CHAPTER VIII.An Old Friend.

“Are you dancing?” Courtney inquired.

“Really, Ted, it’s too warm, thank you; and Mr. Bard and I will be leaving soon, anyhow.”

“Indeed!” he said, with a quick side-glance in Mauney’s direction. Then he turned towards him. “Staying in town long, Mr. Bard, may I ask?”

“Quite a little while,” said Mauney. “I’m billed to appear every morning at nine—at the collegiate, in the role of plain teacher.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Courtney with evident surprise. “Teacher! Oh, indeed! I don’t envy you the job of trying to pound knowledge into some of the local skulls, but I hope you like the town.”

“So far I’ve found it unusually interesting,” replied Mauney, with a twinkle of mischievous light in his eyes. “I think the word ‘variegated’ would describe my first impressions—some skulls much thicker than others, as you can readily imagine.”

“Oh, yes, yes, of course,” said Courtney, a trifle puzzled at Mauney’s apparent innuendo. “I’m damned if I quite grasp what you mean, though.”

“Well, you see, it’s like this,” smiled Mauney, with sudden decision to soften his own manner to the meaningless vapidity of Courtney’s, “I’ve really been here only one day as yet and, no matter how shrewd an observerI was, one could hardly expect me to know the place, could one?”

“Of course not,” readily admitted Courtney, with a glance toward Freda, who was quite preoccupied. “Well, Freda,” he said, turning to leave, “I trust you will be more careful about speeding in future. I hear Pinkerton’s outfit getting into their stride; so, cheerio!” With a little wave of his hand he left, without again looking at Mauney.

Mauney found a boarding-house on Church Street, directly opposite the collegiate institute, a plain unit, in a plain brick terrace set close to the sidewalk. He engaged the down-stairs front room, which looked directly upon the thoroughfare by a wide window. He liked the room chiefly because of this window, for it afforded a generous view of the street and promised an excellent point of vantage. The landlady was a gigantic Irish woman whose husband worked in a foundry. It seemed to Mauney that their occupations ought to have been interchanged, for the husband was a puny, sickly fellow, thoroughly subdued by his wife’s temper. He had a way of moving quietly and guiltily through the house, as if expecting her to pounce on his back at any moment.

The first morning of Mauney’s occupancy, Mrs. Hudson came into his room, gowned in her collarless, blue, print dress, broom in hand. As school would not open for a day or two, Mauney was engaged in arranging his books.

“Oh! and it’s a scholar ye are, is it?” she asked.

“Teacher, Mrs. Hudson,” he explained.

“Indade, an’ sure I t’ought, all the time, ye were a commarcial trovler,” she said, surveying the volumeshe was taking from his trunk. “I knew ye were a sangle mon. But I t’ought ye were a commarcial trovler. An’ which schule, might I be asking, are ye goin’ to be teaching at?”

“That one,” he said, pointing through the window at the grey stone mass across the street.

“Poor mon,” she sighed, as books still continued to come forth from the trunk. “It must keep ye busy. I’m glad ye’re a quiet mon.”

“Do I look quiet?” laughed Mauney.

“Ay, ye do thot, an’ imogine me thinkin’ ye were a commarcial trovler, now. Well, the saints rest ye, when are ye ging to rade all thim books?”

“In the evenings, I suppose.”

“Imogine, now. Poor mon! Have ye no friends in town?”

“Oh, yes, a few.”

“That’s a good thing,” she said, starting towards the hall, “and ye’ll not be throubled with noise, onyway. ’Tis a very, very quiet house. An’ I’m afther thinking ye’ll need plenty o’ quietness for to read so mony books. Poor mon, an’ me thinkin’ ye were a commarcial trovler. Imagine, now!”

After she had gone, Mauney stood, idly watching an old man in a faded navy-blue suit, as he made his way slowly up the street. The senile curve of his figure was accentuated by a long, white beard, that flopped in front of his body as he jogged along. With each determined, but feeble, step he struck the pavement a sharp rap with his thick, metal-tipped cane. At regular intervals of about ten paces he invariably paused and turned slowly about to gaze backward, as though he were proudly calculating the extent of his efforts.

Mauney hardly saw the old fellow. His thoughts were running busily along with plans for his work soon to begin. Then he suddenly thought of Freda and his bosom burned, while the day seemed to expand and brighten. He had dreamed of her in the night, and she came upon his consciousness now with that unspeakable dearness, which dreams, though half-forgotten, lend to our waking thoughts. Her dark eyes were before him like infinite comfort; the sound of her voice formed a music in his mind. He wanted nothing more than Freda. He prayed that heaven would refuse him all other gifts, but her. When he opened his eyes slowly, there was the old man just in the act of turning to gaze back along the sultry street.

From the other edge of the window he espied the quicker figure of Henry Dover, the collegiate principal, on his way to his office. Although dressed in a grey, flannel suit, and a straw hat, his appearance was not lightsome. Of medium height, he walked with a pensive inclination of his head, but with an energetic and measured stride, while his arms, curved at the elbows, swung rhythmically beside him. Here was a careful, strong, man, thoroughly accustomed to the harness of office. Henry Dover, dressed in a Prussian general’s uniform, and following in the cortege of a field-marshal’s funeral, would perform the part with great credit.

Later in the morning, as Mauney sat idly by the window, he was conscious that the room was all at once illuminated by reflected sunlight. He looked up quickly at the figure who was passing and saw, under the shadow of her hat, and at a very near view, the faceof Jean Byrne. With an instinctive turn of her head she at once recognized him, hesitated and then stopped.

“Mauney Bard! Where did you come from?”

“Wait till I get my hat,” replied Mauney.

“Well, Mrs. Poynton,” he said as he joined her on the street and shook hands with her. “It’s a great pleasure to see such an old friend, again.”

“The same to you,” she said, as they walked along, and favored him with the close scrutiny permitted to old friends on meeting. “You’ve changed some way or other, Mauney, but I’d know you anywhere. Your hair has lost its brilliance, and you look like a man of affairs. After reading your book I didn’t know what you’d be like. I heard a few days ago that you were going to teach here; so you see you’ve taken my advice after all.”

Her voice and manner were the same, although Mauney fancied she was more animated, an impression possibly due to her extravagant, but tasteful, costume.

“I’ve nearly lost track of you,” he admitted. “I’d like to talk over old times. Are you on your way down town?”

“Just to the post office. Will you come along?”

“Thank you,” he nodded. “Where do you live, may I ask?”

“Just a little way up Church Street, the second house past the Baptist Church. We used to live on Queen Street East, but when Charles went out West this spring—by the way, did you know that the doctor had left Lockwood?”

“No, I hadn’t heard that.”

