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Quill's Window

by George Barr McCutcheon · English · Gutenberg #6044 · 526,959 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Quill's Window

Author: George Barr McCutcheon


        
Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #6044]
                Most recently updated: June 4, 2012

Language: English

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Credits: Etext produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK QUILL'S WINDOW ***




Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.









[Illustration: "What are you doing up here?"]



QUILL'S WINDOW

BY GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON


FRONTISPIECE BY

C. ALLAN GILBERT





CONTENTS




CHAPTER

     I THE FORBIDDEN ROCK
    II THE STORY THE OLD MAN TOLD
   III COURTNEY THANE
    IV DOWD'S TAVERN
     V TRESPASS
    VI CHARLIE WEBSTER ENTERTAINS
   VII COURTNEY APPEARS IN PUBLIC
  VIII ALIX THE THIRD
    IX A MID-OCTOBER DAY
     X THE CHIMNEY CORNER
    XI THANE VISITS TWO HOUSES
   XII WORDS AND LETTERS
  XIII THE OLD INDIAN TRAIL
   XIV SUSPICION
    XV THE FACE AT THE WINDOW
   XVI ROSABEL
  XVII SHADOWS
 XVIII MR. GILFILLAN IS PUZZLED
   XIX BRINGING UP THE PAST
    XX THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ROSABEL VICK
   XXI OUT OF THE NIGHT
  XXII THE THROWER OF STONES
 XXIII A MESSAGE AND ITS ANSWER
  XXIV AT QUILL'S WINDOW





QUILL'S WINDOW




CHAPTER I

THE FORBIDDEN ROCK


A young man and an old one sat in the shade of the willows beside
the wide, still river. The glare of a hot August sun failed to
penetrate the shelter in which they idled; out upon the slow-gliding
river it beat relentlessly, creating a pale, thin vapour that
clung close to the shimmering surface and dazzled the eye with an
ever-shifting glaze. The air was lifeless, sultry, stifling; not a
leaf, not a twig in the tall, drooping willows moved unless stirred
by the passage of some vagrant bird.

The older man sat on the ground, his back against the trunk of a
tree that grew so near to the edge that it seemed on the point of
toppling over to shatter the smooth, green mirror below. Some of its
sturdy exposed roots reached down from the bank into the water,
where they caught and held the drift from upstream,--reeds and
twigs and matted grass,--a dirty, sickly mass that swished lazily
on the flank of the slow-moving current.

The water here in the shade was deep and clear and limpid, contrasting
sharply with the steel-white surface out beyond.

The young man occupied a decrepit camp stool, placed conveniently
against the trunk of another tree hard by. A discarded bamboo rod
lay beside him on the bank, the hook and line hopelessly tangled
in the drift below. He smoked cigarettes.

His companion held a well-chewed black cigar in the vise-like corner
of his mouth. His hook and line were far out in the placid water,
an ordinary cork serving as a "bob" from which his dreary, unwavering
gaze seldom shifted.

"I guess they're through bitin' for today," he remarked, after a
long unbroken silence.

"How many have we got?" inquired the other languidly.

"Between us we've got twenty-four. That's a fair-sized mess. Sunfish
don't make much of a showing unless you get a barrel of 'em."

"Good eating though," mused the young man.

"Fried in butter," supplemented the other. "What time is it?"

"Half-past nine."

"Well, that's just about what I'd figured. I've been fishin' in
this 'hole' for something like forty years, off and on, and I've
found out that these here sunfish get through breakfast at exactly
eighteen minutes past nine. I always allow about ten minutes' leeway
in case one or two of 'em might have been out late the night before
or something,--but as a general thing they're pretty dog-goned
prompt for breakfast. Specially in August. Even a fish is lazy in
August. Look at that fish-worm. By gosh, it's BOILED! That shows
you how hot the water is."

He removed the worm from the hook and slowly began to twist the
pole in the more or less perfunctory process of "winding up" the
line. The young man looked on disinterestedly.

"Ain't you going to untangle that line?" inquired the old man,
jerking his thumb.

"What's the use? The worm is dead by this time, and God knows
I prefer to let him rest in peace. The quickest way to untangle a
line is to do it like this."

He severed it with his pocket-knife.

"A line like that costs twenty-five cents," said the old man, a
trace of dismay in his voice.

"That's what it cost when it was new," drawled the other. "You
forget it's been a second-hand article since eight o'clock this
morning,--and what's a second-hand fish-line worth?--tell me that.
How much would you give, in the open market, or at an auction sale,
for a second-hand fish-line?"

"I guess we'd better be gittin' back to the house," said the other,
ignoring the question. "Got to clean these fish if we're expectin'
to have 'em for dinner,--or lunch, as you fellers call it. I'll
bet your grandfather never called it lunch. And as for him callin'
supper DINNER,--why, by crickey, he NEVER got drunk enough for
that."

"More than that," said the young man calmly, "he never saw a cigarette,
or a telephone, or a Ford, or a safety-razor,--or a lot of other
things that have sprung up since he cashed in his checks. To be
sure, he did see a few things I've never seen,--such as clay-pipes,
canal boats, horse-hair sofas, top-boots and rag-carpets,--and he
probably saw Abraham Lincoln,--but, for all that, I'd rather be
where I am today than where he is,--and I'm not saying he isn't in
heaven, either."

The older man's eyes twinkled. "I don't think he's any nearer heaven
than he was forty years ago,--and he's been dead just about that
long. He wasn't what you'd call a far-seeing man,--and you've got
to look a long ways ahead if you want to see heaven. Your grandma's
in heaven all right,--and I'll bet she was the most surprised mortal
that ever got inside the pearly gates if she found him there ahead
of her. Like as not she would have backed out, thinking she'd got
into the wrong place by mistake. And if he IS up there, I bet he's
making the place an everlastin' hell for her. Yep, your grandpa was
about as mean as they make 'em. As you say, he didn't know anything
about cigarettes, but he made up for it by runnin' after women and
fast horses,--or maybe it was hosses and, fast women,--and cheatin'
the eye teeth out of everybody he had any dealings with."

"I don't understand how he happened to die young, If all these things
were true about him," said the other, lighting a fresh cigarette
and drawing in a deep, full breath of the pungent smoke. The old
man waited a few seconds for the smoke to be expelled, and then,
as it came out in a far-reaching volume, carrying far on the still
air, his face betrayed not only relief but wonder.

"You don't actually swaller it, do you?" he inquired.

"Certainly not. I inhale, that's all. Any one can do it."

"I'd choke to death," said the old man, shifting his cigar hastily
from one side of his mouth to the other, and taking a fresh grip on
it with his teeth,--as if fearing the consequences of a momentary
lapse of control.

"You've been chewing that cigar for nearly two hours," observed
the young man. "I call that a filthy habit."

"I guess you're right," agreed the other, amiably. "The best you
can say for it is that it's a man's job, and not a woman's," he
added, with all the scorn that the cigar smoker has for the man
who affects nothing but cigarettes.

"You can't make me sore by talking like that," said his companion,
stretching himself lazily. "Approximately ten million men smoked
cigarettes over in France for four years and more, and I submit
that they had what you might call a man's job on their hands."

"How many of them things do you smoke in a day?"

"It depends entirely on how early I get up in the morning,--and
how late I stay up at night. Good Lord, it's getting hotter every
minute. For two cents, I'd strip and jump in there for a game of
hide and seek with the fish. By the way, I don't suppose there are
any mermaids in these parts, are there?"

"You stay out of that water," commanded the old man. "You ain't
strong enough yet to be takin' any such chances. You're here to get
well, and you got to be mighty all-fired careful. The bed of that
river is full of cold springs,--and it's pretty deep along this
stretch. Weak as you are,--and as hot as you are,--you'd get cramps
in less'n a minute."

"I happen to be a good swimmer."

"So was Bart Edgecomb,--best swimmer I ever saw. He could swim
back an' forth across this river half a dozen times,--and do you
know what happened to him last September? He drowned in three foot
of water up above the bend, that's what he did. Come on. Let's be
movin'. It'll be hotter'n blazes by eleven o'clock, and you oughtn't
to be walkin' in the sun."

The young man settled himself a little more comfortably against
the tree.

"I think I'll stay here in the shade for a while longer. Don't be
uneasy. I shan't go popping into the water the minute your back's
turned. What was it you said early this morning about sniffing rain
in the air?"

"Thunderstorms today, sure as my name's Brown. Been threatening
rain for nearly a week. Got to come some time, and I figure today's--"

"Threats are all we get," growled the young man peevishly. "Lord,
I never dreamed I could get so sick of white skies and what you call
fresh air. You farmers go to bed every night praying for rain, and
you get up in the morning still praying, and what's the result?
Nothing except a whiter sky than the day before, and a greater
shortage of fresh air. Don't talk to me about country air and
country sunshine and country quiet. My God, it never was so hot
and stifling as this in New York, and as for peace and quiet,--why,
those rotten birds in the trees around the house make more noise
than the elevated trains at the rush hour, and the rotten roosters
begin crowing just about the time I'm going to sleep, and the
dogs bark, and the cows,--the cows do whatever cows do to make a
noise,--and then the crows begin to yawp. And all night long the
katydids keep up their beastly racket, and the frogs in the pond
back of the barns,--my God, man, the city is as silent as the grave
compared to what you get in the country."

"I manage to sleep through it all," said the old man drily. "The
frogs and katydids don't keep me awake."

"Yes, and that reminds me of another noise that makes the night
hideous. It's the way you people sleep. At nine o'clock sharp,
every night, the whole house begins to snore, and--Say, I've seen
service in France, I've slept in barracks with scores of tired
soldiers, I've walked through camps where thousands of able-bodied
men were snoring their heads off,--but never have I heard anything
so terrifying as the racket that lasts from nine to five in the
land of my forefathers. Gad, it sometimes seems to me you're all
trying to make my forefathers turn over in their graves up there
on the hill."

"You're kind of peevish today, ain't you?" inquired the other,
grinning. "You'll get used to the way we snore before long, and
you'll kind of enjoy it. I'd be scared to death if I got awake in
the night and didn't hear everybody in the house snoring. It's kind
of restful to know that everybody's asleep,--and not dead. If they
wasn't snoring, I'd certainly think they was dead."

The young man smiled. "I'll say this much for you farmers,--you're
a good-natured bunch. I ought to be ashamed of myself for grousing.
I suppose it's because I've been sick. You're all so kind and
thoughtful,--and so darned GENUINE,--even when you're asleep,--that
I feel like a dog for finding fault. By the way, you said something
awhile ago about that big black cliff over yonder having a history.
I've been looking at that cliff or hill or rock, or whatever it is,
and it doesn't look real. It doesn't look as though God had made
it. It's more like the work of man. So far as I can see, there isn't
another hill on either bank of the river, and yet that thing over
there must be three or four hundred feet high, sticking up like a
gigantic wart on the face of the earth. What is it? Solid rock?"

"Sort like slate rock, I guess. There's a stretch of about a mile
on both sides of the river along here that's solid rock. This bank
we're standin' on is rock, covered with six or eight foot of earth.
You're right about that big rock over there being a queer thing.
There's been college professors and all sorts of scientific men
here, off and on, to examine it and to try to account for its being
there. But, thunderation, if it's been there for a million years
as they say, what's the sense of explaining it?"

"There's something positively forbidding about it. Gives you the
willies. How did it come by the name you called it a while ago?"

"Quill's Window? Goes back to the days of the Indians. Long before
the time of Tecumseh or The Prophet. They used to range up and down
this river more than a hundred years ago. The old trail is over
there on the other bank as plain as day, covered with grass but
beaten down till it's like a macadam road. I suppose the Indians
followed that trail for hundreds of years. There's still traces
of their camps over there on that side, and a little ways down the
river is a place where they had a regular village. Over here on
this side, quite a little ways farther down, is the remains of an
old earthwork fort used by the French long before the Revolution,
and afterwards by American soldiers about the time of the War of
1812. We'll go and look at it some day if you like. Most people
are interested in it, but for why, I can't see.

"There ain't nothing to see but some busted up breastworks and
lunettes, covered with weeds, with here and there a sort of opening
where they must have had a cannon sticking out to scare the squaws
and papooses. You was askin' about the name of that rock. Well, it
originally had an Indian name, which I always forget because it's
the easiest way to keep from pronouncing it. Then the French came
along and sort of Frenchified the name,--which made it worse, far
as I'm concerned. I'm not much on French. About three-quarters of
the way up the rock, facing the river, is a sort of cave. You can't
see the opening from here, 'cause it faces north, looking up the
river from the bend. There are a lot of little caves and cracks in
the rock, but none of 'em amounts to anything except this one. It
runs back something like twenty foot in the rock and is about as
high as a man's head.

"Shortly after General Harrison licked The Prophet and his warriors
up on the Tippecanoe, a man named Quill,--an Irishman from down
the river some'eres towards Vincennes,--all this is hearsay so far
as I'm concerned, mind you,--but as I was saying, this man Quill
begin to make his home up in that cave. He was what you might call
a hermit. There were no white people in these parts except a few
scattered trappers and some people living in a settlement twenty-odd
miles south of here. As the story goes, this man Quill lived up there
in that cave for about four or five years, hunting and trapping all
around the country. White people begin to get purty thick in these
parts soon after that, Indiana having been made a state. There was
a lot of coming and going up and down the river. A feller named
Digby started a kind of settlement or trading-post further up,
and clearings were made all around,--farms and all that, you see.
Your great grandfather was one of the first men to settle in this
section. Coming down the river by night you could see the light,
up there in Quill's Cave. You could see it for miles, they say.
People begin to speak of it as the light in Quill's window,--and
that's how the name happened. I'm over seventy, and I've never
heard that hill called anything but Quill's Window."

"What happened to Quill?"

"Well, that's something nobody seems to be quite certain about.
Whether he hung himself or somebody else done the job for him,
nobody knows. According to the story that was told when I was a
boy, it seems he killed somebody down the river and come up here
to hide. The relations of the man he killed never stopped hunting
for him. A good many people were of the opinion they finally tracked
him to that cave. In any case, his body was found hanging by the
neck up there one day, on a sort of ridge-pole he had put in. This
was after people had missed seeing the light in Quill's Window for
quite a spell. There are some people who still say the cave is
ha'nted. When I was a young boy, shortly before the Civil War, a
couple of horse thieves were chased up to that cave and--ahem!--I
reckon your grandfather, if he was alive, could tell you all about
what became of 'em and who was in the party that stood 'em up against
the back wall of the cave and shot 'em. There's another story that
goes back even farther than the horse thieves. The skeleton of
a woman was found up there, with the skull split wide open. That
was back in 1830 or 1840. So, you see, when all of them ghosts get
together and begin scrapping over property rights, it's enough to
scare the gizzard out of 'most anybody that happens to be in the
neighbourhood. But I guess old man Quill was the first white man
to shuffle off, so it's generally understood that his ghost rules
the roost. Come on now, let's be moving. It's gettin' hotter
every minute, and you oughtn't to be out in all this heat. For the
Lord's sake, you ain't going to light another one of them things,
are you?"

