Could you maybe explain, " he quavered hungrily; "could you kinda tellme--just why it is--you're a-askin' me? It--it ain't jest because youhev to, entirely; now, is it? It ain't because there ain't nothin'else left you to do?"

Denny Bolton sensed immediately more than half of what was behind thequestion. He shook his head. 

"No, " he answered steadily. "No, because I'm going to try to tell heragain, myself, tonight. It's only partly because maybe I--I won't beable to see her before I go--and part because she--she'd believe you, somehow, I think, when she wouldn't believe any of the rest. "

The white-haired old man sighed. His stiffened body slackened as heshifted his feet against the stove. 

"Why--why, I kinda hoped it was something like that, " he murmured; andhe was talking more to himself than to Denny. "I kinda hoped itwas--but I never had no reason to believe it. "

His voice lifted until it was its shriller, more natural falsetto. 

"I wouldn't 'a' believed myself today, at twelve o'clock noon, " hestated flatly. "No, sir-e-e! After takin' stock of myself, as youmight say, the way I done this morning, I wouldn't 'a' believed myselfon oath!"

His feet dropped noisily to the floor, and he sat bolt upright again. 

"But she's a-goin' to believe me! Godfrey, yes, she'll believe me whenI git through tellin' her!"

His pale eyes clung to the boy's face, tinged with astonishment beforeso much vehemence. 

"And ain't it kinda struck you--ain't it sorta come to you thatshe wa'n't quite fair, either, any more than the rest of us, a-thinkin'--a-thinkin' what she did, without any real proof?"

Young Denny did not have time to reply. 

"No, I reckon it ain't, " Old Jerry rushed on. "And I don't know's I'vegot much right criticizing either. Not very much! I've been a tidyhand at jedgin' other folks' matters until jest lately. Some way Iain't quite so handy at it as I was. And I kinda expect she's goin' tobe sorry she even thought it, soon enough, without my tryin' to makeher any more so. She's goin' to be mighty uncomfortable sorry, ifshe's anything like me!"

He rose and shuffled across to the door, and stopped there. Dennycould not understand the new thrill there was in his cracked voice, nor the light in those pale eyes. But he knew that the old man beforehim had been making something close akin to an eleventh-hourconfession; making it out of a profound thankfulness for theopportunity. With the same gesture with which he bade the old manwait, his big hand went inside his shirt, and came out again. And hereached out and pressed something into Old Jerry's knotty fingers. 

"I--I was sure you'd do it, " he told him. "I knew you would. And Iwant you to take this, too, and keep it. I don't want to go away likethis, but I have to. If I didn't start right now I--I might not go atall. I hate to leave her alone--in this town. That's half of what theJudge let me have today on this place. It's not much, but it'ssomething if she should need anything while I'm gone. I thought youmight--see that she was all right--till I got back?"

The servant of the "Gov'mint" stood and stared down at the limp littleroll of bills in his hand; he stared until something caught in histhroat and made him gulp again noisily. But his face was shamelesslydefiant of the mist that smarted under his eyelids when he looked upagain. 

"Take care of her?" he whispered. "Me take care of her for you?Why--why, Godfrey--why, man----"

He dashed one hand across his eyes. 

"I'm a old gossipy fool, " he exclaimed. "Nothin' but a old gossipyfool; but I reckon you don't hev to _count_ them bills over before youleave 'em with me. Not unless you want to. I've been just an ordinary, common waggle-tongue. That's what I really come for in such a hurrytonight, once I'd thought of it. Jest to see if I couldn't nose aroundinto business that wa'n't no concern of mine. But I'm gittin' overthat--I'm gittin' over that fast! Learning a little dignity ofbearin', too, as you might say. And I don't deny I ain't a littlecurious yet--more'n a little curious. But I want to tell you this:There's some folks that lies mostly for profit, and some that lieslargely for their own amusement, and they both do jest about as muchdamage in the long run, and I ain't no better, jest because I nevermade nothin' outen mine. But if you could kinda drop me a line, maybeonce in a while, and tell me how you're gittin' on, I'd be mighty gladto hear. An' it wouldn't do no harm, either. " He nodded his head, inturn, in the direction of the drab cottage across the valley. "Because--because she's goin' to be waitin' to hear--she's goin' to besorry, and kinda wonderin'. I know--well, jest because I know!"

Still he lingered, with his fingers on the door catch. He shoved outhis free hand. 

"I--I suppose we'd ought to shake hands, hedn't we, " he faltered;"bein' as it's kinda considered the reg'lar and customary thing to doon such occasions?"

Denny was smiling as his hand closed over those clawlike fingers; hewas smiling in a way that Old Jerry had never seen before. Because thenoise in his throat was growing alarmingly louder every moment, thelatter went on talking almost wildly, to cover that weakness which hecould not control. 

"I hope you git on, " he said. "And I reckon you will. It's funny--it'smore'n that--and I don't know where I got the idea. But it's kindacome to me, somehow, that maybe it was that account in the paper--thatstory of Jeddy Conway--that's set you to leavin'. It ain't none of mybusiness, and I ain't askin' no questions, but I do want to say thatthere never was a time when you couldn't lick the everlastin' tarouten him. And you've growed some since then. Jest a trifle--jest atrifle!"

The boy's smile widened and widened. Then he laughed aloud softly andnodded his head. 

"I'll send you the papers, " he promised. "I'll send you all of them. "

Old Jerry stood with his outstretched hand poised in midair whilehe realized that his chance shot had gone home. And suddenly, unaccountably, he began to chuckle; he began to cackle noisily. 

"I might 'a' knowed it, " he whispered. "I ought to hev knowed it allalong. Now, you don't hev to worry--they ain't one mite of a thing Iain't a-goin' to see to while you're away. You don't want nothin' onyour mind, because you're goin' to hev a considerable somethin' onyour hands. And I got to git along now. Godfrey, but it's late for meto be up here, ain't it? I got to hustle, if I ever did; and thereain't too much time to spare. For tonight--tonight, before I gitthrough, I aim to put a spoke in the Jedge's wheel, down to theTavern, that'll make him think the axles of that yello'-wheeled gig ofhis'n needs greasin'. Jest a trifle--jest a trifle!"

He opened the door and slammed it shut behind him even before theboy could reply. Still smiling whimsically, Young Denny stood andlistened to the grating of the wheels as the buggy was turned aboutoutside--heard the old rig groan once, and then complain shrillyas it started on its way. But no one witnessed Old Jerry's wilddescent to the village that night; no one knew the mad speed hemade, save the old mare between the shafts; and she was kept too busywith the lash that whistled over her fat flanks to have given thematter any consistent thought. 

Old Jerry drove that scant mile or two this night under the spur ofhis one greatest inspiration; and while he drove he talked aloud tohimself. 

"And I was a-goin' to fix it for him, " he muttered once, "I wasa-goin' to fix that old busted jug in the morning. Godfrey, I must'a' been flustered!" He shrilled in uncontrollable glee at therecollection. And then again, later and far more gravely:

"I'm a-gittin' more religious every livin' day. I'm gittin' morereligious jest from standin' around and kinda watchin' how things ismade to work out right, jest when you've about decided that the Lordain't payin' as much attention to details as he might. "

He knew that there had to be a light in the windows of the Tavernoffice; he knew that he had to be in time. That was the finger of aSomething behind the whole day's developments which was directing itall so masterfully. And because he was so certain of it all--becausehe was positive that he was the agent who had been selected to meteout justice at last--he found himself possessed of a greater couragethan he had ever known before as he clambered down from his seat andmounted the worn steps. 

A rush of chill air swept the group about the sprawling stove ashe opened the door and made each member lift his head, each after afashion that was startlingly indicative of the man himself. ForJudge Maynard wheeled sharply as the cold blast struck him--wheeledwith head flung back challengingly, and a harsh rebuke in everyfeature--while old Dave Shepard turned and merely shivered. He justshivered and flinched a little from the draft, appealingly. Therest registered an ascending scale of emotions betwixt and between. 

Just as he knew he would find them they sat. Judge Maynard had thefloor; and it was an easy thing to read that he had all but reachedthe crisis of his recital. Any man could have read that merely fromthe protest in the faces of the rest. And yet Old Jerry simply stoodthere and swept the group with serene and dangerous geniality. 

"Evenin', folks, " he saluted them mildly. 

His mildness was like a match to the fuse. Judge Maynard pounded hisfat knee with a fatter fist, and exploded thunderously:

"Shut that door!" he roared. "Shut that door!"

Old Jerry complied with amazing alacrity. The very panels shiveredwith the force of the swing that slammed it close. The Judge shouldhave known right there--he should have read the writing on thewall--and yet he failed to do that thing. Instead, he turned back oncemore to his audience--back to his interrupted tale, and left Old Jerrystanding there before the door, ignored. 

"As I was sayin'. " He cleared his throat. "As I was sayin' when thisunnecessary interruption occurred, I realized right from the momentwhen I opened the door and saw him standing there in front of me, grinning, and his chin cut wide open, that there was something wrong. I am a discerning man--and I knew! And it didn't take me long toconvince him--not very long!--that there were other communities whichwould find him more welcome than this one. Maybe I was harsh--maybe Iwas--but harsh cases require harsh remedies. And because he didn'thave the money, I offered to let him have enough to carry him out oftown, and something to keep him about as long as he'll last now, I'mthinking, although that place of his isn't worth as much as the paperto write the mortgage on. 

"I knew it had come at last--but, at that, I didn't get anything thatI wanted to call real proof until after we'd drawn up the papers andsigned 'em, and were about ready to start back. Then, when we werecoming down the steps of the clerk's office, I got all the proof Iwanted, and a little more than that. He--he stumbled just about then, and would have gone down on his face if I hadn't held him up. And hewas laughing out loud to himself, chuckling, with one fist full ofmoney fit to draw a crowd. And he pulled away from me just when I wastrying to force him into the buggy--pulled away and sort of leered upat me, waving that handful of bills right under my nose. 

"'Oh, come now, Judge, ' he sort of hiccoughed, 'this ain't the way fortwo old friends to part. This ain't the way for me to treat an oldfriend who's given me this. I want to buy you something--I want to buyyou at least one drink--before I go. Come on, now, Judge. What'll youhave?' says he. "

They had all forgotten Old Jerry's interruption; they had forgotteneverything else but the Judge's recital, that was climbing to itsclimax. That room was very quiet when the speaker paused and waitedfor his words to sink in--very quiet until a half-smothered gigglebroke the stillness. 

There was an unholy glee in that mirth--a mocking, lilting note ofactual joy which rang almost profane at such a moment. Man for man itbrought that circle erect in the chairs; man for man they sat andstared at the grotesque figure which was rocking now in a paroxysm oflaughter too real for simulation. In a breathless hush they turnedfrom the offender back to the judge, waiting, appalled, for the stormto break. 

Judge Maynard's round moon-face went purple. Twice he tried to speakbefore he sat silent, annihilation in his eyes, until Jerry's outbreakhad subsided. Then he lifted one forefinger and pointed, with all themajesty such a gesture could ever convey, to the empty chair--thechair which Old Jerry should have been occupying in becoming silenceat that moment. 

"Have you gone crazy?" he thundered. "Have you--or are you justnaturally witless? Or was there something you wanted to say? If thereisn't--if you've no questions to ask--you get over to that chair andsit down where you belong!"

It was then that the rest of the circle realized that something hadgone wrong--most mightily wrong! According to all precedent, thelittle, white-haired man should have shrunk back and cowered beneaththat verbal lash, and obeyed without a glance. They all realized thatthere was imminent a climax unforeseen by all--all but the Judge; andhe was too blind with rage to see. 

Very meekly Old Jerry bore his thundered rebuke--too meekly. But afterthe judge had finished he failed to move; he merely stood there, facing the town's great man. And in his attitude there was somethingof infantile, derisive, sparrowlike impudence as he peered back intothe Judge's face--something that was very like the attitude of anoutraged, ruffled old reprobate of a parrot rearing himself erect. 

Old Jerry made no haste. It was a thing which required a nicedeliberation. And so he waited--waited and prolonged the moment to itslast, sweetest second. Once more he chuckled, to himself thistime--just once, before he began to speak. That old Tavern office hadnever been so deathly still before. 

"A question?" he echoed at last, thoughtfully. "A question? Well, Jedge, there was one thing I was a-goin' to ask you. Jest one triflin'thing I was kinda curious to know. Why, I was a-goin' to ask you, backa spell--What did you hev? It kinda interested me, wonderin' about it. But now--now that I've heard your story in full, I reckon I'll hev tochange that question a mite. I reckon they ain't nothin' left but toask you--How many did you hev? How many, Jedge? For, Jedge, you'retalkin' most mighty wild tonight!"

And that silence endured--endured even after the huge man hadhalf-risen, purple features gone white, and then dropped heavily backinto his chair before that rigid figure in its sodden garments whichhad turned from him toward the rest of the circle of regulars. 

Old Jerry made his formal exit that night--he knew that he wasresigning his chair--but the thing was very cheap at the price. 

[Illustration: "WHAT YOU NEED, GENTLEMEN, IS A TRIFLE WIDER READIN'--JUSTA TRIFLE! FOR YOU AIN'T BEIN' WELL POSTED ON FACTS!"]

"An' I reckon, too, " he went on deliberately, and there was awicked fleer of sarcasm tinging the words, "I reckon I'll hev tokinda apologize to you gentlemen for interruptin' your evenin'sentertainment, as you might say. I'm sorry I ain't able to remain, for it's interestin'. I don't know's I've ever heard anything thatwas jest as excitin' an' thrillin', but I've got something moreimportant needin' my attention this evenin'--meanin' that I ain't gotnothin' in particular that's a-callin' me! But it's no more'n myplain duty for me to tell you this: You'd ought to follow thepapers a mite closer from now on. It's illuminatin'--it's broadenin'!What you need, gentlemen, is a trifle wider readin'--jest atrifle--jest a trifle! For you ain't bein' well posted on facts!"

Nobody moved. Nobody was capable of stirring even. Old Jerry bowed tothem from the doorway--he bowed till the water trickled in a streamfrom the brim of his battered hat. 

And this time, as he passed out, he closed the door very gently behindhim. 

CHAPTER XI

It would have been hard for her to have explained just why it was so, but Dryad Anderson had been sitting there in the unlighted front roomof the little once-white cottage before Judge Maynard's boxlike placeon the hill, watching hour after hour for that light to blink out ather from the dark window of Denny Bolton's house on the oppositeslope. Ever since it had grown dark enough for that signal to be seen, which had called across to her so many nights, she had been waitingbefore the table in front of the window--waiting even while she toldherself that it could not appear. It was not Saturday night; there wasno real reason why she should be watching, unless--unless it was hopethat held her there. 

Only in the last few hours since twilight had she admitted to herselfthe possibility that such a hope lurked behind her vigil. Before then, when the thought had first come to her that Denny might cry out to herthrough the night, with that half-shuttered light, she had stifled itwith a savageness that left her shaking, panting and dizzy from itsbewildering intensity. 

Time after time she told herself that it would go unheeded by her, nomatter how long or how insistently it beckoned, if by the hundredthchance it should flare up beyond the shadows, but as minutes draggedinterminably by into equally interminable hours, the strainedfierceness of that whispered promise grew less and less knifelike inits hardness--less and less assured. 

Somehow, ever since the first light of that gray day had discoveredher sitting there in almost the same position in which she now sat, eyes straining out across the valley, pointed chin cupped in herpalms, that fearful, almost insane passion which had held each nerveand fiber of her taut as tight-stretched wire through the entiresleepless night, had begun to give way to something even less easy toendure. 

All the terror which had checked her that evening when she swung thedoor open and stood poised on the threshold, a low laugh of sheerestdelight in the costume she had worn across for him to see ready toburst from parted lips--all the horror that had held her incapable ofmotion until Denny had swung around and found her there, and liftedhis arms and attempted to speak, had given way, in the first hoursthat followed, to a flaming scorn, a searing contempt for him and forhis weakness that had lost him his fight. 

All through that night which followed her panic flight from the huge, heavy-footed figure that had groped out for her, called to her, anddropped asprawl her own small cloak in the doorway, Denny Bolton'sblood-soiled face and drunkenly reckless laugh had been with her, feeding that rage which scorched her eyes beneath their lids--thatburned her throat and choked her. 

Little drops of blood oozed out upon her lips--strangely brilliantcrimson drops against that colorless background--where her teeth sankdeep in the agony of disillusionment that made each pulse-beat asledge-hammer blow within her brain. Her small palms were etched blueunder the clenched fingers where the nails bit the flesh. And yet--andyet, for all the agony of it which made her lift her blanched facefrom time to time throughout the night--a face so terribly strainedthat it was almost distorted--and set her gasping chokingly that shehated him, hated him for a man who couldn't fight and keep onfighting, even when the odds were great--when the light of that new, dreary day had come streaking in across her half-bowed head, somethingelse began to take the place of all that bitterness and scorn. 

And throughout the day she had still been struggling against it, struggling with all the tense fierceness of which her spirit wascapable--her spirit that was far too big for the slim body that housedit. Yet that thought could not be shaken off. She couldn't forget it, couldn't wipe out the recollection of that great, gaping wound thathad dripped blood from his chin. She tried to close her eyes and shutit out as she went from task to task that day, and it would not fade. 

Somehow it wasn't that man at all whom she remembered as the afternoondragged by to its close; it wasn't the big-shouldered body nervelesslyasprawl upon the floor that filled her memory. Instead a picture of anawkward, half-grown boy flashed up before her--a big, ungainly, terribly embarrassed boy who turned from watching the mad flight of arabbit through the brush to smile at her reassuringly, even though hisface was torn raw from her own nails. 

That was the point at which the tide of her chaotic thoughts began towaver and turn. Long before she realized what she was doing she hadfallen to wondering, with a solicitude that made moist and misty oncemore her tip-tilted eyes and softened the thin line of her lips, whether or not that bruise had been washed out, cleansed and cleanlybandaged. 

When she did realize what that thought meant, it had been too longwith her to be routed. She was too tired to combat it, anyway, tootired with the reaction of that long, throbbing night to do more thanwonder at herself. Twilight came and the gray mist that had been overthe hills for hours dissolved into rain. With the first hint ofdarkness that the storm brought with it she began to watch--to peerout of the window whenever her busy footsteps carried her past it, atthe bleak place across the hollow. Before it was fairly night shebegan to understand that she was not merely watching for the light, but hoping, praying wordlessly that it might shine. And when her workwas finished she had taken her place there, her slim body in its scantblack skirt and little white blouse hunched boyishly forward as alwaysacross the table. 

Even that girl who, after the hours which had been almost cataclysmicfor her, could scarcely have been expected to be able to comprehend itclearly yet--even she read the meaning of the slackened cords of herbody, of her loosened lips and wet eyes. As long as she could she hadfed the flame within her soul--fed it with every bitter thought andharsh judgment which her brain could evolve--and yet that flame hadslackened and smouldered and finally died out entirely. Self-shame, self-scorn even, could not rekindle it. 

Her lips were no longer white and straight and feverish with contempt;they were damp and full again, and curved and half-open withcompassion. The ache was still there in her breast--a great gnawingpain which it seemed at that moment time could never remove, but itwas no longer the wild hatred which made her pant with a desire tomake him suffer, too, just as she had suffered that night through. The pain was just as great, but it was pity now--only pity and anunaccountable yearning to draw that bruised face down against her andcroon over it. 

In spite of the numbness, in spite of the lassitude which thatburnt-out passion had left behind in brain and body, she knew what itmeant. She understood. She had hated his weakness; she still hated hislack of manhood which had made him fail her. That hatred would be along time dying now--if it ever did perish. But she couldn't hate_him_! She looked that fact in the face, dumb at first at theawakening. She couldn't hate him--not the man he was! There was adistinction--a difference very clear to her woman-brain. She coulddespise his cowardice; she could despise herself for caring still--butthe caring still went on. Half-vaguely she realized it, but she knewthe change had come. The girlishness was gone from it forever. She hadto care now as a woman always cares--not for the thing he was, but inspite of it. 

"I ought to hate him, " she told herself once, aloud. "I know I oughtto hate him, and yet--and yet I don't believe I can. Why, I--I can'teven hate myself, as I did a little while back, because I stillcare!"

It was a habit that had grown out of her long loneliness--thosehalf-whispered conversations with herself. And now only one convictionremained. Again and again she told herself that she could not go tomeet him that night--could not go, even if he should call to her. Andthat, too, she put into whispered words. 

"Even if he lights the window, I can't--I couldn't! Oh, not tonight!He won't--he won't think of it. But I couldn't let him touchme--until--until I've had a little time to forget!"

But she was watching still--watching with small, gold-crowned headnodding heavily, eyes half-veiled with sinking lids--when thathalf-shaded window in the dark house glowed suddenly yellow with thelight behind it. She was still hoping, praying dumbly that it mightbe, when Young Denny lifted the black-chimneyed lamp from its bracketon the kitchen wall that night, after he had stood and listened with asmile on his lips to Old Jerry's hurried departure, and carried itinto the front room which he scarcely ever entered except upon thaterrand. 

At first she did not believe. She thought it was only a trick of herbrain, so tired now that it was as little capable of connected thoughtas her worn-out body was of motion. Hardly breathing she stared untilshe saw the great blot of his body silhouetted against the pane for amoment as he crowded between the lamp, staring across at her, sheknew. 

She rose then, rose slowly and very cautiously as though she fearedher slightest move might make it vanish. Young Denny's bobbinglantern, swinging in one hand as he crossed before the house andplunged into the thicket that lay between them, was all that convincedher--made her believe that she had seen aright. 

"I can't go--I can't!" she breathed. And then, lifting her head, vehemently, as if he could hear:

"I want to--oh, you know I want to! But I can't come to youtonight--not until I've had a little longer--to think. "

Almost before she had finished speaking another voice answered, asoft, dreamy voice that came so abruptly in the quiet house that itmade her wheel like a startled wild thing. She had forgotten him forthe time--that little, stooped figure at its bench in the back roomworkshop. For hours she had not given him a thought, and he had madenot so much as a motion to make her remember his presence. She couldnot even remember when his sing-song, unending monologue had ceased, but she realized then that he had been more silent that night thanever before. 

Earlier in the evening when she had lighted his lamp for him and setout his lump of moist clay, and helped him to his place on the highstool, she had thought to notice some difference in him. 

Usually John Anderson was possessed of one or two unvarying moods. Either he plunged contentedly into his task of reproducing themultitude of small white figures around the walls, or else he merelysat and stared up at her hopelessly, vacantly, until she put the clayherself into his hands. Tonight it had been different, for when shehad placed the damp mass between his limp fingers he had laid it asideagain, raised astonishingly clear eyes to hers and shaken his head. 

"After a little--after a little while, " he had said. "I--I want tothink a little first. "

It had amazed her for a moment. At any other time it would havefrightened her, but tonight as she stroked his bowed head, she toldherself that it was nothing more than a new vagary of his anchorlessmind. 

But that same strangely clear, almost sane glow which had puzzled herthen was still there when she turned. It was even brighter thanbefore, and the slow words which had startled her, for all theirdreamy softness, seemed very sane as well. 

"You have to go, " John Anderson answered her faltering, half-audiblewhisper. "You have to go--but you'll be back soon. Oh, so soon! AndI'll be safe till you come!"

Dryad flashed forward a step, both hands half-raised to her throat ashe spoke, almost believing that the miracle for which she had ceasedeven to hope had come that night. And then she understood--she knewthat the bent figure which had already turned back to its bench hadonly repeated her words, parrotlike; she knew that he had only piecedtogether a recollection of the absence which her vigil before thewindow had meant on a former occasion and repeated her own words ofthat other night. 

And yet her brain clamored that there was more behind it all than merewitless repetition. John Anderson was smiling at her, too, smilinglike a benevolent wraith. She saw that his pile of clay was stilluntouched, but there was no hint of petulant perplexity in his face, nothing of the terrified impotence which the inactivity of his fingershad always heralded before. He was just smiling--vaguely to be sureand a little uncertainly--but smiling in utter contentment andsatisfaction, for all that. 

Very slowly--wonderingly, she crossed to him and put both arms abouthis white head and drew it against her. 

"I think you knew, " she said to him, unsteadily. "I think you are ableto understand better than I can myself. And I know, too, now. I dohave to go--I must go to him. But he need not even know, until I tellhim some day--that I was with him tonight. "

The old man pulled away from her clasp, gently but very insistently. And he nodded--nodded as though he had understood. She paused andlooked back at him from the doorway, just as she had alwayshesitated. He was following her with his eyes. Again he shook hishead, just as positively as he might have, had he been the man hemight have been. 