“He found the town so conservative and stodgy that he thought he’d prefer things out there, and I felt thatuntil he got settled I’d better stay here with mother. She’s getting old, you know, and is practically an invalid with rheumatism.”

As they were coming out of the post office, Mauney noticed one of the middle-aged women whom he had met the previous evening at the club, sitting in a motor car at the curb. She bowed affably, then glanced quickly at Mrs. Poynton.

“Do you know Mrs. Squires?” Jean asked as they walked along.

“Yes, met her only last night.”

Before leaving Jean at her home he accepted her invitation to come up for dinner that evening. Her mother was then discovered to be a woman prematurely aged by a morose and taciturn disposition, which seemed to account for her daughter’s surprising animation. Jean made good to Mauney what her mother’s manner lacked in friendliness. And, indeed, the home was all in distinct contrast with the impression of affluence which Jean’s street appearance had so unquestionably made.

Dinner finished, Mrs. Byrne at once settled herself in a chair by a western window, and, adjusting a second pair of glasses, reached a Bible from the window-sill. Mauney thought this might herald a session of family worship, and was relieved when his hostess led him to the parlor. With a Bohemian grace that was foreign to his conception of his former country-school teacher, Jean opened for him a silver box of cigarettes, and selecting one for herself pressed it neatly into a pearl holder.

“Times have changed, since Lantern Marsh days,”she said, smiling gently, “and I hope you have learned by this time to excuse women for their little follies.”

“I am free and easy,” laughed Mauney. “I’ve been living for the last few years in a house where cigarette-smoke was the prevailing perfume.”

“And about five years on Queen Street East,” Jean said, “have made these things almost essential to me. I started smoking at bridges in self-defence, and now my meals don’t digest without them. Charles always hated me to smoke. But I presume he realized the environment was to blame.”

For perhaps an hour they talked of Beulah and its inhabitants, of deaths and marriages, of careers which had justified their early promise, and of others which had not. Mauney briefly outlined his college experiences, but noticed that she said almost nothing about her own married life. All girlishness had departed from her face, and gone, too, was a certain carelessness of appearance which had formerly been quite refreshing. She was now, as nearly as he could judge, possessed of a dormant bitterness, never expressed, but as ugly as she was attractive. He found himself not a little curious to learn her philosophy, but even now he felt the same unexplainable distaste in her presence as he had felt during a certain evening drive, seven years ago. To be sure Jean had lost the directness which had then displeased him. She had become more subtle, more complex. But in this quiet parlor a mental hand was reaching towards him with the same emotional intent.

“Well,” she said at length, “you’re a sly fox. You’ve told me all about your life just as if there hadn’t beena single woman in it. Now, please confess, as I am desperately curious.”

For some reason Mauney preserved a guarded attitude. The last thing he could have discussed, or even mentioned, was his love for Freda MacDowell.

“I am not much of a ladies’ man,” he smiled. “I’ve been told that I was a woman-hater. I guess my early upbringing was against me that way.”

He soon left the house, feeling that old friendships did not necessarily improve with years, and that he himself, free and easy as he might be, was not attracted by a home where Bible-reading and cigarette-smoking were indulged by different members at the same time. It was not artistic. As for Jean, she was not an admirable person, nor even winning. He felt that he did not care if they should never meet again.

During the first week of September Freda saw nothing of Mauney. Each day she kept expecting that he would either call or telephone. She tried to explain his delinquency by the excuse of work; but no excuse could justify it, especially when she might be returning to Merlton at the end of the month. Her impatience increased daily. She was remaining quietly at home, assisting in the house work, and systematically declining invitations. She was prompted on Saturday morning to telephone him and find out what was the matter. On second thought she decided not to make any overtures whatever. She had planned going to the market.

That was one thing about Lockwood that Freda loved. Saturday morning, she insisted on going to market for her mother. Long before sunrise the quietness of Queen Street was disturbed by the creaking wheels of farmers’ wagons coming into town, and by eight o’clock River Street Square presented a varied assembly of picturesque conveyances, each backed accurately to the cement walk that surrounded the enclosure. In the centre of the square stood a fountain, well covered by a generous canopy of faded maroon canvas, under which the farmers’ horses were allowedto stand while their owners presided, for three busy hours, beside their wagon-loads of produce.

It was a turbulent market, invaded with throngs of bargain-seeking citizens, and defended by shrewd, rustic salesmen, who withheld all bargains until the last possible moment. On certain days—no one knew why—a spirit of great conservatism reigned, when the farmers ill-temperedly refused to lower prices, and the customers with equal stubbornness, refused to buy. At other times a happier contact prevailed, and citizens captured what seemed stupendous bargains until, on walking further along the rows of wagons, they discovered, too late, the advantages of caution.

On this Saturday, early in September, Freda set out for River Street Square to indulge her great Lockwood affection. A woman could wear any kind of clothes at market, and Freda accordingly donned a yellow silk sweater, and set forth bareheaded. Carrying a large market basket, she walked leisurely along Queen Street, enjoying the spectacle of other folk arriving, similarly equipped.

On reaching the edge of the square, she almost collided with one, Fenton Bramley, a tall, ill-groomed, but strong-featured man of possibly sixty. Although slightly stooped, his carriage suggested the British army as unerringly as his polite manner betrayed the fundamental gentleman that he was. Bramley’s lines had fallen in barren places, but he was in direct descent from English nobility and could have been a knight even now, if he had possessed the necessary funds to clarify his title. Every one liked and tolerated “Fen.” He was a Lockwood fixture. In conversation he maintained the off-handed ease and abruptness of introductioncharacteristic of his thorough self-possession. He spoke to every one and every one spoke to him.

“Freda,” he commenced in a quiet, conversational tone, as if he had been talking with her continually for the past hour, “I see where that cove that murdered the bank teller’s got his sentence. Did ye see that?”

“Why, no, Fen,” she laughed; “I’m afraid I missed the item.”

“It was an item all right,” he continued. “And I had a letter yesterday from Frank Booth. He’s away up in the Yukon an’ says things are boomin’.”

“Frank Booth,” repeated Freda, trying to place the name.

“Maybe you don’t remember him,” admitted Bramley, scowling down attentively into her face. “You’re lookin’ the picture of health, Freda. And I’m not so bad myself. It’s a big market to-day. Some time when you’re passing the house, slip in tu see my furnitoor. Yer feyther was lookin’ it over and said he liked it. Did ye see where they arrested the head of the drug ring in Merlton?”

She nodded.

“I had a letter last week from Mac Tupper,” continued Bramley in his discursive way. “He’s down in New York, an’ says since prohibition came in they—”

“Tupper?” interrupted Freda.