"Sure. It's the only vice I'm capable of enjoying at present. Being
gassed and shell-shocked, and then having the flu and pneumonia
and rheumatism,--and God knows what else,--sort of purifies a chap,
you see."

"Well, all I got to say is--I guess I'd better not say it, after
all."

"You can't hurt my feelings."

"I'm not so sure about that," said the old man gruffly.

"How do you get up to that cave?"

"You ain't thinking of trying it, are you?" apprehensively.

"When I'm a bit huskier, yes."

The old man removed his cigar in order to obtain the full effect
of a triumphant grin.

"Well, in the first place, you can't get up to it. You've got to
come down to it. The only way to get to the mouth of that cave is
to lower yourself from the top of the rock. And in the second place,
you can't get DOWN to it because it ain't allowed. The owner of all
the land along that side of the river has got 'no trespass' signs
up, and NOBODY'S allowed to climb to the top of that rock. She's
all-fired particular about it, too. The top of that rock is sacred
to her. Nobody ever thinks of violatin' it. All around the bottom
of the slope back of the hill she's got a white picket fence, and
the gate to it is padlocked. You see it's her family buryin'-ground."

"Her what?"

"Buryin'-ground. Her father and mother are buried right smack on
top of that rock."

The young man lifted his eyebrows. "Does that mean there are a
couple of married ghosts fighting on top of the rock every night,
besides the gang down in the--"

"It ain't a joking matter," broke in the other sharply.

"Go on, tell me more. The monstrosity gets more and more interesting
every minute."

The old man chewed his cigar energetically for a few seconds before
responding.

"I'll tell you the story tonight after supper,--not now. The only
thing I want to make clear to you is this. Everybody in this section
respects her wishes about keeping off of that rock, and I want to
ask you to respect 'em, too. It would be a dirty trick for you to
go up there, knowin' it's dead against her wishes."

"A dirty trick, eh?" said the young man, fixing his gaze on the
blue-black summit of the forbidden rock.




CHAPTER II

THE STORY THE OLD MAN TOLD


David Windom's daughter Alix ran away with and married Edward Crown
in the spring of 1894.

Windom was one of the most prosperous farmers in the county. His
lands were wide, his cattle were many, his fields were vast stretches
of green and gold; his granaries, his cribs and his mows, filled
and emptied each year, brought riches and dignity and power to this
man of the soil.

Back when the state was young, his forefathers had fared westward
from the tide-water reaches of Virginia, coming at length to the
rich, unbroken region along the river with the harsh Indian name,
and there they built their cabins and huts on lands that had cost
them little more than a song and yet were of vast dimensions.
They were of English stock. (Another branch of the family, closely
related, remains English to this day, its men sitting sometime in
Parliament and always in the councils of the nation, far removed
in every way from the Windoms in the fertile valley once traversed
by the war-like redskins.) But these Windoms of the valley were no
longer English. There had been six generations of them, and those
of the first two fought under General Washington against the
red-coats and the Hessians in the War of '76.

David Windom, of the fourth generation, went to England for a
wife, however,--a girl he had met on the locally celebrated trip
to Europe in the early seventies. For years he was known from one
end of the county to the other as "the man who has been across the
Atlantic Ocean." The dauntless English bride had come unafraid to
a land she had been taught to regard as wild, peopled by savages
and overrun by ravenous beasts, and she had found it populated
instead by the gentlest sort of men and equally gentle beasts.

She did a great deal for David Windom. He was a proud man
and ambitious. He saw the wisdom of her teachings and he followed
them, not reluctantly but with a fierce desire to refine what God
had given him in the shape of raw material: a good brain, a sturdy
sense of honour, and above all an imagination that lifted him
safely,--if not always sanely,--above the narrow world in which the
farmer of that day spent his entire life. Not that he was uncouth
to begin with,--far from it. He had been irritatingly fastidious
from boyhood up. His thoughts had wandered afar on frequent journeys,
and when they came back to take up the dull occupation they had
abandoned temporarily, they were broader than when they went out to
gather wool. The strong, well-poised English wife found rich soil
in which to work; he grew apace and flourished, and manifold were
the innovations that stirred a complacent community into actual
unrest. A majority of the farmers and virtually all of the farmers'
wives were convinced that Dave Windom was losing his mind, the way
he was letting that woman boss him around.

The women did not like her. She was not one of them and never
could be one of them. Her "hired girls" became "servants" the day
she entered the ugly old farmhouse on the ridge. They were no longer
considered members of the family; they were made to feel something
they had never felt before in their lives: that they were not their
mistress's equals.

The "hired girl" of those days was an institution. As a rule, she
moved in the same social circle as the lady of the house and it
was customary for her to intimately address her mistress by her
Christian name. She enjoyed the right to engage in all conversations;
she was, in short, "as good as anybody." The new Mrs. Windom was
not long in transporting the general housework "girl" into a totally
unexampled state of astonishment. This "girl,"--aged forty-five and
a prominent member of the Methodist Church,--announced to everybody
in the community except to Mrs. Windom herself that she was going
to leave. She did not leave. The calm serenity of the new mistress
prevailed, even over the time-honoured independence in which
the "girl" and her kind unconsciously gloried. Respect succeeded
injury, and before the bride had been in the Windom house a month,
Maria Bliss was telling the other "hired girls" of the neighbourhood
that she wouldn't trade places with them for anything in the world.

Greatly to the consternation and disgust of other householders,
a "second girl" was added to the Windom menage,--a parlour-maid
she was called. This was too much. It was rank injustice. General
housework girls began to complain of having too much work to
do,--getting up at five in the morning, cooking for half a dozen
"hands," doing all the washing and ironing, milking, sweeping and
so on, and not getting to bed till nine or ten o'clock at night,--to
say nothing of family dinners on Sunday and the preacher in every
now and then, and all that. Moreover, Mrs. Windom herself never
looked bedraggled. She took care of her hair, wore good clothes,
went to the dentist regularly (whether she had a toothache or not),
had meals served in what Maria Bliss loftily described as "courses,"
and saw to it that David Windom shaved once a day, dressed better
than his neighbours, kept his "surrey" and "side-bar buggy" washed,
his harness oiled and polished, and wore real riding-boots.

The barnyard took on an orderly appearance, the stables were
repaired, the picket fences gleamed white in the sun, the roof of
the house was painted red, the sides a shimmering white, and there
were green window shutters and green window boxes filled with
geraniums. The front yard was kept mowed, and there were great
flower-beds encircled by snow-white boulders; a hammock was swung
in the shade of two great oaks, and--worst of all! a tennis-court
was laid out alongside the house.

Tennis! That was a game played only by "dudes"! Passers-by looked
with scorn upon young David Windom and his flaxen-haired wife
as they played at the silly game before supper every evening. And
they went frequently to the "opera house" at the county seat, ten
miles up the river; they did not wait for summer to come with its
circus, as all the other farmers were content to do; whenever there
was a good "show" at the theatre in town they sent up for reserved
seats and drove in for supper at the principal hotel. Altogether,
young Mrs. Windom was simply "raising Cain" with the conventions.

Strange to say, David did not "go to smash." To the intense chagrin
of the wiseacres he prospered despite an unprecedented disregard
for the teachings of his father and his grandfather before him. The
wolf stayed a long way off from his door, the prophetic mortgage
failed to lay its blight upon his lands, his crops were bountiful,
his acreage spread as the years went by,--and so his uncles, his
cousins and his aunts were never so happy as when wishing for the
good old days when his father was alive and running the farm as it
should be run! If David had married some good, sensible, thrifty,
hard-working farmer's daughter,--Well, it might not have meant an
improvement in the crops but it certainly would have spared him
the expense of a tennis court, and theatre-going, and absolutely
unnecessary trips to Chicago or Indianapolis whenever SHE took it
into her head to go. Besides, it wasn't natural that they should
deliberately put off having children. It wasn't what God and the
country expected. After a year had passed and there were no symptoms
of approaching motherhood, certain narrow-minded relatives began to
blame Great Britain for the outrage and talked a great deal about
a worn-out, deteriorating race.

Then, after two years, when a girl baby was born to David and his
wife, they couldn't, for the life of them, understand how it came
to pass that it wasn't a boy. There had been nothing but boys in
the Windom family for years and years. It appeared to be a Windom
custom. And here was this fair-haired outsider from across the
sea breaking in with a girl! They could not believe it possible.
David,--a great, strong, perfect specimen of a Windom,--the father
of a girl! Why, they emphasized, he was over six feet tall, strong
as an ox, broad-shouldered,--as fine a figure as you would see in
a lifetime. There was something wrong,--radically wrong.

The district suffered another shock when a nurse maid was added to
David's household,--a girl from the city who had nothing whatever
to do, except to take care of the baby while the unnatural mother
tinkered with the flower-beds, took long walks about the farm,
rode horseback, and played tennis with David and a silly crowd of
young people who had fallen into evil ways.

She died when her daughter was ten years old. Those who had
misunderstood her and criticized her in the beginning, mourned
her deeply, sincerely, earnestly in the end, for she had triumphed
over prejudice, narrow-mindedness, and a certain form of malice.
The whole district was the better for her once hateful innovations,
and there was no one left who scoffed at David Windom for the choice
he had made of a wife.

Her death wrought a remarkable, enduring change in Windom. He became
a silent, brooding man who rarely smiled and whose heart lay up
in the little graveyard on the ridge. The gay, larksome light fled
from his eyes, his face grew stern and sometimes forbidding. She
had taken with her the one great thing she had brought into his
life: ineffable buoyancy. He no longer played, for there was no
one with whom he would play; he no longer sang, for the music had
gone out of his soul; he no longer whistled the merry tunes, for
his lips were stiff and unyielding. Only when he looked upon his
little daughter did the soft light of love well up into his eyes
and the rigid mouth grow tender.

She was like her mother. She was joyous, brave and fair to look
upon. She had the same heart of sunshine, the same heart of iron,
and the blue in her eyes was like the blue of the darkening skies.
She adored the grim, silent man who was her father, and she was
the breath of life to him.

And then, when she was nineteen, she broke the heart of David Windom.
For two years she had been a student in the University situated
but half a score of miles from the place where she was born,
a co-educational institution of considerable size and importance.
Windom did not believe in women's colleges. He believed in the
free school with its broadening influence, its commingling of the
sexes in the search for learning, and in the divine right of woman
to develop her mind through the channels that lead ultimately and
inevitably to superiority of man. He believed that the girl trained
and educated in schools devoted exclusively to the finer sex fails
to achieve understanding as well as education. The only way to give
a girl a practical education,--and he believed that every woman
should have one,--was to start her off even with the boy who was
training to become her master in all respects.

During her second year at the University she met Edward Crown,
a senior. He was the son of a blacksmith in the city, and he was
working his way through college with small assistance from his
parent, who held to the conviction that a man was far better off
if he developed his muscles by hard work and allowed the brain
to take care of itself. Young Crown was a good-looking fellow of
twenty-three, clean-minded, ambitious, dogged in work and dogged
in play. He had "made" the football team in his sophomore year.
Customary snobbishness had kept him out of the fraternities and
college societies. He may have been a good fellow, a fine student,
and a cracking end on the eleven, and all that, but he was not
acceptable material for any one of the half dozen fraternities.

When he left college with his hard-earned degree it was to accept
a position with a big engineering company, a job which called him
out to the far Northwest. Alix Windom was his promised wife. They
were deeply, madly in love with each other. Separation seemed
unendurable. She was willing to go into the wilderness with him,
willing to endure the hardships and the discomforts of life in a
construction camp up in the mountains of Montana. She would share
his poverty and his trials as she would later share his triumphs.
But when they went to David Windom with their beautiful dream, the
world fell about their ears.

David Windom, recovering from the shock of surprise, ordered Edward
from the house. He would sooner see his child dead than the wife
of Nick Crown's son,--Nick Crown, a drunken rascal who had been
known to beat his wife,--Nick Crown who was not even fit to lick
the feet of the horses he shod!

One dark, rainy night in late June, Alix stole out of the old
farmhouse on the ridge and met her lover at the abandoned tollgate
half a mile up the road. He waited there with a buggy and a fast
team of horses. Out of a ramshackle cupboard built in the wall of
the toll-house, they withdrew the bundles surreptitiously placed
there by Alix in anticipation of this great and daring event, and
made off toward the city at a break-neck, reckless speed. They
were married before midnight, and the next day saw them on their
way to the Far West. But not before Alix had despatched a messenger
to her father, telling him of her act and asking his forgiveness
for the sake of the love she bore him. The same courier carried
back to the city a brief response from David Windom. In a shaken,
sprawling hand he informed her that if she ever decided to return
to her home ALONE, he would receive her and forgive her for the
sake of the love he bore her, but if she came with the coward who
stole her away from him, he would kill him before her eyes.

II

The summer and fall and part of the winter passed, and in early
March Alix came home.

David Windom, then a man of fifty, gaunt and grey and powerful,
seldom had left the farm in all these months. He rode about his
far-spread estate, grim and silent, his eyes clouded, his voice
almost metallic, his manner cold and repellent. His tenants, his
labourers, his neighbours, fearing him, rarely broke in upon his
reserve. Only his animals loved him and were glad to see him,--his
dogs, his horses, even his cattle. He loved them, for they were
staunch and faithful. Never had he uttered his daughter's name in
all these months, nor was there a soul in the community possessed
of the hardihood to inquire about her or to sympathize with him.

It was a fierce, cruel night in March that saw the return of Alix.
A fine, biting snow blew across the wide, open farmlands; the beasts
of the field were snugly under cover; no man stirred abroad unless
driven by necessity; the cold, wind-swept roads were deserted. So
no one witnessed the return of Alix Crown and her husband. They came
out of the bleak, unfriendly night and knocked at David Windom's
door. There were lights in his sitting-room windows; through them
they could see the logs blazing in the big fireplace, beside which
sat the lonely, brooding figure of Alix's father. It was late,--nearly
midnight,--and the house was still. Old Maria Bliss and the one
other servant had been in bed for hours. The farmhands slept in
a cottage Windom had erected years before, acting upon his wife's
suggestion. It stood some two or three hundred yards from the main
house.

A dog in the stables barked, first in anger and then with unmistakable
joy. David's favourite, a big collie, sprang up from his place on
the rug before the fire and looked uneasily toward the door opening
onto the hall. Then came a rapping at the front door. The collie
growled softly as he moved toward the door. He sniffed the air in
the hall and suddenly began to whine joyously, wagging his tail as
he bounded back and forth between his master and the door.

David Windom knew then that his daughter had come home.

He sprang to his feet and took two long strides toward the door.
Abruptly, as if suddenly turned to stone, he stopped. For a long
time he stood immovable in the middle of the room. The rapping was
repeated, louder, heavier than before. He turned slowly, retraced
his steps to the fireplace and took from its rack in the corner a
great iron poker. His face was ashen grey, his eyes were wide and
staring and terrible. Then he strode toward the door, absolutely
unconscious of the glad, prancing dog at his side.