"Some day, " he reiterated, serenely, "some day! And she'll knowthen--some day I'll tell her--that I was with her tonight. "

She had forgotten the rain. It was coming down heavily, and it wasdark, too--very, very dark. She stopped a while, as long as she dared, and waited with the rain beating cold upon her uncovered head and barethroat until her eyes saw the path a little more clearly. It took hera long time to feel her way forward that night. And even when she camewithin sight of Denny's lantern, even when she was near enough to seehim through the thicket ahead of her, in the little patch of light, she had not decided what she meant to do. 

But with that first glimpse of him squatting there in the smallcleared space it came to her what her course should be. Sherealized that if it was an impossibility for her to go to him, shecould at least let him know she had been there--let him know that hehad not been entirely alone while he waited. She even smiled toherself--smiled with wistful, half-sad, elfen tenderness as she, too, huddled down without a sound, there in the wet bushes opposite him, and decided how she would tell him. 

Denny Bolton never quite knew how long he waited in the rain before hewas certain that there was no use waiting longer. More than half thenight had dragged by when he reached finally into the pockets of hiscoat and searched for a scrap of paper. Watching from her place in thethicket near him, she recognized the small white card which hediscovered--she even reached out one hand instinctively for herinvitation from the Judge, which she had told him had never arrivedand for which she had hunted in vain throughout the following days. 

With an unaccountable gladness because he knew straining at herthroat, she watched him draw the lantern nearer and read again thewords it bore before he turned it over and wrote, laboriously, withthe thick pencil that he used to check logs back in the hills, somemessage across its back. 

It was a message to her, she knew; and she knew, too, that he wasgoing now. Deliberately she reached out then and found a rotten branchbeside her. Young Denny's head shot up as it cracked between herhands--shot swiftly erect while he stared hard at that wall ofdarkness which hid her. And swiftly as she fled, like some noiselessnight creature of the woods, his sudden, plunging rush almostdiscovered her. 

Back in the safety of the blackness she stood and saw him bend overthe place where she had been crouching; she saw him put his hand uponthe patch of dead ferns which her body had crushed flat, and knew thathe found it still warm. She even held up her face, as though she weregiving him her lips--she reached out her arms to him--when she saw himrise from an examination of her foot-prints in the mold, smiling hisslow, infinitely grave smile as he nodded his head over what he hadseen. 

Back over the path she had come she followed the dancing point of hislantern, sometimes almost upon him, sometimes lagging far behind whenhe stopped and strained his ears for her. All recollection of thenight before was gone from her mind, wiped out as utterly as though ithad never existed. Nothing but a great gladness possessed her, a joythat amounted almost to mischievous glee whenever he stood still amoment and listened. 

Not until she had waited many minutes after he stooped and slipped thecard beneath the door did she come out from the cover of the woods. But she raced forward madly then, and flung the door open, and stoopedfor it where it lay white against the floor. 

All the mischievous glee went from her face in that next moment. Bitby bit it faded before the advance of that same strained whitenessthat had marred it, hours before. All the wistfulness that made herface so childlike, all the hunger that made the hurt in her breastcame back while she read, over and over, the words which Denny hadwritten for her across the back of her card, until she could repeatthem without looking at it. And even then she only half-understoodwhat they meant. Once she opened the door and peered out into theblackness, searching for the lantern that had disappeared. 

"Why--why he's gone! He came to tell me that he was going away, " shemurmured, dully. And then, still more dully:

"And I didn't tell him I was sorry. I've let him go without eventelling him how sorry I was--for the hurt upon his chin!"

Perhaps it was the silence that made her turn; perhaps she simplyturned with no thought or reason at all, but she faced slowly about atthat moment, just in time to see John Anderson nod and smile happilyat something he alone could see--just in time to hear him sigh softlyonce, before his arms went slack upon his work-bench and his headdrooped forward above them. 

The bit of a card fluttered to the floor as both her tight-clenchedfists lifted toward her throat. The softest of pitying little moanscame quavering from her lips. She needed no explanation of what thatsuddenly limp body meant! And she understood better now, too, thatuntouched lump of clay upon the boards beside his bowed head. JohnAnderson's long task was finished. He had known it was finished, andhad been merely resting tonight--resting content before he startedupon that long journey, before he followed that face, tumbled of hairand uplifted of lip, which seemed always to be calling to him. 

The slim-bodied girl whose face was so like what that other woman'sface had been went slowly across to him where he sat. After a whileshe slipped her arm about his wasted shoulders, just as she had doneso often on other nights. A racking sob shook her when she first triedto speak--and she tried again. 

"You kept faith, didn't you, dear?" she whispered to him. "Oh, but youkept faith with her--right--right up to the end. Please God--pleaseGod, I may get my chance back again--to try to keep it, too. You'vegone to her--and--and I'm glad! You waited a long time, dear, and youwere very patient. But, oh, you've left me--you've left me allalone!"

The tears came then. Great, searing drops that had been hopelesslydammed back the night before rolled down her thin cheeks. She stoopedand touched the silvered head with her lips before she groped her wayinto the other room and found her chair at the table. 

"He knew I was there with him, " she tried to whisper. "He knew I was, I know! But I wish I could tell him I'm sorry. Oh, I wish I could!"

And Old Jerry found her so, head pillowed upon her outstretched arms, her hair in a marvelous shimmering mass across her little shoulderswhen he came the next morning, almost before the day was fairly begun, to tell her all the things there were for him to tell. 

CHAPTER XII

Monday morning was always a busy morning in Jesse Hogarty's FourteenthStreet gymnasium; busy, that is to say, along about that hour whenmorning was almost ready to slip into early afternoon. The reason forthis late activity was very easy to understand, too, once one realizedthat Hogarty's clientele--especially that of his Monday mornings--wascomposed quite entirely of that type of leisurely young man who rarelypointed the nose of his tub-seated raceabout below Forty-secondStreet, except for the benefits of a few rather desultory rounds underHogarty's tutelage, a shocking plunge beneath an icy shower, and theall pervading sense of physical well-being resultant upon a halfhour's kneading of none too firm muscles on the marble slabs. 

It was like Jesse Hogarty--or Flash Hogarty, as he had been styled bythe sporting reporters of the saffron dailies ten years back, when itwas said that he could hit faster and harder out of a clinch than anylightweight who ever stood in canvas shoes--to refuse to transfer hisplace to some locality a bit nearer Fifty-seventh Street, even when itchanced, as it did with every passing year, that he drew hispatrons--at an alarmingly high rate per patron--almost entirely fromfar uptown. 

"This isn't a turkish bath, " Flash Hogarty was accustomed to answersuch importunities. "If you are just looking for a place to boil outthe poison, hunt around a little--take a wide-eyed look or two! Thereare lots and lots of them. This isn't a turkish bath; it's agymnasium--a _man's_ gymnasium!"

That was his invariable formula, alike to the objections of theyouthful, unlimited-of-allowance, more or less hard-living sons thatit "spoils the best part of the week, you know, Flash, just running'way down here, " and the equally earnest and far more peevishcomplaints of the ticker tired, just-a-minute-to-spare fathers that itcost them about five thousand, just to take an hour to work off a fewpounds. 

But they kept on coming, in spite of their lack of time and Hogarty'scalm refusal to consider their arguments--some of the younger menbecause they really did appreciate the sensation of flexible musclessliding beneath a smooth skin, some of them merely because they likedto hear Hogarty's fluently picturesque profanity, always couched inthe most delightfully modulated of English, when the activity of aparticularly giddy week-end brought them back a little too shaky ofhand, a little too brilliant of eye and a trifle jumpy as to pulse. Hogarty had a way of telling them just how little they actuallyamounted to, which, no matter how wickedly it cut, never failed toamuse them. 

The older generation dared do nothing else, even in the face of theex-lightweight's scathingly sarcastic admiration of their constantlyincreasing waist-line--or lack of one. For their lines were largely aseries of curves exactly opposite to those on which Nature hadoriginally designed them. 

They continued to come; they ran down-town in closed town cars, paddedheavily across the sidewalk like sad bovines going to the slaughter, to reappear an hour or two later stepping like three-year-olds, serenely, virtuously joyous at the tale of the scales which indicateda five-pound loss. And the Saturday and Sunday week-end out of townwhich presently followed, with the astoundingly heavy dinners thataccompanied it, brought them back in a week, sadder even than before. 

Monday morning was always a very busy morning in Hogarty's--but neveruntil along about noon. And because he knew how infallible were thehabits of his patrons, Hogarty did not so much as lift his eyes to thepractically empty gymnasium floor when a clock at the far side of theroom tinkled the hour of eleven. The two boys who were busilyscrubbing with waxing-mops the floor that already glistened like theunruffled surface of some crystal pool were quite as unconcerned atthe lack of activity as was their employer. They merely paused longenough to draw one shirt sleeve across the sweat-beaded foreheads--itwas a very early spring in Manhattan and the first heat was hard tobear--and went at their task harder than ever. 

Hogarty had one other reason that morning which accounted for hisabsolute serenity. From Third Avenue to the waterfront any one whowas well-informed at all--and there was no one who had not at leastheard whispers of his fame--knew that the thin-faced, hard-eyed, steel-sinewed ex-lightweight who dressed in almost funeral black andwhite and talked in the hushed, measured syllables of a professorof English, loved one thing even more than he loved to see his ownman put over the winning punch in--say the tenth. It was commongossip that a set of ivory dominoes came first before all else. 

No man had ever ventured to interrupt twice the breathless interestwith which Hogarty was accustomed to play his game. It did not promiseto be safe--a second interruption. And Hogarty was playing dominoesthis particular Monday morning, at a little round, green-topped tableagainst the wall opposite the door, peering stealthily at theupturning face of each piece of a newly dealt hand, when the clockstruck off that hour. But if Hogarty was oblivious to everything butthe game, his opponent was far from being in that much to be enviedstate. Bobby Ogden yawned--yawned from sheer ennui--although he triedto hide that indication of his boredom behind a perfectly manicuredhand, while he scowled at the dial. 

Ogden was one of the Monday morning regulars--one of the crowd whichusually arrived in a visibly taut-nerved condition at an entirelyirregular and undependable hour. An attack of malignant malaria, contracted on a prolonged 'gator hunt in the Glades, coupled with theequally malignant orders of his physician, alone accounted for hispresence there at that unheard of o'clock. 

There were purplish semi-circles still painfully too vivid beneathhis eyes; his pallor was still tinged with an ivory-like shade ofyellow. And he fidgeted constantly in the face of Hogarty's happydeliberation, stretching his heliotrope silk-clad arms and tappingflat, heel-less rubber-soled shoes on the floor beneath the table ina fashion that would have irritated any but the blandly unconsciousman across the table from him to a state of violence. 

Ogden's quite perfectly lined features were smooth with the smoothnessof twenty years or so. His lack of stability and poise belonged alsoto that age and to a physique that managed to tilt the scale beam atone hundred and eighteen--that is, unless he had been forgettingrather more rashly than usual that liquids were less sustaining thansolids, when one hundred and ten was about the figure. 

He was playing poorly that morning--playing inattentively--with hiseyes always waiting for the hands to indicate that hour which was mostlikely to herald the arrival of the advance guard of the crowd ofregulars. Hogarty himself, after a time, began to feel, vaguely, hisuneasiness and lack of application to the matter in hand, and madeevident his irritation by even longer pauses before each play. Heliked a semblance of opposition at least, and he lifted his head, scowling a little at Ogden's last, most flagrant blunder, to find thathis antagonist had moved without so much as looking at the piece hehad slipped into position. 

The boy wasn't looking at the table at all. He sat twisted about inhis chair, staring wide-eyed at the figure that had pushed open thestreet door and was now surveying the whole room with an astonishinglycalm attention to detail. Ogden was staring, oblivious to everythingelse, and with real cause, for the figure that had hesitated on thethreshold was like no other that had ever drifted into Hogarty's placebefore. His shoulders seemed fairly to fill the door-frame, for allthat bigger men than he was had stood on that same spot and goneunnoticed because of size alone. And his waist appeared almostslender, and his hips very flat, merely from contrast with all thatweight which he carried high in his chest. 

But it was not the possibilities of the newcomer's body that heldOgden's fascinated attention. In point of fact, he did not notice thatat all, until some time later. Denny Bolton's long, tanned face wasentirely grave--even graver than usual. Just a hint of wistfulnessthat would never quite leave them showed in his eyes and lurked in theline of his lips--an intangible, fleeting suggestion of expectationthat had waited patiently for something that had been very long in thecoming. And the black felt hat and smooth black suit which he worefinished the picture and made the illusion complete. His face andfigure, even there in the doorway of Hogarty's Fourteenth Streetplace, could have suggested but one thing to an observant man. Hemight have been a composite of all the New England Pilgrim Fathers whohad ever braved a rock-bound coast. 

And Bobby Ogden was observing. Utterly unconscious of Hogarty'sthreatening storm of protest, he sat and gazed and gazed, scarcelycrediting his own eyes. Domino poised in hand, Hogarty had turned inpreoccupied resignation back to a perplexed contemplation of whetherit would be better to play a blank-six and block the game or adouble-blank and risk being caught with a handful of high counters, when Ogden reached out and clutched him by the wrist. 

"Shades of Miles Standish!" that silk-shirted person gasped. "In thename of the Mayflower and John Alden, and hallowed Plymouth Rock, look, Flash, look! For the love o' Mike look, before he moves andspoils the tableau!"

Hogarty lifted his head and looked. 

Denny Bolton's eyes had returned from their deliberate excursion aboutthe gymnasium just in time to meet halfway that utterly impersonalscrutiny. For a long moment or two that mutual inspection endured;then the boy's lips moved--open with a smile that was far graver thanhis gravity had been--and he started slowly across the floor towardthe table. Hogarty half rose, one hand outstretched as if to halt him, but for some reason which the ex-lightweight scarcely understoodhimself, he failed to utter the protest that was at his tongue's end. And Young Denny continued to advance--continued, and left in the reara neatly defined trail where the heavy nails of his shoes marred thesacred sheen of that floor. 

Within arm's reach of the table he stopped, his eyes flittingquestioningly from Hogarty's totally inscrutable face to the tenseinterest and enjoyment in Bobby Ogden's features, and back again. Hogarty's hard eyes could be very hard--hard and chilling as chippedsteel--and they were that now. He was only just beginning to awake toa realization of that profaned floor, but the smile upon Denny'smouth neither disappeared nor stiffened in embarrassment before thatforbidding countenance. Instead he held out his hand--a big, long-fingered, hard-palmed hand--toward the ex-lightweight proprietor. And when he began to speak there was nothing but simple interrogationin the almost ponderous voice. 

"I--I reckon, " he said slowly, "that you must be Jesse Hogarty--Mr. Jesse Hogarty?"

Flash Hogarty looked at him, looked at that outstretched hand--lookedback at his steady eyes and the smile that parted his lips. AndHogarty did a thing that made even Bobby Ogden gasp. He bowedgracefully and reached out and silently shook hands. When he spoke, instead of the perfectly enunciated, picturesquely profane rebukewhich the silk-shirted boy was waiting to hear, his voice was evensmoother and softer, and choicer of intonation than usual. 

"Quite so, " he stated. "Quite free from error or embarrassing mistake, sir. I am Mr. Jesse Hogarty. You, however, if I may be permitted thatassertion, have me rather at a disadvantage, sir. "

He bowed again, once more elaborately graceful. Bobby Ogden hugged hisknees beneath the table, for he knew from the very suavity of thatreply all that was brewing. Hogarty's silken voice went on. 

"Regrettable, sir, and most awkward. You, no doubt, have no objection, however, to making the introduction complete?"

The smile still hovered upon Denny's lips. Ogden noted, though, thatit had changed. And he realized, too, that it had not been aparticularly mirthful smile, even in the first place. Again YoungDenny's eyes met those of the other boy for one moment. 

"I'm Denny Bolton, " he replied just as deliberately. "Denny Bolton, from Boltonwood--or--or I reckon you've never heard of that place. I'mdown from the hill country, back in the north, " he supplemented. 

Hogarty turned away--turned back to the green-topped table and playedthe double-blank with delicate precision. 

"Of course, " he agreed softly. "Quite right--quite right! And--er--mayI inquire if it was something of importance--something directlyconcerning me--which has resulted in this neighborly call?"

He did not so much as lift his eyes from the dominoes beneath hisfingers. If he had he would have seen, as Ogden saw, that Denny'ssmile faded away--disappeared entirely. But when he replied the boy'svoice was unchanged. 

"I don't know's it's particularly important to you, " he answered. "That's what I came down for--to see. I was directed--back a day ortwo I was told that maybe if I looked you up you'd have some openingfor me, down here. I was told you were looking for a--a goodheavyweight fighter!"

Bobby Ogden threw back his head to laugh. And instead he just satthere with his mouth wide open, waiting. He felt sure that there was abetter moment coming. Hogarty fiddled with the dominoes and seemed tobe considering that information with due deliberation and from everyangle. 

"I see, " he murmured at last. "Surely. Quite right--quite right! And Imay, I believe, safely assure you that I have several fine openings inthe establishment for young men--for just the right sort of young men, of course. May I--er--inquire if you wish employment by the--er--week, or just in your spare time, to put it so?"

The question was icily sarcastic. Denny's answer came sharp upon itsheels. His voice was just as measured, just as inflectionless asHogarty's had been. 

"If you hire them here by the week, " he said, "or for their sparetime, I--I reckon I've come to the wrong establishment. I was onlyasking you for a chance to show you whether I was any good or not. Iwas told you'd be just as interested to find out as I was myself. Maybe--maybe I've made a bad mistake!"

Bobby Ogden was sorry he had waited to laugh. There was a hardness inthe big-shouldered figure's words that he did not like; a directlysimple, unmistakable rebuke for the sneer concealed in Hogarty'squestion that could not be misinterpreted. And something utterly badflared up in the lean-faced black-clad proprietor's eyes--somethingof enmity that seemed to Ogden all out of proportion with theprovocation. All the smooth suavity disappeared from his speech justas chalk marks are wiped out by a wet sponge. And Hogarty cameswiftly to his feet. 

"Maybe you were--maybe you did make a bad mistake!" he rasped out in adead, colorless monotone that scarcely moved his lips. "But no manever came into this place yet, and went out again to say he didn't gethis chance. I know a few specimens who make a profession of pleadingthat. They're quitters--and they assay a streak of yellow that isn'tpay dirt!"

His voice dropped in register. It just missed being hoarse. With arapidity that was almost bewildering he began to give orders to thetwo boys who were still phlegmatically waxing the floor. And theEnglish-professor intonation was gone entirely. 

"You, Joe!" he called, "get out the rods; set 'em up and rope her off!Legs, you chase out and find Sutton, if he's not in back. You'll runinto him at Sharp's, most likely. Tell him to come a-running. Tell hima new one's drifted in from the frontier--and thinks he needs to beshown. Move, you shrimp!"

Before he had finished speaking he had started toward the lockerrooms at the rear. Denny he ignored as though he did not exist. Hewent without a sound in his rubber-soled shoes. Bobby Ogden, wakingsuddenly from his trancelike condition, leaped to his feet and ranafter him. Hogarty halted at the pressure of the boy's pink-nailedfingers on his arm and wheeled to show a face that was startlinglywhite and strained. 

"Why, you great big kid!" Bobby Ogden flung at him. "You big infant!You're really sore! Don't you know he didn't mean anything. He's onlya kid himself--and you egged him into it!"

"Is he?"

From that gently rising inflection alone Ogden knew that interferencewas absolutely hopeless. 

"Is he? Well, he's old enough to seem to know what he wants. And he'sgoing to get it--see? He's going to get it--and--get--it--good! No manever flung it into my face that I didn't give him a chance--not andgot away with it. "

Hogarty glanced meaningly down at the restraining hand upon his sleeveand Ogden removed it hastily. He stood in dismayed indecision untilthe ex-lightweight had disappeared before he turned toward YoungDenny, who had been watching in silence his effort at intervention. Denny had not moved. Ogden's almost girlishly modeled face was morethan apprehensive as he stepped up to him. 

"He's mad, " he stated flatly. "You've got him peeved for keeps. And Iguess you've let yourself in for quite a merry little session, too, unless--unless"--he hesitated, peering curiously in Denny's graveface, "unless you want to make a nice quiet little exit before hecomes back with Sutton. You can, you know, and--and it may save youquite a little--er--discomfort in the long run. Sutton--well, theleast I can say of Sutton is that he's inclined to be a triflerough!"

Ogden saw that slow smile returning; he saw it start far back in thesteady eyes and spread until it touched the corners of the other boy'slips again. 

"You mean--leave?" Young Denny asked. 

Ogden nodded significantly. 

"That's just what I do mean--only a great deal more so!"

"But I--I couldn't very well do that now--could I?"

The silk-shirted shoulders shrugged hopelessly. 

"Well, since you ask me, " he said, "judging from what I've alreadyseen of your methods, I--I'd say most emphatically no. I've done all Ican when I advise you that now is the one best hour to make yourgetaway. It wouldn't be exactly a glorious retreat from the field, butit wouldn't be so painful, either. Just remember that, will you? I'mto fit you out with some fighting togs, I suppose, if you'll just comealong. "

He turned to follow in the direction which Hogarty had taken, and thenpaused once more. 

"Beg pardon for the omission, Mr. Bolton, " he added, and he smiledboyishly. "My name's Ogden--Bobby Ogden. Glad to become acquaintedwith you, I'm sure. And now, if you will follow on, I'll do my bestfor you. Would you mind walking on your toes? You see, there are justtwo things most calculated to get Flash's goat. One of 'em's marringup his floor with heavy boots, and the other is butting in when he'splaying dominoes. You couldn't have known it, of course, but he can'tstand for either of them. And together I am afraid they have got youin pretty bad. You're sure you can't swallow your pride, and just beatit quietly while the chance is nice and handy? Maybe you ought tothink of your family--no?"

Denny's smile widened. He shook his head in refusal. He knew he wasgoing to like Ogden--like him for the same reason that he had likedthe fat, brown-clad newspaper man in Boltonwood--because of thecharming equality of his attitude and the frankness in his eyes. 

"No, " he decided, "I--I'm afraid I can't. I didn't mean to stir him upso, either, only--only I thought, just for a minute or two, that hewas laughing at me. I think I'd rather stay and see it out. But youmustn't worry about me--I wouldn't if I were you. "

Again Ogden shrugged resignedly. On tiptoe Denny followed him to thelocker-rooms in the rear, and at a word of direction began to removehis clothes. While he plunged head-foremost into a bin in search for apair of white trunks, Ogden kept up a steady stream of advicecalculated to save the other at least a small percentage ofpunishment. 

"Sutton's big, " he exclaimed jerkily, head out of sight, "but he isn'tfast on his feet. That's why they call him Boots. He steps around asthough he had on waders--hip-high ones. But he's lightning hittingfrom close in--in-fighting they call it--where most big fighters don'tshine. That's because he's had Flash's coaching. You want to keep awayfrom him--keep him at arm's length, and maybe he won't do too muchharm. I--I'd let him do all the leading, if I were you, and--and kindof run ahead of him. " The voice came half-smothered from the clutteredbin of equipment. "That isn't running away from him because you'reafraid, you understand. It's just playing him to tire him out, youknow!"

It was silent for a moment while Bobby Ogden burrowed for thenecessary canvas shoes. Then a hushed laugh broke that quiet andbrought the latter bolt upright. With the trunks in one hand and therubber-soled slippers in the other, Ogden stood and stared, only halfunderstanding that the big boy before him was laughing at him for hissolicitude and trying to reassure him with that same mirth. 

"Funny, is it?" he snorted aggrievedly. "So very--very--funny? Well, Ionly hope you'll be able to laugh that way again--say even in a monthor two!"

"I wasn't laughing at you, " Young Denny told him soberly. "I--I wasjust thinking how strange it seemed to have somebody worried overme--worried because they were afraid I might get hurt. Most littlemix-ups I've gone into have worried folks--lest I wouldn't. "

CHAPTER XIII

When he had first looked up from the green-topped table and seen himstanding there in the entrance of the gymnasium Ogden had only sensedthe bigness of Denny Bolton's body--only vaguely felt the promisewhich his smooth black suit concealed. It was the face that hadinterested him most at that moment, and yet he had not even noticedthe half healed cut that ran almost to the point of the chin. YoungDenny's grave explanation of his quiet mirth caused him to lookcloser--made him really wonder now what had been its cause. There wasa frankly inquisitive question half-formed behind his lips, but whenhe turned to find Denny sitting stripped to the waist, waiting for thegarments which he held in his hands, he merely stood and stared. BobbyOgden had seen many men stripped for the ring. It took more than anordinary man to make him look even once--but he could not take hiseyes off this boy before him. Once he whistled softly between histeeth in unconcealed amazement; once he walked entirely around him, exclaiming softly to himself. Then he remembered. 

"Here, get into these, " he ordered abruptly, and thrust the thingsinto Denny's waiting hands. 

While Denny was obeying he continued to circle and to admirecritically. 