“Maybe he was before your time. A great man wi’ the billiard cue was Mac! How’s yer feyther?”

“Oh, he’s fine.”

“An’ yer mother?”

“She’s well too.”

“And yerself?”

“Dandy.”

“Good-bye.” Bramley plucked off his cap, bowed and walked quickly away.

“How, much are your eggs?” Freda asked a farmer.

“The cheapest they’ll be this here autumn, lady,” he answered indifferently, with scarcely a look at his intending customer.

“But that gives me very little idea of the price,” she replied.

“Strictly fresh, them eggs is, too,” he said. “Picked right out o’ the hay last night. It’s one thing to get fresh eggs, but it’s a different thing to get strictly fresh!”

He picked up one of the eggs and balanced it on the points of his fingers.

“Look at that!” he invited. “Nice, clean, white egg. D’ye notice the shape of that egg?”

“Yes.”

“Then notice them in the basket,” he said, pointing to the wagon. “They’s all the same shape. You can depend on ’em lady.”

“Suppose I put it this way,” smiled Freda. “What are they worth a dozen?”

“I’m not saying what they’reworth, lady, but—”

At this juncture the dialogue was interrupted by a short, florid-faced woman, with big, wide, blue eyes, who recognized Freda and came waddling toward her.

“Well, well, Freda,” she began, putting down her basket. “I don’t know when I’ve seenyou. I alwaysliketo see you. It always makes me think of poor Jennie. Poor Jennie always liked you, poor child! Even when she could hardly sit up she’d always talk about you. Poor Jennie! She always sat next to youin school, didn’t she? She liked you because you said she was so pretty; and shewasa pretty child, too. Just think of her and you sitting there together. Ain’t it strange how as it’s always the beautiful are taken?”

Freeing herself as soon as possible from the garrulous mother of the departed Jennie, Freda began to market in earnest. A wagon-load of meat attracted her attention first. When the farmer had finished with a group of customers, she pointed to some choice-looking mutton.

“How much is the lamb?” she enquired.

“Gawd knows ’tis little enough,” he replied in a rasping, sorrowful tone, while he made gestures of innocence “Gawd knows I’m not tryin’ to flace dacent people like yourself. Gawd bless ye. And when ye see the rubbitch as yon jackeen does be haulin’ t’ town”—he nodded towards his nearest opposition—“and see the rediculeus price he does be afther askin’ fer it, Gawd knows, woman, ’tis little enough that I shud ask ony twinty-foive cints.”

“Still,” objected Freda, “it seems a little high, doesn’t it?”

“High!” he exclaimed. “Wirra, woman, ye misjidge me! Gawd knows ye’d pay nigh double the price at the butcher’s shop. An’ I’m afther thinkin’ that it’s dodderin’ little that a pretty, young lady ass yerself does be knowin’ o’ the price o’ butcher’s mate, so it is. Gawd bless ye!”

“Gawd know’s that’s done it,” laughed Freda, placing her order. “I’d buy it now even if I didn’t want it.”

While the farmer was carefully weighing the meat,Freda was surprised by the sudden appearance of Edward Courtney, walking through the crowd toward her.

“Girl,” he said, in his deep voice, “how much more do you intend to buy?”

“Not much, Ted,” she replied. “Why?”

“Nothing. I was waiting to spin you home and maybe play you a game of cribbage before lunch. Like it?”

“Um-hum,” she nodded.

“But don’t hurry,” he said. “I’m idle to-day as usual, and totally at your service.”

“Aren’t you an obliging person! Do you want to take my basket?”

“Pardon, how stupid of me!”

Marketing eventually finished, although not nearly so well finished as might have been, they wound their circuitous way to Queen Street, and, depositing the basket in the back of Courtney’s car, climbed quickly in and motored home.

Courtney had a way of making himself swiftly at home with people he wished to befriend. He carried Freda’s purchases boldly into her house, through the dining room and into the kitchen, where Mrs. MacDowell was peeling potatoes.

“I rescued your daughter just as she was finishing,” he announced. He was pressing her wet hand, obdurate to her excuses, and bowing as punctiliously as at a drawing-room reception. “I hope you’re quite well, Mrs. MacDowell. Freda and I are going to have a game of cribbage before lunch.”

On the verandah they arranged chairs by the small table and began playing.

“The old town does bear down pretty heavily, Freda—what?” he enquired as he dealt the cards. “Themater is slipping down to New York and Phily for a short duty call, and I’m wondering what wild schemes I can perpetrate during her regretted absence. I had thought of a foursome up the river in the big boat to-morrow night, but unfortunately the skipper has been graciously granted a week’s shore-leave. Damn! The mater takes this generous tack merely as a curb on my propensities.”

“Hard luck, Edward.”

“But mark my vow, Freda—some time before I’m eighty, I’m going to stage a buster aboard the gentleCinderella. However, I’ve got the launch in shape and all I need now is a personnel for this proposed voyage. What say?”

“Ted, I simply couldn’t go.”

He smiled while his eyes wandered over her fingers.

“I don’t notice either a diamond or a frat-pin,” he replied, teasingly.

“No; but, nevertheless, Ted, I’m practically engaged.”

“What, ho!” he exclaimed, in a low tone of surprise. “Freda, girl, are you genuine?”

“I really mean it, Ted.”

“Dear heavens!” he mused. “Incidentally, though, my congratulations! Is it a secret?”

“Yes, just at present.”

“Then, I’ll regard it so. But to think of the partner of my youthful adventures being no longer available. Well,” he added in a voice unusually serious for him, “Somebody’s lucky.”

“Why! You know you don’t care,” she rejoined offhandedly.

Courtney’s face was sufficiently mask-like to hide whatever feelings he experienced, and accustomed enough to all contingencies to smile with its usual ease.

“Tell me, then,” he presently inquired, “aren’t you going to come dancing with me any more?”

“Possibly.”

“There’s going to be abonaffair at the Country Club in the shape of an informal free-for-all for clubbers and guests. It’s on Wednesday. You’d better come.”

“Well, Ted,” she sighed, after a moment’s hesitation, “I’m on. What time?”

“Expect me at nine—and thanks awfully.”

The cribbage game was soon finished and Courtney, with a finalbon mot, was striding towards his car, while Freda in an idle mood was thinking that, for all his shallow opulence and apparent emptiness, he possessed a social grace that was admittedly worth while.

Next day, Freda was agreeably surprised to be called on the telephone, about ten in the morning.

“Are you going to church?” asked Mauney.

“No, are you?” she asked.

“I’m too fed up, Freda, to bother. It’s going to be a warm day and I think we ought to get out in the country, up the river some place. I’ve got a lot to talk about.”