In the poor shelter of the little porch stood Alix, bent and
shivering, and, behind her, Edward Crown, at whose feet rested two
huge "telescope satchels." The light from within fell dimly upon
the white, upturned face of the girl. She held out her hands to
the man who towered above her on the doorstep.

"Daddy! Daddy!" she cried brokenly. "Oh, my daddy! Let me come
in--let me,--I--I am freezing."

But David Windom was peering over her head at the indistinct face
of the man beyond. He wanted to be sure. Lifting his powerful arm,
he struck.

Edward Crown, stiff and numb with cold and weak from an illness of
some duration, did not raise an arm to ward off the blow, nor was
he even prepared to dodge. The iron rod crashed down upon his head.
His legs crumpled up; he dropped in a heap at the top of the steps
and rolled heavily to the bottom, sprawling out on the snow-covered
brick walk.

The long night wore on. Windom had carried his daughter into the
sitting-room, where he placed her on a lounge drawn up before the
fire. She had fainted. After an hour he left her and went out into
the night. The body of Edward Crown was lying where it had fallen.
It was covered by a thin blanket of snow. For a long time he stood
gazing down upon the lifeless shape. The snow cut his face, the
wind threshed about his coatless figure, but he heeded them not. He
was muttering to himself. At last he turned to re-enter the house.
His daughter was standing in the open doorway.

"Is--is that Edward down there?" she asked, in weak, lifeless tones.
She seemed dull, witless, utterly without realization.

"Go back in the house," he whispered, as he drew back from her in
a sort of horror,--horror that had not struck him in the presence
of the dead.

"Is that Edward?" she insisted, her voice rising to a queer,
monotonous wail.

"I told you to stay in the house," he said. "I told you I would look
after him, didn't I? Go back, Alix,--that's a good girl. Your--your
daddy will--Oh, my God! Don't look at me like that!"

"Is he dead?" she whispered, still standing very straight in
the middle of the doorway. She was not looking at the inert thing
on the walk below, but into her father's eyes. He did not, could
not answer. He seemed frozen stiff. She went on in the same dull,
whispered monotone. "I begged him to let me come alone. I begged
him to let me see you first. But he would come. He brought me all
the way from the West and he--he was not afraid of you. You have
done what you said you would do. You did not give him a chance.
And always,--always I have loved you so. You will never know how I
longed to come back and have you kiss me, and pet me, and call me
those silly names you used--"

"What's done, is done," he broke in heavily. "He is dead. It had to
be. I was insane,--mad with all these months of hatred. It is done.
Come,--there is nothing you can do. Come back into the house. I
will carry him in--and wake somebody. Tomorrow they will come and
take me away. They will hang me. I am ready. Let them come. You
must not stand there in the cold, my child."

She toppled forward into his arms, and he lifted her as if she were
a babe and carried her into the house. The collie was whining in
the corner. Windom sat down in the big armchair before the fire,
still holding the girl in his arms. She was moaning weakly. Suddenly
a great, overwhelming fear seized him,--the fear of being hanged!

A long time afterward,--it was after two,--he arose from his knees
beside the lounge and prepared to go out into the night once more.
Alix had promised not to send her father to the gallows. She was
almost in a stupor after the complete physical and mental collapse,
but she knew what she was doing, she realized what she was promising
in return for the blow that had robbed her of the man she loved.

No one will ever know just what took place in that darkened
sitting-room, for the story as afterwards related was significantly
lacking in details. The light had been extinguished and the doors
silently closed by the slayer. The stiffening body of Edward Crown
out in the snow was not more silent than the interior of the old
farmhouse, apart from the room in which David Windom pleaded with
his stricken daughter.

And all the while he was begging her to save him from the consequences
of his crime, his brain was searching for the means to dispose
of the body of Edward Crown and to provide an explanation for the
return of Alix without her husband.

Circumstances favoured him in a surprising manner. Young Crown and
his wife had travelled down from Chicago in a day coach, and they
had left the train at a small way station some five miles west of
the Windom farm. Crown was penniless. He did not possess the means
to engage a vehicle to transport them from the city to the farm,
nor the money to secure lodging for the night in the cheapest hotel.
Alix's pride stood in the way of an appeal to her husband's father
or to any one of his friends for assistance. It was she who insisted
that they leave the train at Hawkins station and walk to Windom's
house. They had encountered no one who knew them, either on the
train or at the station; while on their cold, tortuous journey
along the dark highway they did not meet a solitary human being.

No one, therefore, was aware of their return.

Edward Crown's presence in the neighbourhood was unknown. If David
Windom's plan succeeded, the fact that Crown had returned with his
wife never would be known. To all inquirers both he and his daughter
were to return the flat but evasive answer: "It is something I cannot
discuss at present," leaving the world to arrive at the obvious
conclusion that Alix's husband had abandoned her. And presently
people, from sheer delicacy, would cease to inquire. No one would
know that Crown had been ill up in the mountains for weeks, had
lost his position, and had spent his last penny in getting his wife
back to the house in which she was born,--and where her own child
was soon to be born.

Windom went about the task of secreting his son-in-law's body in a most
systematic, careful manner. He first carried the two "telescopes"
into the house and hid them in a closet. Then he put on an old
overcoat and cap, his riding boots and gloves. Stealing out to the
rear of the house, he found a lantern and secured it to his person
by means of a strap. A few minutes later he was ready to start
off on his ghastly mission. Alix nodded her head dumbly when he
commanded her to remain in the sitting-room and to make no sound
that might arouse Maria Bliss. He promised to return in less than
an hour.

"Your father's life depends on your silence, my child, from this
moment on," he whispered in her ear.

She started up. "And how about my husband's life?" she moaned.
"What of him? Why do you put yourself--"

"Sh! Your husband is dead. You cannot bring him to life. It is your
duty,--do your hear?--your duty to spare the living. Remember what
I said to you awhile ago. Never forget it, my child."

"Yes," she muttered. "'Blood is thicker than water.' I remember."

III

He went out into the night, closing the door softly behind him.
The collie was at his heels. He was afraid to go alone. Grimly,
resolutely he lifted the body of Edward Crown from the ground and
slung it across his shoulder, the head and arms hanging down his
back. Desperation added strength to his powerful frame. As if his
burden were a sack of meal, he strode swiftly down the walk, through
the gate and across the gravel road. The night was as black as
ink, yet he went unerringly to the pasture gate a few rods down
the road. Unlatching it, he passed through and struck out across
the open, wind-swept meadow. The dog slunk along close behind him,
growling softly. Snow was still falling, but the gale from the
north was sweeping it into drifts, obliterating his tracks almost
as soon as they were made.

Straight ahead lay the towering, invisible rock, a quarter of a
mile away. He descended the ridge slope, swung tirelessly across
the swales and mounds in the little valley, and then bent his back
to the climb up the steep incline to Quill's Window. Picking his
way through a fringe of trees, he came to the tortuous path that
led to the crest of the great rock. Panting, dogged, straining every
ounce of his prodigious strength, he struggled upward, afraid to
stop for rest, afraid to lower his burden. The sides and the flat
summit of the rock were full of treacherous fissures, but he knew
them well. He had climbed the sides of Quill's Window scores of
times as a boy, to sit at the top and gaze off over the small world
below, there to dream of the great world outside, and of love,
adventure, travel. Many a night, after the death of his beloved
Alix, he had gone up there to mourn alone, to be nearer to the
heaven which she had entered, to be closer to her. He knew well of
the narrow fissure at the top,--six feet deep and the length of a
grave! Filled only with the leaves of long dead years!

He lowered his burden to the bare surface of the rock. The wind
had swept it clean. Under the protecting screen of his overcoat
he struck a match and lighted the lantern. Then for the first time
he studied closely the grey, still face of the youth he had slain.
The skull was crushed. There was frozen blood down the back of the
head and neck--He started up in sudden consternation. There would
be blood-stains where the body had lain so long,--tell-tale,
convicting stains! He must be swift with the work in hand. Those
stains must be wiped out before the break of day.

Lowering himself into the opening, he began digging at one end with
his hands, scooping back quantities of wet leaves. There was snow
down there in the pit,--a foot or more of it. After a few minutes
of vigorous clawing, a hole in the side of the fissure was revealed,--an
aperture large enough for a man to crawl into. He knew where it
led to: down into Quill's cave twenty feet below.

Some one,--perhaps an Indian long before the time of Quill, or it
may have been Quill himself,--had chiselled hand and toe niches in
the sides of this well and had used the strange shaft as means of
getting into and out of the cave. Windom's father had closed this
shaft when David was a small boy, after the venturesome youngster
had gone down into the cave and, unable to climb out again, had
been the cause of an all-day search by his distracted parent and
every neighbour for miles around. The elder Windom had blocked the
bottom of the hole with a huge boulder, shorn from the side of the
cave by some remote wrench of nature. Then he had half filled the
cavity from the top by casting in all of the loose stones to be
found on the crest of the rock, together with a quantity of earth.
The work had never been completed. There still remained a hole some
ten feet deep.

David Windom clambered out, leaving his lantern below. Letting the
dead man's body slide into the crevice, he followed, bent on at
least partially finishing the job. When he climbed out a second
time, Edward Crown was at the bottom of the hole and the wet, foul
leaves again hid the opening. Tomorrow night, and the night after,
he would come again to close the hole entirely with earth and
stones, hiding forever the grewsome thing in Quill's "chimney," as
the flue-like passage was called.

Extinguishing the lantern, he started down the hill at a reckless,
break-neck speed. He had the uncanny feeling that he was being
followed, that Edward Crown was dogging his footsteps. Halfway
down, he stumbled and fell sprawling. As he started to rise, a
sound smote his ears--the sound of footsteps. For many seconds he
held his breath, terror clutching his throat. He WAS being followed!
Some one was shuffling down the rock behind him. The collie! He
had forgotten the dog. But even as he drew in the deep breath of
relief, he felt his blood suddenly freeze in his veins. It was not
the dog. Something approached that moaned and whimpered and was
not mortal. It passed by him as he crouched to the earth,--a shadow
blacker than the night itself. Suddenly the truth burst upon him.

"My God! Alix!"

Half an hour later he staggered into his house, bearing the form
of his daughter,--tenderly, carefully, not as he had borne the
despised dead.

She had followed him to the top of Quill's Window, she had witnessed
the ghastly interment, and she had whispered a prayer for the boy
who was gone.

The next day her baby was born and that night she died. Coming out
of a stupor just before death claimed her, she said to David Windom:

"I am going to Edward. I do not forgive you, father. You must not ask
that of me. You say it is my duty to save you from the gallows,--a
child's duty to her parent. I have promised. I shall keep my
promise. It is not in my heart to send you to the gallows. You
are my father. You have always loved me. This is my baby,--mine
and Edward's. She may live,--God knows I wish I might have died
yesterday and spared her the accursed breath of life,--she may grow
up to be a woman, just as I grew up. I do not ask much of you in
return for what I have done for you, father. You have killed my
Edward. I loved him with all my soul. I do not care to live. But
my child must go on living, I suppose. My child and his. She is his
daughter. I cannot expect you to love her, but I do expect you to
take care of her. You say that blood is thicker than water. You
are right. I cannot find it in my heart to betray you. You may tell
the world whatever story you like about Edward. He is dead, and I
shall soon be dead. You can hurt neither of us, no matter what you
do. I ask two things of you. One is that you will be good to my
baby as long as you may live, and the other is that you will bury
me up there where you put Edward last night. I must lie near him
always. Say to people that I have asked you to bury me in that pit
at the top of Quill's Window,--that it was my whim, if you like.
Close it up after you have placed me there and cover it with great
rocks, so that Edward and I may never be disturbed. I want no
headstone, no epitaph. Just the stones as they were hewn by God."

David Windom promised. He was alone in the room with her when she
died.

IV

Twenty years passed. Windom came at last to the end of his days.
He had fulfilled his promises to Alix. He had taken good care of
her daughter, he had given her everything in his power to give,
and he had worshipped her because she was like both of the Alixes
he had loved. She was Alix Crown,--Alix the Third, he called her.

On the day of his death, Windom confessed the crime of that far
off night in March. In the presence of his lawyer, his doctor,
his granddaughter and the prosecuting attorney of the county, he
revealed the secret he had kept for a score of years. The mystery
of Edward Crown's disappearance was cleared up, and for the first
time in her young life Alix was shorn of the romantic notion that
one day her missing father would appear in the flesh, out of the
silences, to claim her as his own. From earliest childhood, her
imagination had dealt with all manner of dramatic situations; she
had existed in the glamour of uncertainty; she had looked upon
herself as a character worthy of a place in some gripping tale of
romance. The mound of rocks on the crest of Quill's Window, surrounded
by a tall iron paling fence with its padlocked gate, covered only
the body of the mother she had never seen. She did not know until
this enlightening hour that her father was also there and had been
throughout all the years in which fancy played so important a part.

Like all the rest of the world, she was given to understand that
her father had cruelly abandoned her mother. In her soul she had
always cherished the hope that this heartless monster might one
day stand before her, pleading and penitent, only to be turned away
with the scorn he so richly deserved. She even pictured him as rich
and powerful, possessed of everything except the one great boon
which she alone could give him,--a daughter's love. And she would
point to the top of Quill's Window and tell him that he must first
look there for forgiveness,--under the rocks where his broken-hearted
victim slept.

The truth stunned her. She was a long time in realizing that her
grandfather, whom she both loved and feared,--this grim, adoring
old giant,--not only had murdered her father but undoubtedly had
killed her mother as well. The story that David Windom had written
out and signed at the certain approach of death, read aloud in
his presence by the shocked and incredulous lawyer, and afterwards
printed word for word in the newspapers at the old man's command,
changed the whole course of life for her. In fact, her nature
underwent a sharp but subtle change. There was nothing left to her
of the old life, no thought, no purpose, no fancy; all had been
swept up in a heap and destroyed in the short space of half an
hour. Everything in her life had to be reconstructed, made-over to
suit the new order. She could no longer harbour vengeful thoughts
concerning her father, she could no longer charge him with the
wanton destruction of her mother's happiness.

The grandfather she had loved all her life assumed another shape
entirely; he was no longer the same, and never again could be the
same. She did not hate him. That was impossible. She had never seen
her parents, so she had not known the love of either. They did not
belong in her life except through the sheerest imagination. Her
grandfather was the only real thing she had had in life, and she
had adored him. He had killed two people who were as nothing to her,
but he had taken the place of both. How could she bring herself to
hate this man who had destroyed what were no more than names to
her? Father,--Mother! Two words,--that was all. And for twenty
long years he had been paying,--Oh, how he must have paid!