"Man--man!" he murmured. "But you're sure put together right!" He wassilent for a moment while he punched back and shoulders with asearching thumb. "Silk and steel, " he went on to himself. "And not alump--not a single knot! Oh, if you only knew how to use it; if youonly knew the moves, wouldn't we give Flash the heart-break of hislife! Now wouldn't we?"

Denny finished lacing his flat shoes and stood erect, and even Ogden'schattering tongue was silent. It was very easy now to see why that bigbody had seemed shoulder-heavy. From the shoulder points the lines ranunbroken, almost wedgelike, to his ankles. He was flat and slim in thewaist as any stripling might have been. All hint of bulkiness wasgone. He seemed almost slender, until one started to analyze eachdimension singly, such as the breadth of his back, or the depth of hischest. Then one realized that it was only the slimness of fine-drawnankles, the swelling smoothness of hidden sinews which created thatimpression. And Ogden's quick eye caught that instantly. 

"I'd have said one-ninety, " he stated judicially. "At least as much asthat, or a shade better, before you undressed. Now I'd put itunder--what do you weigh, anyhow?"

He slid the weight over the bar after Young Denny had stepped upon thewhite scales. 

"One sixty-five--sixty-eight--seventy, and a trifle over, " hefinished. "Man, but you're built for speed! You ought to be lightningfast. "

At that instant the boy called Legs opened the door and thrust in hishead. 

"The chief says if you're coming at all, " he droned apathetically, "you might just as well come now. "

Ogden threw a long bathrobe over his charge's shoulders as the latterstarted forward. He wanted to note the effect which the sudden displayof that pair of shoulders and set of back muscles would have uponFlash Hogarty's temper. As they crossed the long room Denny's gravelack of concern was made to seem almost stolid in contrast with theheliotrope silk-shirted boy's excessive nervousness. 

"Now remember what I told you, " he whispered hoarsely. "Keep away fromhim--keep away and let him do the rushing--for he's got a punch that'ssudden death! You can tire him out. He's old and his wind is gone. "

The brass rods had been set up in their sockets in the floor and thespace which they outlined in the middle of the room roped off andcarpeted with a square of hard, brown canvas. The man called BootsSutton was already in his corner, waiting, and his attitude toward thewhole affair was very patently that of sheer boredom. He barely liftedhis eyes as Young Denny crawled through the ropes at the oppositecorner, behind the officiously fluttering Ogden. This was merely partof his every day's work; he spent hours each week either instructingfrankly confessed amateurs or discouraging too-confident, would-beprofessionals. It was only because of the strangely venomous harshnesswith which Hogarty had given him his orders while he was himselfdressing that he vouchsafed Denny even that one glance. 

"I want you to get him, " Hogarty snarled. "I want you to get him rightfrom the jump--and get him!--and keep on getting him! Either make himsqueal--make him quit--or beat him to death!"

But if Sutton failed to note the play of those muscles that bunchedand quivered and ran like live things beneath the skin of the boy'sback, when Bobby Ogden threw off the enveloping wrap with anostentatious flourish and knelt to lace on his gloves, that disclosurewas not entirely lost upon Hogarty. Watching from the corners of hiseyes, Bobby saw him scowl and chew his lip as his head came forward alittle. And immediately he turned to speak again in a whisper toBoots, squatting nonchalantly in his corner. 

"There's no need, mind, of being careless, " he cautioned. "He--hemight have a punch, you know, at that. Some of 'em do--a lucky oneonce in a while. Just watch him a trifle--and hand it to him good!"

Sutton nodded and rose to his feet. Watch in hand, Hogarty vaulted theropes, and Ogden, with a last whispered admonition, bundled up thebathrobe and scuttled from the ring. 

At that moment Young Denny's bulkily slender body was even moredeceptive. Sutton, even when trained to his finest, would haveoutweighed him twenty pounds. Now that margin was nearer thirty, andadded to that, he was inches less in height. He was shorter of neck, blocky, built close to the ground. And the span of his ankle wasnearly as great as that of Denny's knee. 

Comparing them with detail-hungry eyes, Bobby Ogden saw, however, thatfrom the waist up the boy's clean, swelling body totally shadowed theother's knotted bulk; he noted that, with arm outstretched, heel ofglove against Sutton's chin, Denny's reach was more than great enoughto hold the other away from him. Hard on the heels of that thoughtcame the realization that that was a fine point of the game utterlyoutside of the boy's knowledge. 

It was quiet--oddly, peacefully quiet for a second--in that long room. Then in obedience to a nod from Hogarty the lanky boy called Legslanguidly touched a bell, and all that peaceful silence was shatteredto bits. Ogden shouted aloud, without knowing it, a shrill, dismayedcry of warning, as Sutton catapulted from his corner; he shouted andshut his eyes and winced as if that rushing attack had been launchedat himself. But he opened them again--opened them at the sound of asickening smash of glove against flesh--to see Denny blink both eyesas his whole body rebounded from that blow. 

Ogden waited, forgetting to breathe, for the boy to go down; he waitedto see his knees weaken and his shoulders slump forward. But insteadof shriveling before that pile-driver swing, he realized that Dennysomehow was weathering the storm of blows that followed it; thatsomehow he had managed to keep his feet and was backing away, tryingto follow faithfully his instructions. 

Just as Ogden had pictured it would be, it all happened. Foot by footSutton drove him around the ring. There was no opening for Denny toreturn a blow--nothing but a maze of battering fists to be blocked andducked and covered. Even the speed, the natural speed of lithe musclesfor which Bobby had hoped, and hopelessly expected, was entirelylacking in every motion. Heavy-footed, ponderous, Young Denny gave waybefore that attack. Sutton, always reputed slow, was terribly, brutally swift of movement in comparison with the boy's falteringuncertainty. 

Twice and a third time in the first minute of fighting Boots feintedaside his guard with what seemed childish ease and then drove hisglove against the other's unprotected face. Time after time herepeated the blow, and at each sickening smack that answered the crashof leather against flesh Bobby Ogden gasped aloud and marveled. For ateach jolt Denny merely blinked his eyes as he recoiled--blinked, andretreated a little more slowly than before. 

At the bell Ogden was through the ropes and dragging him to hiscorner. A little trickle of blood was gathering on the point ofDenny's chin where the glove had opened afresh the half-healed cut onhis cheek; he was shaking his head as he waved aside the wet towel inOgden's hands. 

"Man, but you're some bear for punishment!" Ogden chattered, strangelyweak himself beneath his belt. "If you only had a little speed--just alittle! Why, he sent over a dozen to your chin that ought to have laidyou away. But you're playing him right! You're working him, and if youcan manage to hang on you'll get him in the end. Just keep away--keepaway and let him wear himself out. But--oh, if you did have it. Justone real punch!"

Young Denny continued to shake his head--continued to shake itdoggedly. 

"Do--do you mean that that is as hard as he is likely to hit?" hequeried slowly. "Do you mean--he was really trying--hard?"

Ogden stopped urging the wet towel upon him and stood and gazed at himwith something close akin to awe in his eyes. 

"Hard!" he echoed in a small voice. "Hard! How hard do you expect aman to hit?"

"Then your plan was wrong, " Young Denny told him. "Of course, " hehastened to soften that abrupt statement, "of course it would work allright, only--only I'm not much good at that kind of fancy work. I--Ijust have to wade right in, when I want to do any damage, because I'mslow getting away from a man. I can't punch--not hard--when I'mbacking off. But now I aim to show you how hard I expect a man to hit, just as soon as they ring that bell!"

Hogarty was leaning over Sutton in the opposite corner, frowning andtalking rapidly. 

"What's the matter, Boots?" he demanded anxiously. "Haven't lost yourkick, have you?"

Sutton gazed contemplatively down at his gloved hands and up againinto his employer's face. 

"Who'd you say that guy was?" he countered. "Where's he blowed infrom--again?"

"A rube--down from the hills he called it. Just some come-on, "Hogarty repeated his former information, "who thinks because he'scleaned up main street and licked the village blacksmith thathe's a world-beater. Why, Boots? You aren't worried, are you?"

The contemplative gleam in Sutton's eyes deepened. 

"Because, " he stated thoughtfully, "just because there's somemistake--or--or he's made of brass. I--I hit him pretty hard, Flash--anddo you know what he done? Well, he blinked. He--blinked--at--me. Inever hit any man harder. "

Hogarty's face had lost a little of its inscrutability. He flashed onesharp glance across at Young Denny in the other corner as he steppedback out of the ring and his frown deepened a little after that briefscrutiny. For the boy's body, squatting there, crouched waiting forthe bell, was taut in every sinew, quivering with eagerness. 

"You just failed to place 'em right, I guess, " he reassured Boots. "Take a little more time, and get him flush on the bone. You can slowup a little. He isn't even fast enough to run away from you. "

Again Hogarty nodded to the boy called Legs, and again the gong rang. Five minutes earlier it would have been hard for Bobby Ogden to haveexplained just what it was which he had half dreamed might lurk inthose rippling muscles that bunched and ran beneath Denny's whiteskin. For want of a better name he had named it speed. And now, at thetap of the bell, he watched and recognized. 

Swift as was Sutton's savage rush across the canvas, he had hardlyleft his corner in the ropes before Young Denny was upon him. The boylifted and sprang and dropped cat-footed in the middle of the ring, hunched of shoulder and bent of knee to meet the shocking impact. Itwas bewilderingly rapid--terrifyingly effortless--this explosive, spontaneous answer of every muscle to the call of the brain. Just asbefore, Sutton feinted and saw his opening and swung. Young Denny knewonly one best way to fight; he knew only that he had to take a blow inorder to give one, and Sutton's fist shot home against his unprotectedchin. He blinked with the shock, just as he had blinked before, andswayed back a little. Sutton had swung hard--he had swung from hisheels--and he was still following that blow through when Denny snappedforward again. 

It wasn't a long swing, but it was wickedly quick. From the waist itstarted, a short, vicious jolt that carried all the boy's weightbehind it, and the instant that Denny whipped it over Sutton's chinseemed to come out to meet it--seemed almost to lift to receive it. And then, as his head leaped back, even before his body had liftedfrom the floor, the boy's other hand drove across and set him spinningin the air as he fell. He went down sideways, a long, crashing fallthat dropped him limp in the corner which he had just left. 

For a moment Denny crouched waiting for him to rise. Then he realizedthat Sutton would not rise again--not for a time. He saw Hogarty leapover the ropes and kneel--saw the boy Legs rush across with ammoniaand water--and he understood. Ogden was at his side, pounding him uponthe shoulder and shrieking in his ear. His eyes lifted from the faceof the fallen man to that of the heliotrope silk-shirted person besidehim. 

"He's not really badly hurt, is he?" he inquired slowly. "I--I didn'thit him--too hard?"

Ogden ceased for a moment thumping him on the back. 

"Hurt!" he yelped. "Didn't hit him too hard! Why, man, he's stiff, right now. He's ready for the coroner! Gad--and I was pitying you--Iwas----"

Young Denny shook him off and crossed and knelt beside the kneelingHogarty. And at that moment Sutton opened his eyes again and stareddully into the ex-lightweight's face. After a time recognition beganto dawn in that gaze--understanding--comprehension. Once it shifted toDenny, and then came back again. He made several futile efforts beforehe could make his lips frame the words. 

Then, "Amateur, " he muttered, and he managed to rip one glove from alimp hand and hurl it from him as he struggled to sit erect. "Amateur--hell! A-a-a-h, Flash, what're you tryin' to hand me?"

CHAPTER XIV

Denny had begun to get back into his clothes, pausing now and then todabble tentatively at the freshly broken bruise with the wet towelwhich Ogden had at last forced him to accept, when the door of thedressing-room opened, and Hogarty stepped briskly inside and closedthe door behind him. 

The ex-lightweight ignored entirely the covertly delighted grin thatlit up Bobby Ogden's features at his appearance. His own too-pale, too-thin lips were curved in a ghost of a smile; his face had lost allits dangerous tautness, but the greatest change of all lay there inhis eyes. Their flaring antagonism had burnt itself out. And whenHogarty spoke it was once more in his smoothly perfect, delightfullymeasured, best professor-of-English style, for all that his openingremark was couched in the vernacular. 

"Mr. Bolton, " he began to the boy sitting quiet before him, "it looksas though we would have to hand it to you--which I earnestly desireyou to believe I am now doing, with both hands. It may eventuallyprove that I lost a most valuable assistant through this morning'slittle flurry. I am not quite certain yet as to that as Boots is notsufficiently himself to give the matter judicious consideration. 

"He still thinks I crossed him for the entertainment's sake--which isof little immediate importance. What I did come in for was to listento anything at all that you may have to tell me. You'll admit, ofcourse, that while your explanation as to your errand was strictly tothe point, it was scarcely comprehensive. My own unfortunate temperwas, no doubt, largely the cause of your brevity. "

He hesitated a moment, clearing his throat and gazing blankly at thegrinning Ogden. 

"As Ogden here has of course told you, I'm--well, rather touchy wheninterrupted at my favorite pastime, and especially so when I am tryingto get a few minutes relaxation with a pin-headed person who insistsupon playing without watching the board. 

"But you spoke of wanting an opportunity of--er--entering thegame professionally. I'm not admitting you're a world-beater, understand--or anything like that! You've just succeeded inputting away a man who was as formidable as the best of them, five years ago. And five years isn't today, by any means. I've beenlooking for a real possibility to appear for so long that I'vegrown exceedingly sensitive at each fresh failure. And yet--and yet, if you did have the stuff----!"

Again he stopped and Denny, watching, saw the proprietor's face glowsuddenly with a savage sort of exultation. His eyes, half-veiledbehind drooping lids that twitched a little, went unseeingly over theboy's head as though they were visualizing a triumph so longanticipated that it had become almost a lost hope. Again that promiseof something ominous blackened the pupils--something totally dangerousthat harmonized perfectly with the snarl upon his lips. 

Hogarty's whole attitude was that of a man who wanted to believe andyet who, because he knew that the very measure of his eagerness madehim doubly easy to convince, had resolved not to let himself acceptone spurious proof. And all his skepticism was shot through andthrough with hate--a deadly, patient sort of hatred for someone whichwas as easy to see as it was hard for the big-shouldered boy tounderstand. 

There was craft in the ex-lightweight's bearing--a gentleness almoststealthy when he leaned forward a little, as if he feared that thefirst abrupt move or word on his part would frighten away that timidhope. 

"I believe that you said some one sent you. You--you did not mentionthe name?"

Denny leaned over and picked up his coat from a chair beside thebench, searching the pockets until he found the card which the plump, brown-clad newspaper man had given him. Without a word he reached outand put it in Hogarty's hands. 

It bore Jesse Hogarty's Fourteenth Street address across its face. Hogarty turned it over. 

"Introducing the Pilgrim, " ran the caption in the cramped handwritingof Chub Morehouse's stubby fingers. And, beneath, that succinctsentence which was not so cryptic after all:

"Some of them may have science, and some of them may have speed, butafter all it's the man who can take punishment who gets the finaldecision. Call me up, if this ever comes to hand. "

Very deliberately Hogarty deciphered the words, lifted a vaguelypuzzled face to Young Denny, who waited immobile--and then returnedagain to the card. He even nodded once in thorough appreciation of thetitle which Morehouse had given the boy; he smiled faintly as heremembered Denny as he had stood there in the entrance of the bigroom, a short while before, and realized how apt the phrase was. Thenhe began to whistle, a shrill, faint, monotonous measure, thecalculating glitter in his eyes growing more and more brilliant. 

"So!" he murmured thoughtfully. "So-o-o!"

And then, to Denny:

"Was there--did he make any comment in particular, when he gave youthis?"

The boy's eyes twinkled. 

"He--made several, " he answered. "He said that there was a man at thataddress--meaning you--that would fall on my neck and weep, if Ihappened to have the stuff. And he warned me, too, not to think thatJed The Red fought like a school boy, just because he was asecond-rater--because he didn't, nothing like that!"

Hogarty laughed aloud. That sudden, staccato chuckle was almoststartling coming from his pale lips. It hushed just as quickly as ithad begun. 

"Jed The Red, eh?" he reiterated softly, and he began tapping the cardwith his fingertips. "I see, or at least I am commencing to get aglimmer of those possibilities which Mr. Morehouse may have had inmind. And now I think the one best thing to do would be to call himup, as he has here requested. As soon as you finish dressing Ogdenhere will show you the rest of the works, if you'd care to look arounda little. It is entirely likely that we shall want to talk with youdirectly. "

He wheeled abruptly toward Ogden who had been listening without aword, the broad grin never leaving his lips. It was the silk-shirtedboy to whom Hogarty addressed the rest of that sentence. 

"And you, " he said, and his voice shed with astounding completenessall its syllabled nicety. "You try to make yourself useful as well aspestilential. Get him a bit of adhesive for that cut. It looks as badas though a horse had kicked him there. 

"And the rest of your mob will be swarming in here in a few minutes, too. You can tell them that Sutton is--er--indisposed this morning, and that they'll have to play by themselves. "

He nodded briefly to Denny and opened the door. But he stopped againbefore he passed out. 

"There's one other question, Mr. Bolton, " he said over his shoulder. "And please believe that I am not usually so inquisitive. But I'm morethan a little curious to know why you did not present this cardfirst--and go through the little informal examination I arranged foryou afterward? It would have insured you a far different reception. Was there any special reason, or did you just overlook it?"

Denny dabbed again at the red drop on his chin. 

"No, I didn't exactly forget it, " he stated ponderously. "But, yousee, I kind of thought if I just told you first that I wanted to seeif I had any chance, you wouldn't make any allowances for me becauseI----"

Hogarty's second nod which cut him short was the quintessence of crispsatisfaction. 

"I understand, " he cut in. "Perfectly! And quite right--quite right!"

The ex-lightweight proprietor was sitting with his chin clasped inboth palms, still staring at the half facetious words of introductionwhich the plump newspaper man had penciled across that card, when thedoor of the small office in the front of the gymnasium was pushed opena crack, some scant fifteen minutes after his peremptory summons hadgone out over the wire, and made him lift his head. 

His eyes were filmed with a preoccupation too profound to be dispelledby the mock anxiety upon the chubby round countenance which Morehousethrust through that small aperture between door and frame, or hisexcessively overdone caution as he swung the door wider and tiptoedover the threshold, to stand and point a rigidly stubby finger behindhim at the trail of nail prints which Young Denny's shoes had leftacross the glistening wax an hour or so earlier. 

"Jesse, " he whispered hoarsely, "some one has perpetrated here uponthe sacred sheen of your floor a dastardly outrage! I merely want youto note, before you start running the guilty one to earth, that I ammaking my entrance entirely in accordance with your oft-reiteratedinstructions. I am not he!"

For all the change which it brought about in Hogarty's face thatgreeting might have been left unspoken. He vouchsafed the fat man'selaborate pantomime not so much as the shadow of a smile, nodded once, thoughtfully, and let his eyes fall again to the card between hiselbows on the table-top. 

"Come in, Chub, " he invited shortly. "Come in. " And as a clamor ofmany voices in the outer entrance heralded the arrival of the rest ofOgden's crowd: "Here comes the mob now. Come in and close the door. "

Morehouse, still from head to toe a symphony in many-toned browns, shed every shred of his facetiousness at Hogarty's crisply repeatedinvitation. He closed the door and snapped the catch that made it fastbefore he crossed, without a word, and drew a chair up to the oppositeside of the desk. 

"Your hurry call just caught me as I was leaving for lunch, " heexplained then. "And I made pretty fair time getting down here, too. What's the dark secret?"

The black-clad proprietor lifted his lean jaw from his hands and gazedlong and steadily into the newspaper man's eyes, picked up the bit ofpasteboard which bore the latter's own name across its front andflipped it silently across the table to him. Morehouse took it upgingerly and read it--reversed it and read again. 

"Nice little touch, that, " he averred finally. "Rather neat and tasty, if I do say it myself. 'Introducing The Pilgrim!' Hum-m-m. You can'tquite appreciate it of course, but--oh, Flash, I wish you could haveseen that big boy standing there in the door of that little backwoodstavern, just as I saw him, about a week ago! Why, he--he was----"

"He's come!" Hogarty cut in briefly. 

Morehouse's chin dropped. He sat with mouth agape. 

"Huh?" he grunted. "He's--he's come where?"

Where his facetiousness had failed him Morehouse's round-eyedastonishment, a little tinged with panic, was more than successful. Hogarty permitted himself to smile a trifle--his queer, strainedsmile. 

"He is here, " he repeated gravely, and the words were couched in hischoicest accents. "He came in, perhaps, an hour ago. That is hismonogramed trail across the floor which caught your eye. Oh, he'shere--don't doubt that! I'll give you a little review of the manner ofhis coming, after you tell me how you ever happened to send him--whyyou gave him that card? What's the answer to it, Chub?"

That same light of savage hope and cruelly calculating enmity, all sostrangely mixed with a persistent doubt, which Young Denny had seenflare up in the ex-lightweight's eyes a little while before, back inthe dressing-room, began to creep once more across Hogarty's face. 

"You know how long I've been waiting for one to come along, Chub, " hewent on, almost hoarsely. "You know how I've looked for the man whocould do what none of the others have done yet, even though he is onlya second-rater. Twice I thought I had a newcomer who could put The Redaway--and put him away for keeps--and I just fooled myself because Iwas so anxious to believe. I've grown a trifle wary, Chub, just atrifle! Now, I'd like to hear you talk!"

Morehouse sat and fingered that card for a long time in absolutesilence--a silence that was heavy with embarrassment on his part. Heunderstood, without need of explanation, for whom that chill hatredglowed in the spare ex-lightweight's eyes--knew the full reason forit. And because he knew Hogarty, too, as few men had ever come to knowhim, he had often assured himself that he was thankful not to be theman who had earned it. 

That knowledge had been very vividly present when, a few daysbefore, on the platform of the Boltonwood station, he had requestedDenny Bolton to give him back his card for a moment, after listeningto the boy's grave explanation of the raw wound across his cheek, and on a quite momentary impulse written across its back that shortsentence which was so meaty with meaning. Every detail of Hogarty'scountry-wide search for a man who could whip Jed The Red was an opensecret, so far as he was concerned; he was familiar with all thebitterness of every fresh disappointment, but he had never seenHogarty's face so alive with exultant hope as it was at that moment. 

And Morehouse was embarrassed and sorry, and ashamed, too, of whatseemed now must have been a weak surrender to an impulse which, afterall, could have been born of nothing but a too keen sense of humor. Hogarty's face was more than eager. It was white and strained. 

"Flash, " he began at last, ludicrously uncomfortable, "Flash, I'msorry I wrote this, for I always told you that if I ever did send anyone to you he'd be a live one and worth your trouble. Right thisminute I can't tell why I did it, either, unless I am one of thosenaturally dangerous idiots with a perverted sense of what is reallyfunny. Or maybe I didn't believe he'd ever get any farther from homethan he was that morning when I gave him this card. That must havebeen it, I suppose. Because I never saw him in action. Why, I never somuch as saw him kick a dog!

"I'm telling you because I don't want you to be disappointedagain--and yet I have to tell you, too, that right at the time I wrotethis stuff, Flash, just for a minute or two, I believe I did almostthink he might be an answer to your riddle. Maybe that was because hehad already licked Jed The Red once, and I should judge, made a verythorough job of it at that. That must have influenced me some. But letme tell you all the story and maybe you'll understand a littlebetter--something that I can't say for myself right at this veryinstant. "

Morehouse began at the very beginning, looking oftener at the cardbetween his fingers than at Hogarty's too brilliant eyes, which werefairly burning his face. 

"In the first place, Flash, " he went on, "you know as well as I dothat The Red isn't a real champion and never will be. He has the buildand the punch, and he's game, too--you'll have to hand him that. Butstacked up against the men who held the title ten years ago he'd lastabout five rounds--if he was lucky. I don't know why that is, either, unless he is so crooked at heart that he loses confidence even inhimself when he has to face a real man. But the public at this minutethinks he is as great as the greatest. The way he polished off TheTexan had convinced them of that--and we--well, the paper always triesto give them what they want, you know. 

"Now that was the reason I ran up north last week, after I'd got a tipthat Conway hailed originally from a little New England village backin the hills--one of those towns that are almost as up-to-date todayas they were fifty years ago. It looked like a nice catchy littlestory, which I will, of course, admit I could have faked just as wellas not. But it was the cartoons I wanted. You can't really fakethem--not after you've once known the real thing. And as it happens Ihave known it, for I came from a village up that way myself. 

"And, then, I was curious, too. I've always had a private opinion thatif chance hadn't pitchforked Conway into the prize-ring he'd have madea grand success as a blackjack artist or a second-story man. But Iwanted the pictures, and it wasn't a very difficult matter either toget them. You see I knew just where I'd find what I wanted, and thingspanned out pretty much as I thought they would. 