They motored to Shadow Bay, a dozen miles west of Lockwood, and had dinner together at the Chalet, a summer place, which, owing to the auspicious weather, was still open.

“I’m beginning to understand Lockwood better,” Mauney said, as they sat on a shaded cliff after dinner. “I don’t remember ever having put in a more disagreeable week in my life.”

“What’s wrong?” she enquired, with no suggestion in her voice that her own past week had been the most unpleasant she could recall.

“Just everything,” he said. “I’m foolish to mind it at all. But the staff of the collegiate are the hardest people to get acquainted with. They’re all capable, unusually so, but terribly stand-offish.”

“That, my dear boy, is the key-note of Lockwood,”she interrupted. “They’ve just naturally acquired that manner.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he nodded. “But I wish they’d get over it. They seem to think I’m a high-brow, or something just as bad. Inadvertently I heard a couple of the men discussing my book, knocking it to beat the deuce.”

“And do you actually care, Mauney Bard?” she asked in a surprised tone.

“Yes, I do,” he replied. “I’ve always been damnably lonesome for pals, for good fellows, who, like Max Lee, could see the motive behind the act. Freda, you know the motive behind my book. You know it was merely a wish of mine to warm up the subject of history a little bit. Well, these chaps agreed that it was mere nonsense.”

“That,” sneered Freda, “was mere jealousy. They haven’t tried to write a book. If they had they’d be more lenient. But really,” she added, looking Mauney seriously in the eye, “I think you must be tired, for I never saw you so down in the mouth, before.”

She wanted to pillow his head in her lap, and tell him that his book was the best one ever written. She longed to comfort him and change his loneliness. There were great allowances, after all, which she would gladly make for him. She knew all about his life now. She knewhim, too—just how stimulating a little praise was to him, just how diffident he was about himself, and how hard it was for anyone to reach his real open self. As she sat there beside him and watched his strong, splendid profile, while he gazed at the river, she knew that she could never pity him. He was too big and strong. To-day was but a passing mood in his stronglife. Rather than comfort him she would prefer to cast her inmost self upon his support and be comforted. But he was too immovable either to come to her or to receive her.

“I’ve got a bone to pick, Mauney,” she said.

“All right. What is it?” he asked pleasantly.

“Can’t you imagine?”

“Possibly, but I’d prefer that you present the bone.”

“Why didn’t you call me up all week?”

“My easiest excuse would be that I did not think you cared.”

“But,” she answered, “as we happen to be sensible people of the twentieth century, and as youknowI cared, tell me your real reason.”

“Would work be a decent excuse?” he laughed.

“With anyone else but you, Mauney, it would do fine. But you must remember that I’ve only got three more weeks, perhaps, to stay in Lockwood.”

“But three weeks is a long time, too, Freda,” he said, seriously. “Just think how terribly much can happen in three weeks.”

“I suppose you’re thinking of history, are you?” she asked in a delicate tone of mockery.

“No, Freda,” he replied, quickly. “I’m thinking of you. I’m thinking of you all the time, all this week. Please do me the honor to believe me.”

“Sorry,” she said, dropping her hand suddenly on his.

Her week of impatience quickly melted from her thoughts, and in the silence, as they sat so close together, she could have wept. Why had she used that little, mocking tone? If he could realize how she felt he would take her hand in his and not leave it just whereshe had dropped it. But there he sat looking away toward the river, so very self-contained.

“And I was going to tell you,” he said presently, “about the young people I’m teaching. I like them all right and I think they have unusual ability. But they have no enthusiasm, except a very few of them. I decided that I’d like to start a seminary for one of the classes where we could get right down to business and have open discussions. Don’t you think that’s a good idea?”

“Yes, Mauney, splendid,” she replied, lifting her hat carefully from her head, and tossing it on the grass. “Why don’t you do it?”

“Just one reason. Dover, when I put it up to him, didn’t think it could be done. I talked it over with him in his office, Friday night. He’s a good fellow and capable and has got a line on Lockwood that I wish you’d heard. He impressed on me that his words were confidential, but I’m going to tell you. He approved of the round-table idea immediately, but said it had once been tried out, and failed. They had to be held after regular classes, you see, and a lot of the wealthy people objected to their children being kept in. They sent doctor’s certificates and raised the devil. Of course, once robbed of its spontaneity, the seminaries proved a failure.”

“Enthusiasm,” said Freda, “is one word that dear old Lockwood will never learn. They hate enthusiasm.”

“You should have seen Dover,” laughed Mauney. “When he grows warm under the collar he always gets on those two feet of his and hikes all over the room, like a madman looking for a hole by which to escape from his cell.”

“He was just the same when I went,” she nodded.

“I had touched a tender spot when I mentioned seminaries,” Mauney continued. “It got him off on a general criticism of Lockwood. After he had paced the floor for a moment or two he stopped and said in his slow, nasal, sarcastic way: ‘Mr. Bard, I’ve lived here for twenty-five years. That’s exactly a quarter of a century, and I’m going to tell you that it’s been exactly a quarter of a century too long. I don’t know what’s wrong with Lockwood, because I’ve been much too busy to try to find out.’”

“That sounds just like him!” laughed Freda.

“‘But, there’s something wrong, I can assure you. A teacher who teaches in this town, is just a paid servant of the community. He has no social status, whatever. His wife has none either. His planetary orbit reaches as far as school at nine in the morning, and as far as bed at nine in the evening. If he tries to do more than he’s paid for he becomes unpopular. They want uniformity, here in Lockwood and, by George, they’re going to get it. That’s why seminaries won’t work, Mister Bard.’”

“Oh, well,” Freda said, “you mustn’t be discouraged, boy.”

Mauney shook his head slowly while the muscles of his jaw hardened. “I’m far from being discouraged,” he said quietly. “I’ve started in on this work, and I’m going to stay with it.”

There, in that simple statement of his, Freda felt that his whole reliable character showed itself. Born of parents who had dug their living out of the ground, Mauney would persist in whatever task he undertook—obdurate, stubborn, steadfast and gloriously reliable.

They had supper at the Chalet and then returned to their nook under the trees. Freda had, by this time, attuned herself to the quiet and dispirited mood which seemed to possess Mauney. It would pass, she felt, but it was lasting unusually long.

“I couldn’t come to see you this week,” he said awkwardly. “I got a letter from the nurse at Rockland, and Max is dying.”

“Dying!” she exclaimed.

He nodded his head slowly several times. That was all the explanation he could give for his conduct during the past week, and it had taken him all day to give it. They drove home in the twilight and later, on the verandah at MacDowell’s, as he was bidding her good-night, the illumination of a red moon shining through a hot, smoky, sky showed him her face. Never would he forget the quietness of that moment, disturbed only by the wind in the pines, as he looked down upon her features, and suffered to clasp the vision in his arms. But he did not.