She recalled his reason for taking her to England when she was less
than eight years old and leaving her there until she was twelve.
She remembered that he had said he wanted her to be like her
grandmother, to grow up among her people, to absorb from them all
that had made the first Alix so strong and fine and true. And then
he had come to take her from them, back to the land of her birth,
because, he said, he wanted her to be like her mother, the second
Alix,--an American woman. She recalled his bitter antipathy to
co-educational institutions and his unyielding resolve that she should
complete her schooling in a Sacred Heart Convent. She remembered
the commotion this decision created among his neighbours. In her
presence they had assailed him with the charge that he was turning
the girl over, body and soul, to the Catholic Church, and he had
uttered in reply the never to be forgotten words:

"If I never do anything worse than that for her, I'll be damned
well satisfied with my chance of getting into heaven as soon as
the rest of you."

When David's will was read, it was found that except for a few
small bequests, his entire estate, real and personal, was left to
his granddaughter, Alix Crown, to have and to hold in perpetuity
without condition or restriction of any sort or character.

The first thing she did was to have a strong picket fence constructed
around the base of the hill leading up to Quill's Window, shutting
off all accessible avenues of approach to the summit. Following
close upon the publication of David Windom's confession, large
numbers of people were urged by morbid curiosity to visit the
strange burial-place of Edward and Alix Crown. The top of Quill's
Window became the most interesting spot in the county. Alix the
Third was likewise an object of vast interest, and the old, deserted
farmhouse on the ridge came in for its share of curiosity.

Almost immediately after the double tragedy and the birth of little
Alix, David Windom moved out of the house and took up his residence
in the riverside village of Windomville, a mile to the south.
The old house was closed, the window shutters nailed up, the doors
barred, and all signs of occupancy removed. It was said that he never
put foot inside the yard after his hasty, inexplicable departure.
The place went to rack and ruin. In course of time he built a new
and modern house nearer the village, and this was now one of the
show places of the district.

The influence of Alix the First was expressed in the modelling
of house and grounds, the result being a picturesque place with a
distinctly English atmosphere, set well back from the highway in
the heart of a grove of oaks,--a substantial house of brick with
a steep red tile roof, white window casements, and a wide brick
terrace guarded by a low ivy-draped wall. English ivy swathed the
two corners of the house facing the road, mounting high upon the
tall red chimneys at the ends. There were flower-beds below the
terrace, and off to the right there was an old-fashioned garden.
The stables were at the foot of the hill some distance to the rear
of the house.

The village of Windomville lay below, hugging the river, a relic of
the days when steamboats plied up and down the stream and railways
were remote, a sleepy, insignificant, intensely rural hamlet of
less than six hundred inhabitants. Its one claim to distinction was
the venerable but still active ferry that laboured back and forth
across the river. Of secondary importance was the ancient dock,
once upon a time the stopping place of steamboats, but now a rotten,
rickety obstruction upon which the downstream drift lodged in an
unsightly mass.

In the solid red-brick house among the oaks Alix the Third had spent
her childhood days. She was taken to England when she was eight
by her haunted grandfather, not only to receive the bringing-up of
an English child, but because David Windom's courage was breaking
down. As she grew older, the resemblance to Edward Crown became
more and more startling. She had his dark, smiling eyes; his wavy
brown hair; her very manner of speech was like his. To David Windom,
she was the re-incarnation of the youth he had slain. Out of her
eyes seemed to look the soul of Edward Crown. He could not stand it.
She became an obsession, a curious source of fascination. He could
not bear her out of his sight, and yet when she was with him, smiling
up into his eyes,--he was deathly afraid of her. There were times
when he was almost overcome by the impulse to drop to his knees
and plead for forgiveness as he looked into the clear, friendly,
questioning eyes of Edward Crown.

And her voice, her speech,--therein lay the true cause of his taking
her to England. When she came home to him, after four years, there
was no trace of Edward Crown in her voice or manner of speaking.
She was almost as English as Alix the First. But her eyes had not
changed; he was still a haunted man.

In the little graveyard on the outskirts of the village more than
a score of Windoms lie. With them lies all that was mortal of fair
Alix the First, and beside her is David Windom, the murderer.




CHAPTER III

COURTNEY THANE


"And what has become of Alix the Third?" inquired the young man,
squinting at his wristwatch and making out in the semi-darkness
that it was nearly half-past nine.

He had listened somewhat indulgently to the story of the three Alixes.
The old man, prompted and sometimes disputed by other members of
the family, had narrated in his own simple way the foregoing tale,
arriving at the end in a far more expeditious and certainly in a
less studied manner than the present chronicler employs in putting
the facts before his readers. The night was hot. He was occasionally
interrupted by various members of the little group on the front
porch of the big old farmhouse, the interruption invariably taking
the form of a conjecture concerning the significance of certain
signs ordinarily infallible in denoting the approach of rain. Heat
lightning had been playing for an hour or more in the gloomy west;
a tree-toad in a nearby elm was prophesying thunder in unmelodious
song: night-birds fluttered restlessly among the lofty branches;
widely separated whiffs of a freshening wind came around the corner
of the house. All of these had a barometric meaning to the wistful
group. There was a thunderstorm on the way. It was sure to come
before morning. The prayers inaugurated a month ago were at last
to be answered.

As old man Brown drily remarked: "There's one satisfaction about
prayin' for rain. If you keep at it long enough, you're bound to
get what you're askin' for. Works the same way when you're prayin'
for it to stop rainin'. My grandfather once prayed for a solid two
months before he got rain, and then, by gosh, he had to pray for
nearly three weeks to get it to quit."

Supper over, the young man had reminded his venerable angling
companion of his promise to relate the history of Quill's Window.
Old Caleb Brown was the father of Mrs. Vick,--Lucinda Vick, wife
of the farmer in whose house the young man was spending a month as
a boarder.

The group on the porch included Amos Vick, anxious, preoccupied,
and interested only in the prospect of rain; his daughter Rosabel,
aged eighteen, a very pretty and vivacious girl, interested only
in the young man from the far-off, mysterious city in the East; his
son Caleb, a rugged youth of nineteen; Mrs. Vick, and a neighbour
named White, who had come over for the sole purpose of finding out
just what Amos Vick thought about the weather. Two dogs lay panting
on the dry grass at the foot of the steps.

"Oh, she's living over there in the Windom house," said Mrs. Vick.

"Sort of running the place," explained Mr. Brown, a trace of irony
in his voice.

"Well," put in Amos Vick, speaking for the first time in many minutes,
"she's got a lot of sense, that girl has. She may be letting on
that she's running the farm, but she ain't, you bet. That's where
she's smart. She's got sense enough to know she don't know anything
about running a farm, and while she puts on a lot of airs and acts
kind of important like, the real truth is she leaves everything to
old Jim Bagley. I guess you don't know who Jim Bagley is, do you,
Courtney?"

"I can't say that I do," replied the young man.

"Well, he's about the slickest citizen you ever saw. From what
father here says about your granddad, he must have been a purty
hard customer to deal with, but, by ginger, if he was any worse
than Jim Bagley in driving a bargain, I'm glad he died as long ago
as he did."

"You're just sore, Amos," said his wife, "because Mr. Bagley got
the best of you in that hog deal three years ago."

"Oh, Lord, ain't you ever going to get tired of throwin' that up
to me?" groaned Mr. Vick. "I never mention Jim Bagley's name but
what you up and say something about them hogs. Now, as a matter of
fact, them hogs--"

"For goodness sake, Pa, you're not going to tell Mr. Thane about
that hog business, are you?" cried Rosabel.

"Well, when your Ma begins to insinuate that I got the worst of--"

"I don't say that you got the worst of it, Amos," interrupted Mrs.
Vick good-humouredly. "I only say that he got the best of it."

"Well, if that don't come to the same--"

"Looks to me, Amos, like we'd get her good and plenty before mornin',"
broke in Mr. White. He was referring to the weather. "That ain't
all heat lightnin' over there. Seems to me I heard a little thunder
just now."

"Alix Crown is away a good part of the time, Courtney," said Mrs.
Vick, taking up the thread where it had been severed by recrimination.
"All through the war,--long before we went in,--she was up in town
working for the Belgiums, and then, when we did go in, she went
East some'eres to learn how to be a nurse or drive an ambulance or
something,--New York, I believe. And as for money, she contributed
quite a bit--how much do they say it was, Amos?"

"Well, all I know is that Mary Simmons says she gave ten thousand
dollars and Josie Fiddler says it was three hundred,--so you can
choose between 'em."

"She did her share, all right," said young Caleb defensively.
"That's more'n a lot of people around here did."

"Gale's in love with her, Mr. Thane," explained Rosabel. "She's
five years older than he is, and don't know he's on earth."

"Aw, cut that out," growled Caleb.

"Is she good-looking?" inquired Courtney Thane.

"I don't like 'em quite as tall as she is," said Mr. White.

"She's got a good pair of legs," said old Caleb Brown, shifting
his cigar with his tongue.

"We're not talking about horses, father," said Mrs. Vick sharply.

"Who said we was?" demanded old Caleb.

"Most people think she's good-looking," said Rosabel, somewhat
grudgingly. "And she isn't any taller than I am, Mr. White."

"Well, you ain't no dwarft, Rosie," exclaimed Farmer White, with a
brave laugh. "You must be five foot seven or eight, but you ain't
skinny like she is. She'd ought to weigh about a hunderd and sixty,
for her height, and I'll bet she don't weigh more'n a hunderd and
thirty."

"I wouldn't call that skinny," remarked Courtney.

"She wears these here new-fangled britches when she's on horseback,"
said old Caleb, justifying his observation. "Rides straddle, like
a man. You can't help seeing what kind of--"

"That will do, Pa," broke in his wife. "It's no crime for a woman
to wear pants when she's riding, although I must say I don't think
it's very modest. I never rode any way except side-saddle,--and
neither has Rosabel. I've brought her up--"

"Don't you be too sure of that, Ma," interrupted young Caleb
maliciously.

"I never did it but once, and you know it, Cale Vick," cried Rosabel,
blushing violently.

The subject was abruptly changed by Mr. White.

"Well, I guess I'll be moseyin' along home, Amos. That certainly
did sound like thunder, didn't it? And that tree-toad has stopped
signallin',--that's a sure sign. Like as not I'll get caught in
the rain if I don't,--what say, Lucindy?"

"Do you want an umberell, Steve?"

"I should say not! What do you want me to do? Scare the rain off?
No, sir! Rain's the funniest thing in the world. If it sees you
got an umberell it won't come within a hunderd miles of you. That's
why I got my Sunday clothes on, and my new straw hat. Sometimes
that'll bring rain out of a clear sky,--that an' a Sunday-school
picnic. It's a pity we couldn't have got up a Sunday-school
picnic,--but then, of course, that wouldn't have done any good.
You can't fool a rainstorm. So long, Amos. Night, everybody. Night,
Courtney. As I was sayin' awhile ago, I used to go to school with
your pa when him an' me was little shavers,--up yonder at the old
Kennedy schoolhouse. Fifty odd years ago. Seems like yesterday.
How old did you say you was?"

"Twenty-eight, Mr. White."

"And your pa's been dead--how long did you say?"

"He died when I was twenty-two."

"Funny your ma didn't bring him out here and bury him 'longside his
father and all the rest of 'em up in the family burying-ground,"
was Mr. White's concluding observation as he ambled off down the
gravel walk to the front gate.

"I wish you'd brought your croix de guerre along with you, Mr.
Thane," said young Caleb, his eyes gleaming in the faint light
from the open door. "I guess I don't pronounce it as it ought to
be. I'm not much of a hand at French."

"You came pretty close to it," said Thane, with a smile. "You see,
Cale, it's the sort of thing one puts away in a safe place. That's
why I left it in New York. Mother likes to look at it occasionally.
Mothers are queer creatures, you know. They like to be reminded of
the good things their sons have done. It helps 'em to forget the
bad things, I suppose."

"You're always joking," pouted Rosabel, leaning forward, ardour
in her wide, young eyes. "If I was a boy and had been in the war,
I'd never stop talking about it."

"And I'd have been in it, too, if pa hadn't up and told 'em I was
only a little more than fifteen," said Cale, glowering at his father
in the darkness.

"You mustn't blame your pa, Cale," rebuked his mother. "He knows
what a soldier's life is better than you do. He was down in that
camp at Chattanooga during the Spanish War, and almost died of
typhoid, Courtney. And when I think of the way our boys died by
the millions of the flu, I--well, I just know you would have died
of it, sonny, and I wouldn't have had any cross or medal to look
at, and--and--"

"Don't begin cryin', Lucindy," broke in old Caleb hastily. "He didn't
die of the flu, so what's the sense of worryin' about it now? He
didn't even ketch it, and gosh knows, the whole blamed country was
full of it that winter."

"Well," began Mrs. Vick defensively, and then compressed her lips
in silence.

"I think it was perfectly wonderful of you, Mr. Thane, to go over
to France and fight in the American Ambulance so long before we
went into the war." This from the adoring Rosabel. "I wish you'd
tell us more about your experiences. They must have been terrible.
You never talk about them, though. I think the real heroes were the
fellows who went over when you did,--when you didn't really have
to, because America wasn't in it."

"The American Ambulance wasn't over there to fight, you know,"
explained Courtney.

"What did you get the cross for if you weren't fighting?" demanded
young Cale.

"For doing what a whole lot of other fellows did,--simply going
out and getting a wounded man or two in No-Man's Land. We didn't
think much about it at the time."

"Was it very dangerous?" asked Rosabel.

"I suppose it was,--more or less so," replied Thane indifferently.
He even yawned. "I'd rather talk about Alix the Third, if it's all
the same to you. Is she light or dark?"

"She's a brunette," said Rosabel shortly. "All except her eyes.
They're blue. How long were you up at the front, Mr. Thane?"

"Oh, quite a while,--several months, in fact. At first we were in
a place where there wasn't much fighting. Just before the first
big Verdun drive we were transferred to that sector, and then we
saw a lot of action."

"Some battle, wasn't it?" exclaimed young Cale, a thrill in his
voice.

"Certainly was," said Courtney. "We used to work forty-eight hours
at a stretch, taking 'em back by the thousands."

"How near did the shells ever come to you?"

"Oh, sometimes as close as twenty or thirty feet. I remember one
that dropped in the road about fifty feet ahead of my car, and
before I could stop we ran plunk into the hole it made and upset.
I suppose the Windom estate must be a pretty big one, isn't it,
Mr. Vick?"

"Taking everything into consideration, it amounts to nearly a million
dollars. David Windom had quite a bit of property up in the city,
aside from his farm, and he owned a big ranch out in Texas. The
grain elevator in Windomville belonged to him,--still belongs to
Alix Crown,--and there's a three mile railroad connecting with the
main line over at Smith's Siding. Every foot of it is on his land.
He built the railroad about twenty year ago, and the elevator,
too,--out of spite, they say, for the men that run the elevator at
Hawkins a little further up the road. Hawkins is the place where
his daughter and Edward Crown got off the train the night of the
murder."