"It didn't take more than a half hour to spread the report that Conwaywas practically the only really famous man in the country today, andin a fair way to make his own home town just as celebrated. It maysound funny to you, for you don't know the back-country as I do, butjust that short article in the daily, coupled with a few helpful hintsfrom me that I was looking for all the nice, touching incidents of hisboyhood days, with the opinions of the oldest inhabitants, and maybe afew of their pictures to be used in a big Sunday feature, brought themall out: the old circle of regulars which always sits around thetavern stove nights, straightening out the country's politics andattending strictly to everybody's affairs but their own. 

"Eager? Man, it was a stampede! I reckon that every male inhabitantwithin a radius of five miles was there when I opened the meeting witha few choice words--every man but one, and he comes in just a littlelater in this tale. They surely did turn out. It was as perfect amass meeting as any I've ever seen, but the crowd itself didn't getmuch of a chance to talk--not individually anyhow. They were simplythe chorus of 'ayes' which the town's big man paused now and then forthem to voice. 

"He did the talking, Flash. They called him 'Judge'--they most alwaysdo in those towns. He most certainly monopolized the conversation, andwhile he gave his monologue, I sat and got the best of them down onpaper. They thought I was taking notes. I'll show you his picture someday. He's the meanest man I ever met yet--and I've met a few!Puffy-faced and red, and too close between the eyes. Fat, too! SomehowI'm ashamed of being plump myself, since meeting him. 

"He did all the talking, and from the very first time he opened hismouth I knew he was lying. You can always tell a professional liar; helies too smoothly, somehow. Well, to judge from his story Conway wasthe only unspotted cherub child that had ever been born and bred inthat section. Oh, yes, _he'd_ seen the promise in Conway; _he_ knewthat Conway was to be the pride and joy of the community, right fromthe first. _He'd_ always said so! Why, _he_ was the very man who hadgiven him his first pointers in the game, when he was cleaning up allthe rest of the boys in town, just by way of recreation. If I'd neverhad a suspicion before I'd have known just from those slick sentencesof his that Conway had never been anything in that village but asmall-sized edition of the full-blown crook he is today. 

"But I didn't have any reason to contradict him, did I? He was doingall that I could ask, and more. For there wasn't a man in that wholecrowd who dared to sneeze until he got his cue from the Judge. Butthat fat man got his jolt finally, just the same, and got it good, too. 

"He had just finished telling how Conway had cleaned up the villagekids, irrespective of size, whenever he felt the need of exercise, andwas looking around at the circle behind him to give them a chance toback him up, when it happened. I told you a minute ago that I wishedyou could have seen that boy, as I saw him that night, standing therein that tavern doorway. You see, he'd come in so quietly that nobodyhad heard him--come in just in time to hear the Judge's last words. And when the Judge turned around he looked full into that boy's eyes. 

"Oh, he got his, good and plenty! I didn't watch him very closelybecause it was hard for me to take my eyes off the white face of thatboy at the door. But I did see that he went pretty nearly purple for aminute, and I heard him gurgle, too, he was that surprised, before hecaught his breath. Then he stuck out one hand and tried to bluff itout. 

"'There's one of 'em, right now, ' he sang out; but he should haveknown that a man who's sure of his ground doesn't have to shout tomake his point. 'There's Young Denny Bolton, ' he said, 'who went toschool with him, right here in this town. _Ask him_ if Jeddy Conwaywas pretty handy as a boy!' And he laughed, Flash--commenced tochuckle! Oh, there was no misunderstanding what he meant to insinuate. 'Ask him--but maybe he's still a little mite too sensitive to talkabout it yet--eh, Denny?'

"He thought he could bluff it--bluff me, with that boy standing therein the doorway calling him a liar as if I didn't know it all, yet atthat minute I couldn't help but ask that boy a question. I think itwas mostly because I wanted to hear what the voice of a man with aface like his would sound like, for he hadn't opened his lips toanswer that fat hypocrite's insinuation. 

"So I asked him if he had known Conway well--asked him if he had had afew set-to's with him himself. I'm not going to forget how he lookedwhen he turned toward me, either. I'm not going to forget the look onhis face as he swung around. And I'm remembering his voice prettyfairly well, too, right now!

"'Maybe, ' he answered me, and he almost drawled the words. 'Maybe Idid, ' he said. 

"Why, Flash, he couldn't have said more if he had talked for a week. He'd said all there was to say, now, hadn't he? But it let the Judgeout, just the same, for he just gave the circle behind him the thehigh sign and set the crowd to laughing for a minute or two, until thetension was relieved. I didn't laugh myself. There didn't seem to bemuch of a joke about it after seeing that boy's eyes. It wasBolton--Young Denny, they called him--and I got his story, their sideof it at least, after he shut the door behind him. 

"It's another thing I'd be more likely to understand than you would, Flash, because you've never lived in a village like that, and I have. Back a hundred years or so the first settlement had been named for hisfamily--Boltonwood, they'd called it--but I guess the strain must havepetered out. From all I could gather the Boltons had been drinkingthemselves to death with unfailing regularity and dispatch for severalgenerations back, and I heard a choice detailed description, too, ofthe way the boy's own father had made his final exit--heard it fromthat moon-faced leading citizen who did all the talking--that made mewant to kick him in the face. I don't know yet why I didn't. I wassitting on the tavern desk with my feet on a level with his face. Ishould have bashed him a good one. It's one of the lost opportunitieswhich I'll always regret, unless maybe I take a Saturday off some dayand run up and beat him up proper!

"He gave me a nice little account of how the boy's dad had gone over, screaming mad, with the town's elite standing around saying, 'I toldyou so, ' and that big scared kid kneeling beside his bed, trying topray--trying to make it easier for him. 

"Did you ever see a flock of buzzards circling, Flash, waiting forsome wounded thing beneath them to die? No? Well, I have, and it isn'ta pretty sight either. That was what they made me think of that night. And I learned, too, how they'd been waiting ever since for that boy togo the way his father had traveled before him; they even told me thatthe same old jug still stood in the kitchen corner, and would havepointed out his tumble-down old place on the hill, where they had lethim go on living alone, only it was too dark for any one to see. 

"Odd, now wasn't it? But it didn't come to me at that moment. I nevergave it a thought that there was a man who had licked Conway once andmight do it again. But I didn't forget him; I wanted to, that night, but I couldn't. And I guess I was still thinking about him when someone touched my arm the next morning, while I was waiting for thetrain, and I turned around and found him standing there beside me. 

"Flash, have you noticed how grave he is--kind of sober-quiet? Haveyou? That comes from living too much alone. And he's only a kid, afterall--that's all, just a kid. He startled me for a moment, but theminute I looked at him that morning I knew he had something on hismind, and after I'd tried to make it a little easier for him I gavehim a chance to talk. 

"He had a big raw welt across one cheek--a wicked thing to look at!You've noticed it, I see. Well, he stood there fingering it a little, trying to think of a way to begin gracefully. Then he got out thepaper with the account of Jed The Red's last go in it and jumped rightinto the middle of all that was bothering him. He hunted out thestatement of Conway's share of the purse and asked me if it was true. I told him it was--that I'd written it myself. And then he asked me, point blank, how _he_ could get a chance at Conway. He--he said Conwayhad never been able to whip him, Flash--said he didn't believe he evercould!

"Now, I'm sentimental--I know that. But I manage to keep my feet onthe ground now and then just the same. And so I want to say righthere that it wasn't his words that counted with me. Why, I'd havelaughed in his face only for the way he said them! As it was, I saidtoo much. But I thought of you then--I couldn't help it, could I? Ithit me smash between the eyes! His face had been reminding me ofsomething--something I couldn't place until that minute. Flash, doyou know what he made me think of? Do you? Well, he looked like ahalftone print of the Pilgrim Fathers--the kind that they hang on thewalls in the district schools. And it got me--got me!--maybe youknow why. I don't. But I wrote it on this card, under your address, and gave it to him. 

"I would have laughed at him only he was so mighty grave and quiet. One doesn't make a practice of laughing at men who are as big as heis--not when they carry themselves like that. I kept my funny feelingsto myself, if I had any, while I spent a minute or two sizing him up. And that brought me back to his chin--back to that big, oozing cut. Ihad been waiting for an opportunity to ask him about it, and didn'tknow myself how to go about it. Just from that you can realize how hehad me guessing, for it takes quite some jolt to make me coy. So Ifollowed his own lead finally and blurted the question right out, without any fancy conversational trimmings, and he told me how it hadhappened. 

"One of his horses had kicked him. You look as though you could haveguessed it yourself! He didn't tell you, did he, Flash? No-o-o? Well, that was it. He said he had gone blundering in on them the nightbefore, to feed, without speaking to them in the darkness. It isn'thard to guess what had made him absent-minded that night. You can'tknow, just from seeing it now, how bad that fresh cut was, either. Itlooked bad enough to lay any man out, and I told him so. But he saidhe had managed to feed his horses just the same--he'd worked thempretty hard that week in the timber!

"It wasn't merely what he said, you see; it was the way he said it. I've made more fuss before now over pounding my finger with a tackhammer. And I did a lot of talking myself in that next minute or two. A man can say a whole lot that is almost worth while when he talksstrictly to himself. It wasn't alone the fact that he had been able toget back on his feet and keep on traveling after a blow that wouldhave caved in most men's skulls that hit me so hard. The recollectionof what his eyes had been like that night before, when he had handedthe Judge the lie without even opening his lips, helped too--and theway he shut his mouth, there on the station platform, when I gave himan opening to say his little say concerning the village in general. Hejust smiled, Flash, a slow sort of a smile, and never said a word. 

"Man, he knew how to take punishment! Oh, don't doubt that! I realizedright then that he had been taking it for years, ever since they hadcounted his father out, with the whole house yelling for the stuff toget him, too. He'd been hanging on, hoping for a fluke to save him. He'd been hanging on, and he didn't squeal, either, while he was doingit. Not--one--yip--out--of--him!

"So I made him give me back the card and I wrote the rest of thisstuff across the back of it. And again I'll tell you, Flash, rightnow, I'm not sure why I did it. But I'll tell you, too, just as I toldmyself a few mornings ago, back there on that village stationplatform, that if I were Jed The Red and I had my choice, I wouldn'tchoose to go up against a man who had been waiting five years for anopening to swing. No--I would not! For he's quite likely to do more orless damage. I never thought he'd turn up, and I don't know whether Iam sorry or not. But now that he's here, what are you going to doabout it?

"It's my fault, but whatever you do I want to ask you not to do onething. I want you to promise not to try to make a fool of the boy, Flash? You're, well--a little bit merciless on some of 'em, you know. It's not his fault, and I--why, damn it, I haven't met a man in yearsI like as I do that big, quiet, lonesome kid! Now, there's your story. It explains the whole thing, and my apologies go with it. What are yougoing to do?"

CHAPTER XV

Jesse Hogarty had been listening without moving a muscle--without oncetaking his two brilliant eyes from Morehouse's warm face--even whenMorehouse refused to look back at him as he talked. 

"'Introducing The Pilgrim, '" he murmured to himself, after a moment ofsilence, and the professor of English accent could not have been moreperfect, "The Pilgrim! Hum-m-m, surely! And a really excellent namefor publicity purposes, too. It--it fits the man. "

Then he threw back his head--he came suddenly to his feet, to pacetwice the length of the room and back, before he remembered. When hereseated himself he was gnawing his lip as if vexed that he had showedeven that much lack of self-control. And once more he buried the pointof his chin in his hands. 

"Do, Chub?" he picked up the other's question silkily. "What am Igoing to do? Well, I believe I am going to pay my debts at last. Ithink I am going to settle a little score that has stood so longagainst me that it had nearly cost me my self-respect. "

That lightning-like change swept his face again, twisting his lipsnastily, stamping all his features with something totally bad. The manwho had never been whipped by any man, from the day he won his firstbrawl in the gutter, showed through the veneer that was no thickerthan the funereal black and white garb he wore, no deeper than hissuperficially polished utterance which he had acquired from longcontact with those who had been born to it. 

"I'm going to pay my debts, " he slurred the words dangerously, "paythem with the same coin that Dennison slipped to me two years ago!"

Little by little Morehouse's head came forward at the mention of thatname. It was of Dennison that the plump newspaper man had beensubconsciously thinking ever since he had entered Hogarty's immaculatelittle office; it was of Dennison that he always thought whenever hesaw that bad light kindling in the ex-lightweight's eyes. Dennison wasthe promoter who had backed Jed The Red from the day when the latterhad fought his first fight. 

And, "You don't mean, " he faltered, "Flash, you don't mean that youthink that boy can stop----"

Hogarty's thin voice bit in and cut him short. 

"Think?" he demanded. "Think? I don't have to think any more! Iknow!"

For a second he seemed to be pondering something; then he threw up hishead again. And his startlingly sudden burst of laughter madeMorehouse wince a little. 

"Don't make a fool of him, Chub?" he croaked. "Be merciful with theboy! Man, you're half an hour late! I did my best. Oh, I'm bad--I knowjust how bad I can be, when I try. But he called me! Yes, that's whathe did--he as much as told me that I wasn't giving him a chance to gethis cards on the table. So I ran him up against Sutton. And I did morethan that. I told Boots to get him--told him to beat him to death--andI meant it, too! And do you know what happened? Could you guess? Well, I'll tell you and save you time. 

"He went in and took enough punishment from Boots in that first roundto make any man stop and think. He put up the worst exhibition I eversaw, just because he was trying to fight the way Ogden had coachedhim, instead of his own style. That was the first round; but it didn'ttake him very long to see where he had been wrong. There wasn't anysecond round--that is, not so that you could really notice it. 

"He was waiting for the bell, and the gong just seemed to pick him upand drop him in the middle of the ring. And Sutton went to him--and hecaught Boots coming in! Why, he just snapped his right over andstraightened him up, and then stepped in and whipped across his left, and Boots went back into the ropes. He went back--and he stayedback!"

Swiftly, almost gutturally, Hogarty sketched it all out: Young Denny'scalm statement of his errand, his own groundless burst of spleen, andthe outcome of the try-out which had sent him hurrying back to Denny'sdressing-room with many questions on his tongue's tip and a livinghope in his brain which he hardly dared to nurse. 

Hogarty even recalled and related the late delivery of the card ofintroduction which Morehouse was now nervously twisting into misshapenshreds and, word for word, repeated the boy's grave explanation of hisreason for that tardiness. 

"He bothered you, did he?" he asked. "Well, he had me guessing, too, right from the first word he spoke. There was something about him thatleft me wondering--thinking a little. But I'm understanding a wholelot better since you finished talking. You're right, too, Chub--you'reall of that! Five years is a long time to wait for a chance to swing. I ought to know--I've waited half that long myself. That was the wayhe started for Boots, that second round. Oh, it was deadly--it wasmighty, mighty wicked. And now, to top it all, it's The Red for whomhe was looking, too. I wish it wasn't so easy; I sure do! It's sosimple I almost don't enjoy it. Almost--but not quite!"

Once more he shot to his feet and began pacing up and down the room. Morehouse sat following him to and fro with his eyes, trying tocomprehend each step of this bewildering development which wasfurthest of all from what he had expected. He had listened with hisface fairly glowing with appreciation to the ex-lightweight's accountof Denny's coming. It was all so entirely in keeping with what he hadalready known of him. But the glint died out of his eyes after a time;even his nervously active fingers stopped worrying the bit ofcardboard on the table. 

"Granted that he could turn the trick, Flash, " he suggested at last, "even admitting that he might be able to stop Conway after a fewmonths of training to help him out, do you suppose he'd be willing tohang around and fight his way up through the ranks, until he forced'em to let him have his match? It's usually a two year's job, youknow, at the very least. 

"I don't know why, Flash, but somehow the more I think of it, thesurer I grow that there is something more behind his wanting thatfight than we know anything about. It isn't just a grudge; it isn'tjust because of the dirty deal which that village has been giving him, either. I've been wondering--I'm wondering right now why he asked meif that account of the purse was true or not. Because men don't fightthe way you say he fought, Flash, just for money. They fight hard, I'll admit, but not that way!"

There was a living menace in Hogarty's steady tread up and down theroom. He wheeled and crossed, turned and retraced his stepsnoiselessly, cat-footed in his low rubbed-shod shoes. And he turned agaze that was almost pitying upon the plump man's objection. 

"Two years--to get ready?" he asked softly. "Chub, do you think I'dwait two years--now? Why, two months is too long, and that is theoutside limit which I'm allowing myself in this affair. You're alittle slow, Chub--just a bit slow in grasping the possibilities, aren't you? Think a minute! Put your mind upon it, man! I've told youI am going to pay Dennison off--and pay him with the same coin that hehanded me. Doesn't that mean anything at all?"

He stopped short, crossed to the table and stood with his fingertipsbracketed upon its surface. Morehouse knew Hogarty--knew him as didfew other men, unless, perhaps, it was those who, years before, hadfaced him in the ring. And at that moment Hogarty's eyes were mereslits in his face as he stood and peered down into the newspaper man'supturned features, his mouth like nothing so much as a livid scarabove his chin. There was nothing of mirth in those eyes, nothing ofmerriment in that tight mouth, and yet as he sat and gazed back up atthem, Morehouse's own lips began to twitch. They began to relax. Thatwide grin spread to the very corners of his eyelids and half hid hisdelighted comprehension behind a thousand tiny wrinkles. 

"I wonder, " he breathed, "I wonder now, Flash, if you are thinkingabout the same thing I am? For if you are--well, you're too soberfaced. You are that! It's time to indulge in a little hysterics. "

And he began to chuckle; he sat and shook with muffled spasms ofabsolute joy as the thing became more and more vivid with each newthought. Even Hogarty's answering smile, coming from reluctant lips, had in it something of sympathetic mirth. 

"That's just what I am thinking, " he said. "Just that! It's what Imeant when I said I was going to pay him--with his own coin. When aman plays another man crooked, he expects that other man to come backat him some day; he is looking for him to do that. But there is onething he doesn't expect--not usually. He isn't looking for him to workthe same old game. It is something new he's looking to guard against. 

"And that is where Dennison is weak--in that spot and one other. Hedoesn't know even yet that when I fell for his game I fell hard enoughto wake me up. He thinks I haven't a suspicion but what it was just anaccident that laid Sutton out, two years back--just a lucky punch ofThe Red's that went across and spoiled our perfect frame-up. And hehasn't a suspicion that I know he was sure The Red was going to cleanup Sutton, just as surely as they went to the ring together. 

"That is where he is weak. When a man is a crook he wants to be a realcrook--and a real one is suspicious of everybody, even of himself. "

He lifted one hand and pounded gently upon the polished surface of thetable. 

"The old days are done--dead--when a man got his reputation, and achance at the big ones simply by fighting his way up from the bottom. I can give a man a bigger reputation in a week, with five thousanddollars' worth of real advertising, than he'd be able to get in alifetime the old way. And training?----"

He jerked his head over one shoulder toward the dressing-rooms beyondthe closed door. 

"Right now he is just where I want him. Why, he looks like a pitifuldub if you hold him back. Order him to wait--and it's heart-breakingto watch him suffer. In one month I can teach him all he'll ever needto know about blocking and getting away. And the rest? Well, you'llget a chance to see just what happens when he really goes into action. I tell you it makes you stop and think. 

"And I don't care what _he_ is fighting for; I don't care what hewants. Pleasure or profit, it's all one to me. It's you I need mostright now, Chub. I know you have always been a little particular aboutsoiling your hands. A shady deal never appealed to me so much, either, but I'm not exactly bashful about this one. That part of it will be myown private affair. You handle the publicity end--merely hail Boltonas a comer, when the time is ripe. Are you--are you in on it?"

Morehouse thoughtfully scratched his head. 

"I have been a trifle fastidious, haven't I?" he murmured, andunconsciously he mimicked Hogarty's measured accents. "But I hardlybelieve that any sensitive scruples of mine would annoy me much inthis matter. I don't know but what I'd just as soon squash a snakewith a brick, even if I knew it was somebody's beloved performingpet. 

"That, as you say, is your side of the question. As for me--well, every time I remember that popeyed unctuous fat party they called the'Judge' chanting Conway's innocent childhood, with that big, lonesomekid standing there in the doorway listening and trying to understand, I begin to sizzle. It is time that Conway was licked--and lickedright!

"Oh, I'm in on it--I want to be there! But, " he stopped and made apainstaking effort to fit the torn card together again, "but I have anidea that Bolton may be the one to hold out. There are some honestpeople, you know, who are honest all the time. He might notunderstand the necessity of--er--a little professional fixing, so tospeak. "

"Will he have to be in on it?" Hogarty countered instantly. "Will he?Not to any great extent, he won't. According to my plan he fightsstraight. Don't you suppose I know a straight man when I see one, justas well as you do?

"Here's the whole thing--just as I'll put it up to Dennison beforeit's dark tonight. It's Dennison's own plan, too, in the first place, so he hasn't any kick coming. We'll match Bolton against one of thefairly good ones--Lancing, say--in about two weeks. Lancing gets hisorders to open up in the sixth round and go down with the punch--andstay down! That's plain enough, isn't it? Well, Bolton is fightingunder the name of 'The Pilgrim, ' and you step up the next morning andgive him two columns--you hail him as a real one, at last. 

"We'll match him with The Texan then. Conway whipped him back a weekor two, but he had his hands full doing it. The Texan--and I ought toknow--is open to reason if the figure is big enough to be persuasive. We'll see to that. 

"He gets his orders, too--just as if they were really necessary! Aboutthe twelfth he lies down to sleep. Why, it's so simple it's real art!I'll just hold Bolton back until those rounds. I'll make him take itslow--and then send him in to clean up! Dennison is shy a match rightthis minute for The Red; they're all a little doubtful about him. ThePilgrim will be the only logical man in the world to send againsthim--that is, according to your sporting columns. And Dennison, ofcourse, being on the inside, knows he is really nothing but adub--knows it is simply a plain open and shut proposition. That is tosay--he _thinks_ he knows!"

Jesse Hogarty paused and the corners of his lips twitched back to showhis teeth, but not in laughter. 

"It's the same little frame-up that he sent against Boots and me, " hefinished. "He ought to be satisfied, hadn't he? And I'll have him onthe street the next morning--I'll put him where he'll be glad toborrow a dollar to buy his breakfast with!"

For a long time they stared back into each other's face: Hogarty tautat the table side, Morehouse slouched deep in his chair. The latterwas the first to break that pregnant silence. He was nodding his headin thoughtful finality when he lifted himself to his feet. 

"You've got me, " he stated. "You've got me snared! Not that I give twohoots about what happens to Dennison, mind! I don't--although I mustadmit that the prospect of his starving to death is a lovely one tocontemplate. And I'd die happy, I think, if I could see The Redtrimmed, and trimmed with conscientious thoroughness. But thosearen't my reasons for going hands with you in this assassination. 

"I know a hunch when I see one. I ought to, for I've spent thecontents of my little yellow envelope often enough trying to make onecome true. And I'm in with you, Flash, till the returns are all infrom the last district, but it's because I know that there issomething more than either of us dream of behind that boy's wanting tomeet Conway. He has something on his mind; he wants something, andwants it real bad. And I like him--I liked him right from thebeginning--so I'll stick around and help. Maybe I'll find out what itis that's been bothering him, too, before I get through. But I wish Iwasn't of such an inquiring turn of mind. It keeps one too stirredup. "

He stopped to grin comically. 

"Any objection, now that I've sworn allegiance, Flash, if I go out andpresent myself?"

Hogarty's whole tense body began to relax, his lean face softened andhis eyes lost much of their hardness and glitter as he shook his headin negation. 

"That's a little detail of the campaign which I had already assignedto you, " he replied, and the inflection of his voice was perfect. "Notthat I have any fears of his going the way of his forefathers, however, because I haven't. And if my assurance on that pointperplexes you, you might ask him to have one drink and watch his eyeswhen he refuses you. 

"But I would like to have you look out for him for a while. If youdon't Ogden will--Ogden likes him, too--and he is too frivolous to betrusted. "

Hogarty reached out one long arm and dropped a hand heavily uponMorehouse's shoulder. He was smiling openly now--smiling with abarefaced enjoyment which the plump newspaper man had never beforeknown him to exhibit. And he continued to smile, while he stood therein the open door and watched Morehouse mince on tiptoe across thepolished floor to the corner where Ogden was officiously presentingeach member of the Monday morning squad of regulars, as they returnedfrom the dressing-rooms, to the big-shouldered boy in black, whoseface was so very grave. 

Hogarty smiled as he closed his office door, after he had seenMorehouse slip his hand through the crook of Young Denny's arm, inspite of Bobby Ogden's yelp of protest, and clear a way to the outerentrance with one haughty flip of his free hand. 