And when he had gone, Freda, unable to understand his restraint, suffered, too. Idealization was a bogey cast out of heaven years ago. She coveted actuality and the simple, sweet rewards of affection, and, in a pang of loneliness, she wished that Mauney was less immovable and self-contained and reliable.

There was a depth in Freda’s nature which she was sure no one would ever discover. A delicate fear occasionally separated her from people for an hour of tranquil meditation, in which she reached back through time and down through obstructions to regain touch with it herself. Sometimes she would paddle slowly along the shore near her home, or, beaching the canoe on the meagre shelf by the cliff’s feet, sit in passive enjoyment of the simple natural objects about her. She never took a book on these solitary excursions, because of a characteristic impulse toward actuality. The flat, round stones and pebbles, rendered smooth by years of the river’s polishing, may have been very uninteresting and inanimate things, indeed, but she loved the amazing variation in their color, all dim, composite shades of purples, greens and nameless greys. There was a silence, not encroached upon by the monotonous murmur of the persistent shore waters, and a solitude unaffected by distant freighters moving slowly in the midstream. She would stretch supinely to gaze at the nervous phantoms of reflected light that pendulated upon the cavernous, stratified face of the cliffs, or to watch a fisher-bird perched attentively on a bare, protruding root, far up at the grassy edge above.

Her ears, attuned to disregard the soft sounds that formed about her an atmospheric velvet, began at length to hear that wondrous roaring silence that ever widened and thrilled with the very mystery of all mysteries. And she knew, but could never have explained, what else she found then. It was strength and rare forgetfulness of self, and belief in a vast Something that could never henceforth be doubted.

This, however, constituted for Freda merely that ultimate spiritual experience, painfully unapproachable by friends, which it is the strange lot of all mortals to know less or more. Men and women cling to it, hunger for it, recover it or lose it, but for ever treasure it. The gratifications of a hundred vaunted pursuits dissipate into shadow-play before it. And yet it is what? So elusive, so stupendous, so readily forgotten. The trammelling events of a world constantly with us, march upon us, swoop us into their caravanserie, and we are no longer the living strength of that incomparable hour. We are but the dutiful perpetuators of age-old customs and follies.

Back to life, as it was, and with an impetuous relish, went Freda, on the night of the dance.

It was no disloyalty to Mauney. Her nature surged energetically on both sides of the line of average experience. If there were moments of spiritual joy, there were also moments of blinder joy, when music inspired the sinews and the blood warmed. Life was so large that it could not remember from hour to hour its past occupations. Eyes that loved soft, verdant light at the river’s edge, must love, too, the carnival display of garish crimsons and yellows; ears that had listened into the silence heard now the barbaric tune of drum andtrumpet with enhanced sensation. This gaiety was not disloyalty to Mauney. It was merely life—her life—that craved the thrills. She thought, as she pirouetted with Courtney, that the delectable exercise was indeed a necessary training. It made her love Mauney more. Taught by its care-free spirit, she would be better able to cheer that dependable man, who lived a life curbed constantly to the line of average emotions. With a fresher attraction she would decoy him from the inevitable, but wearing, sombreness of his lonely existence.

And then, too, as she half-meditated, the while her feet were gliding in accurate rhythm with her partner, Mauney could not really blame her. He had stubbornly withheld the final declarations and demands that would have made her his fiancée. And he had left her alone for a whole week. Reason, noble reason he had, no doubt. But she would value love that broke past all reasons; and now, if he learned that she had gone dancing with Courtney, the discovery might rouse him, by jealousy or caution, to that pitch of emotion where she longed to behold him. And, if he disapproved, he had only to discipline, to satisfy her.

Many of Lockwood’s elite thought that Freda and Courtney made a striking pair, and said so. He was well known to have many attractions, some of them popular, some not. As a matrimonial prize he had been variously encouraged by several ambitious mothers; then given up, but never scorned. He enjoyed that kind of popularity which is inspired by wealth and ease, enhanced by a pleasant enough personality, but which is restrained by an envious bitterness seldom expressed. The wealthy are aware of such bitterness, but have learned to disregard it.

As for Freda, she was now practically a visitor in Lockwood society. A few years before she had been a beautiful and popular debutante, with an influential father. She was now a university woman, and her people, though not so influential as before, were still definitely well considered. To-night she was merely an admittedly beautiful and acceptable young lady. Society was not keenly interested in her.

“I think,” said Mrs. Turnbull to Mrs. Squires, as they watched the dancing from the verandah, “that Miss MacDowell looks so graceful with Ted.”

“He knows a good dancer,” replied Mrs. Squires with a supercilious expression. “But you know, of course, that his mother, who is in New York, would scarcely approve if she were here.”

“Why not?” enquired Mrs. Turnbull, with the seriousness due to a most important issue.

“No reason, except that the MacDowell’s are scarcely—ah—what they were once, you know. And besides, I presume that Ted is expected to aim higher.”

“Is he serious about Freda MacDowell?” Mrs. Turnbull asked in surprise.

“He was once, my dear, and Mrs. Courtney is known to have cut Freda rather cruelly on several occasions.”

Freda, had she heard such remarks, would have been quite indifferent. The dance was the thing. It was the glory of movement and sound and color that charmed her. Courtney was but a means to an end—an impersonal partner who lived up to the character with his customary gentility. But Courtney was not quite impregnable. The intoxication of Freda’s proximity had been making inroads on his polite reserve, and graduallyculminated in a little outburst as they stood alone on a deserted part of the verandah during a number.

“Girl, I love you!” he whispered passionately and tried to embrace her. But she pushed him back steadily.

“Ted, you do not,” she replied angrily. “You just imagine it, and I don’t like your arms on me, either! You may take me home, please!”

He bowed and went so directly for his car that Freda half forgave him. He told her on the way home that his only regret over the incident was her displeasure. He hoped that she might soon give him some slight reason to be less unhappy than he was just then. If she could not in any case entertain his serious bid for love, he would gladly content himself with the consolation of her friendship. Would she not, at least, forgive him for to-night?

“I don’t know, Ted,” she replied, as he was about to leave her. “I didn’t like it one little bit.”

Nor did she.

In her room she engaged in an intense mood of self-despising, and anger and regret. Ah! She wanted Mauney’s arms just then. Her sense of guilt melted into one of weakness and dependence. In his strong, clean arms she would be at last peaceful and safe. She ought not to have gone with Courtney. That was plain. But she had promised. Now she would confess to Mauney and accept his chastisement with delicious satisfaction.