"And this young girl owns all of it,--farms, ranch, railroad and
everything?"

"Every cent's worth of it is her'n. There ain't a sign of a mortgage
on any of it, either. It's as clear as a blank sheet of writin'
paper."

"When was it you were gassed, Mr. Thane?" inquired young Caleb.

"Oh, that was when I was in the air service,--only a few weeks
before the armistice."

"You left your wings at home, too, I suppose?"

"Yes. Mother likes to look at the only wings I'll probably ever
have,--now or hereafter."

"How does it come, Court, that you went into the British air corpse,
'stead of in the U. S. A.?" inquired old Caleb.

"I joined the Royal Flying Corps, Mr. Brown, because the Americans
wouldn't have me," replied Thane tersely. "I tried to get in, but
they wouldn't pass me. Said I had a weak heart and a whole lot
of rubbish like that. It's no wonder the American Air Service was
punk. I went over to Toronto and they took me like a shot in the
Royal British. They weren't so blamed finicky and old womanish.
All they asked for in an applicant was any kind of a heart at all
so long as it was with the cause. I don't suppose I ought to say
it, but the American Air Service was a joke."

"I hope you ain't turning British in your feelings, Court," remarked
Amos Vick. "It's purty difficult to be both, you know,--English
and Yankee."

"I'm American through and through, Mr. Vick, even though I did
serve under the British flag till I was gassed and invalided out."

"Affects the lungs, don't it?" inquired old Caleb.

"I don't like to talk about it, Mr. Brown. I'm trying to forget
what hell was like. I was in hospital for four months. It took a
lot more nerve to draw a breath then than it did to fly over the
German lines with the Boches popping away from all sides. I didn't
mind the wounds I sustained,--but the gas! Gee, it was horrible."

"Your ma said in her letter to me that you'd had pneumonia twice
since you got back," said Mrs. Vick. "Was that due to the gas?"

"I suppose so. They thought I had tuberculosis for awhile, you
see. Then, this spring, I had to go and have a bout with typhoid.
I ought to be dead, with all I've had,--but here I am, alive and
happy, and if you keep on feeding me as you have been for the past
three days, I'll live forever."

"You mustn't overdo, Courtney," warned the farmer's wife. "Your ma
sent you out here to get well, and I feel a kind of responsibility
for you. I guess it's about time you was off to bed. Come on, Amos.
It isn't going to bring rain any sooner for you to be setting out
here watching for it."

Old Caleb had his say. "I suppose it was all right for you to serve
with the British, Court, but if you'd waited a little while longer
you might have carried a gun over there under the Stars and Stripes.
But, as you say, you couldn't bear to wait. I give you credit for
it. I'm derned glad to see one member of the Thane family that had
the nerve to volunteer. At the time of the Civil War your grandpa
was what we call a slacker in these days. He hired a feller to go
in his place, and when that feller was killed and a second call
for volunteers come up, dogged if he didn't up and hire another
one. One of your grandpa's brothers skipped off to Canada so's he
wouldn't have to serve, and the other,--his name was George Washington
Thane, by the way,--accidentally shot two of his fingers off while
his company was in camp down at Crawfordsville, gettin' ready to
go down and meet Morgan's Riders,--and that let him out. I admit
it takes right smart of courage to accidentally shoot your fingers
off, specially when nobody is lookin', but at any rate he had a
uniform on when he done it. Course, there wasn't any wars during
your pa's day, so I don't know how he would have acted. He wasn't
much of a feller for fightin', though,--I remember that. I mean fist
fightin'. I'm glad to know you don't take after your granddad. I
never had any use for a coward, and that's why I'm proud to shake
hands with you, my boy. There was a derned bad streak in your family
back in your granddad's day, and it certainly is good to see that
you have wiped it out. It don't always happen so. Yeller streaks
are purty hard to wipe out. Takes more than two generations to do
it as a rule. I'm happy to know you ain't gun shy."

The young man laughed. "I don't mind telling you, Mr. Brown, that
I never went into action without being scared half out of my boots.
But I wasn't alone in that, you see. I never knew a man over there
who wasn't scared when he went over the top. He went, just the
same,--and that's what I call courage."

"So do I," cried Rosabel.

"Did you ever know for sure whether you got a German?" asked the
intense young Caleb. "I mean,--did you ever KILL one?"

"That's pretty hard to say, Cale. We never knew, you see,--we
fellows up in the clouds. I was in a bombing machine. I'd hate to
think that we WASTED any bombs."

"Come now,--all of you,--off to bed," interposed Mrs. Vick. "I
don't want to hear any more, Courtney. I wouldn't sleep a wink."

"Strikin' ten," said Amos, arising from his rocking-chair and
turning it upside down at the back of the porch.

"Don't do that, Amos," protested old Caleb. "It'll NEVER rain if
you--Why, dog-gone it, ain't you learned that it's bad luck to turn
a chair bottom-side up when rain's needed? Turn it right-side up
and put it right out here in front again where the rain can get at
it. Nothin' tickles the weather more'n a chance to spoil something.
That's right. Now we c'n go to bed. Better leave them cushions on
the steps too, Rosie."

Courtney Thane went to his room,--the spare-room on the second
floor,--and prepared to retire. The process was attended by the
smoking of three cigarettes. Presently he was stretched out on the
bed without even so much as a sheet over him. The heat was stifling.
Not a breath of air came in through the wide-open windows. He lay
awake for a long time, staring out into the night.

"So my precious granddad had a yellow streak in him, did he?
And father wasn't much of a fighter either. Takes more than two
generations to wipe out a yellow streak, does it? I wonder what
the old boob meant by that rotten slam at my people."




CHAPTER IV

DOWD'S TAVERN


The last week in August Courtney Thane left the Vick farm and,
crossing the river, took lodgings at the boarding house conducted
by the Misses Dowd in the town of Windomville.

In a letter to his mother, informing her of the change, he had
said:

Of course, I appreciate the fact that you are paying the bills,
old dear, and out of consideration for you I dare say I ought to
stick it out with the Vicks till November as we arranged. But I
simply cannot stand it any longer. The old woman almost puts me to
bed, the girl almost sits on my lap, the boy drives me crazy with
his infernal questions about the war, and old man Brown,--the one
who went to school with father out in this gosh awful land of the
grasshopper,--he is the limit. He never lets a day go by without
some slur about my grandfather or some other member of the family
who existed long before I was born. Thinks he's witty. He is always
nagging at me about cigarette smoking. I wish you could see the
way he mishandles a cigar. As you know, I seldom smoke more than a
half dozen cigarettes a day, but he swears to God I am everlastingly
ruining my health, and it has got on my nerves so that if I stay
on here another week I'll call the old jay so hard he'll drop dead
from the shock. And, my heavens, how lonesome it is here. I almost
die of homesickness. I just had to find a place where there is
some one to talk to besides the cows and sheep and people who never
think of anything but crops and the weather, last Sunday's sermon
and Theodore Roosevelt. They are honest, but, my God, how could
they be anything else? It would not be right for me to deny that
I have improved a great deal in the last couple of weeks. I am
beginning to feel pretty fit, and I've put on four or five pounds.
Still, I'm getting sick of fresh eggs and fresh milk and their
everlasting bacon,--they call it side-meat,--and preserves. She
simply stuffs me with them. The air is wonderful, even during that
awful hot spell I wrote you about. I am sure that another month or
two out here,--perhaps three,--will put me back on my pins stronger
than ever, and then I'll be in condition to go back to work. I am
eager to get at it as soon as possible in order to pay back all
you have put up for me during this beastly year. If I did not know
you can well afford to do what you have been doing for me, mother
dear, I wouldn't allow you to spend another penny on me. But you
will get it all back some day, not in cash, of course,--for that
means nothing to you,--but in the joy of knowing that it was worth
while to bring your only son into the world. Now, as to this change
I am going to make. I've been across the river several times and I
like it over there much better than here. I think the air is better
and certainly the surroundings are pleasanter. Windomville is a
funny little village of five or six hundred people, about the same
number of dogs (exaggeration!), and the sleepiest place you've
ever imagined. Old Caleb Brown says it was laid out back in 1830
or thereabouts by the first Windom to come to these parts. It has
a public school, a town hall, a motion-picture house (with last
year's reels), a drug store where you can get soda water, a grain
elevator, and a wonderful old log hut that was built by the very
first settler, making it nearly a hundred years old. Miss Alix Crown,
who owns nearly everything in sight,--including the log hut,--has
had the latter restored and turned into the quaintest little town
library you've ever seen. But you ought to see the librarian! She
is a dried-up, squinty old maid of some seventy summers, and so
full of Jane Austen and the Bronte women and Mrs. Southworth that
she hasn't an inch of room left in her for the modern writers. Her
name caps the climax. It is Alaska Spigg. Can you beat it? No one
ever calls her Miss Spigg,--not even the kids,--nor is she ever
spoken of or to as Alaska. It is always Alaska Spigg. I wish you
could see her. Miss Crown is the girl I wrote you about, the one
with the dime novel history back of her. She has a house on the
edge of the town,--a very attractive place. I have not seen her
yet. She is up in Michigan,--Harbor Point, I believe,--but I hear
she is expected home within a week or two. I am rather curious to
see her. The place where I have taken a room is run by a couple of
old maids named Dowd. It is really a sort of hotel. At least, you
would insult them if you called it a boarding house. Their grandfather
built the house and ran it as a tavern back before the Civil War.
When he died his son carried on the business. And now his two
daughters run the place. They have built on a couple of wings and
it is really an interesting old shack. Clean as a pin, and they say
the grub is good. It will be, as I said, a little more expensive
living here than with the Vicks but not enough to amount to anything.
The Dowds ask only fifteen dollars a week for room and board, which
is cheaper than the Ritz-Carlton or the Commodore, isn't it?...Here
is my new address in the Metropolis of Windomville-by-the-Crick:
Dowd's Tavern, Main Street.

Her reply was prompt. She wrote from Bar Harbor, where she was
spending the summer:

...perfectly silly of you, dearest, to speak of repaying me. All
I possess will be yours some day, so why begrudge you a little of
what should be yours now? Your dear father perhaps thought he was
doing the right thing for both of us when he left everything to
me during my lifetime, but I do not believe it was fair....There
will not be a great deal, of course. You understand how heavy my
expenses have been....In any case, you are in wretched health, my
dear boy. Nothing must stand in the way of your complete recovery.
When you are completely recovered, well and strong and eager to take
up life where this cruel war cut it off, I shall be the happiest
mother alive. I am sure you will have no difficulty in establishing
yourself. They tell me the returned soldiers are not having an easy
time finding satisfactory and lucrative positions. It is a shame
the way certain concerns have treated a good many of them, after
actually promising to hold their places open for them. But with you
it will be different. I spoke to Mr. Roberts yesterday about you.
He wants to have a talk with you. I have an idea he wants to put you
in charge of one of their offices in Spain. At any rate, he asked
if you spoke Spanish well....So I can easily afford to increase
your allowance to one hundred and fifty a month. More, if you
should ask for it, but you are so proud and self-reliant I can
do absolutely nothing with you, dear boy. I quite understand your
unwillingness to accept more than you actually need from me. It is
splendid, and I am very proud of you....This girl you wrote me
about, is she so very rich?...Your father used to speak of a young
man named Windom and how he envied him because he was so tall and
handsome. Of course, your dear father was a small boy then, and
that is always one of the laments of small boys. That, and falling
in love with women old enough to be their mothers....Do write me
often. But don't be angry with me if I fail to answer all of your
letters. I am so frightfully busy. I rarely ever have more than a
minute to myself. How I have managed to find the time to write this
long letter to you I cannot imagine. It is really quite a nice long
one, isn't it?...and don't be writing home to me in a few weeks to
say you are engaged to be married to her. It took me a great many
years to convert your dear father into what he was as you knew
him. I don't relish the thought at my time of life of transforming
a crude farmer's daughter into a Fifth Avenue lady, no matter how
pretty she may be in the rough. The days of Cinderella are long
since past. One has so much to overcome in the way of a voice with
these country girls, to say nothing of the letter r. Your poor
father never quite got over being an Indiana farmer's son, but he
did manage to subdue the aforesaid letter....And these country-girls
take a harmless, amusing flirtation very seriously, dear boy....
Your adoring mother.

Courtney Thane's fame had preceded him to Windomville. By this
time, the entire district had heard of the man who was gassed, and
who had actually won two or three medals for bravery in the Great
War. The young men from that section of the state who had seen
fighting in France were still in New York City, looking for jobs.
Most of them had "joined up" at the first call for volunteers. Some
of them had been killed, many of them wounded, but not one of them
had received a medal for bravery. The men who had been called by
the draft into the great National Army were all home again, having
got no nearer to the battle front than an embarkation camp in New
Jersey,--and so this tall, slender young fellow from the East was
an object not only of curiosity but of envy.

The Misses Dowd laid themselves out to make him comfortable,--as
well as prominent. They gave him a corner room on the upper floor
of Dowd's Tavern, dispossessing a tenant of twelve years' standing,--a
photographer named Hatch, whose ability to keep from living too far
in arrears depended on his luck in inveigling certain sentimental
customers into taking "crayon portraits" of deceased loved ones,
satisfaction guaranteed, frames extra. Two windows, looking out
over the roof of the long front porch, gave him an unobstructed
view of Main Street, including such edifices as the postoffice,
the log-hut library, the ancient watering trough, the drug store,
and the steeple of the Presbyterian Church rising proudly above
the roofs of the houses in between.

Main Street ran almost parallel with the river. With commendable
forethought, the first settlers had built their houses and stores
some little distance back from the stream along the summit of a
wooded ridge perhaps forty feet above the river at its midsummer
low-water level. The tremendous, devastating floods that came annually
with the breaking up of winter failed to reach the houses,--although
in 1883,--according to the records,--the water came up to within a
foot of Joe Roush's blacksmith shop, situated at that time halfway
down the slope, compelling the smith to think seriously of "moving
up a couple of hops," a precaution that was rendered unnecessary
by a subsequent midsummer bolt of lightning that destroyed not
only the forge but shocked Joe so severely that he "saw green"
for a matter of six weeks and finally resulted in his falling off
the dock into deep water in the middle of what was intended to be
a protracted spree brought on by the discovery that his insurance
policy did not cover "loss by lightning." To this day, the older
inhabitants of Windomville will tell you about the way his widow
"took on" until she couldn't stand it any longer,--and then married
George Hooper, the butcher, four months after the shocking demise
of Joseph.