Hours later that same day, when the tumult in the long main room ofthe gymnasium had hushed and the apathetic Legs and his helper hadturned again to their endless task of grooming the waxed floor, Dennison, the manager of Jed The Red, sitting in that same chair whichMorehouse had occupied, cuddling one knee in his hands, fairly baskedin that same smile. The purring perfection of Hogarty's discourse wasenticing. The absurd simplicity of his plan, which he admitted must, after all, be credited to the astuteness of Dennison himself, was morethan alluring. But that smile was the quintessence of hypnoticflattery. 

It savored of a delightful intimacy which Jesse Hogarty accorded tofew men. 

CHAPTER XVI

In all that hill town's history no period had ever before been sofilled with sensation as was that one which opened with the flight ofJudge Maynard's yellow-wheeled buckboard along the main street ofBoltonwood to herald the passing of the last of the line of men whohad given the village its name. 

One by one, in bewildering succession, climax after climax had pileditself upon those which already had left the white-haired circle ofregulars about the Tavern stove breathless with fruitless argument andfootless conjecture. 

Old Jerry's desertion from the ranks of the old guard over which theJudge had ruled with a more than despotic tongue, bursting withbomblike suddenness in their midst that very same night which had seenYoung Denny's dramatic departure, had complicated matters to aninconceivable degree. For, after all, he was the one member of thecircle to whom they had all been unconsciously looking for acomprehensive answer to the question which the Judge's craftyexhibition of the boy's bruised face had created. 

He enjoyed what none of the others could claim an absolutelyincontestable excuse for visiting the old, weatherbeaten farmhouse onthe hill above town--and in his official capacity they felt, too, thathe might venture a few tentative inquiries at least, which, comingfrom any one else, might have savored of indelicacy. 

Not but what the circle had enjoyed Judge Maynard's masterly recital, for it had held them as one man. But they were hungry also forfacts--facts which could convince as well as entertain. Even the Judgehimself had planned upon Old Jerry's co-operation; he had had it inmind to be patronizingly lenient that night; that is, after that firstrebuke which was to leave him the undisputed master of the situation. 

To reach the really great heights of which the evening's triumph wascapable the old mail carrier's collaboration had been almostindispensable. They had been waiting with hungry impatience for him. And then Old Jerry had appeared--he made his entrance and hisexit--and departing had left them gasping for breath. 

Old Jerry had not waited to view the effect of his mad defiance of thetown's great man. It is doubtful if he had given that side of theissue one passing thought, but his triumphant withdrawal from thefield had robbed the situation of not one bit of its decisiveness. Quiet followed his going, a stillness so profound that they heard himcackling to himself in insane glee as he went down the steps. And thathush had endured while they waited in a delicious state of tinglingsuspense for the first furious sentences which should preface hislifelong banishment from the circle itself. 

For years they had whispered, "Just wait, he'll come to it--he'll gojust like the rest. " And so Young Denny's final weakening had not beenso unexpected as it might have been. And more than once, too, when theJudge's harsh censure of him who had always been his stanchestsupporter had left Old Jerry cringing in his place beside the stove, they had all felt the justice if not a premonition of finalretribution to come. It was the debonaire dare-deviltry of Old Jerry'sdefiance rather than its unexpectedness which had proved its greatestsensation. That day's one supreme moment--the only one which had notsuffered from too acute anticipation--came while they waited for theJudge's denial, that denial which was never spoken. 

The town's great man had slumped back in his chair in a kind ofstunned trance while the apoplectic purple of his earlier wrath fadedfrom his face. He did open his mouth, but not in any effort to speak. It was only to lick his thick lips and gurgle noisily in his fatthroat. He tried to rise, too, and failed in his first attempt--andtried again. 

They had all realized what it was that made his knees wabble as hecrossed to the door; they understood what had drained his face of allits color. Every man of them knew why the latch rattled under hisshaking figure. The Judge had been afraid, not merely morallyfrightened, but abjectly, utterly terrified in the flesh--afraid ofthe threat in the insolent bearing of the little, shriveled man whohad passed out into the night a moment before. 

It could have been funny. It might have been sublimest farce-comedy, had they not lacked the perspective necessary for its appreciation. But it was enough that they realized that the demagogue had comecrashing down--enough that, watching his furtive disappearance thatnight, they learned how pitiful a coward a blusterer really can be. 

Old Jerry's own actions in those days which followed had furnishedrich food for conjecture. The fact that it had been the littlemail-carrier himself who had ridden in the carriage beside the slimgirl with the tumbled hair, at the head of the dreary procession thattoiled slowly up to the bleak cemetery behind the church, had, indeed, been worthy of some discussion. The spendthrift prodigality of thewhite roses which rumor whispered he had gone to place the next dayover the new mound of raw earth had not gone unspoken. Even theresemblance of the girl who John Anderson had named Dryad in hishunger for the beautiful--even the likeness of her face with itsstraight little nose and wistfully curved lips, to the features ofthat small, rain-stained statue of the white and gold slip of a womanwho had been his wife, came in for its share of the discussion, too. 

But all those topics which were touched upon in the nights thatfollowed were, at best, of only secondary importance. Inevitably thecircle about the stove swung back to a consideration of that firstday's major climax, until the very discord of opinion which hithertohad been the chief joy of those nightly sessions bade fair to provetheir total disruption. 

For the circle of regulars were leaderless now; there was no longer amaster mind to hold in check the flood of argument and rebuttal, orpreserve a unity of disagreement. Where before they had beenaccustomed to take up each new development and pursue it until itreached a state either too lucid for further consideration or aninsolvable problem that dead-locked conversation, a half dozendifferent arguments sprang up each night, splitting the circle intowrangling factions which trebled the din of voices and multipliedten-fold the new note of bitter personalities which had taken theplace of former incontrovertible logic. 

Judge Maynard's iron discipline was gone, and the old guard faced aquite probable dissolution in the first week or two which followed hisgoing. More from habit than anything else they had waited that nextnight for him to come and clear his throat pompously and open theevening's activities. And the Judge failed to appear, failed just assignally as had Old Jerry. 

And yet it was not the absence of the former which had left themleaderless. Not one of them had realized it the night before--but thatsecond night they knew!

By his very rebellion Old Jerry had won the thing which years offaithful service had failed to bring. He had dethroned the despot, andthe honors were his by right of conquest. 

The circle knew that the Judge would never return; after one hour offruitless waiting that was a certainty. But night after night theycontinued to gather, stubbornly, persistently hopeful that Old Jerrywould come back. And in the meantime they almost forgot, at times, Young Denny who had gone the way of his fathers as they had so trulyprophesied; they only touched a little uncomfortably upon the problemof the slim, yellow-haired girl alone in the battered cottage at theedge of the town, while they reviewed with startlingly fertile detailand a lingering relish that came very close to being hero-worship, his last brief remarks which had left the Judge a wreck of his formermagnificence. 

If Old Jerry realized all this that had come to pass he gave nooutward sign of such knowledge. He even forgot to pause impressivelyupon the top step of the post-office those days, as he always hadformerly, before he made his straight-backed descent with the pouchesslung over one shoulder. There were mornings when he came perilouslynear to ignoring altogether the double line which, with a newdeference, greeted his daily passage to the waiting buggy, and yetthere was not one who dared so much as to whisper that there wasanything in his air of preoccupation that savored of studiouslyplanned forethought. But it is doubtful if he did realize the changethat had taken place, at least in that first week or two, for OldJerry had much of a strictly private nature to occupy his mind. 

He was never quite able to remember the things he had said thatmorning to the girl with the too-white face and tumbled hair, huddledin the half-light at the table before the window, or to recall in anysort of a connected, coherent sequence his own actions in those firstfew days which followed it. 

It aggravated him for a day or two, this inability to piece out thedetails; it brought a peevish frown to his thin face and a higher, even more querulous note to his shrill falsetto voice, which, whilethey hardly understood it, nevertheless resulted in an evenprofounder hush in those respectful ranks. He couldn't evenrevisualize it clearly enough for his own private edification--for thejoy of seeing himself as others had seen him. 

Nothing remained but a picture of Dryad Anderson's face--the face thathad tried so hard to smile--which she had lifted to him that firstmorning when he entered the front room of the little drab cottage atthe edge of town. That was limned upon his brain in startlinglyperfect detail still--that and one other thing. The memory of JohnAnderson's pitifully wasted form huddled slack upon the high stool, arms outstretched and silvered head bowed in a posture of utterweariness, remained with him, too, clinging in spite of every effortto dislodge it. 

That whole week had not served to wipe it out. Day after day, as OldJerry drove his route with the reins taut in his nervous hands, itfloated up before him. And even when he wound the lines about thewhipstock, letting the old mare take her own pace, and leaned back, eyes closed, against the worn cushions, the interior of that back-roomshop with its simple, terribly inert occupant and countless rows oftiny white statues, all so white and strangely alike, crept in underthe lids. 

Old Jerry's mail route suffered that week; his original "system" ofmail distribution, of which he had always been so jealously proud, went from bad to very, very bad, and from that to an impossible worse;and yet, while it became a veritable lottery for the hillsfolk whowere dependent upon him whether they would receive the packet of mailwhich really belonged to a two-mile distant neighbor or none at all, in one respect the rural service improved immensely, and theimprovement--and strangely enough, too--was as directly a result ofthat stubborn image of John Anderson's bowed head which persisted inhaunting the mind of the servant of the Gov'mint as was the alarminggrowth of his lack of dependability. 

Day by day Old Jerry grew less and less prone to let the leisurelywhite mare take her own pace. Instead, he sat stiffly erect a greatportion of the time, driving with one eye cocked calculatingly uponthe course of the sun, and his mind running far ahead of him, to theend of the day's route, when he would have to turn in at thecross-road that toiled up the grade to the wind-racked old Boltonplace on the hill north of town. 

They had always had a forbidding aspect--Young Denny's black, unpainted farmhouse and dilapidated outbuildings--even when he hadbeen certain that just as surely as he reached the crest he would findthe boy's big body silhouetted against the skyline, waiting for him, they had not been any too prepossessing. Now they never served toawake in him anything but actual dread and distrust. 

Old Jerry laid it to the lonesomeness of the place--to the bleakblindness of the shaded windows and the untenanted silence--but hetook good care that no loitering on his part would be to blame for hisarrival at the house after dusk. 

No one, not even he himself, knew how strong the temptation was thatweek to make tentative advances of peace to the members of the circleof Tavern regulars, for the more he dwelt upon it the finer thedramatic possibilities of the thing seemed. But he had misread in thehushed respect of his former intimates a chill and uncompromisingdisapproval, and he had to fall back upon a one-sided conversationwith himself as the next best thing. 

"I wa'n't brought up to believe in ghosts, " he averred to himself morethan once. "Ghosts naturally is superstition--and that ain't accordin'to religion, not any way you look at it. But allowing that there couldbe ghosts--just for the sake of argument allowing that there is--nowwhat would there be to hinder him from just kinda settlin' down upthere, as you might say? It's nice and quiet, ain't it? Sort of out ofthe way--and more or less comfortable, too?"

At that point in the mumbled monologue the white-haired driver of thebuggy usually paused for a moment, tilting his head, birdlike, to oneside, wrapped in thought. There were those shelves lined withcountless white figures which also had to be considered. 

"He must've worked mighty steady, " he told himself time and again in avoice that was small with awe. "He must hev almost enjoyed workin' at'em, to hev finished so many! And he kept at it nearly all the time, Ireckon. And now, that's what I'm a-gettin' at! Now I want to ask howdo we know he's a-goin' to quit now--how do we know that? We don'tknow it! And Godfrey 'Lisha, what better place would he want than thatback kitchen up there? Ain't there a table right there by the window, all a-waitin' for him--an'--an'----"

Invariably he broke off there, to peer furtively at the sun, before hewhipped up his horse. 

"Git along!" he admonished her earnestly, then, "Git along--you!Nobody believes in ghosts--leastwise, I don't. But they ain't no sensenor reason in just a-killin' time on the road, neither. And I ain'tone to tempt Providence--not to any great nor damagin' extent, Iain't!"

And yet in spite of all the uneasiness which the combination of thedark house and the persistent image of the little, worn-outstone-cutter kept alive in him, in so far as Young Denny's team ofhorses was concerned, and the scanty rest of the stock which the boyhad left in his care, Old Jerry kept strictly to the letter of hisagreement. At the most it meant no more than a little readjustment ofhis daily schedule, which he high-handedly rearranged to suit hisbetter convenience. 

But all the rest which he had promised so fervidly to carry out--themessage which he had meant to deliver the very next morning after theboy's departure and the explanation of Young Denny's bruised face, even a diplomatic tender of the damp wad of bills which Denny hadpushed in his hand--had somehow been allowed to wait. For it hadproved to be anything but the admirably simple thing it had seemed tothe old man when he had volubly acquiesced to the plan. 

He had forgotten it that first morning. With the well-planned openingsentence fairly trembling upon his tongue-tip when he opened the door, the whole thing had been swept utterly from his mind. And in the pressof events that followed he never so much as thought of it again fordays. When the memory of it did return, a week later, somehow he foundit almost impossible to introduce the subject--at least impossible tointroduce it gracefully. 

That was one of the reasons for his failure to execute the missionentrusted to him. The other reason, which was far weightier, so far asOld Jerry was concerned, was even harder to define. He blamed itdirectly to the attitude of the girl with the tumbled yellow hair andblue eyes, which were never quite the same shade of purple. More thana small proportion of the remarks which he had prepared beforehand todeliver to her had consisted of reproof--not too harsh, but for allthat a trifle severe, maybe--of her hasty and utterly unfair judgmentof Young Denny. That, he had assured himself, was only just andmerited, and could only prove, eventually, to have been for the best. But she never gave him a chance to deliver it. One moment of sadnesson her part would have been sufficient excuse. If he could havesurprised her just once gazing at him from moist, questioning eyes, hefelt that that would have been enough proof of contrition and humblemeekness of spirit on her part. But he never did. 

Instead Old Jerry had never seen so astounding a change take place inany human being as that which came over her day by day. By the end ofthat first week the pallor had gone entirely from her cheeks. The deepdark circles which had rimmed the wet eyes which she had lifted to himthat first morning disappeared so entirely that it was hard toremember that they had ever been there at all. Even the lithelyslender body seemed fuller, rounder. To every outward appearance atleast Old Jerry had to confess to himself that he had never seen amore supremely contented, thoroughly happy creature than DryadAnderson was at that week's end. 

And it irritated him; it almost angered him at times. Remembering hisown travail of spirit, the self-inflicted agony of mind which he hadundergone that day when he had first looked square into the eyes ofhis own soul and acknowledge his years of guilty unfairness to thelonely boy on the hill, he shut his lips tight upon the message hemight have delivered and waited, stubbornly, for her to show some signof repentance. 

For a day or two a mental contemplation of this necessarily severecourse brought him moments of comparative peace of mind. It justifiedin a measure, at least, his own remissness, and yet even thatmind-state at times was rudely shaken. At each day's end, after he hadmade his reluctant ascent of the hill which led up to Young Denny'sunlighted house, and a far speedier, none too dignified return, thelittle driver of the squealing buggy made it a point to turn off andstop for a moment or two before the gate of John Anderson's cottage. At first the girl's real need of him prompted this daily detour; then, when the actual need no longer existed, he excused the visit on theplea of her lonesomeness and his promise to Denny to look after her. 

His own loneliness--for he had never been so lonely before in all hislonely life--and the other and real reason for this habit, he neverallowed himself to scrutinize too closely. But each day he sat alittle forward on the buggy seat as soon as he had turned the lastsharp curve in the road and stared eagerly ahead through the afternoondusk until he made out her slim figure leaning against the fencewaiting for him. And every afternoon, after he had pulled theshuffling horse to a standstill, he bent down from his vantage pointon the high seat to scan her upturned face minutely, almost craftilyat times, for some tell-tale trace of tears on her long lashes, or apossible quiver of her lips, or a suspicious droop in her boyishshoulders. And he never discovered either the one or the other. 

It was at such moments that his peace of mind suffered, for no saneman could ever have read, by any stretching of the imagination, anything akin to sorrow or sadness in the low laugh with which sheinvariably met his scrutiny. It fairly bubbled joy. Each day Old Jerryfound her only happy--offensively happy--and where he had beensecretly watching her for one betraying sign he became uneasilyconscious after a time that very often she, too, seemed to be scanninghis own face as if she were trying to penetrate into the inner tumultof perplexities behind his seamed forehead. Some days he was almostcertain that there was a calculating light in her steady eyes--a hintof half-hidden delight in something he couldn't understand--and itworried him. It bothered him almost as much as did the unvariedformula with which she greeted him every afternoon. 

"Have you any news for me today?" she always asked him. "Surely you'vesomething new to tell me this afternoon--now, haven't you?"

The tone in which she made the query was never anything but disarming;it was quite childishly wheedling and innocently eager, he thought. But reiterated from day to day it wore on his nerves after a while. Added to the something he sometimes thought he caught glimmering inher tip-tilted eyes, it made him more than a little uncomfortable. Hefell back upon a quibble to dodge the issue. 

"Was you expectin' a letter?" he always countered. 

This daily veiled tilt of wits might have gone on indefinitely had nota new development presented itself which threw an entirely differentaspect upon the whole affair. 

A fortnight had elapsed since Denny Bolton's mysterious departure fromthe village when it happened. As usual, after the day's duties werecompleted with his hurried return from the Bolton homestead, Old Jerryturned off at the crossroads to stop for a moment before the cottagesquatting in its acre of desolate garden. He didn't even straighten upin his seat that afternoon to gaze ahead of him, so certain he hadgrown that she would be waiting for him, a hint of laughter in hereyes and the same disturbing question on her lips, and not until thefat animal between the shafts had stopped of her own accord before thestraggling fence did he realize that the girl was not there. Then herabsence smote him full. 

It frightened him. Right from the first he was conscious of impendingdisaster born quite entirely of the knowledge of his own guilt. Thefront door of the house was open and after fruitless minutes ofpanicky pondering he clambered down and advanced uncertainly towardit. His shadow across the threshold heralded his reluctant coming, andDryad turned from the half-filled box upon the table over which shehad been bending and nodded to him almost before he caught sight ofher. 

That little, intimately brief inclination of the head was her onlygreeting. With hands grasping each side of the door-frame Old Jerrystood there and gazed about the room. It had never been anything butbare and empty looking--now with the few larger pieces of furniturewhich it had contained all stacked in one corner and the smallerarticles already stored away in a half-dozen boxes, the last of whichwas holding the girl's absorbed attention, it would have been barnlikehad it not been so small. From where he stood Old Jerry could seethrough into the smaller back-room workshop. Even its shelves wereempty, --entirely stripped of their rows of tiny white woman-figures. 

He paled as he grasped the ominous import of it; he tried to speakunconcernedly, but his voice was none too steady. 

"So you're a-house-cleanin', be you?" he asked jauntily. "Ain't youcommencin' a little early?"

He was uncomfortably conscious of that interrogative gleam in Dryad'sglance--that amused glimmer which he couldn't quite fathom--when sheturned her head. She was smiling, too, a little--smiling with her lipsas well as with her eyes. 

"No-o-o, " she stated with preoccupied lack of emphasis, as she bentagain over the box. "No--I'm packing up. "

Old Jerry had known that that would be her answer. He had been certainof it. The other interpretation--the only other possible one whichcould be put upon the dismantled room--had been nothing more or lessthan a momentary and desperate grasping at a straw. 

For a while he was very, very quiet, wondering just what it was in hermind which made her so cheerfully indifferent to his presence. Shefilled that last box while he stood there in the doorway, stood off tosurvey her work critically, and then picked up a hammer that lay onthe table and prepared to nail down the lid. 

"I've hit my finger four times today, " she apprised him between strokesas she drove the first nail home. "Four times this afternoon--and alwaysthe same finger, too!"

The very irrelevancy of the statement, coupled with her calm serenity, was appalling to the old man. She didn't so much as lift her eyes whenshe told him, but when the lid was fastened she whirled suddenly withthat impetuosity which always startled him more than a little, herhands tightly clasped in front of her, and fairly beamed at him. 

"There, that finishes everything--everything but the pots and pans, "she cried. "And I'll need them a little longer, anyway, won't I? Butmaybe I won't take them with me, either--they're pretty old and wornout. What do you think?"

Old Jerry cleared his throat. He ignored her question. 

"Ain't--ain't this a trifle sudden, " he faltered--"jest a trifle?"

She shook her head again and laughed softly, as if from sheer joyousexcitement. 

"No, " she said. "No, I've been planning it for days and days--oh, formore than a week!"

Then she seemed to catch for the first time the dreariness of hiswhole attitude--the dejection of his spare angular body andsparrowlike, anxious face. 

"You're sorry I'm going, " she accused him then, and she leaned towardhim a little, eyes quizzically half closed. "I knew you'd be sorry!"And then, swiftly, "Aren't you?"

Old Jerry scraped first one foot and then the other. 

"I reckon I be, " he admitted faintly. "Kinda surprised, too. I--Iwa'n't exactly calculating on anything like this. It--it's kindathrown me off my reckonin'! Are you--are you figurin' on goin' rightaway?"

Dryad spun about and threw her head far on one side to scan the wholebare room. 

"Tomorrow, maybe, " she decided, when she turned back to him. "Or thenext day at the very latest. You see, everything is about ready now, and there isn't any reason for me to stay, on and on, here--isthere?"

A little tired note crept into the last words, edging the questionwith a suggestion of wistfulness. It was something not so verydifferent from that for which Old Jerry had been stubbornly waitingthroughout those entire two weeks, but he failed to catch it at thatmoment. He had heard nothing but her statement that she meant toremain at least another day. It made it possible for him to breathedeeply once again. 

Much could happen in twenty-four hours. She might even change hermind, he desperately assured himself--women were always doingsomething like that, wern't they? But even if she did go it was areprieve; it gave him one last opportunity. Now, for the present, allhe wanted was to get away--to get away by himself and think! Onheavily dragging feet he turned to go back down the rottingboardwalk. 

"I--I'll drop in on you tomorrow, " he suggested, pausing at the steps. "I'll stop in on my way 'round--to--to say good-by. "

The girl stood in the doorway smiling down at him. He couldn't meether eyes. As it was he felt that their gaze went through and throughhim. And so he did not see her half lift her arms to him in a suddenquite wonderful gesture of contrite and remorseful reassurance. He didnot hear the first of the impulsive torrent of words which she barelysmothered behind lips that trembled a little. His head was bowed sothat he did not see her eyes, and if he could but have seen them andnothing else, he would have understood, without the words or thegesture. 

Instead he stood there, plucking undecidedly at his sleeve. 

"Because I--I wouldn't like to hev you go--without seein' you again, "he went on slowly--"without a chance to tell you something--er--totell you good-by. "

He didn't wait for her answer. At the far bend in the road, when helooked back, she was still there in the doorway watching him. 

He was not quite certain, but he thought she threw up one thin whitearm to him as he passed out of sight. 

CHAPTER XVII

It rained that next day--a dull, steady downpour that slanted in upona warm, south wind. Old Jerry was glad of the storm. The leadengrayness of the low-hanging clouds matched perfectly his own frame ofmind, and the cold touch of the rain soothed his hot head, too, as itswept in under the buggy hood, and helped him to think a littlebetter. There was much that needed readjusting. 

Throughout the early hours of that morning he drove with a newspaperspread flat upon his knees--the afternoon edition of the previous day, which, in the face of other matters, he had had neither the necessarytime nor enthusiasm to examine until it was an entire twelve hoursold. At any other time the contents of that red-headlined sheet wouldhave set his pulses throbbing in a veritable ecstasy of excitement. 

For two whole weeks he had been watching for it, scanning every inchof type for the news it brought, but now that account of Young Denny'sfirst match, with a little, square picture of him inset at the columnhead, fell woefully flat so far as he was concerned. 

Not that the plump newspaperman who had written the account of thatfirst victorious bout had achieved anything but a masterpiece ofsensationalism. Every line was alive with action, every phrase seemedto thud with the actual shock of contest. And there was that lastparagraph, too, which hailed Denny--"The Pilgrim, " they called him inthe paper, but that couldn't deceive Old Jerry--as the newcomer forwhom the public had been waiting so long, and, toward the end, sohopelessly. 

It was really a perfect thing of its kind--but Old Jerry could notenjoy it that morning, even though it was Denny Bolton's firsttriumph, to be shared by him alone in equal proportion. Instead ofsending creepy thrills chasing up and down his spine it merelyintensified his doleful bitterness of spirit. Long before noon hebreathed a leaden heavy sigh, refolded the sodden sheet and put itaway in the box beneath the seat. 

The old mare took her own pace that day. In a brain that was alreadyburdened until it fairly ached there was no room for the image of thesilver-haired stone-cutter which had made for speed on otheroccasions. He had plenty to occupy his mind which was of a strictlyimmediate nature. 