The next evening Mauney called at MacDowell’s and had his first encounter with Freda’s father. He found him comfortably seated with a newspaper on the verandah. As Mauney approached, MacDowell’s sharp, black eye surveyed him over the corner of his journal. Then he removed his feet from the low wicker table.

“Good evening, sir,” he said politely, rising and extending his hand. “Come right up. I ought to have met you before, Mr. Bard,” he continued with a mischievous smile, “but better late than not at all. It’s warm, isn’t it? There’s a chair. I don’t know what’s going to happen if it doesn’t soon rain. We usually have a breath of air from the river here, but this last week, I’ve been sweltering.”

“And what has surprised me, Mr. MacDowell,” said Mauney, “is the general impression that Lockwood is such ‘a cool, breezy, summer resort.’”

“So it is,” MacDowell affirmed. “This is exceptional heat. You can go a long piece before you’ll find a town whose situation, general lay-out, and climate can even compare with this wonderful little town.”

“It’s funny, though,” rejoined Mauney, “how many knockers are to be found among its citizens. I’ve beenhere only a couple of weeks, and I’ve noticed that the lower and middle classes—for I think the divisions are pretty distinct—are constantly fault-finding and grouching.”

“No doubt, no doubt,” MacDowell nodded, while his face reassumed the special enthusiastic expression which he always wore when praising his town. “Let them talk! But I’m going to tell you, Mr. Bard, that this town, out of the whole province, has, without exception, the most brilliant future before it. Some day you’re going to see that river alive with commerce and our harbor crowded with freighters. The population is going to jump up, internal trade will flourish, the community will become permanently prosperous. And all this, once some big industry sees the advantage of locating here. It’s no myth. It’s bound to come.”

Mauney liked the big man for his enthusiasm. He was inspired, as most people were who talked with MacDowell, by a new belief in Lockwood. After all, why should it not grow and prosper and become a city? There was the river, indeed; that great, potential artery of commerce, with its undeveloped water-power. And here was Lockwood, sure enough, strategically situated, and upon the very brink of an undeniably great future. Some personal magnetism of his host had conjured up the vision before him and taught him faith. He felt all at once a deep respect for the masterly man who, at this moment, although unnoticed, was smiling slyly at Mauney’s serious face. MacDowell was at last clear to him: he was remaining in Lockwood because of his faith. He was tied to the old town by invisible bonds of strong affection and belief. Let them talk! Here was an heroic figure, a man of brave judgment andgreat dreams. Mauney could not have been persuaded, just then, that his hero’s dream was simply a lifelong adoration of Gloria Smith, and that his skilful role was but the disguise of a private loyalty. Later he would learn, perhaps, that MacDowell was, of all municipal students, the most confirmed pessimist, but that would never hinder him from liking the genial man and feeling that in some degree he redeemed Freda’s home from hopeless frigidity.

At last Freda came out of the house, and seemed surprised to see Mauney. While they were talking her father interrupted good-naturedly.

“Look here, you folks, why don’t you take out the canoe for a paddle along the shore?”

“You have a very fertile imagination, Dad,” said Freda.

“Yes,” he agreed dryly, “and a desperate determination not to be ousted from this verandah.”

His suggestion was adopted, and together they crossed the rough tableland to the steps leading down to the boat-house, exchanging not a word as they went.

“I telephoned last night, Freda,” Mauney said as he began to follow her down the steps.

“What time did you ’phone?” she asked, pausing as she reached the first landing.

“I think it was about nine, and your mother said you had gone to a dance.”

Freda stood by the railing, looking away to the river as he reached the landing. She said nothing, but displeasure was written openly on her face. She had been looking forward to making her own confession of the gentle guilt. She had imagined herself saying: “I was a very wayward girl last night, Mauney,” and him listening,thoroughly vexed. But he had spoiled that anticipation by knowing all about it.

“Well,” she said, with a haughty elevation of her brows, “wasn’t that all right?”

“Of course, it was all right, Freda,” he replied. “But I had heard nothing about the dance, you see.”

“Hadn’t youreally!” she exclaimed with more sarcasm than she felt.

“No,” he replied quietly, but with a puzzled glance at her cheek which, though turned away, was suddenly very red. “I have no authority over what you do, Freda, and even if I had, I wouldn’t use it.”

“I don’t suppose you would, Mauney. I suppose you’dalwaysjust let me do as I wanted to.”

“You’re quite right. But I was surprised last night, and a little bit hurt.”

“Well, I knew you would be,” she admitted, turning slightly towards him.

“And I just want to know,” he continued, “if you’re always going to do things that hurt.”

“How do I know?” she retorted, facing him. “If you don’t like things I do, why then, you’ve got to discipline me.”

“Discipline you!” he exclaimed. “Why I hadn’t even thought of disciplining you.”

“Because,” she interrupted without heeding his words, “I don’t know what it is that sometimes plays the devil with me, and I’vegotto be disciplined. I’ve been like a boat without a rudder. My greatest need has been for some one to steer me.”

“Tell me, Freda, who were you with at the dance?”

“Ted Courtney,” she quickly answered.

His eyes opened wide, then grew thoughtful. “Doyou mean that he—that Courtney took you to the dance?”

“Yes.”

He was silent a moment, studying the palm of his hand. “But I never dreamed that you even liked him,” he said at length.

“I don’t either, Mauney.”

“I suppose,” he said in a lower tone, as he leaned his hips against the railing and folded his arms on his breast, “I suppose it’s really your business and not mine. Don’t imagine that I’m trying to interfere in your affairs.”

“Oh, goodness, no,” she almost jeered. “I’m afraid there’s not much danger of your ever interfering the least bit! Why, Mauney, I don’t mind if you give me the very devil for going to that dance!”

“Only tell me. Why did you go with Courtney?” he asked with a deliberation that provoked her.

“There are just about forty-seven reasons,” she stated with thin grace. “First, because I knew I shouldn’t, second, because at the time he asked me I was furious with you for not calling me up for a whole week, third because I wanted to do something to relieve my fury.”

“But, I told you,” he interrupted in a quiet, polite tone, “I told you why I didn’t call you up.”

“You told me after I had promised to go to the dance.”

“Yes, but you don’t understand,” he said, gently, taking off his straw hat and turning the rim slowly around between his hands. “It was not the dance. Can’t you understand my feelings?”