Dowd's Tavern had few transient guests. "Drummers" from the city
hard-by dropped in occasionally for a midday meal, but they never
stayed the night. The guests were what the Misses Dowd called
"regulars." They included Hatch, the photographer; an old and indigent
couple, parents of a farmer whose wife objected so vehemently to
their well-meant efforts to "run" her house for her that he was
obliged to "board 'em" with the Dowd girls, an arrangement that
seemed to satisfy every one concerned except the farmer himself,
who never missed an opportunity to praise the food and the comforts
to be enjoyed at the county "poorhouse" when he paid his semi-annual
visit to the venerable dependents; Mr. Charlie Webster, the rotund
manager of the grain elevator, who spent every Saturday night and
Sunday in the city and showed up for duty on Monday with pinkish eyes
and a rather tremulous whistle that was supposed to be reminiscent
of ecclesiastical associations; Miss Flora Grady, the dress-maker;
Doctor Simpson, the dentist, a pale young man with extremely bad
teeth and a habit of smiling, even at funerals; Miss Miller, the
principal of the school, who was content with a small room over
the kitchen at ten dollars a week, thereby permitting her to save
something out of her salary, which was fifty dollars a month; A.
Lincoln Pollock, the editor, owner and printer of the Weekly Sun,
and his wife, Maude Baggs Pollock, who besides contributing a poem
to each and every issue of the paper, (over her own signature),
collected news and society items, ran the postoffice for her
husband, (he being the postmaster), and taught the Bible Class in
the Presbyterian Sunday-school, as well as officiating as president
and secretary of the Literary Society, secretary to the town board,
secretary of the W. C. T. U., secretary of the Woman's Foreign
Missionary Society, secretary of the American Soldiers' and Sailors'
Relief Fund, secretary of the Windomville Improvement Association,
secretary of the Lady Maccabees, and, last but far from least,
secretary of the local branch of the Society for the Preservation
of the Redwood Forests of California. She was a born secretary.

A. Lincoln Pollock, being a good democrat and holding office under
a democratic administration, had deemed it wise to abbreviate his
first name, thereby removing all taint of republicanism. He reduced
Abraham to an initial, but, despite his supreme struggle for dignity,
was forced by public indolence to submit to a sharp curtailment of
his middle name. He was known as Link.

The Weekly Sun duly reported the advent of Colonel Courtney Thane,
of New York and London, and gave him quite a "send-off," at the same
time getting in a good word for the "excellent hostelry conducted
by the Misses Dowd," as well as a paragraph congratulating the
readers of the Sun on the "scoop" that paper had obtained over the
"alleged" newspapers up at the county seat. "If you want the news,
read the Sun," was the slogan at the top of the editorial column on
the second page, followed by a line in parenthesis: ("If you want
the Sun, don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today. Price
Three Dollars a Year in Advance.")

All of the boarders sat at the same table in the dining-room.
Punctuality at meals was obligatory. Miss Jennie Dowd was the cook.
She was assisted by Miss Margaret Slattery, daughter of Martin
Slattery, the grocer. Miss Mary Dowd had charge of the dining-room.
She was likewise assisted by Miss Slattery. Between meals Miss
Slattery did the dish-washing, chamber-work, light cleaning and
"straightening," and still found room for her daily exercise, which
consisted of half a dozen turns up and down Main Street in her
best frock. Old Jim House did the outside chores about the place.
He had worked at Dowd's Tavern for thirty-seven years, and it was
his proud boast that he had never missed a day's work,--drunk or
sober.

The new guest was given the seat of honour at table. He was placed
between Mrs. Pollock and Miss Flora Grady, supplanting Doctor Simpson,
who had held the honour ever since Charlie Webster's unfortunate
miscalculation as to the durability of an unfamiliar brand of
bourbon to which he had been introduced late one Sunday evening. It
was a brand that wore extremely well,--so well, in fact, that when
he appeared for dinner at noon on Monday he was still in a lachrymose
condition over the death of his mother, an event which took place
when he was barely six years old. Doctor Simpson relinquished the
seat cheerfully. He had held it a year and he had grown extremely
tired of having to lean back as far as possible in his chair so that
Mrs. Pollock and Miss Grady could converse unobstructedly in front
of him, a position that called for the utmost skill and deliberation
on his part, especially when it came to conveying soup and "floating
island" to such an altitude. (He had once resorted to the expedient
of bending over until his nose was almost in the plate, so that
they might talk across his back, but gave it up when Miss Molly
Dowd acridly inquired if he smelt anything wrong with the soup.)

Mr. Hatch invited Courtney down to the studio to have his photograph
taken, free of charge; Mr. Pollock subjected him to a long interview
about the War; Mr. Webster notified him that he had laid in a small
stock just prior to July the first and that all he had to do was
to "say the word,"--or wink if it wasn't convenient to speak; Miss
Grady told him, at great length, of her trip to New York in 1895,
and inquired about certain landmarks in the Metropolis,--such as
the aquarium, the Hoffman House, Madison Square, Stewart's Drygoods
Store, Tiffany's place,--revealing a sort of lofty nonchalance in
being able to speak of things she had seen while the others had
merely read about them; Mrs. Pollock had him write in her autograph
album, and wondered if he would not consent to give a talk before
the Literary Society at its next meeting; and Margaret Slattery
made a point of passing things to him first at meals, going so far
as to indicate the choicest bits of "white meat," or the "second
joint," if he preferred the dark, whenever they had chicken for
dinner,--which was quite often.

Old Mr. Nichols, (the indigent father), remembered Courtney's
grandfather very well, and, being apt to repeat himself, told
and retold the story of a horse-trade in which he got the better
of Silas Thane. Mrs. Nichols, living likewise in the remote past,
remembered being in his grandmother's Sunday-school class, and
how people used to pity the poor thing because Silas ran around
considerable after other women,--'specially a lively-stableman's
wife up in the city,--and what a terrible time she had when John
Robinson's Circus came to town a little while before her first child
was born and the biggest boa-constrictor in captivity escaped and
eat up two lambs on Silas's farm before it went to sleep and was
shot out in the apple orchard by Jake Billings. She often wondered
whether her worrying about that snake had had any effect on the
baby, who, it appears, ultimately grew up and became Courtney's
father. The young man smilingly sought to reassure her, but after
twice repeating his remark, looked so embarrassed that Mr. Hatch
gloomily announced from the foot of the table:

"She's deef."

Now, as to Mr. Courtney Thane. He was a tall, spare young man, very
erect and soldierly, with an almost unnoticeable limp. He explained
this limp by confessing that he had got into the habit of favouring
his left leg, which had been injured when his machine came down
in flames a short distance back of the lines during a vicious gas
attack by the enemy--(it was on this occasion that he was "gassed"
while dragging a badly wounded comrade to a place of safety)--but
that the member was quite as sound as ever and it was silly of
him to go on being so confounded timid about it, especially as it
hadn't been anything to speak of in the beginning,--nothing more,
in fact, than a cracked knee joint and a trifling fracture of the
ankle.

His hair was light brown, almost straw-coloured, and was brushed
straight back from the forehead. A small, jaunty moustache, distinctly
English in character, adorned his upper lip. His eyes were brown,
set well back under a perfectly level, rather prominent brow. His
mouth was wide and faintly satirical; his chin aggressively square;
his nose long and straight. His voice was deep and pleasant, and he
spoke with what Miss Miller described as a "perfectly fascinating
drawl." Mrs. Pollock, who was quite an extensive reader of novels
and governed her conversation accordingly went so far as to say that
he was "the sort of chap that women fall in love with easily,"--and
advised Miss Miller to keep a pretty sharp watch on her heart,--a
remark that drew from Miss Miller the confession that she had
rejected at least half a dozen offers of marriage and she guessed
if there was any watching to be done it would have to be done by
the opposite sex. (As Miss Miller had repeatedly alluded to these
fruitless masculine manifestations, Mrs. Pollock merely sniffed,--and
afterwards confided to Miss Molly Dowd her belief that if any one
had ever asked Angie Miller to marry him she'd be a grandmother
by this time.) From this, it may be correctly surmised that Miss
Miller was no longer in the first bloom of youth.

Whenever Courtney appeared on Main Street, he was the centre not
only of observation but of active attention. Nearly every one had
some form of greeting for him. Introductions were not necessary.
Women as well as men passed the time of day with him, and not a few
of the former solicitously paused to inquire how he was feeling.
Young girls stared at him and blushed, young boys followed his
progress about town with wide, worshipful eyes,--for was he not a
hero out of their cherished romance? He had to hear from the lips
of ancient men the story of Antietam, of Chancellorsville and
of Shiloh; eulogies and criticisms of Grant, McClellan and Meade;
praise for the enemy chieftains, Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Johnston;
comparisons in the matter of fatalities, marksmanship, generalship,
hardships and all such, and with the inevitable conclusion that the
Civil War was the greatest war ever fought for the simple reason
that it was fought by men and not by machinery.

"And, what's more," declared old Captain House vigorously, "it was
fit entirely by Americans, and not by every dodgasted nation on the
face of the earth, no two of 'em able to understand a blamed word
of what was being said by friend er foe." "And," added ex-Corporal
Grimes, stamping the sidewalk with his peg leg, "what's more,
there wasn't ary one of them Johnny Rebs that couldn't pick off a
squirrel five hundred yards away with a rifle--a RIFLE, mind ye,
not a battery of machine guns. Every time they was a fight, big er
little, we used to stand out in the open and shoot at each other
like soldiers--AND gentlemen--aimin' straight at the feller we'd
picked out to kill. They tell me they was more men shot right
smack between the eyes in the Civil War than all the other wars
put together. Yes-sir-EE! And as fer REE-connoiterin', why it was
nothin' for our men,--er the rebs, either, fer that matter,--to
crawl up so close to the other side's camps that they could smell
the vittels cookin',--and I remember a case when one of our scouts,
bein' so overcome by the smell of a fried chicken, snuck right up
and grabbed it offen the skillet when the cook's back was turned,
and got away with it safe, too, b'gosh!"




CHAPTER V

TRESPASS


Courtney never was without the heavy English walking-stick on which
he occasionally leaned for support. He took long strolls in the
country, frequently passing the Windom place, and twice he had gone
as far as the railed-in base of Quill's Window. From the footpath at
the bottom he could look through the trees up to the bare crest of
the rock. The gate through the high fence was padlocked, and contained
a sign with the curt warning: "No Trespass." On the opposite side
of the wide strip of meadow-land, in which cattle grazed placidly,
he could see the abandoned house where Alix Crown was born,--a
colourless, weather-beaten, two-storey frame building with faded
green window shutters and a high-pitched roof blackened by rain and
rot. Every shutter was closed; an atmosphere of utter desolation
hung over the place.

Across that brown, sunburnt stretch of meadow-land when it was white
and cold, old David Windom had carried the stiff body of Edward
Crown,--and returning had borne the soft, limp figure of his stricken
child. Courtney permitted his fancy to indulge in calculation. He
followed with his eye what must have been the path of the slayer
on that dreadful night. It led, no doubt, to the spot on which he
now was standing, for just behind him was the suggestion of a narrow,
weed-lined path that wormed its way through the trees toward the top
of the great rock. He decided that one day soon he would disregard
that sign on the gate, and climb up to the strange burial place of
Edward Crown and Alix the Second.

He had tested his increasing strength and endurance by rowing up
the river with Rosabel for a fair view of the hole in the face of
the rock--Quill's Window. It was plainly visible from the river, a
wide black gash in the almost perpendicular wall that reached well
above the fringe of trees and underbrush along the steep bank of
the stream.

He tried to picture Quill as he sat in his strange abode, a hundred
years ago, cowering over the fire or reading perhaps by the light
of a huge old-fashioned lanthorn. He thought of him hanging by the
neck back in the dark recess, victim either of his own conscience
or the implacable hatred of the enemy "down the river." And then
there were the others who had found death in the heart of that
mysterious cavern,--ugly death.

He wondered what the interior of the cave was like, and whether he
could devise some means of entering it. A rope ladder attached to
a substantial support at the top of the cliff would afford the easiest
way of reaching the mouth of the cave,--in fact, he recalled that
Quill employed some such means of descending to his eerie home. The
entrance appeared to be no more than twenty feet below the brow of
the cliff. It would not even be a hazardous undertaking. Besides,
if Quill and his successors were able to go up and down that wall
safely and repeatedly, why not he? No doubt scores of men,--perhaps
even schoolboys of the Tom Sawyer type,--had made frequent visits
to the cave. He knew he would be disregarding the command of Alix
Crown,--a command that all people respected and observed,--if he
passed the barrier and climbed to the top of the rock, but who,
after all, was Alix Crown that she should say "no trespass" to the
world at large?

The thought of Edward Crown wedged in at the bottom of Quill's Chimney,
weighted down with stones and earth, alone served as an obstacle to
the enterprise. He shrank from certain gruesome possibilities,--such
as the dislodgment of stones at the bottom of the crevice and the
consequent exposure of a thing that would haunt him forever. And
even though the stones remained in place there would still remain
the fact that almost within arm's length was imprisoned the crushed,
distorted remains of the murdered man.

Toward the end of his second week at Dowd's Tavern, he set out to
climb to the top of the big rock. He had no intention of descending
to the cavern's mouth on this occasion. That feat was to be reserved for
another day. Arriving at the gate, he was surprised and gratified
to discover that it was unlocked. While it was latched, the
padlock and chain hung loosely from the post to which the latter
was attached. Without hesitation, he opened the gate and strode
boldly into proscribed territory.

The ascent was gradual at first, then steep and abrupt for a matter
of fifty or sixty feet to the bald summit of the hill. Once at the
top, he sat down panting and exhausted upon the edge of the shallow
fissure he had followed as a path up the rock, and again his thoughts
went back to the night of the murder. This had been David Windom's
route to the top of the hill. He found himself discrediting one
feature at least of the man's confession. Only a fabled giant could
have carried the body of a man up that steep, tortuous incline.
Why, he was exhausted, and he had borne no heavier burden than
his stout walking-stick. That part of Windom's story certainly was
"fishy."

Presently he arose and strode out upon the rough, uneven "roof" of
the height. He could look in all directions over the tops of the
trees below. The sun beat down fiercely upon the unsheltered rock.
Off to the north lay the pall of smoke indicating the presence
of the invisible county seat. Thin, anfractuous highways and dirt
roads scarred the green and brown landscape, and as far as the eye
could reach were to be seen farmhouses and barns and silos.

Avoiding the significant heap of rocks near the centre of the little
plateau, he made his way to the brink of the cliff overlooking
the river. There he had a wonderful view of the winding stream,
the harvest fields, the groves, and the herds in the far-reaching
stretches of what was considered the greatest corn raising "belt"
in the United States. Some yards back from the edge of the cliff
he discovered the now thoroughly rotted section of a tree trunk,
eight or ten inches in diameter, driven deeply into a narrow fissure
and rendered absolutely immovable by a solid mass of stones and
gravel that completely closed the remainder of the crevice. He was
right in surmising that this was the support from which Quill's rope
or vine ladder was suspended a hundred years ago. Nearby were two
heavy iron rings attached to standards sunk firmly into the rock,
a modern improvement on the hermit's crude device. (He afterwards
learned that David Windom, when a lad of fifteen, had drilled the
holes in the rock and imbedded the stout iron shafts, so that he
might safely descend to the mouth of the cave.)