A dozen times that morning Old Jerry asked himself what he would tellDryad Anderson that night, when he stopped at the little drab cottageat the route's end, ostensibly to bid her good-by. He asked himself, in desperate reiteration, _how_ he would tell, for he knew that thelong delay in the delivery of Denny's message was going to need morethan a little explanation. And when he had wrestled with the questionuntil his eyes stung and his temples throbbed, and still could find nosolution for it, he turned helplessly to the consideration of anotherphase of the problem. 

He fell to tormenting himself with the possibility of her having gonealready. Everything in those bare rooms had been packed--there was noreal reason for the girl to remain another hour. Perhaps she hadreconsidered, changed her mind, and departed even earlier than she hadplanned, and if she had--if she had----

Whenever he reached that point, dumbly he bowed his head. 

It was dark when he turned off the main road and started up the longhill toward the Bolton place--not just dark, but a blackness soprofound that the mare between the shafts was only a half formlesssplotch of gray as she plodded along ahead. Even his dread of theplace, which formerly had been so acute, did not penetrate the mentalmisery that wrapped him; he did not vouchsafe so much as one uneasyglance ahead until a glimmer of light which seemed to flash out fromthe rear of the house fairly shocked him into conscious recollectionof it all. 

He sprang erect then, spilling a cataract of water from his hat brimin a chill trickle down the back of his neck, and barked a shrillystaccato command at the placid horse. The creaking buggy came to astandstill. 

He tried to persuade himself it was a reflection of the village lightsupon the window panes which had startled him, but it was only ahalf-hearted effort. No one could mistake the glow that filtered outof the black bulk of the rear of the house for anything save the thingit was. Half way up the hill he sat there, hunched forward in ahopeless huddle, his eyes protected by cupped palms, and stared andstared. 

Once before, the evening of that day when the Judge's exhibition ofYoung Denny's bruised face had been more than his curiosity couldendure, he had approached that bleak farmhouse in fear and trembling, but the trepidation of that night, half real, half a child of his ownerratic imagination, bulked small beside the throat-tightening terrorof this moment. 

And yet he did not turn back. The thought that he had only to wheelhis buggy and beat as silent a retreat as his ungreased axles wouldpermit never occurred to him. It was much as if his harrowed spirit, driven hither and yon without mercy throughout the whole day long, hadat last backed into a corner, in a mood of last-ditch, crazydesperation, and bared its teeth. 

"If he is up there, " he stated doggedly, "if he is up there, a-putterin' with his everlasting lump o' clay, he ain't got no moreright up there than I hev! He's just a-trespassin', that's what he'sa-doin'. I'm the legal custodian of the place--it was put into myhands--and I'll tell him so. I'll give him a chance to git out--or--orI'll hev the law on him!"

The plump mare went forward again. There was something terriblyuncanny, even in her relentless advance, but the old man clung to thereins and let her go without a word. When she reached the top sheslumped lazily to a standstill and fell contentedly to nibblinggrass. 

The light in the window was much brighter, viewed from that lesseneddistance--thin, yellow streaks of brightness that quivered a littlefrom the edges of a drawn shade. An uneven wick might easily haveaccounted for the unsteadiness, but in that flickering pallor OldJerry found something ominously unhealthy--almost uncanny. 

But he went on. He clambered down from his high seat and went doggedlyacross--steadily--until his hand found the door-latch. And he gavehimself no time for reconsideration or retreat. The metal catchyielded all too readily under the pressure of his fingers, and whenthe door swung in he followed it over the threshold. 

The light blinded him for a moment--dazzled him--yet not so completelybut that he saw, too clearly for any mistake, the figure that hadturned from the stove to greet him. Dryad Anderson's face waspink-tinted from forehead to chin by the heat of the glowing lids--herlips parted a little until the small teeth showed white beyond theirred fullness. 

In her too-tight, boyish blouse, gaping at the throat, she stood therein the middle of the room, hands bracketed on delicate hips, andsmiled at him. And behind her the lamp in its socket on the wallsmoked a trifle from a too-high wick. 

Old Jerry stood and gazed at her, one hand still clutching the doorlatch. In one great illuminating flash he saw it all--understood justwhat it meant--and with that understanding a hot wave of rage began towell up within him--a fierce and righteous wrath, borne of all thatday's unnecessary agony and those last few minutes of fear. 

It was a hoax on her part. She had been trifling with him the daybefore, just as she had been playing fast and loose with his peace ofmind for days. An ejaculation bordering close upon actual profanitytrembled upon his lips, but a draft of cold air sweeping in at theopen doorway set the lamp flickering wildly and brought him back alittle to himself. His eyes went again to the girl in the middle ofthe floor. She was rocking to and fro upon the balls of her feet, every inch of her fairly pulsing with mocking, malicious delight. 

She waited for him to speak, and he, stiff of back and grim of face, stood stonily silent. She seemed all innocently unaware of hisunconcealed disgust. The quizzical smile only widened before thechilly threat of his beady eyes and ruffled forehead. And then, all inone breath, her little pouted chin went up and she burst into a lowgurgle of utter enjoyment of the tableau. 

"Well, " she demanded, "aren't you ever going to say anything? Here Iam! I--I decided to move today--there really wasn't any use ofwaiting. Aren't you surprised--just a little?"

The meekness of her voice, so wholly belied by her eyes and lips andswaying boy-like body, only tightened the old man's mouth. He wasstill reviewing all that long day's mental torment, counting thewasted hours which might have been applied to a soul-satisfying feastupon Morehouse's red-headlined account in the paper. No veteran hadever marched more hopelessly into a cannon's mouth than he hadapproached the door of that kitchen. 

And yet a flood of thankfulness, the direct reflex of his firstimpotent rage, threatened to sweep up and drown the fires of hiswrath. Already he wanted to slump down into a chair and rest wearybody and wearier, relieved brain; he wanted a minute or two in whichto realize that she was there--that his unfulfilled promise was stillfar from being actual catastrophe--and he would not let himself. Notyet!

She had been playing with him--playing with him cat-and-mouse fashion. The birdlike features which had begun to relax hardened once more. 

"Maybe I be, " he answered her question with noncommittal grimness. "Maybe I be--and maybe I ain't!" And then, almost belligerently: "Yourlamp's a-smokin'!"

She turned and strained on tiptoe and lowered it. 

"I thought you would be, " she agreed, too gravely for his completecomfort, when she had accomplished the readjustment of the wick to herentire satisfaction. "For, you know, you seemed a little worriedand--well, not just happy, yesterday, when I told you I was going tomove I--I felt sure you would be glad to find that I hadn't gonefar!"

Old Jerry remembered at that moment and he removed his soaked hat. Heturned, too, and drew up a chair. It gave him an opportunity to avoidthose moistly mirthful eyes for a moment. Seated and comfortablytilted back against the wall he felt less ill at ease--felt betterable to deal with the situation as it should be dealt with. 

For a moment her presence there had only confounded him--that was whenthe wave of righteous wrath had swept him--but at the worst he hadcounted it nothing more than a too far-fetched bit of fantasticmischief conceived to tantalize him. 

Her last statement awakened in him a preposterously impossible suspicionwhich, now that he had a chance to glance about the room, was confirmedinstantly--absolutely. It was astounding--utterly unbelievable--andyet on all the walls, in every corner, there were the indisputableevidences of her intention to remain indefinitely--permanently. 

At least it gave him an opening. 

"You don't mean to say, " he began challengingly, "you don't mean totell me that you're a-figurin' on stayin' here--for good?"

She pursed her lips and nodded vigorously at him until the loosenedwisps of hair half hid her eyes. It was quite as though she werepleased beyond belief that he had got at the gist of it all sospeedily. 

"Yes, for good, " she explained ecstatically, "or, " more slowly, "or atleast for quite a while. You see I like it here! It's just like homealready--just like I always imagined home would be when I really hadone, anyway. There's so much room--and it's warm, too. And then, thefloors don't squeak, either. I don't think I care for squeakyfloors--do you?"

A quick widening of those almost purple eyes accompanied the lastquestion. 

The little white-haired figure in the back-tilted chair snorted. Hetried to disguise it behind a belated cough, but it was quitepalpably a snort of outraged patience and dignity. She couldn't foolhim any longer--not even with that wide-eyed appealingly infantilestare. He knew, without looking closer, that there was a flare ofmirth hidden within its velvet duskiness. And there was only one wayto deal with such shallowness--that was with firm and unmistakableseverity. He leaned forward and pounded one meager knee for emphasisas Judge Maynard had often done. 

"You can't do it!" he emphasized flatly, his thin voice almostgloatingly triumphant. "Whatever put it into your head I don'tknow--but don't you realize what you're a-doin', comin' up here likethis and movin' in, high-handed, without speaking to nobody? Well, you've made yourself liable to trespass--that's what you've done!Trespass and house-breaking, too, I guess, without interviewin' mefirst!"

The violet eyes flew wider. Old Jerry was certain that he caught agleam of apprehension in them. She took one faltering step toward himand then stopped, irresolute, apparently. Somehow the mute appeal inthat whole poise was too much, even for his outraged dignity. Maybe hehad gone a little too far. He attempted to temper the harshness ofit. 

"Not a-course, " he added deprecatingly, "meanin' that anything likethat would be likely to happen to you. Seein' as you didn't exactlyunderstand, I wouldn't take no steps against you. " And, even moreencouragingly, "I doubt if I'd hev any legal right to proceed againstanybody without seeing Den--without seeing the rightful owner first. "

He bit his tongue painfully in covering that slip, but Dryad had notseemed to notice it. She crossed back to the stove and in an absolutesilence fell to prodding with a fork beneath steaming lids. 

"I really should have thought of that myself, " she murmured pensively. "After seeing you return from here every afternoon, I should haveknown he--the place had been left in your care. "

It rather startled him--that half absent-minded statement of hers--itdisturbed his confidence in his command of the situation. Sittingthere he told himself that he should have realized long ago that shecould easily watch the hill road from the door of the little drabcottage huddled at the end of Judge Maynard's acres. 

He began to feel guilty again--began to wonder just how much his dailyvisits to Denny's place had led her to suspect. But Dryad did not waitfor any reply. She had turned once more until she was facing him, herlips beginning to curl again, petal-like, at the corners. 

"But you would have to interview the real owner first?" she inquiredinsistently. "You do think that would be necessary before you couldmake me leave, don't you?"

He nodded--nodded warily. Something in her bearing put him on hisguard. And then, before he knew how it had happened, a little rush hadcarried her across the room and she was kneeling at his feet, her faceupflung to him. 

"Then you'll have to interview me, "--the words trembled madly, breathlessly, from her lips. "You'll have to interviewme--because--because I own it all--all--every bit of it!"

And she laughed up at him--laughed with a queer, choking, strainednote catching in her throat up into his blankly incredulous face. Hefelt her thin young arms tighten about him; he even half caught hernext hysterical words in spite of his amazement, and for all that theywere quite meaningless to him. 

"You dear, " she rushed on. "O, you dear, dear stubborn old fraud! Ipunished you, didn't I? You were frightened--afraid I'd go! You knowyou were! As if I'd ever leave until--until--" She failed to finishthat sentence. "But I'll never, never tease you so again!"

Then there came that lightning-like change of mood which always lefthim breathless in his inability to follow it. The mirth went out ofher eyes--her lips drooped and began to work strangely as she kneltand gazed up at him. 

"I bought his mortgage, " she told him slowly. "I bought it from JudgeMaynard a week ago with part of the money he gave me for our placethere below his. He was very generous. Somehow I feel that he paidme--much more than it was worth. He's always wanted it and--andI--there wasn't any need for me to stay there any more, was there?"

Old Jerry had never seen a face so terribly earnest before--sohungrily wistful--but it was the light that glowed in that kneelinggirl's eyes that held him dumb. It left him completely incapable ofcoherent thought, yet mechanically his mind leaped back to that night, two weeks before, when Young Denny had stumbled and gone flounderingto his knees before her, there on that very threshold. The boy's ownwords had painted that picture for him too vividly for him to forget. And he knew, without reasoning it out, just from the world of painthere in her eyes, that she, too, at that moment was thinking of thatlimp figure--of the great red gash across its chin. 

"I didn't help him, " she went on, and now her voice was little morethan a whisper. "I went and left him here alone--and hurt--when Ishould have stayed, that night when he went away. And so I boughtit--I bought it because I thought some day he might come back--andneed me even more. I thought if he did come--he'd feel as though hehad just--come back home! And--and just to be here waiting, Ithought, too, might somehow help me to have faith that he would come, some day--safe!"

The old man felt the fiercely tense little arms go slack then. Herhead went forward and lay heavy, pillowed in her hands upon his knees. But he sat there for a full minute, staring down at the thick, shimmering mass of her hair, swallowing an unaccountable lump thatbothered his breathing preparatory to telling her all that he had keptwaiting for just that opportunity, before he realized that she wascrying. And for an equally long period he cast desperately about forthe right thing to say. It came to him finally--a veritableinspiration. 

"Why, you don't want to cry, " he told her slowly. "They--they ain'tnothing to worry about now! For if that's the case--if you've gone towork and bought it, why, I ain't got no more jurisdiction overit--none whatever!"

Immediately she lifted her head and gazed long and questioningly athim, but Old Jerry's face was only guilelessly grave. It was more thanthat--benevolent reassurance lit up every feature, and little bylittle her brimming eyes began to clear; they began to glisten withthat baffling delight that had irritated him so before. She slippedslowly to her feet and stood and gazed down at him. Old Jerry knewthen that he would never again see so radiant a face as hers was atthat moment. 

"I wasn't crying because I was worried, " she said, and she managed notto laugh. "I've been doing that every night, all night long, for twoweeks. That was before I understood--things! But today--this afternoonI found something--read something--that made me understand better. I--I'm just crying a little tonight because I am so glad. "

Old Jerry couldn't quite fathom the whole meaning of those last wordsof hers. They surprised him so that all the things he had meant totell her right then of Young Denny's departure once more went totallyout of mind. He wondered if it was the red-headlined account of hisfirst battle that she had seen. No matter how doubtful it was he feltit was very, very possible, for at each day's end he had been leavingDenny's roll of papers there just as he had when the boy was at home. 

But the rest of it he understood in spite of the wonder of it all. Whenever he remembered Young Denny asprawl upon the floor it seemed tohim a thing too marvelous for belief, and yet, recalling the lightthat had glowed radiant in that girl's eyes, he knew it was the onlything left to believe. 

He talked it over with himself that night on the way home. 

"She bought it so's if he ever did want to come back, he'd feel as ifhe had come back home, " he repeated her words, and he pondered longupon them. There was only one possible deduction. 

"She thought he wouldn't have nothing left to buy it back when he didcome--that he'd be started on the road all the rest of 'em traveledand pretty well--shot--to--pieces! That's what she thought, " hedecided. 

He shook his head over it. 

"And she didn't know, " he marveled. "She didn't know how that old jugreally got broke--because I ain't told her yet! But she's waitin' forhim just the same--just a-waitin' for him, no matter how he comes. Figurin' on takin' care of him, too--that's what she was doin'--herthat ain't no bigger'n his little finger!"

The storm had blown over long before his buggy went rattling down thatlong hill, and he sat with the reins dangling neglected between hisknees and squinted up at the stars. 

"I always did consider I'd been pretty lucky, " he confided after atime to the plump mare's lazily flopping ears, "never gettin' mixed upin any matrimonial tangle, so to speak. But now--now I ain't quite sosure. " A lonesome note crept into the querulous voice. "Maybe I'd hevkept my eyes open a little mite wider'n I did if I'd ever a-dreamedanybody could care like that. . . . Don't happen very often though, Ireckon. Just about once in a lifetime, maybe. Maybe, if he ain't tooblind to see it when it does come . . . Maybe once to every man!"

 * * * * *

That next week marked the beginning of an intimacy unlike anythingwhich Old Jerry had ever before known in all his life, for in spite ofthe girl's absolute proprietorship he continued his daily trips up thelong hill, not only for the purpose of leaving Young Denny's bundle ofpapers and seed catalogues, but to attend to the stock which the boyhad left in his care as well. It never occurred to him that that dutywas only optional with him now. 

He never again attempted either, after that night, to explain hisdelinquency and deliver Young Denny's message to her. There seemed tohim absolutely no need now to open a subject which was bound to beembarrassing to him. And then, too, a sort of tacit understandingappeared to have sprung up between them that needed no furtherexplanation. 

Only once was the temptation to confess to her the real reason forDenny's sudden going almost stronger than he could resist. That wasquite a month later, when the news of the boy's second battle wasflaunted broadcast by the same red-headlined sheet. Then for days heconsidered the advisability of such a move. 

It was not some one to share his hot pride that he wanted; he hadlived his whole life almost entirely within himself, and so hiselation was no less keen because he had no second person with whom todiscuss the victory. He wanted her opinion on a quite differentquestion--a question which he felt utterly incapable of deciding forhimself. It was no less a plan than that he should be present at thematch which was already hinted at between "The Pilgrim" and Jed TheRed--Jeddy Conway, from that very village. 

There were days when he almost felt that she knew of this newperplexity of his, felt that she really had seen that account of YoungDenny's first fight and had been watching for the second, and at suchtimes only a mumbled excuse and a hasty retreat saved him from baringhis secret desire. 

"She'd think I'd gone stark crazy, " he excused his lack of courage. "She'd say I was a-goin' into my second childhood!"

Yet in the end it was the girl with the tip-tilted eyes who decided itfor him. 

Spring had slipped into early summer when the day came which made thegossip of "The Pilgrim's" possible bid for the championship acertainty. It was harder than ever for Old Jerry after that. Eachfresh day's issue brought forth a long and exhaustive comparison ofthe two men's chances--of their strength and weaknesses. The technicaldiscussion the old man skipped; it was undecipherable to him andenough that Young Denny was hailed as a certain winner. 

And then as the day set for the match crept nearer and nearer, hebegan to notice a new and alarming change in the tone of that dailycolumn. At first it was only fleeting--too intangible for one to placeone's finger upon it. But by the end of another week it was openlyinquiring whether "The Pilgrim" had as much as an even chance ofwinning after all. 

It bewildered Old Jerry; it was beyond his comprehension, and had henot been so depressed himself he would have noted the change that cameover the girl, too, these days. He never entered the big back kitchennow to hear her humming softly to herself, and sometimes he had tospeak several times before she even heard him. 

That continued for almost a week, and then there came a day, a scantthree days before the date which he had hungrily underlined in redupon a mental calendar, which brought the whole vexing indecision to aprecipitate head. 

Old Jerry read that day's column in the sporting extra with weazenedface going red with anger--read it with fists knotted. Those othershad been merely skeptical--doubtful of "The Pilgrim's" willingness tomeet the champion--and now it openly scoffed at him; it laughed at hisability, lashed him with ridicule. And, to cap it all, it accused himopenly of having already "sold out" to his opponent. 

When the little white-haired driver of the buggy reached the house onthe hill that night he was as pale as he had been red, hours before, and he pleaded fatigue to excuse his too hasty departure. He did notsee that she was almost as openly eager to have him go or that shealmost ran across to the table under the light with the packet ofpapers as he turned away. 

Had he noticed he would have been better prepared the next night forthe scene that met him when he opened her door at dusk. One step wasall he took, and then he stopped, wide-eyed, aghast. Dryad wasstanding in the middle of the room, her hair loose about hershoulders, lips drawn dangerously back from tight little teeth, fistsclenched at her throat, and her eyes flaming. 

Old Jerry had never before seen her in a rage; he had never beforeseen anybody so terribly, pallidly violent. As he entered her eyesshot up to his. He heard her breath come and go, come and go, betweendry lips. And suddenly she lifted her feet and stamped upon thenewspaper strewn about her on the floor--infinitesimal shreds whichshe had torn and flung from her. 

"It's a lie!" she gasped. "It's a lie--a lie! They said he couldn'twin anyway; they said he had sold--sold his chance to win--and theylie! He's never been whipped. He's never--been--whipped--yet!"

It frightened him. The very straining of her throat and the mad riseand fall of her breast made him afraid for her. In his effort to quiether he hardly reckoned what he was saying. 

"Why, it--it don't mean nothin', " he stated mildly. "That newspapertrash ain't no account, anyway you look at it. "

"Then why do they print it?" she stormed. "How do they dare to printit? They've been doing it for days--weeks!"

He felt more equal to that question. The answer fairly popped into hisbrain. 

"They hev to, I reckon, " he said with a fine semblance of cheerfulness. "If they didn't maybe everybody'd be so sure he'd win that theywouldn't even bother to go to see it. " And then, very carelessly, asthough it was of little importance: "Don't know's I would hev thoughtof goin' myself if it hadn't been for that. It's advertisin' Ireckon--just advertisin'!"

Her fists came down from her chin; her whole body relaxed. It was thatbewildering change of mood which he could never hope to follow. Sheeven started toward him. 

"Wouldn't have thought of it!" she repeated. "Why--why, you don't meanthat you _aren't_ going?"

It was quite as though she had never considered the possibility ofsuch a contingency. Old Jerry's mouth dropped open while he stared ather. 

"Go, " he stammered, "me go! Why, it's goin' to happen tomorrownight!"

She nodded her head in apparent unconsciousness of his astonishment. 

"You'll have to leave on the early train, " she agreed, "and--and so Iwon't see you again. "

She turned her back upon him for a moment. He realized that she wasfumbling inside the throat of the little, too-tight blouse. When shefaced him again there was something in the palm of her outstretchedhand. 

"I've been waiting for you to come tonight, " she went on, "and it washard waiting. That's why I tore the paper up, I think. And now, willyou--will you give him this for me--give it to him when he has won?You won't have to say anything. " She hesitated. "I--I think he'llunderstand!"

Old Jerry reached out and took it from her--a bit of a red silk bow, dotted with silver spangles. He gazed at it a moment before he tuckedit away in an inside pocket, and in that moment of respite his brainraced madly. 

"Of course I figured on goin', " he said, when his breath returned, "but I been a little undecided--jest a trifle! But I ought to bethere; he might be a mite anxious if they wasn't somebody from home. And I'll give it to him then--I'll give it to him when he's won!"

He went a bit unsteadily back to his waiting buggy. 

"She had that all ready to give me, " he said to himself as he climbedup to the high seat. Tentatively his fingers touched the little lumpthat the spangly bow of red made inside his coat. "She's had it allready for me--mebby for days! But how'd she know I was a-goin'?" heasked himself. "How'd _she_ know, when I didn't know myself?"

He gave it up as a feminine whimsicality too deep for mere malewisdom. Once on the way back he thought of the route that would gomailless the next day. 

"'Twon't hurt 'em none to wait a day or so, " he stated, and his voicewas just a little tinged with importance. "Maybe it'll do 'em good. And there ain't no way out of it, anyhow--for I surely got to bethere!"

CHAPTER XVIII

Morehouse did not hear the door in the opaque glass partition thatwalled his desk off from the outer editorial offices open and close, for all that it was very quiet. Ever since the hour which followed thegoing to press of the afternoon edition of the paper the huge room, with its littered floor and flat-topped tables, had been deserted, sostill that the buzzing of a blue-bottle fly against the window pane atMorehouse's side seemed irritatingly loud by contrast. 

The plump newspaperman in brown was too deeply preoccupied to hearanything so timidly unobtrusive as was that interruption, and onlyafter the intruder had plucked nervously at the elbow that supportedhis chin did he realize that he was not alone. His head came up then, slowly, until he was gazing back into the eyes of the little, attenuated old man who, head tilted birdlike to one side, was standingbeside him in uncomfortable, apologetic silence. 

It surprised Morehouse more than a little. For the life of him hecouldn't have told just whom he had expected to see when he looked up, but nothing could have startled him more than the presence of thatwhite-haired wisp of a man with the beady eyes who fitted almostuncannily into the perplexing puzzle which had held him there at hisdesk until dusk. He forgot to greet the newcomer. Instead he satgazing at him, wide-mouthed, and after Old Jerry had borne thescrutiny as long as he could he took the initiative himself. 

"Well, I got here, " he quavered. "I been a-tryin' to get upstairs tosee you ever since about three o'clock, and they wouldn't let me in. Said you was too busy to be bothered, even when I told 'em I belongedto the Gov'mint service. But I managed to slip by 'em at last!"

He paused and waited for some word of commendation. Morehouse merelynodded. He was thinking--thinking hard! The voice was almost asfamiliar to him as was his own, and yet it persisted in tantalizinghis memory. He couldn't quite place it. Old Jerry sensed something ofhis difficulty. 

"I'm from Boltonwood, " he introduced himself, not quite so uncertainly. "I'm Old Jerry. Maybe you remember me--I sat just next the stove thatnight you was in town a-huntin' news. "

Then Morehouse remembered. Old Jerry had not had much to say thatnight, but his face and his shrill eagerness to snatch a little of thespotlight was unforgettable. And it was of that very night Morehousehad been thinking--that and the face of the big boy silent there onthe threshold--when the interruption came. But still he uttered nowelcome; instead there was something close akin to distinct aversionin his manner as he drew up a chair for the old man. 