“I understand them only too well.” Her dark eyes were now burning almost savagely, and her handstightly gripping the balustrade. She spoke in an unnaturally restrained tone. “It’s Max Lee, of course, I’ve tried to feel sorry about him being ill. Perhaps I ought to be trying to comfort you. If so—too bad. I’m just being true to my feelings, that’s all. You had to be so thoughtful of that man, didn’t you, Mauney? Had to let him down so very, very easily. You couldn’t let him die like a man, unhappy and miserable, butlikea man you had to smooth out his path for him. Even if he did love me, which I doubt, he knew I didn’t love him. What difference did he make anyway? Why allow your care for him to make you slight me? Even if Leeisdying,” she concluded emphatically, “that’s not half as dramatic as it looks. There are other people who areliving—or trying to!”

“But he’s beenmypal,myfriend, Freda,” he answered very calmly, “and I’m afraid that you’d have to be a man to quite appreciate my feelings.”

It was nothing apparently. Mauney seemed quite unperturbed. As Freda stood regarding his reposeful figure she wondered what she could possibly do to stir him up. Even rudeness to a dying man—for it was that—had not brought the storm she expected. Even scorn of his solicitude for a dying friend—for her words had been that, too—had failed to budge him an inch. And now he was there before her, leaning against the railing, reflectively flipping his finger at the lining of his hat, as if she had merely remarked upon the brilliance of the sinking sun, or the character of the weather.

“Why don’t you curse me?” she asked presently. “I doubt if you have any feelings. Why don’t you simply kill me for what I said?”

“In the first place,” he smiled, “I don’t think you quite meant it.”

“Oh, but I did,” she affirmed. “I really did.”

“Come on,” he said in a lighter tone, catching her hand and starting down the second flight of steps. “If I were to kill you, Freda MacDowell, it would be a tough little world for me to go on living in.”

“Anyway,” he added, drawing her gently along as she made to grasp the railing. “I certainly did use you rottenly last week. I can see now how you felt, and as for that dance and our friend, Courtney, well—I’m not going to be so miserably jealous any more.”

The edge of Freda’s knife-like mood was dulled a little by his words, and she followed him with a sense of defeat. It was becoming her ambition to see this big fellow angry. Why a woman should desire such a sight, and desire it like a fetish, is one of the obscure phenomena of feminine psychology. To say that anger reveals new qualities of the man is to give but a paltry explanation. During the little canoe journey along under the eastern shore of Lockwood, Freda kept thinking of Gertrude Manton’s apothegm: “We don’t know why our love makes us hurt them. They are only men, but we are women.” But had Gertrude really managed to hurt them? That was the question. If so, unbounded praise! As for herself, Freda was ignobly defeated. The man at whose sure stroke her canoe glided so sleekly under the shadowy cliffs was surely incapable of anger.

It would always require a longer time for Mauney to become roused than for most people, in any vital matter. He would be sure to react very slowly to the irritating stimuli. He would gain cognizance of issues very tardily, and keep on half-doubting things that he hated to believe.

Friday, at noon, he crossed Church Street, from the collegiate to his boarding house, conscious of only one thing, that the morning’s work had been utterly unsatisfactory. Just why his discipline over his classes had weakened he was not ready even now to enquire. The faces of half a hundred students can be very unfriendly at times. They can act as a unified mirror to throw back at a teacher the gloom, the uncertainty, the desperate undercurrent of his own mood. There had been slight lapses of memory when those inquisitive faces had roused him to complete the phrases almost escaped. No doubt he had appeared to them stupidly absent-minded. In the principal’s office there had been a queer conversation, too. Dover had only been explaining some detail of routine, but he had worn an expression of impatient emphasis, as though he were trying to impress an idiot. That, too, had been due, no doubt, to Mauney’s own preoccupation.

Noon recess on this Friday marked the end of the week’s work. A half-holiday had been granted for some reason or other—preparation for field-day, now that he thought of it. He entered his room with a grateful sense of finding at last shelter and opportunity to think.

He knew that these bright days, with streets flooded by dry, hard sunlight were important and sombre days. Other people seemed to be free of care. Field sports and picnics up the river, and long, refreshing drives along the river road—these enjoyments were not, and could not be, for him. Nor was this September so much different from all his past autumns. Each fall had found him enmeshed in difficulties. He was beginning to perceive that his life lay just outside the border of the sunlight. And that, unprofitable though all his problems might be, they were, nevertheless, undeniably with him. He could not shirk them. Perhaps some strength might be gained in the effort to solve them. At any rate he realized quite clearly, as he removed his coat and tossed it on the bed, that the problem to-day was Freda MacDowell.

First of all he would shave. He had no sooner poured a little water into the basin on the washstand than the landlady knocked on his door.

“Come in, Mrs. Hudson,” he said wearily.

As she entered, clothed as usual in her plain, print gown, his eyes focused on a yellow envelope in her hand.

“It’s a telegraph,” she announced officiously, but without proffering it. “And it’s afther coming while ye were at the schule, Mister Bard. Poor mon! I due hope as it is nothin’ alarming. It’s the sight of a telegraphthat I due dhread, Mister Bard. For wanse, several years ago, I did receive wan meself.”

“But it may be nothing,” said Mauney cheerfully, as he reached for it.

“Ah, but it’s a telegraph, mind!” she insisted, while her eyes keenly studied her boarder’s face as he tore it open and began reading. She preserved silence until he had finished, but her curiosity kept her standing, huge and peering, by the open door. She noticed his blue eyes scan the message hurriedly, then again several times more slowly. Finally he looked up over the edge of the paper with wide, blank eyes. He was conscious of her enormous body beside him and was irked by it.

“It’s nothing much, after all, Mrs. Hudson,” he said in a low tone, starting once more to read it.

“Imogine, now!” she replied, “Indade, but sure, I t’ought it would be afther bein’ a—”

Mauney, ignoring her presence, went to the window and stood looking out on the street. Mrs. Hudson, after a final assertion that “a telegraph” was never a very welcome kind of missive, left and closed the door angrily.

“Patient failed to regain consciousness; died quietly six this morning.” That, with the nurse’s signature, was the whole message. Mauney stood pensively by the window wondering why he received the news so apathetically. It was unreal. It was unquestionably true. But the external objects of this bright, Friday noon wore a casual appearance that denied the occurrence of death. Church Street was just the same innocent, familiar thoroughfare. There were the groups of collegiate students hurrying along with books in their arms, laughing and talking. There was the doubledold man, white-bearded and feeble, plodding down the walk, rapping the cement sharply with his metal-headed stick, and nearby, in the shade of a maple, lay the neighbor’s familiar Airedale, mouth open and tongue protruding, as he panted in the heat.

Turning back into the room he slowly walked to his trunk and opened it. Then he folded the telegram quickly and put it in one of the compartments of the tray. As he closed the lid slowly he cleared his throat, and then set to work shaving. He tried, as faithfully as possible, to take an interest in his personal toilet, but found it quite a boring procedure. There was a new grey suit, hanging on the back of the door, to be worn for the first time to-day, and although it was very becoming, he took no pleasure in it. He was going down to the MacDowell’s this afternoon to hear some expert piano music. Freda had telephoned him before school that Betty Doran, home from New York, was going to give a private recital to a few friends. Just who Betty Doran was he neither knew nor cared. What she was going to play he had not heard, nor was he in the least curious.