Turning back, he approached the heap of boulders that covered the
grave of Edward and Alix Crown. No visible sign of the cleft in
the surface of the rock remained. Six huge boulders, arranged in
a row, rose above a carefully made bed of stones held in place by
a low, soundly mortared wall.

Chiselled on one of the end boulders was the name of Alix Windom
Crown, with the date of her birth and her death, with the line:
"Rock of Ages Cleft for Me." Below this inscription was the recently
carved name of Edward Joseph Crown, Born July 7, 1871. Died March
22, 1895. Three words followed this. They were "Abide With Me."

II

Thane stood for a long time looking at the pile. He was not
sentimental. His life had been spent in an irreverent city, among
people hardened by pleasure or coarsened by greed. His thoughts
as he stood there were not of the unhappy pair who reposed beneath
those ugly rocks; they were of the far-off tragedy that had brought
them to this singular resting-place. The fact that this was a grave,
sacred in the same sense that his father's grave in Woodlawn was
supposed to be sacred to him and to his mother, was overlooked in
the silent contemplation of what an even less sophisticated person
might have been justified in describing as a "freak." Nothing
was farther from his mind, however, than the desire or impulse to
be disrespectful. And yet, as he was about to turn away from this
sombre pile, he leaned over and struck a match on one of the huge
boulders. As he was conveying the lighted sulphur match,--with
which Dowd's Tavern abounded,--to the cigarette that hung limply
from his lips, he was startled by a sharp, almost agonized cry.
It seemed to come from nowhere. He experienced the uncanny feeling
that a ghost,--the ghost that haunted Quill's Window,--standing
guard over the mound, had cried out under the pain inflicted by
that profane match.

Even as he turned to search the blazing, sunlit rock with apprehensive
eyes, a voice, shrill with anger, flung these words at him:

"What are you doing up here?"

His gaze fell upon the speaker, standing stockstill in the cloven
path below him, not twenty feet away. In his relief, he laughed.
He beheld a slim figure in riding-togs. Nothing formidable or
ghostlike in that! Nevertheless, a pair of dark blue eyes transfixed
him with indignation. They looked out from under the rim of a black
sailor hat, and they were wide and inimical.

"Did you not see that sign on the gate?" demanded the girl.

"I did," he replied, still smiling as he removed his hat,--one of
Knox's panamas. "And I owe you an apology."

She advanced to the top. He noted the riding-crop gripped rather
firmly in her clenched hand.

"No one is permitted to come up here," she announced, stopping a
few feet away. She was quite tall and straight. She panted a little
from the climb up the steep. He saw her bosom rise and fall under
the khaki jacket; her nostrils were slightly distended. In that
first glimpse of her, he took in the graceful, perfect figure; the
lovely, brilliant face; the glorious though unsmiling eyes. "You
must leave at once. This is private property. Go, please."

"I cannot go before telling you how rotten I feel for striking that
match. I beg of you, Miss Crown,--you ARE Miss Crown?--I can only
ask you to believe that it was not a conscious act of desecration.
It was sheer thoughtlessness. I would not have done it for the
world if I had--"

"It is not necessary for you to explain," she broke in curtly. "I
saw what you did,--and it is just because of such as you that this
spot is forbidden ground. Idle curiosity, utter disregard for the
sacredness of that lonely grave,--Oh, you need not attempt to deny
it. You are a stranger here, but that is no excuse for your passing
through that gate. I AM Miss Crown. This hill belongs to me. It was
I who had that fence put up and it was I who directed the sign to
be put on the gate. They are meant for strangers as well as for
friends. It was not thoughtlessness that brought you up here. You
thought a long time before you came. Will you be good enough to
go?"

He flushed under the scornful dismissal.

"The gate was unlocked--" he began.

"That doesn't matter. It might have been wide open, sir,--but that
did not grant you any special privileges."

"I can only ask your pardon, Miss Crown, and depart in disgrace,"
said he, quite humbly. As he started down the path, he paused to
add: "I did not know you had returned. I daresay I should have been
less venturesome had I known you were in the neighbourhood."

The thinly veiled sarcasm did not escape her.

"I suppose you are the young man from New York that every one is
talking about. That may account for your ignorance. In order that
you may not feel called upon to visit this place again to satisfy
your curiosity, I will point out to you the objects of interest.
This pile of rocks marks the grave of my father and mother. The
dates speak for themselves. You may have noticed them when you
scratched your match just above my mother's name. My father was
murdered by my grandfather before I was born. My mother died on
the day I was born. I never saw them. I do not love them, because
I never knew them. But I DO respect and honour them. They were good
people. I have no reason to be ashamed of them. If you will look
out over those trees and across that pasture, you will see the house
in which my mother died and where I was born. Directly in front of
the little porch my father died as the result of a blow delivered
by my grandfather. As to the disposal of the body, you may obtain
all the information necessary from Alaska Spigg, our town librarian,
who will be more than delighted to supply you with all the ghastly
details. To your right is the post to which a man named Quill
attached his ladder in order to reach the cave in the face of this
rock,--where he lived for many years. This is the path leading
down to the gate, which you will still find unlocked. It will not
be necessary for you to come up here again. You have seen all there
is to see."

With that, she deliberately turned her back on him and walked toward
the edge of the cliff. He stared after her for a few seconds, his
lips parted as if to speak, and then, as the flush of mortification
deepened in his cheeks, he began picking his way rather blindly
down the steep path.

He was never to forget his first encounter with Alix the Third.




CHAPTER VI

CHARLIE WEBSTER ENTERTAINS


That evening at the supper table, Mr. Pollock politely informed
him that Alix Crown had returned from Michigan, looking as fit as
a fiddle.

"You've been so sort of curious about her, Court?" (it had not
taken the male boarders long to dispense with formalities), "that
I thought you'd be interested in knowing that she's home. Got back
last evening. Her Packard automobile met her at the depot up in
the city. You'll know her when you see her. Tall girl and fairly
good-looking. Puts on an awful lot of 'dog.' What is it you fellows
in the Army call it? Swunk?"

"Swank," said Courtney, rather shortly. He was still smarting under
the sting of his afternoon's experience.

"Lemme help you to some more squash, Mr. Thane," said Margaret
Slattery in his ear. "And another biscuit."

"Thank you, no," said he.

"What's the matter with your appetite?" she demanded. "You ain't
hardly touched anything this evenin'. Sick?"

"I'm not hungry, Margaret."

"Been out in the sun too much, that's what's the matter with you.
First thing you know you'll get a sunstroke, and THEN! My Uncle
Mike was sunstruck when I was--"

"Pass me the biscuits, Maggie, and don't be all night about it," put
in Mr. Webster. "I'm hungry, even if Court isn't. I can distinctly
remember when you used to pass everything to me first, and almost
stuff it--"

"Yes, and she used to do the same for me before you shaved off your
chin whiskers, Charlie," said Mr. Hatch gloomily. "How times have
changed."

"It ain't the times that's changed," said Margaret. "It's you men.
You ain't what you used to be, lemme tell you that."

"True,--oh so true," lamented Mr. Webster. "I used to be nice and
thin and graceful before you began showering me with attention. Now
look at me. You put something like fifty pounds on me, and then you
desert me. I was a handsome feller when I first came here, wasn't
I, Flora? I leave it to you if I wasn't."

"I don't remember how you looked when you first came here," replied
Miss Grady loftily.

"Can you beat that?" cried Charlie to Courtney across the table.
"And she used to say I was the handsomest young feller she'd ever
laid eyes on. Used to say I looked like,--who was it you used to
say I looked like, Flora?"

"The only thing I ever said you looked like was a mud fence, Charlie
Webster."

"What did she say, Pa? Hey?" This from old Mrs. Nichols, holding
her hand to her ear. "What are they laughing at?"

"She says Charlie looks like a mud fence," shouted old Mr. Nichols,
his lips close to her ear.

"His pants? What about his pants?"

This time Courtney joined in the laugh.

After supper he sat on the front porch with the Pollocks and Miss
Grady. It was a warm, starry night. Charlie Webster and Doc Simpson
had strolled off down the street. Mr. Hatch and Miss Miller sat in
the parlour.

"She's going to land Furman Hatch, sure as you're a foot high,"
confided Mr. Pollock, with a significant jerk of his head in the
direction of the parlour.

"Heaven knows she's been trying long enough," said Miss Grady. "I
heard him ask Doc and Charlie to wait for him, but she nabbed him
before he could get out. Now he's got to sit in there and listen
to her tell about how interested she is in art,--and him just dyin'
for a smoke. Why, there's Alix Crown now. She's comin' in here."

A big touring car drew up to the sidewalk in front of the Tavern.
Miss Crown sprang lightly out of the seat beside the chauffeur and
came up the steps.

"How do you do, Mrs. Pollock? Hello, Flora. Good evening, Mr.
Editor," was her cheery greeting as she passed by and entered the
house.

"She comes around every once in a while and takes the Dowd girls
out riding in her car," explained Mrs. Pollock.

"Mighty nice of her," said Mr. Pollock, taking his feet down from
the porch-rail and carefully brushing the cigar ashes off of his
coat sleeve. "Takes old Alaska Spigg out too, and the Nicholses,
and--"

"We've been out with her a great many times," broke in Mrs. Pollock.
"I think a Packard is a wonderful car, don't you, Mr. Thane? So
smooth and--"

"I think I'll take a little stroll," said Courtney abruptly; and
snatching up his hat from the floor beside his chair he hurried
down the steps.

She had not even glanced at him as she crossed the porch. He had
the very uneasy conviction that so far as she was concerned he
might just as well not have been there at all. In the early dusk,
her face was clearly revealed to him. There was nothing cold
or unfriendly about it now. Instead, her smile was radiant; her
eyes,--even in the subdued light,--glowed with pleasure. Her voice
was clear and soft and singularly appealing. In the afternoon's
encounter he had been struck by its unexpected combination of English
and American qualities; the sharp querulousness of the English and
the melodious drawl of the American were strangely blended, and
although there had been castigation in her words and manner, he
took away with him the disturbing memory of a voice he was never
to forget. And now he had seen the smile that even the most envious
of her kind described as "heavenly." It was broad and wholesome
and genuine. There was a flash of white, even teeth between warm
red lips, a gleam of merriment in the half-closed eyes, a gay tilt
to the bare, shapely head. Her dark hair was coiled neatly, and
the ears were exposed. He liked her ears. He remembered them as he
had seen them in the afternoon, fairly large, shapely and close to
the head. No need for her to follow the prevailing fashion of the
day! She had no reason to hide her ears beneath a mat of hair.

In the evening glow her face was gloriously beautiful,--clear-cut
as a cameo, warm as a rose. It was no longer clouded with anger.
She seemed taller. The smart riding costume had brought her trim
figure into direct contrast with his own height and breadth, and
she had looked like a slim, half-grown boy beside his six feet and
over. Now, in her black and white checked sport skirt and dark
sweater jacket, she was revealed as a woman quite well above the
average height.

He was standing in front of the drug store when the big car went
by a few minutes later, filled with people. She was driving, the
chauffeur sitting in the seat beside her. In the tonneau he observed
the two Dowd sisters, Mr. and Mrs. Pollock and Flora Grady.

As the car whizzed by, A. Lincoln Pollock espied him. Waving his
hand triumphantly, the editor called out:

"Hello, Court!"

The object of this genial shout did not respond by word or action.
He looked to see if the girl at the wheel turned her head for a
glance in his direction. She did not, and he experienced a fresh
twinge of annoyance. He muttered something under his breath. The
car disappeared around a bend as he turned to enter the store.

"That was Alix Crown, Court," remarked Charlie Webster from the
doorway. "Little too dark to get a good look at her, but wait till
she flashes across you in broad daylight some time. She'll make you
forget all those Fifth Avenue skirts so quick your head'll swim."

"Is THAT so?" retorted Courtney, allowing rancour to get the
better of fairness. Down in his heart he had said that Alix Crown
was the loveliest girl he had ever seen. "What do you know about
Fifth Avenue?"

Charlie Webster grinned amiably. He was not offended by the other's
tone.

"Well, I've seen it in the movies," he explained. "What are you
sore about?"

"Sore? I'm not sore. What put that into your head?"

The rotund superintendent of the elevator fanned himself lazily
with his straw hat.

"If I was fifteen years younger and fifty pounds lighter," said
he, "I'd be sore too. But what's the use of a fat old slob like me
getting peeved because Miss Alix Crown don't happen to notice me?
Oh, we're great friends and all that, mind you, and she thinks a
lot of me,--as manager of her grain elevator. Same as she thinks
a lot of Jim Bagley, her superintendent,--and Ed Stevens, her
chauffeur, and so on. Now, as for you, it's different. You're from
New York and it goes against the grain to be overlooked, you might
say, by a girl from Indiana. Oh, I know what you New Yorkers think
of Indiana,--and all that therein is, as the Scriptures would say.
You think that nothing but boobs and corn-fed squaws come from
Indiana, but if you hang around long enough you'll find you're
mistaken. This state is full of girls like Alix Crown,--bright,
smart, good-looking girls that have been a hell of a ways farther
east than New York. Of course, there are boobs like me and Doc
Simpson and Tintype Hatch who get up to Chicago once every three
or four years and have to sew our return trip tickets inside our
belly-bands so's we can be sure of getting back home after Chicago
gets through admiring us, but now since prohibition has come in
I don't know but what we're as bright and clever as anybody else.
Most of the fellers I've run across in Chicago seem to be brightest
just after they change feet on the rail and ask the bartender if he
knows how to make a cucumber cocktail, or something else as clever
as that. But that ain't what we were talking about. We were talking
about--"

"I wasn't talking about anything," interrupted Courtney.

"Oh, yes, you were," said Charlie. "Not out loud, of course,--but
talking just the same. You were talking about Alix Crown and the
way she forgot to invite you to take a ride with the rest of--"

"See here, Webster,--are you trying to be offensive?"

"Offensive? Lord, no! I'm just TELLING you, that's all. On the
level now, am I right or wrong?"

"I do not know Miss Crown," replied Thane stiffly. "Why should I
expect her to ask me,--a total stranger,--to go out in her car?"

"Didn't Maude Pollock introduce you a while ago?"

"No," said the other succinctly.

"Well, by gosh, that ain't like Maude," exclaimed Charlie. "I'd
'a' bet two dollars she said 'I want to present my friend from New
York, Mr. Courtney Thane, the distinguished aviator, Miss Crown,'
or something like that. I can't understand Maude missing a chance
like that. She just LOVES it."

Courtney smiled. "I daresay she wasn't quick enough," he said drily.
"Miss Crown was in a hurry. And I left before she came out of the
house. Now is your curiosity satisfied?"

"Absolutely," said Charlie. "Now I'll sleep soundly tonight. I was
afraid the darned thing would keep me awake all night. Remember
me saying I had a small stock hid away up in my room? What say to
going up,--now that the coast is clear,--and having a nip or two?"