Old Jerry felt the chill lack of cordiality, but he sat down. Andafter a long period of silence, in which Morehouse made no move to puthim more at ease, he swallowed hard and went on with his explanation. 

"I come down to--to see Denny fight, " he stated. "It kinda seemed tous--to me--that he'd think it strange if somebody from his home townwa'n't there. So I come along. And I wouldn't a bothered you at alltoday--it's gettin' late and I ain't got my ticket to get inyet--only--only I was worried a mite--jest a trifle--and I thought I'dbetter see you if I could. "

Morehouse tilted his head again. 

Old Jerry gave up any attempt of further excusing his intrusion andwent straight to the heart of the matter. He unfolded a paper thatbulged from the side pocket of his coat and spread it out on thedesk. 

"It's this, " he said, indicating the column that had scoffed so openlyat Young Denny's chances. "You--you wrote it, I suppose, didn't you?"

Again that impersonal nod. 

"Well, I just wanted to ask you if--if you really thought it was--ifyou think he ain't got no chance at all?"

The eagerness of that trembling old voice was not to be ignored anylonger. But Morehouse couldn't help but recollect the eager circle of"Ayes" which had flanked the Judge that other night. 

"What of it?" he inquired coolly. "What if he hasn't? I though JedConway was the particular pride of your locality!"

Old Jerry's beady eyes widened. There was no mistaking the positivedislike in that round face, any more than one could misunderstand theantagonism of that round-faced man's words. 

For weeks Morehouse had been puzzling over a question which he couldnot answer--something which, for all the intimacy that had sprung upbetween himself and Denny Bolton, he had never felt able to ask of theboy with the grave eyes and graver lips. Even since the conference inHogarty's little office, when he had agreed to the ex-lightweight'splan, it had been vexing him, no nearer solution than it had been thatday when he assured Hogarty that there was more behind young Denny'seagerness to meet Jed Conway than the prize-money could account for. 

Now, that afternoon, on the very eve of that battle, he sat there inthe thickening dusk, unconscious of the passage of time, and listenedto the explanation that came pouring from Old Jerry's lips, haltinglyat first, and then in a steady falsetto stream, and learned the answerto it. 

The old mail carrier didn't know what he was doing. His one desire wasto vindicate himself in the cold eyes of the man before him. But hetold it well and he did not spare himself. 

Once he though he caught a glimpse of thawing mirth in that face whenhe had finished relating how Denny had led him, reluctant and fearful, from the kitchen of the farmhouse to the spot of blood on the stablewall, and from there to the jug in a heap of fragments against thetree-butt. And that fleeting mirth became a warm, all-enveloping grinwhen he had detailed the climax of the Judge's prearranged sensationthat same night. 

He knew then that he had set himself right, and he did not mean to gointo it any more fully. It was the changed attitude of Morehouse thatled him on and on. So he told, too, of Dryad Anderson's purchase ofthe bleak old place on the hill and her reason. But when it came toher wild fury against the paper that had dared to scoff at the boy hepaused. For a second he calculated the wisdom of exhibiting the bit ofa red bow that had been entrusted him. It, without a doubt, would bethe only passport he could hope for to a share of the glory, when itwas all over. For the time being he jealously decided to let it wait, and he turned back to the rumpled sheet upon the desk. 

"She--she'd be mighty disappointed, " he finished a little lamely. "She's so sure, somehow, it kinda worries me. You--you do think he'sgot a little chance, don't you--jest a trifle?"

It took a long time--Old Jerry's confession. It was dark before hefinished, but Morehouse did not interrupt him by so much as thelifting of a finger. And he sat silent, gazing straight ahead of him, after the old man had finished. Old Jerry, watching him, wonderedvaguely what made his eyes so bright now. 

"So that's it, is it?" the plump man murmured at last. "So that's it. And I never dreamed of it once. I must be going stale. "

He wheeled in his chair until he faced Old Jerry full. 

"I don't know, " he said. "A half-hour before you came in I didn't likeeven to think of it. But now--chance? Well, this deadly waiting isover anyhow, and we'll soon know. And I wonder--now--I wonder!"

With his watch flat in the palm of his hand Morehouse sat and whistledsoftly. And then he shot hastily to his feet. Old Jerry understoodthat whistle, but he hung back. 

"I--I ain't got my ticket yet, " he protested. 

Morehouse merely reached in and hustled him over the threshold. 

"Your unabridged edition, while it has no doubt saved my sanity, hasrobbed us both of food and drink, " he stated. "There's no time left, even for friendly argument, if you want to be there when it happens. You won't need any ticket this time--you'll be with me. "

Even at that they were late, for when they paused a moment in theentrance of the huge, bowl-shaped amphitheater, a sharp gust ofhand-clapping, broken by shrill whistling and shriller cat-calls, metthem. Far out across that room Old Jerry saw two figures, glisteningdamp under the lights, crawl through the ropes that penned in ahigh-raised platform in the very center of the building, and disappearup an aisle. 

He turned a dismayed face to Morehouse who, with one hand clutchinghis arm, was deeply engrossed in a whispered conversation with a manat the entrance--too engrossed to see. But when the newspapermanturned at last to lead the way down into the body of the house heexplained in one brief word:

"Preliminary, " he said. 

Old Jerry did not understand. But half dragged, half led, he followedblindly after his guide, until he found himself wedged into a seat atthe very edge of that roped-off, canvas-padded area. It was a singlelong bench with a narrow board desk, set elbow high, running theentire length in front of it. Peering half fearfully from the cornerof his eye Old Jerry realized that there were at least a full dozenmen beside themselves wedged in before it, and that, like Morehouse, there was a block of paper before each man. 

The awe with which the immensity of the place had stunned him began tolessen a little and allowed him to look around. Wherever he turned asea of faces met him--faces strangely set and strained. Even under thejoviality of those closest to him he saw the tightened sinews of theirjaws. Those further away were blurred by the smoke that rose in anever-thinning cloud, blurred until there was nothing but indistinctblotches of white in the outer circles of seats. 

And when he lifted his head and looked above him, he gasped. They werethere, too, tiny, featureless dots of white, like nothing so much asholes in a black wall, in the smoke-drift that alternately hid andrevealed them. 

Faces of men--faces of men, wherever he turned his head! Facesstrained and tense as they waited. That terrible tensity got under hisskin after a while; it crept in upon him until his spine crawled alittle, as if from cold. It was quiet, too; oddly quiet in spite ofthe dull mumble that rose from thousands of throats. 

Twice that hush was broken--twice when men laden with pails of water, and bottles and sponges, and thick white towels crowded through theropes in front of him. Then the whole house was swept by a prematurestorm of hand-clapping for the men who, stripped save for the flatshoes upon their feet and the trunks about their hips, followed theminto the ring. 

"Preliminary!" Morehouse had said, and there had been something ofdisinterested contempt in his voice. Old Jerry felt, too, the entiregreat crowd's disinterested, good-natured tolerance. They were waitingfor something else. 

Twice Morehouse left his place at the long board desk and wended hisway off through the maze of aisles. The second time he returned, afterthe third match had been finished, Old Jerry caught sight of his facewhile he was a long way off--and Old Jerry's breath caught in histhroat. His plump cheeks were pale when he crowded back into hisplace. The old man leaned nearer and tried to ask a question and hisdry tongue refused. The plump reporter nodded his head. 

Again the men came with their bottles of water--their pails--theirtowels and sponges. There was a third man who slipped agilely into thenearest corner. Old Jerry saw him turn once and nod reassuringly, hethought, at Morehouse. The little mail carrier did not know him;everybody else within a radius of yards had apparently recognized him, but he could not take his eyes off that lean, hard face. There was akind of satanic, methodical deadliness in Hogarty's directions to theother two men inside the ropes. 

Even while he was staring at him, fascinated, that hand-clappingstormed up again, and then swelled to a hoarse roar that wenthammering to the roof. A figure passed Old Jerry, so close that thelong robe which wrapped him brushed his knee. When Hogarty hadstripped the robe away and the figure went on--on up through theropes--he recognized him. 

As Young Denny seated himself in the corner just above them Morehousethrew out his arm and forced Old Jerry back into his seat. Then thelittle man remembered and shrank back, but his eyes glowed. He forgotto watch for the coming of the other in dumb amaze at the wide expanseof the boy's shoulders that rose white as the narrow cloth thatencircled his hips. Dazed, he listened to them shouting the name bywhich they knew him--"The Pilgrim"--and he did not turn away until JedConway was in the ring. 

He heard first the cheers that greeted the newcomer--brokenreiterations of "Oh, you Red!" But the same heartiness was not there, nor the volume. When Old Jerry's eyes crept furtively across the ringhe understood the reason. 

It was the same face that he had known before, older and heavier, butthe same. And there was no appeal in that face. It was scant of brow, brutish, supercunning, and the swarthy body that rose above the blackhip-cloth matched the face. Old Jerry's eyes clung to the thick neckthat ran from his ears straight down into his shoulders until anameless dread took him by the throat and made him turn away. 

Back in Denny's corner Hogarty was lacing on the gloves, talkingsoftly in the meantime to the big boy before him. 

"From the tap of the gong, " he was droning. "From the tap of thegong--from the tap of the gong. "

Young Denny nodded, smiled faintly as he rose to his feet to meet theannouncer, who crossed and placed one hand on his shoulder andintroduced him. Again the applause went throbbing to the roof; andagain the echo of it after Jed The Red had in turn stood up in hiscorner. 

The referee called them to the middle of the ring. It was quiet in aninstant--so quiet that Old Jerry's throat ached with it. The announcerlifted his hand. 

"Jed The Red fights at one hundred and ninety-six, " he said, "'ThePilgrim' at one hundred and seventy-two. "

Immediately he turned and dropped through the ropes. His going wasaccompanied by a flurry in each corner as the seconds scuttled afterhim with stools and buckets. 

They faced each other, alone in the ring save for the referee--ThePilgrim and Jed The Red. Then a gong struck. They reached out and eachtouched the glove of the other. 

Old Jerry could not follow it--it came too terribly swift forthat--but he heard the thudding impact of gloves as Denny hurtledforward in that first savage rush. 

"From the gong, " Hogarty had ordered, "from the gong!" The Red, covering and ducking, blocking and swaying beneath the whirlwind ofthat attack, broke and staggered and set himself, only to break again, and retreat, foot by foot, around the ring. The whole house had cometo its feet with the first rush, screaming to a man. Old Jerry, too, was standing up, giddy, dizzy, as he watched Conway weather that firstminute. 

He had no chance to swing; with both hands covering he fought wildlyto stay on his feet; to live through it; to block that right hand thatlashed out again and again and found his face. 

Each time that blow went across it shook him to the soles of his feet;it lifted the cheering of the crowd to a higher, madder key; but evenOld Jerry, eyes a little quicker already, saw that none of those blowslanded flush upon the side of the jaw. 

Conway called to his aid all the ring-generalship of which he wascapable in that opening round. Once that lightening-like fist reachedout and found his mouth. A trickle of blood oozed red from the lipsthat puffed up, almost before the glove came away; once when he hadseen an opening and led for The Pilgrim's own face, that wicked joltcaught him wide open. He ducked his head between his shoulders then. The shock sent him to his knees, but that upraised shoulder saved him. The force of that glancing smash had spent itself before it reachedhis unprotected neck. 

There was no let-up--no lull in the relentless advance. He was on hisfeet again, grim, grasping, reeling, hanging on! And again thatavalanche of destruction enveloped him. 

He fought to drop into a clinch, for one breath's respite, his hugehairy arms slipping hungrily out about Denny's white body, but even ashe snuggled his body close in, that fist lashed up between them andfound his chin again. It straightened him, flung him back. And oncemore, before the certain annihilation of that blow, he ducked his headin between his shoulders. 

Old Jerry heard the crash of the glove against the top of his head; hesaw Conway hurled back into the ropes. But not until seconds later, when he realized that the roar of the crowd had hushed, did he seethat a change had come over the fight. 

Conway was no longer giving ground; he was himself driving in more andmore viciously, for that deadly right hand no longer leaped out tocheck him. Twice just as Denny had rocked him he now jolted his ownright over to The Pilgrim's face. At each blow the boy lashed out withhis left hand. Both blows he missed, and the second time the force ofhis swing whirled him against the barrier. Right and left Conway senthis gloves crashing into his unprotected stomach--right and left!

And then the tap of the gong!

Hogarty was through the ropes with the bell. As Denny dropped upon thestool he stripped the glove from the boy's right hand and examined itwith anxious fingers. The other two were sponging his chest withwater--pumping fresh air into his lungs; but Old Jerry's eyes clung tothe calamity written upon Hogarty's gray features. 

Everybody else seemed to understand what had happened--everybody buthimself. He turned again to the man next him on the bench. Morehouse, too, had been watching the ex-lightweight's deft fingers. 

"Broken, " he groaned. "His right hand is gone. " And after what seemedhours Old Jerry realized that Morehouse was cursing hoarsely. 

In Conway's corner the activity was doubly feverish. The Red laysprawled back against the ropes while they kneaded knotty legs, andshoulders. There was blood on his chin, his lips were cut andmisshapen, but he had weathered that round without serious damage. Watching him Old Jerry saw that he was smiling--snarling confidently. 

Back in Denny's corner they were still working over him, but the wholehouse had sensed the dismay in that little knot of men. Hogarty, gnawing his lip, stopped and whispered once to the boy on the stool, but Young Denny shook his head and held out his hand. He laced thegloves back on them, over the purple, puffy knuckles. 

And then again that cataclysmic bell. 

Just as the first round had started, that second one opened with arush, but this time it was Conway who forced the fighting. Like somegigantic projectile he drove in and caught Denny in his own corner, and beat him back against the standard. Again that thudding right andleft, right and left, into the stomach. And again Old Jerry saw thatleft hand flash out--and miss. 

Just as The Pilgrim had driven him Conway forced Denny around thering, except that the boy was heart-breaking slow in getting away. TheRed stayed with him, beat him back and back, smothered him! With thatdeadly right no longer hunting for his jaw, he fought with nothing tofear, for Young Denny could not find his face even once with thatflashing left swing. 

Before the round was half over The Pilgrim had gone down twice--bodyblows that did little harm; but they were shouting for TheRed--shouting as if from a great distance, from the balconies. 

Again Conway drove him into a corner of the ropes, feinted for thestomach. Then there came that first blow that found his chin. OldJerry saw Denny's body go limp as he crashed his length upon thepadded canvas; he saw him try to rise and heard the house screamingfor him to take the count. 

He rested there for a precious instant, swaying on one knee. But hiseyes were still glazed when he rose, and again Conway, rushing, beatdown that guarding right, and, swinging with all his shoulder weightbehind it, found that same spot and dropped him again. 

Pandemonium broke loose in the upper reaches of the seats, but thesilence of the body of the house was deathlike as he lay withoutstirring. Old Jerry gulped and waited--choked back a sobbing breath ashe saw him start to lift himself once more. Upon his hands and kneesfirst, then upon his knees alone. And then, with eyes shut, hestruggled up, at the count of ten, and shaped up again. 

And Conway beat him down. 

Even the gallery was quiet now. The thud of that stiff-armed jolt wentto every corner of that vast room. And the referee was droning out thecount again. 

"--Five--six--seven----"

Head sagging between his arms, eyes staring and sightless, ThePilgrim groped out and found the ropes. Once more at the end of thetoll he lifted himself--lifted himself by the strength of hisshoulders to his legs that tottered beneath him, and then stepped freeof the ropes. 

That time, before Conway could swing, the gong saved him. 

Again it was Hogarty who was first through the ropes. Effortlessly hestooped and lifted that limp body and carried it across to the stool. They tried to stretch him back against the ropes behind him, and eachtime his head slumped forward over his knees. 

Old Jerry turned toward Morehouse and choked--licked his lips andchoked again. And Morehouse nodded his head dumbly. 

"He--he's gone!" he said. 

Old Jerry sat and stared back at him as though he couldn't understand. He remembered the bit of a red bow in his pocket then; he fumbledinside and found it. He remembered the eyes of the girl who had givenit to him, too, that night when she had knelt at his knees. His oldfingers closed, viselike, upon the fat man's arm. 

"But she told me to give him this, " he mumbled dully. "Why, she--shesaid for me to give him this, when he had _Won_. "

Morehouse stared at the bit of tinseled silk--stared up at Old Jerry'sface and back again. And then he leaned over suddenly and picked itup. The next moment he was crowding out from behind the desk--wasclimbing into the ring. 

Old Jerry saw him fling fiercely tense words into Hogarty's face, andHogarty stood back. He knelt before the slack body on the stool andtried to raise the head; he held the bit of bright web before him, butthere was no recognition in Denny's eyes. And the old man heard theplump reporter's words, sob-like with excitement:

"She sent it, " he hammered at those deaf ears. "She sent it--she sentit--silk--a little bow of red silk!"

Then the whole vast house saw the change that came over that limpform. They saw the slack shoulders begin to go back; saw thedead-white face come up; they saw those sick eyes beginning to clear. And The Pilgrim smiled a little--smiled into Morehouse's face. 

"Silk, " he repeated softly. "Silk!" and then, as if it had all comeback at once: "Silk--next to her skin!"

And they called it a miracle--that recovery. They called it a miracleof the mind over a body already beaten beyond endurance. For in thescant thirty seconds which were left, while the boy lay back with themworking desperately above him, it was almost possible to see thestrength ebbing back into his veins. They dashed water upon his head, inverted bottles of it into his face, and emptied it from his eyes, but during that long half minute the vague smile never left hislips--nor his eyes the face of Conway across from him. 

And he went to meet The Red when the gong called to them again. Hewent to meet him--smiling!

The bell seemed to pick him up and drop him in the middle of the ring. Set for the shock he stopped Conway's hurtling attack. And when TheRed swung he tightened, took the blow flush on the side of the face, and only rocked a little. 

Conway's chin seemed to lift to receive the blow which he startedthen from the waist. That right hand, flashing up, found it andstraightened The Red back--lifted him to his toes. And while he wasstill in the air The Pilgrim measured and swung. The left glovecaught him flush below the ear; it picked him up and drove himcrashing back into the corner from which he had just come. 

Old Jerry saw them bend over him--saw them pick him up at last andslip him through the ropes. Then he realized that the referee washolding Young Denny's right hand aloft; that Hogarty, with arms abouthim, was holding the boy erect. 

The little mail-carrier heard the ex-lightweight's words, as he edgedin beside Morehouse, against the ropes. 

"A world-beater, " he was screaming above the tumult. "I'll make aworld-beater of you in a year!"

And The Pilgrim, still smiling vaguely, shook his head a little. 

"Maybe, " he answered faintly. "Maybe I'll come back. I don'tknow--yet. But now--now I reckon I'd better be going along home!"

CHAPTER XIX

It was a white night--a night so brilliant that the village lights farbelow in the hollow all but lost their own identity in the radiance ofthat huge, pale moon; so white that the yellow flare of the singlelamp in its bracket, in the back kitchen of the old Bolton place onthe hill seemed shabbily dull by contrast. 

Standing at the window in the dark front room of the house, peeringout from under cupped palms that hid her eyes, Dryad could almost pickout each separate picket of the straggling old fence that bounded thegarden of the little drab cottage across from her. In that searchinglight she could even make out great patches where the rottingsheathing of the house had been torn away, leaving the frameworkbeneath naked and gaunt and bare. 

It was scarcely two months since the day when she had gone herself toJudge Maynard with her offer to sell that unkempt acre or so which hehad fought so long and bitterly to force into the market. And it hadbeen a strange one, too--that interview. His acceptance had beenquick--instantaneously eager--but the girl was still marvelling alittle over his attitude throughout that transaction, whenever hermind turned back to it. 

When she mentioned the mortgage which Young Denny had secured only afew days before, he had seemed to understand almost immediately whyshe had spoken of it, without the explanation which she meant togive. 

Once again she found him a different Judge Maynard from all the othersshe had known, and he had in the years since she could remember, beenmany different men to her imagination. It puzzled her almost as muchas did his opinion upon the value of the old place, which, somehow, she could not bring herself to believe was worth all that he insistedupon paying. But then, too, she did not know either that the town'sgreat man had been riding a-tilt at his own soul, for several days onend, and just as Old Jerry had done, was seizing upon the firstopportunity to salve the wounds resultant. 

And yet this was the first day that the girl had seen him so much asinspect his long-coveted property; the first time she had known him toset foot within the sagging gate since he had placed in her hands thatsum of money which was greater than any she had ever seen before. Under his directions men had commenced clearing away the rankshrubbery that afternoon--commenced to tear down the house itself. 

Time after time since morning she had entered the front room to standand peer out across the valley at this new activity which the Judgehimself was directing with an oddly suppressed lack of his usualviolent gestures. There was something akin to apology in his everymove. 

It brought a little homesick ache into the girl's throat; it set herlips to curving--made her eyes go damp with pity and tenderness forthe little white-haired figure bending over his bench. He had clung sobravely, so stubbornly, to that battered bit of a house; to his gardenwhich he had never realized had long since ceased to be anything but aplot of waist-high bushes and weeds. Once when she recollected thosecountless rows of poignantly wistful faces on the shelves of thatback-room workshop she wondered if she had not been disloyal, afterall. And she had argued it out with herself aloud as she went fromtask to task in that afternoon's gathering twilight. 

"But it was because of her that he stayed, " she reassured herself. "Itwas because of her that he kept it, all these years. And--and so hecouldn't mind--not very much, I think, now that they don't need it anylonger, if I sold it so that I could keep this place--for him!"

They had been long, those hours of waiting. Not a minute of thoseentire two days since Old Jerry's departure but had dragged by onlaggard feet. And yet now, with nightfall of that third day shebecame jealous of every passing minute. She hated to have them pass;dreaded to watch the creeping hands of the clock on the kitchen wallas they drew up, little by little, upon that hour which meant thearrival of the night train in the village. 

One moment she wondered if he would come--wondered and touched drylips with the tip of her tongue. And the very next, when somehow shewas so very, very sure that there was no room for doubt, she evenwondered whether or not he would be glad--glad to find her there. Thegaunt skeleton of a framework showing through the torn sides of JohnAnderson's cottage almost unnerved her whenever that thought came, andsent her out again into the lighted back room. 

"What if he isn't?" she whispered, over and over again. "Why, I--Inever thought of that before, did I? I just thought I had to be herewhen he came. But what if he--isn't glad?"

An hour earlier, when the thought had first come to her, she hadcarried a big, square package out to the table before the kitchenwindow and untied with fluttering fingers the string that bound it. The little scarlet blouse and shimmering skirt, alive with tinselthat glinted under the light, still lay there beside the thin-heeledslippers and filmy silk stockings. She bent over them, pattingthem lovingly with a slim hand, her eyes velvety dark while sheconsidered. 

"Oh, you're pretty--pretty--pretty!" she said in a childishly hushedvoice, "the prettiest things in the world!"

The next instant she straightened to scan soberly the old shiny blackskirt she was wearing, and the darned stockings and cracked shoes. 

"And--and you would help, I think, " she went on musing. "I know youwould, but then--then it wouldn't be _me_. It would be easy for anyone to care for you--almost too easy. I--I think I'll wear them forhim--some other time, maybe--if he wants me to. "

But she turned the very next moment and crossed to the mirror on thewall--that square bit of glass before which Young Denny had stood andstared back into his own eyes and laughed. Oblivious to everythingelse she was critically scanning her own small reflection--great, tip-tilted eyes, violet in the shadow, and then cheeks and pointedchin--until, even in spite of her preoccupation, she became aware ofthe hungry tremulousness of the mouth of that reflected image--untilthe hoarse shriek of an engine's whistle leaped across the valley andbrought her up sharp, her breath going in one long, quavering gaspbetween wide lips. 

It was that moment toward which she had been straining every hour ofthose two days; the one from which she had been shrinking every minuteof those last two hours since dark. She hesitated a second, headthrown to one side, listening; she darted into that dark front roomand pressed her face to the cold pane, and again that warning notecame shrilling across the quiet from the far side of town. 

There in the darkness, a hand on either side of the frame holding herleaning weight, she stood and waited. Below her the house roofs laylike patches of jet against the moon-brightness. She stood and watchedits whole length, and no darker figure crept into relief against itslighter streak of background. Minutes after she knew that he had hadtime to come, and more, she still clung there, staring wide-eyed, villageward. 

It wasn't a recollection of that half dismantled wreck of a houseunder the opposite ridge that finally drew her dry-lipped gaze fromthe road; she did not even think of it that moment. It was simplybecause she couldn't watch any longer--not even for a minute ortwo--that her eyes finally fluttered that way. But when she did turnthere was a bigger, darker blot there against the leaning picketfence--a big-shouldered figure that had moved slowly forward until itstood full in front of the sagging gate. 