In fact, only one thing mattered—to-day, to-morrow or at any time—that he could conceive. That particular, important thing was a long talk with Freda, a talk which would have consequences. It would definitely end all misunderstandings, and rob her, once and for all, of any doubt about his love.

When he arrived at the MacDowell’s he found himself a neglected member of a gathering of thirty. Betty Doran, a spoiled young person of eighteen with Dutch-cut hair, sat at the piano rendering Chopin brilliantly and smiling affectedly at the frequent applause of theaudience who filled the drawing-room. There was cake and coffee to be served afterwards, but Freda, who had taken a vow never to assist her mother with afternoon refreshments, stubbornly refused now, much to the remarked surprise of guests who saw her talking quietly with Mauney just outside in the hallway.

“This is about the last place I should have wished to come to-day,” he was saying to her in a low tone. “Get me out of it, Freda. And, if you can get away this evening, I’m crazy to take you for a long drive out in the country. Are you free?”

She gladly agreed.

After the recital was finished and the last loquacious woman had finally bade the hostess good-bye, she turned quickly from the door and sought her daughter.

“It’s simply terrible,” she said with evident feeling, “that this Bard person should have been asked to our home to-day, and I must and do insist that in future, if you are so foolish as to see him at all—”

“Now, Mother,” said Freda with some curiosity, “what on earth have the dear ladies been telling you?”

“Everybody knows it!” exclaimed Mrs. MacDowell. “He has been seen on the street with Mrs. Poynton and was also noticed coming out of her house.”

“Well, anything else?” Freda coolly enquired.

“I think that’s almost enough,” smiled her mother. “No one is laboring under any delusions about Mrs. Poynton, surely.”

“Perhaps not, Mother,” Freda almost hissed, as, blushing red, she drew quickly back with hatred in her eyes. “Perhaps Mrs. Poynton was guilty of a sin you and Mrs. Beecher will not forgive her for. Perhaps it was a sin her husband will not forgive. I know nothingabout her. I want to know nothing. But of one thing I am absolutely certain!”

“And of what, my girl, are you so certain?” asked her mother.

“That if Mauney Bard called at her home he did it in innocence,” replied Freda, defiantly.

“Ha,” gently laughed the proud scion of Family-Compact glory, “Your credulity is quite amazing. If you care to believe what you say, you are, of course, at liberty to do so. You have always been full of strange and reckless impulses.”

“I believe in him so much,” said Freda, with emphasis that caused her voice to break, “that I’d stake everything—yes, my life, on him. And you, Mother, without even inquiring into it, are ready, just like the rest of these fools, to throw your harpoon into an innocent man.

“All I say,” replied her mother, haughtily, and with an aggravating smile, “is that this home—my home—is now closed to your glorious hero. I trust that is quite plain?”

Freda could not speak. Her face suddenly grew white as she stood in the middle of the dining-room floor fastening vengeful eyes upon her mother.

“It was even reported,” continued Mrs. MacDowell, turning to arrange some flowers in a vase on the buffet, “that Mr. Bard spent the night at Mrs. Poynton’s.”

“It’s a lie—a damned lie!” burst forth Freda. “Oh, tell me who said that!”

“No, I shall do nothing of the sort. Possibly you can imagine that it was told me in a kindly spirit.”

“When—did they say he—did that?”

“Last week, of course,” she replied. “When you were wondering what had become of him.”

“Mother,” Freda said more calmly, “Mauney will deny this for me. I know it’s all a hopeless lie, one of the big, black lies that they love so much. You don’t know him, Mother. You don’t even want to know him. But let me tell you one thing, that you are as bad as the rest of them!”

“Indeed,” smiled Mrs. MacDowell, turning from the vase of flowers.

“You are worse than a murderer,” suddenly said Freda, while her face quivered with new rage.

Mrs. MacDowell’s composure suffered a noticeable weakening. “My girl, I shall not tolerate such language!” she warned. “Be very careful.”

“You are capable of a crime more dastardly than murder, because it requires no courage—”

“Enough!”

“No,” fumed Freda. “It’s not enough. You’re going to hear it all for once. You have made mehateyou.”

Something of latent power in her daughter’s manner put Mrs. MacDowell on guard.

“Why, Freda,” she exclaimed. “What on earth. I only meant to—”

“It’s what you’ve done that counts, Mother. I know he’s innocent. My God, he must be innocent!”

Just a moment later George MacDowell came into the room and found Freda in a chair with her head clasped in her hands, weeping, and his wife standing, evidently distressed. He looked from one to the other regretfully. Sadness was in his black eyes as he looked accusingly at his wife.

“Gloria,” he said. “I’m surprised. I’ve heard bothsides of this case. I couldn’t miss it, by Gad. Look what you’ve done. You’ve broken her heart. Are you proud of your job? You women aren’t sports, I tell you. Give her a fighting chance. Don’t stand there gloating over it. This business of afternoon-tea scandals has gone too far.”

“Why, George,” she said nervously, “I only meant to warn her of—”

“But you’ve broken her up, completely. Now, look here,” he said more seriously than she had ever heard him speak. “This is no small matter. Let’s get a little British fair play into this business. Do you know what I’m going to do?”

He brought his fist sharply into his opened palm.

“I’m going to get Mauney Bard. If he’s a man he’ll stand his trial and either deny it or not.” He started for the door, picking up his hat from a table nearby. Then before leaving he turned. “Ladies,” he said. “I will request you both to wait my return.”

“But, George,” said Mrs. MacDowell, “I think such a thing is absurd.”

“And I don’t want it either,” said Freda.

“Well, you’re both a fine lot, by Gad,” said MacDowell, impatiently tossing his hat to the table. “All right. But one thing I insist on, Gloria, and that is that you immediately govern your tongue. This is your house, but it is my home and this is my daughter.”

MacDowell sauntered slowly back to the library, while his wife somewhat informed as to new qualities in her married partner, departed quickly for the kitchen and began making unnecessary noise with the dishes. Freda proceeded to her room and was not seen again until eight in the evening, when she came down and passed through,without speaking, on her way to the garage. They heard the rumble of the motor-car and both watched, from different vantage points, as it sped quickly between the pine trees on its way to Queen Street. During the evening, while MacDowell in the library, as Mayor of Lockwood, gave audience to some business men from Merlton, his wife sat playing solitaire on the southern verandah.

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