And even as she watched Denny Bolton swung around from a longcontemplation of that half-torn-down building to peer up at his owndark place on the hill--to peer straight back into the eyes of thegirl whom he could not even see. 

She saw the bewilderment in that big body's poise; even at thatdistance she sensed his dumb, numbed uncomprehension. From bare whitethroat to the mass of tumbled hair that clustered across her foreheadthe blood came storming up into her face; and with the coming of thatwhich set the pulses pounding in her temples and brought anunaccountable ache to her throat, all the doubt which had squired herthat day slipped away. 

Before he had had time to turn back again she had flown on mad feetinto the kitchen, swept the lamp from its bracket on the wall withheedless haste and raced back to that front window. And she placed itthere behind a half-drawn shade--that old signal which they had agreedupon without one spoken word, years back. 

Crouching in the semi-gloom behind the lamp she watched. 

He stepped forward a pace and stopped; lifted one hand slowly, asthough he did not believe what he saw. Bareheaded he waited an instantafter that arm went back to his side. When he swung around anddisappeared into the head of the path that led from the gate into theblack shadow of the thicket in the valley's pit she lifted both arms, too, and stood poised there a moment, slender and straight and vividlyunwavering as the lamp-flame itself, before she wheeled and ran. 

It was dark in the thick of the underbrush; dark and velvety quiet, save for the little moon-lit patch of a clearing where he waited. Hestood there in the middle of that spot of light and heard her cominglong before she reached him--long before he could see her he heard herscurrying feet and the whip of bushes against her skirt. 

But when she burst through the fringe of brush he had no time to moveor speak, or more than lift his arms before her swift rush carried herto him. When her hands flashed up about his neck and her damp mouthwent searching softly across his face and he strained her nearer andeven nearer to him, he felt her slim body quivering just as it hadtrembled that other night when she had raced across the valley tohim--the night when Judge Maynard's invitation had failed to come. After a time he made out the words that were tumbling from her lips, all incoherent with half hysterical bits of sobs, and he realized, too, that her words were like that of that other night. 

"Denny--Denny, " she murmured, her small, gold-crowned head buried inhis shoulder. "I'm here--I've come--just as soon as I could; Oh, I'vebeen afraid! I knew you'd come, too--I knew you would tonight! I wassure of it--even when I was sure that you wouldn't. "

For a long time he was silent, because dry lips refused to frame thewords he would have spoken. Minutes he stood and held her against himuntil the rise and fall of her narrow shoulders grew quieter, beforehe lifted one hand and held her damp face away, that he might lookinto it. And gazing back at him, in spite of all the wordless wonderof her which she saw glowing in his eyes, she read, too, the graveperplexity of him. 

"Why--you--you must have known I'd come, " he said, his voiceponderously grave. "I--I told you so. I left word for you that I wouldbe back--as soon as I could come. "

He felt her slim body slacken--saw the lightning change flash over herface which always heralded that bewildering swift change of mood. Itwiped out all the tenseness of lip and line. 

There in the white light in spite of the shadows of her lashes whichturned violet eyes to great pools of satin shadow, he caught the flareof mischief behind half-closed lids, before she tilted her head backand laughed softly, with utter joyous abandon straight up into hisface. 

"He--he didn't deliver it, " she stated naively. "It wasn't his faultentirely, though, Denny--although I did give him lots of chances, atfirst anyway. I almost made him tell--but he--he's stubborn. "

She stopped and laughed again--giggled shamelessly as she remembered. But her eyes grew grave once more. 

"I think he didn't quite approve of my attitude, " she explained to himas he bent over her. "He thought I wasn't--sorry enough--to deserve itat first. And then--and then I never gave him any opportunity tospeak. I would have stopped him if he had tried. You--you see, I justwanted to--wait. "

Head bowed she paused a moment before she continued. 

"But--but I sent him to you--two days ago, Denny. I sent somethingthat I asked him to give you--when--when it was over. Didn't you--getit?"

He fumbled in the pocket of his smooth black suit after she haddisengaged herself and dropped to the ground at his feet. With herankles curled up under her she sat in a boyish heap watching him, until he drew out the bit of a spangled crimson bow and held it outbefore him in the palm of one big hand. Then he swung down to theground beside her. 

"I thought it must have been Old Jerry who brought it. I didn't seehim, and no one could remember his name or knew where he had gone whenthey thought to look for him. They--they just described him to me. "

He turned the bow of silk over, touching it almost reverently. 

"Some one gave it to me, " he continued slowly. "I don't know exactlyhow or when. It--it was just put into my hand--when I needed it most. I wasn't sure Old Jerry had brought it, but I knew it came from you, knew it when I didn't--know--much--else!"

She was very, very quiet, content merely in his nearness. Even thenshe didn't understand it--the reason for his going that night, weeksbefore--for the papers which had told her a little had told hernothing of his brain's own reason. The question was on her lips whenher narrow fingers, searching the shadow for his, found that bandagedwrist and knuckles. Almost fiercely she drew that hand up into thelight. From the white cloth her gaze went to the discolored, bruisedpatches on face and chin--the same place where that long, ugly cut hadbeen which dripped blood on the floor the night she had run from himin the dark--went to his face, and back again, limpid with pity. Andshe lifted it impulsively and tucked it under her chin, and held itthere with small hands that trembled a little. 

"Then--then if you haven't seen Old Jerry--why--why you--he couldn'thave told you anything at all yet, about me. "

The words trailed off softly and left the statement hanginginterrogatively in midair. 

Denny nodded his head in the direction of John Anderson's house thathad been. 

"About that?" he asked. 

She nodded her head. And then she told him; she began at the verybeginning and told him everything from that night when she had watchedhim there under cover of the thicket. Once she tried to laugh when sherelated Old Jerry's panic, a week or two later, when he had come tofind her packing in preparation to leave. But her mirth was waveringlyunsteady. And when she tried to explain, too, how she had chanced tobuy up the mortgage on his own bleak house on the hill, her voiceagain became suddenly, diffidently small. 

There was a new, sweet confusion in her refusal to meet his eyes andDenny, reaching out with his bandaged hand, half lifted her and swungher around until she needs must face him. 

"You--you mean you--bought it, yourself?" he marvelled. 

Then, face uplifted, brave-eyed, she went on a little breathlessly. 

"I bought it, myself, " she said, "the week you went away. " And, in amuffled whisper: "Denny, I didn't have faith--not much, at first. ButI meant to be here when you did come, just--just because I thought youmight need me--mighty badly. And waiting is hard, too, when one hasn'tfaith. And I did wait! That was something, wasn't it, Denny?Only--only now, today, I--I think I realized that my own need of youis greater than yours could ever be for me!"

She sat, lips apart, quiet for his answer. 

An odd smile edged the boy's lips at her wistful earnestness. It was atwisted little smile which might have been born of the pain ofstinging lids and dryer, aching throat. He could not have spoken atthat moment had he tried. Instead he lifted her bodily and drew herhuddled little figure into his arms. It was his first face to faceglimpse of the wonder of woman. 

But he knew now something which she had only sensed; he knew that thebig, lonesome, bewildered boy whom she had tried to comfort in hisbitterness that other night when she had hidden her own hurtdisappointment with the white square card within her breast, had comeback all man. 

He looked down at her--marvelled at her very littleness as though itwere a thing he had never known before. 

"And--and you still--would stay?" he managed to ask, at last. "You'dstay--even if it did mean being like them, " he inclined his headtoward the distant village, "like them, old and wrinkled and worn-out, before they have half lived their lives?"

She nodded her head vehemently against his coat. He felt her thin armstighten and tighten about him. 

"I'll stay, " she repeated after him in a childishly small voice. "You--you see, I _know_ what it is now to be alone, even just for aweek or two. I think I'll stay, please!"

There had been a bit of a teasing lilt in her half smothered words. Itdisappeared now. 

"I--I'd be pretty lonesome, all the rest of my life--man--if Ididn't!"

And long afterward she lifted her head from his arm and blinked at himfrom sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes. 

"Why, Denny?" she asked in drowsy curiosity. "Why did you go--why, really? Don't you realize that you haven't told me even yet?"

He rose and lifted her to her feet, but that did not cover the slowflush that stained his face--the old, vaguely embarrassed flush thatshe knew so well. He groped awkwardly for words while he stared againat the bit of silk in his hand, before his searching fingers found thethick, crisp packet that had lain with it in his pocket. 

"The Pilgrim's share of the receipts amounted to $12, 000, " had beenthe tale of Morehouse's succinct last paragraph. 

Then, "It--took me almost two months to save fifteen dollars, " YoungDenny explained in painful self-consciousness. 

She understood. She remembered the scarlet blouse and shimmering skirtwith its dots of tinsel, and the stockings and slim-heeled slippers. Her fingers touched his chin--the barest ghost of a caressingcontact. 

"Denny--Denny, " she murmured, "I told you that night that you didn'tunderstand. And yet--and yet I'm glad that you couldn't. It was forme--you went. Don't you--didn't you know it was--just because ofyou--that I wanted them--at--all?"

 * * * * *

The circle in the Boltonwood tavern convened early that night, andlong after hope had all but died a death of stagnation the regularsstuck stubbornly to their places about the cheerlessly cold, fat-bellied stove. 

It was a session extraordinary, for even Dave Shepard, the patriarchof the circle itself, could not recall an occasion when they hadforegathered there in such fashion so long after the last spring snowhad surrendered to summer. Yet it was largely mild-voiced Dave'sdoing--this silent, sober gathering. 

For he alone of all of them had heeded Old Jerry's parting admonitionthat night, weeks before, when the servant of the Gov'mint had turnedfrom his shrill defiance of the Judge to whip their whole ranks withscorn. Since then Dave had been following the papers with faithful andpainstaking care--not merely the political news of the day whichinvariably furnished the key for each night's debate--but searchingevery inch of type, down to the last inconsequential advertisement. And he had been rewarded; he had penetrated, with the aid of thatsmall picture inset at the column-head, the disguise of the colorfulsobriquet which Morehouse had fastened upon Young Denny Bolton. Morethan that, he had been reading for weeks each step in that campaign ofpublicity which had so harrowed Old Jerry's peace of mind--and somehowhe had kept it religiously to himself. 

Not until two days before, when Old Jerry's desertion from duty hadbecome a town-wide sensation had he opened his mouth. The route backin the hills went mailless that day, and for that reason there weremore than enough papers to go around when he finally gave the oldguard which was waiting in vain for Old Jerry's appearance upon thetop step of the post-office, the benefits of his wider reading. 

There had been a fierce factional debate raging when he came uplate to take his unobtrusive place upon the sidewalk, but even beforehe added his voice to the din those who argued that the oldmail-carrier's disappearance could be in no way connected with thatof Young Denny Bolton, who had gone the way of all the others ofhis line, were in a hopeless minority. 

Their timidest member's announcement stunned them all to silence--leftthem hushed and speechless--not for an hour or two, but for the daysthat followed as well. Even the red-headlined account which had comewith that morning's batch of news of Young Denny's victory and thefall of Jed The Red, whom they had championed under the Judge's ableleadership, failed to stir up any really bitter wrangle. 

They sat in an apathetic circle, waiting for Old Jerry to come. 

But no one, not even Morehouse, knew when Old Jerry disappeared thatnight after Jed Conway had come hurtling from his corner, only to liftand whirl and go crashing back before the impact of The Pilgrim'sleaping gloves. At first the plump newspaper man believed that thesurging, shouting wave of humanity which had broken comber-like overthe ropes to hail a newer favorite had separated the little, bird-faced man from him. Only a recollection of those vice-likefingers clinging to his arm a moment before made that probability seemunbelievable. 

It was a long time before The Pilgrim's brain had again become clearenough to grasp the meaning of the questions which Morehouse put tohim, but Denny did not know even as much as did the round-facedreporter himself. He only recognized the description of the shrillvoiced, beady-eyed mail carrier. 

To Old Jerry belonged the only comprehensive explanation for hissudden withdrawal from the scene, just at that moment when his ownshare in it might have been not inconsequential. And more than that, his resolution to keep it strictly and privately his own grew firmerand firmer, the more thought he gave to it. 

In those hours which intervened between the impulse which had resultedin his modest retreat from Morehouse's side, under cover of thecrowd's wild demonstration, and the next morning when he boarded thetrain which was to carry him back to the hills, after a cautiousreconnaissance that finally located Denny in the coach ahead of him, he once or twice sought to analyze his actions for an explanation lessderogatory to his own self-respect. 

"They wan't no real sense ner reason in my hangin' around, jestgittin' under foot, " he stated thoughtfully. "I done about all I wascalled on to do, didn't I? Why, I reckon when all's said and done, Ijest about won that fight myself! For if I hadn't a-come he wouldn'tnever a-got that ribbon. And Godfrey, but didn't that wake him!"

There was more than a little satisfaction to be gained in viewinghimself in that light. With less to occupy his mind and unlimitedleisure for elaboration it could have served as the entire day's themefor thought. But so far as explaining his almost panic haste to getaway the reasoning was palpably unsatisfactory--so unsatisfactory thathe cringed guiltily behind the back of the seat in front of himwhenever anyone entered the front door of the car. 

He gave quite the entire day to the problem and long before night hidthe flying fences outside his window he decided that eventually therecould be only one way out of it. Sooner or later he had to face theissue: he had to tell Young Denny that he had betrayed his trust. Eventhat damp wad of bills which the boy had pressed into his hand, thatnight before he left, still burned within his coat. 

Once or twice he rose, during the return journey and advanced withforced jauntiness as far as the door of the car ahead. But he alwaysstopped there, after a moment's uneasy contemplation of Denny's back, turned a little sadly to the water-cooler, and returned slowly andunenthusiastically to his seat. Twice when it was necessary to changetrains he made the transfer with a lightning precision that would havedone honor to any prestidigitator. And when, hours after nightfall, the train came to a groaning standstill before Boltonwood's desertedstation shed he waited his opportunity and dropped off in the dark--onthe wrong side of the track!

Denny had already become a dark blur ahead of him when he, too, turnedin and took the long road toward town. 

Old Jerry followed the big-shouldered figure that night with heavilylagging feet--he followed heavy in spirit and bereft of hope. He wasstill behind him when Denny finally paused before the sagging gate ofJohn Anderson's half-stripped house. Then, watching the boy's dumblack of understanding, the enormity of the whole horrible complicationdawned upon him for the first time. He had forgotten Dryad Anderson'sgoing--forgotten that the house upon the ridge was no longer theproperty of the man who had entrusted it to him. 

When the light behind that half-drawn shade flared up, far across onthe crest of the opposite hill, and Young Denny wheeled to plunge intothe black mouth of the path that led deeper into the valley, he toostarted swiftly forward. He swept off in desperate haste up the longhill road that led to the Bolton homestead. 

The light was still there in that front room when he poked atentatively inquiring head in at the open door; he paused in adull-eyed examination of the silken garments draped over the table topin the kitchen after he had roamed vaguely through the silent house. But he was too tired in mind to give them much attention just then. 

Outside, buried in the shadow of Young Denny's squat, unpainted barn, he still waited doggedly--he waited ages and ages, a lifetime ofapprehension. And then he saw them coming toward him, up out of theshadow of the valley into the moonlight that bathed the hill insilver. 

They paused and stood there--stood and stared out across the valley atJudge Maynard's great box of a house on the hill and that bit of awedge-shaped acre of ruin that clung like an unsightly burr to the hemof his immaculate pastures. 

Slender and boy-like in her little blouse and tight, short skirt thegirl was half-hidden in the hollow of his shoulder. Once, watchingwith his head cocked pertly, sparrowlike, on one side, the old man'seyes went to the white-bandaged knuckles of Denny's right hand; oncewhile he waited Old Jerry saw her lift her face--saw the big, shoulder-heavy figure fold her in his arms and bend and touch theglory of her hair with his lips while she clung to him, before sheturned and went slowly toward the open kitchen door. 

Then he started. He shrank farther back into the shadow and edged anoiseless way around the building. But with the tavern lightsbeckoning to him he waited an introspective moment or two. 

"Godfrey 'Lisha, " he sighed thunderously, "but that takes a load offenmy mind!"

And he ruminated. 

"But what's the use of my tryin' to explain now? What's the use--whenthey ain't nothing to explain! It's all come out all right, ain't it?Well, then, hedn't I jest as well save my breath?"

He straightened his thin shoulders and stretched his arms. 

"It couldn't a-been handled much neater, either, " that one-sidedconversation went on, "not anyway you look at it. I always did thinkthat the best thing to do in them matters was to kinda let 'em taketheir own course. And now--now I guess I'll be gittin' along down!"

 * * * * *

Before he opened the door of the Tavern office a scant half hourlater, Denny Bolton stopped there on the steps a moment and, his handon the latch, listened to the thin, falsetto voice that came fromwithin. A slow smile crept up and wrinkled the corners of the boy'seyes after a while when he had caught the drift of those stridentwords. 

They had been waiting for him--the regulars. They had been waiting forhim longer than Old Jerry knew. In the chair that had been thethrone-seat of the town's great man the servant of the Gov'mint satand faced his loyal circle. 

He had reached his climax--had hammered it home. Now he was roundingout his conclusion for those who hung, hungry-eyed, upon hiseloquence. 

"I ain't begun to do it jestice yet, " he apologized. "I ain't more'njest teched on a good many things that needs to be gone into atrifle. Jest a trifle! It'll take weeks and weeks to do that. Butas I was a-sayin'--I got there! I got there just when I was neededalmighty bad. I ain't done that part of it jestice--but you'll see itall in the papers in a day or two--Sunday supplement, maybe--andpictures--and colors, too, I reckon!"

THE END

GROSSET & DUNLAP'S

DRAMATIZED NOVELS

THE KIND THAT ARE MAKING THEATRICAL HISTORY

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list. 

WITHIN THE LAW. By Bayard Veiller & Marvin Dana. 

Illustrated by Wm. Charles Cooke. 

This is a novelization of the immensely successful play which ran for twoyears in New York and Chicago. 

The plot of this powerful novel is of a young woman's revenge directedagainst her employer who allowed her to be sent to prison for three yearson a charge of theft, of which she was innocent. 

WHAT HAPPENED TO MARY. By Robert Carlton Brown. 

Illustrated with scenes from the play. 

This is a narrative of a young and innocent country girl who is suddenlythrown into the very heart of New York, "the land of her dreams, " whereshe is exposed to all sorts of temptations and dangers. 

The story of Mary is being told in moving pictures and played in theatresall over the world. 

THE RETURN OF PETER GRIMM. By David Belasco. 

Illustrated by John Rae. 

This is a novelization of the popular play in which David Warfield, as OldPeter Grimm, scored such a remarkable success. 

The story is spectacular and extremely pathetic but withal, powerful, bothas a book and as a play. 

THE GARDEN OF ALLAH. By Robert Hichens. 

This novel is an intense, glowing epic of the great desert, sunlitbarbaric, with its marvelous atmosphere of vastness and loneliness. 

It is a book of rapturous beauty, vivid in word painting. The play hasbeen staged with magnificent cast and gorgeous properties. 

BEN HUR. A Tale of the Christ. By General Lew Wallace. 

The whole world has placed this famous Religious-Historical Romance on aheight of pre-eminence which no other novel of its time has reached. Theclashing of rivalry and the deepest human passions, the perfectreproduction of brilliant Roman life, and the tense, fierce atmosphere ofthe arena have kept their deep fascination. A tremendous dramatic success. 

BOUGHT AND PAID FOR. By George Broadhurst and Arthur Hornblow. 

Illustrated with scenes from the play. 

A stupendous arraignment of modern marriage which has created an intereston the stage that is almost unparalleled. The scenes are laid in New York, and deal with conditions among both the rich and poor. 

The interest of the story turns on the day-by-day developments which showthe young wife the price she has paid. 

Ask for complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction

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JOHN FOX, JR'S. 

STORIES OF THE KENTUCKY MOUNTAINS

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list. 

THE TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE. 

Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. 

The "lonesome pine" from which the story takes its name was a tall treethat stood in solitary splendor on a mountain top. The fame of the pinelured a young engineer through Kentucky to catch the trail, and when hefinally climbed to its shelter he found not only the pine but thefoot-prints of a girl. And the girl proved to be lovely, piquant, and thetrail of these girlish foot-prints led the young engineer a madder chasethan "the trail of the lonesome pine. "

THE LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME

Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. 

This is a story of Kentucky, in a settlement known as "Kingdom Come. " Itis a life rude, semi-barbarous; but natural and honest, from which oftensprings the flower of civilization. 

"Chad, " the "little shepherd" did not know who he was nor whence hecame--he had just wandered from door to door since early childhood, seeking shelter with kindly mountaineers who gladly fathered and motheredthis waif about whom there was such a mystery--a charming waif, by theway, who could play the banjo better than anyone else in the mountains. 

A KNIGHT OF THE CUMBERLAND. 

Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. 

The scenes are laid along the waters of the Cumberland, the lair ofmoonshiner and feudsman. The knight is a moonshiner's son, and the heroinea beautiful girl perversely christened "The Blight. " Two impetuous youngSoutherners fall under the spell of "The Blight's" charms and she learnswhat a large part jealousy and pistols have in the love making of themountaineers. 

Included in this volume is "Hell fer-Sartain" and other stories, some ofMr. Fox's most entertaining Cumberland valley narratives. 

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STORIES OF RARE CHARM BY

GENE STRATTON-PORTER

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap's list. 

THE HARVESTER. 

Illustrated by W. L. Jacobs

"The Harvester, " David Langston, is a man of the woods and fields, whodraws his living from the prodigal hand of Mother Nature herself. If thebook had nothing in it but the splendid figure of this man, with his suregrip on life, his superb optimism, and his almost miraculous knowledge ofnature secrets, it would be notable. But when the Girl comes to his"Medicine Woods, " and the Harvester's whole sound, healthy, large outdoorbeing realizes that this is the highest point of life which has come tohim--there begins a romance, troubled and interrupted, yet of the rarestidyllic quality. 

FRECKLES. 

Decorations by E. Stetson Crawford

Freckles is a nameless waif when the tale opens, but the way in which hetakes hold of life; the nature friendships he forms in the greatLimberlost Swamp; the manner in which everyone who meets him succumbs tothe charm of his engaging personality; and his love-story with "The Angel"are full of real sentiment. 

A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST. 

Illustrated by Wladyslaw T. Brenda. 

The story of a girl of the Michigan woods; a buoyant, lovable type of theself-reliant American. Her philosophy is one of love and kindness towardsall things; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from barren and unpromisingsurroundings those rewards of high courage. 

It is an inspiring story of a life worth while and the rich beauties ofthe out-of-doors are strewn through all its pages. 

AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW. 

Illustrations in colors by Oliver Kemp. Design and decorations by RalphFletcher Seymour. 

The scene of this charming, idyllic love story is laid in Central Indiana. The story is one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love;the friendship that gives freely without return, and the love that seeksfirst the happiness of the object. The novel is brimful of the mostbeautiful word painting of nature, and its pathos and tender sentimentwill endear it to all. 

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STORIES OF WESTERN LIFE

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap's list. 

RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE, By Zane Grey. 

Illustrated by Douglas Duer. 

In this picturesque romance of Utah, of some forty years ago, we arepermitted to see the unscrupulous methods employed by the invisible handof the Mormon Church to break the will of those refusing to conform to itsrule. 

FRIAR TUCK, By Robert Alexander Wason. 

Illustrated by Stanley L. Wood. 

Happy Hawkins tells us, in his humorous way, how Friar Tuck lived amongthe Cowboys, how he adjusted their quarrels and love affairs and how hefought with them, and for them when occasion required. 

THE SKY PILOT, By Ralph Connor. 

Illustrated by Louis Rhead. 

There is no novel, dealing with the rough existence of cowboys, socharming in the telling, abounding as it does with the freshest and thetruest pathos. 

THE EMIGRANT TRAIL, By Geraldine Bonner. 

Colored frontispiece by John Rae. 

The book relates the adventures of a party on its overland pilgrimage, andthe birth and growth of the absorbing love of two strong men for acharming heroine. 

THE BOSS OF WIND RIVER, By A. M. Chisholm. 

Illustrated by Frank Tenney Johnson. 

This is a strong, virile novel with the lumber industry for its centraltheme and a love story full of interest as a sort of subplot. 

A PRAIRIE COURTSHIP, By Harold Bindloss. 

A story of Canadian prairies in which the hero is stirred, through theinfluence of his love for a woman, to settle down to the heroic businessof pioneer farming. 

JOYCE OF THE NORTH WOODS, By Harriet T. Comstock. 

Illustrated by John Cassel. 

A story of the deep woods that shows the power of love at work among itsprimitive dwellers. It is a tensely moving study of the human heart andits aspirations that unfolds itself through thrilling situations anddramatic developments. 

Ask for a complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction

Grosset & Dunlap, 526 West 26th St. , New York