"No, thanks, old man. I don't drink. Doctor's orders. Besides,
I've got some letters to write. I'll walk home with you if you're
ready to go."

II

Mr. Webster shook his head sadly. "That's the one drawback to
livin' in Windomville," he said. "People either want to drink too
much or they don't want to drink at all. Nobody wants to drink in
moderation. Now, here's you, for instance. You look like a feller
that could kiss a highball or two without compromising yourself, and
there's Hatch that has to hold his nose so's he won't get drunk if
he comes within ten feet of a glass of whiskey." They were strolling
slowly toward the Tavern. "Now you up and claim you're on the water
wagon. I'd been counting on you, Court,--I certainly had. The last
time I took Hatch and Doc Simpson up to my room,--that was on the
Fourth of last July,--I had to sleep on the floor. Course, if I
was skinny like Doc and Hatch that wouldn't have been necessary.
But I can't bear sleepin' three in a bed. Doctor's orders, eh? That
comes of livin' in New York. There ain't a doctor in Indiana that
would stoop so low as that,--not one. Look at old man Nichols. He's
eighty-two years old and up to about a year ago he never missed a
day without taking a couple o' swigs of rye. He swears he wouldn't
have lived to be more than seventy-five if he hadn't taken his
daily nip. That shows how smart and sensible our doctors are out
here. They--"

"By the way, Mrs. Nichols appears to be a remarkably well-preserved
old lady,--aside from her hearing. How old is she?"

"Eighty-three. Wonderful old woman."

"I suppose she has always had her daily swig of rye."

Charlie Webster was silent for a moment. He had to think. This was
a very serious and unexpected complication.

"What did you say?" he inquired, fencing for time.

"Has she always been a steady drinker, like the old man?"

Charlie was a gentleman. He sighed.

"I guess it's time to change the subject," he said. "The only way
you could get a spoonful of whiskey down that old woman would be
to chloroform her. If I'm any good at guessin', she'll outlive the
old man by ten years,--so what's the sense of me preachin' to you
about the life preserving virtues of booze? Oh, Lordy! There's
another of my best arguments knocked galley-west. It's no use. I've
been playing old man Nichols for nearly fifteen years as a bright
and shining light, and he turns out to be nothing but a busted
flush. She's had eleven children and he's never had anything worse
than a headache, and, by gosh, he's hangin' onto her with both hands
for support to keep his other foot from slippin' into the grave.
But,"--and here his face brightened suddenly,--"there's one thing
to be said, Court. She didn't consult any darned fool doctor about
it."

Courtney was ashamed of his churlishness toward this good-natured
little man.

"Say no more, Charlie. I'll break my rule this once if it will
make you feel any better. One little drink, that's all,--in spite
of the doctor. He's a long way off, and I daresay he'll never
know the difference. Lead the way, old chap. Anything to cheer up
a disconsolate comrade."

A few minutes later they were in Webster's room, second floor
back. The highly gratified host had lighted the kerosene lamp on
the table in the centre of the room, and pulled down the window
shades. Then, putting his fingers to his lips to enjoin silence,
he tip-toed to the door and threw it open suddenly. After peering
into the hall and listening intently for a moment, he cautiously
closed it again.

"All's well, as the watchman says at midnight," he remarked, as
he drew his key ring from his hip pocket and selected a key with
unerring precision from the extensive assortment. "I always do
that," he added. "I don't suppose it was necessary tonight, because
Angie Miller has got Hatch where he can't possibly escape. Long
as she knows where he is, she don't do much snooping. She used
to be the same way with me,--and Doc, too, for that matter. Poor
Hatch,--setting down there in the parlour,--listening to her talk
about birds and flowers and trying to help her guess what she's
going to give him for next Christmas. It's hell to be a bachelor,
Court."

He unlocked a trunk in the corner of the room, and after lifting
out two trays produced a half empty whiskey bottle.

"I had a dozen of these to begin with," said he, holding the bottle
up to the light. "Dollar sixty a quart. Quite a nifty little stock,
eh?"

"Is that all you have left?"

Charlie scratched his ear reflectively.

"Well, you see, I've had a good deal of toothache lately," he
announced. "And as soon as Doc Simpson and Hatch found out about
it, they begin to complain about their teeth achin' too. Seemed
to be a sort of epidemic of toothache, Court. Nothing like whiskey
for the toothache, you know."

"But Simpson is a dentist. Why don't you have him treat your teeth?"

"Seems as though he'd sooner have me treat his," said Charlie, with
a slight grimace. Rummaging about in the top tray of the trunk,
he produced a couple of bar glasses, which he carefully rinsed at
the washstand. "Tastes better when you drink it out of a regular
glass," he explained. "Always seems sort of cowardly to me to take
it with water,--almost as if you were trying to drown it so's it
won't be able to bite back when you tackle it. Needn't mind sayin'
'when' The glass holds just so much, and I know enough to stop when
it begins to run over. Well! Here's hoping your toothache will be
better in the morning, Court."

"I don't think I ought to rob you like this, Charlie,--"

"Lord, man, you're not robbing me. If you're robbing anybody, it's
Doc Simpson,--and he's been absolutely free from toothache ever
since I told him this room was dry. Excuse me a second, Court. I
always propose a toast before I take a drink up here. Here's to Miss
Alix Crown, the finest girl in the U. S. A., and the best boss a
man ever had. Course I've never said that in a saloon, but up here
it's different,--and kind of sacred."

"I usually make a wry face when I drink it neat like this," said
Courtney.

"You'll like her just as well as I do when you get to know her, boy.
I've known her since she was a little kid,--long before she was
sent abroad,--and she's the salt of the earth. That's one thing on
which Doc and Hatch and me always agree. We differ on most everything
else, but--well, as I was saying, you wait till you get to know
her."

He tossed off the whiskey in one prodigious gulp, smacked his lips,
and then stood watching his guest drink his.

Tears came into Courtney's eyes as he drained the last drop of the
fiery liquid. A shudder distorted his face.

"Pretty hot stuff, eh?" observed Charlie sympathetically.

Courtney's reply was a nod of the head, speech being denied him.

"Don't try to talk yet," said Charlie, as if admonishing a child
who has choked on a swallow of water. "Anyhow," he went on quaintly,
after a moment, "it makes you forget all about your toothache,
don't it?"

The other cleared his throat raucously. "Now I know why the redskins
call it fire water," said he.

"Have another?"

"Not on your life," exclaimed the New Yorker. "Put it back in the
trunk,--and lock it up!"

"No sooner said than done," said Charlie amicably. "Now I'll
pull up the shades and let in a little of our well-known hoosier
atmosphere,--and some real moonshine. Hello! There go Hatch and
Angie, out for a stroll. Yep! She's got him headed toward Foster's
soda water joint. I'll bet every tooth in his head is achin'."

"How long have you been running the grain elevator, Charlie?"

"Ever since David Windom built it, back in 1897,--twenty-two years.
I took a few months off in '98, expecting to see something of Cuba,
but the darned Spaniards surrendered when they heard I was on the
way, so I never got any farther than Indianapolis. Twenty-two years.
That's almost as long as Alix Crown has lived altogether."

"Have you ever seen the grave at the top of Quill's Window?"

"When I first came here, yes. Nobody ever goes up there now. In
the first place, she don't like it, and in the second place, most
people in these parts are honourable. We wouldn't any more think of
trespassin' up there than we'd think of pickin' somebody's pocket.
Besides which, there's supposed to be rattlesnakes up there among
the rocks. And besides that, the place is haunted."

"Haunted? I understood it was the old Windom house that is haunted."

"Well, spooks travel about a bit, being restless sort of things.
Thirty or forty years back, people swore that old Quill and the
other people who croaked up there used to come back during the dark
of the moon and hold high revels, as the novel writers would say.
Strange to say, they suddenly stopped coming back when the sheriff
snook up there one night with a couple of deputies and arrested a
gang of male and female mortals and confiscated a couple of kegs
of beer at the same time. Shortly after old David Windom confessed
that he killed Alix's father and buried him on the rock, people
begin to talk about seeing things again. Funny that Eddie Crown's
ghost neglected to come back till after he'd been dead eighteen years
or so. Ghosts ain't usually so considerate. Nobody ever claims to
have seen him floating around the old Windom front yard before Mr.
Windom confessed. But, by gosh, the story hadn't been printed in
the newspapers for more than two days before George Heffner saw
Eddie in the front yard, plain as day, and ran derned near a mile
and a half past his own house before he could stop, as he told some
one that met him when he stopped for breath. Course, that story
sort of petered out when George's wife went down and cowhided a
widow who lived just a mile and a half south of their place, and
that night George kept on running so hard the other way that he's
never been heard of since. Since then there hasn't been much talk
about ghosts,--'specially among the married men."

"And the rattlesnakes?" said Courtney, grinning.

"Along about 1875 David Windom killed a couple of rattlers up
there. It's only natural that their ghosts should come back, same
as anybody else's. Far as I can make out, nobody has ever actually
seen one, but the Lord only knows how many people claim to have
heard 'em."

He went on in this whimsical fashion for half an hour or more, and
finally came back to Alix Crown again.

"She did an awful lot of good during the war,--contributed to
everything, drove an ambulance in New York, took up nursing, and
all that, and if the war hadn't been ended by you fellers when it
was, she'd have been over in France, sure as you're a foot high."

"Strange she hasn't married, young and rich and beautiful as she
is," mused Courtney.

"Plenty of fellers been after her all right. She don't seem to
be able to see 'em though. Now that the war's over maybe she'll
settle down and pay some attention to sufferin' humanity. There's
one thing sure. If she's got a beau he don't belong around these
parts. Nobody around here's got a look-in."

"Does she live all alone in that house up there? I mean, has she
no--er--chaperon?"

"Nancy Strong is keeping house for her,--her husband used to run
the blacksmith shop here and did all of David Windom's work for
him. He's been dead a good many years. Nancy is one of the finest
women you ever saw. Her father was an Episcopal minister up in
the city up to the time he died. Nancy had to earn her own living,
so she got a job as school teacher down here. Let's see, that was
over thirty years ago. Been here ever since. Tom Strong wasn't good
enough for her. Too religious. He was the feller that led the mob
that wiped out Tony Zimmerman's saloon soon after I came here. I'll
never forget that night. I happened to be in the saloon,--just out
of curiosity, because it was new and everybody was dropping in to
see the bar and fixtures he'd got from Chicago,--but I got out of
a back window in plenty of time. But as I was saying, Nancy Strong
keeps house for Alix. She's got a cook and a second girl besides,
and a chauffeur."

"An ideal arrangement," said Courtney, looking at his wrist-watch.

"I wonder if you ever came across Nancy Strong's son over in France.
He was in the Medical Corps in our Army. He's a doctor. Went to
Rush Medical College in Chicago and afterwards to some place in
the East,--John Hopkins or some such name as that. Feller about
your age, I should say. David Strong. Mr. Windom sent him through
college. They say he's paying the money back to Alix Crown as fast
as he makes it. Alix hates him worse'n poison, according to Jim
Bagley, her foreman. Of course, she don't let on to David's mother
on account of her being housekeeper and all. Seems that Alix is as
sore as can be because he insists on paying the money to her, when
she claims her grandpa gave it to him and it's none of her business.
Davy says he promised to pay Mr. Windom back as soon as he was able,
and can't see any reason why the old man's death should cancel the
obligation. Jim was telling me some time ago about the letter Alix
showed him from Davy. She was so mad she actually cried. He said
in so many words he didn't choose to be beholden to her, and that
he was in the habit of paying his debts, and she needn't be so high
and mighty about refusin' to accept the money. He said he didn't
accept anything from Mr. Windom as charity,--claiming it was a
loan,--and he'd be damned if he'd accept charity from her. I don't
believe he swore like that, but then Jim can't say good morning to
you without getting in a cuss word or two. Alix is as stubborn as
all get out. Jim says that every time she gets a cheque from Davy
she cashes it and hands the money over to Mrs. Strong for a present,
never letting on to Nancy that it came from Davy. Did I say that
Davy is practisin' in Philadelphia? He was back here for a week to
see his mother after he got out of the Army, but when Alix heard
he was coming she beat it up to Chicago. I thought maybe you might
have run across him over in France."

"I was not with the American Army,--and besides there were several
million men in France, Charlie," said Courtney, arising and stretching
himself. "Well, good night. Thanks for the uplift. I'll skip along
now and write a letter or two."

"Snappy dreams," said Charlie Webster.

Just as Courtney was closing a long letter to his mother, the
automobile drew up in front of the Tavern and Alix Crown's guests
got out. There were "good-nights" and "sleep-tights" and then the
car went purring down the dimly lighted road. He had no trouble in
distinguishing Alix's clear, young voice, and thereupon added the
following words of comfort to his faraway mother: "You will love
her voice, mater dear. It's like music. So put away your prejudice
and wish me luck. I've made a good start. The fact that she refused
to look at me on the porch tonight is the best sign in the world.
Just because she deliberately failed to notice me is no sign that
she didn't expect me to notice her. It is an ancient and time-honoured
trick of your adorable sex."

III

The next morning his walk took him up the lane past the charming,
red-brick house of Alix the Third. His leg was troubling him. He
walked with quite a pronounced limp, and there were times when his
face winced with pain.

"It's that confounded poison you gave me last night," he announced
to Charlie Webster as they stood chatting in front of the warehouse
office.

"First time I ever heard of booze going to the knee," was Charlie's
laconic rejoinder. "It's generally aimed at the head."

He made good use of the corner of his eye as he strolled leisurely
past the Windom house, set well back at the top of a small
tree-surrounded knoll and looking down upon the grassy slope that
formed the most beautiful "front yard" in the whole county, according
to the proud and boastful denizens of Windomville. Along the bottom
of the lawn ran a neatly trimmed privet hedge. There were lilac
bushes in the lower corners of the extensive grounds, and the wide
gravel walk up to the house was lined with flowers. Rose bushes
guarded the base of the terrace that ran the full length of the
house and curved off to the back of it.

A red and yellow beach umbrella, tilted against the hot morning
sun, lent a gay note of colour to the terrace to the left of the
steps. Some one,--a woman,--sat beneath the big sunshade, reading
a newspaper. A Belgian police dog posed at the top of the steps,
as rigid as if shaped of stone, regarding the passer-by who limped.
Halfway between the house and the road stood two fine old oaks,
one at either side of the lawn. Their cool, alluring shadows were
like clouds upon an emerald sea. Down near the hedge a whirling
garden spray cast its benevolent waters over the grateful turf, and,
reaching out in playful gusts, blew its mist into the face of the
man outside. Back of the house and farther up the timbered slope
rose a towering windmill and below it the red water tank, partially
screened by the tree-tops. The rhythmic beat of a hydraulic pump
came to the stroller's ears.

Courtney's saunterings had taken him past this charming place
before,--half a dozen times perhaps,--but never had it seemed so
alluring. Outwardly there was no change that he could detect, and
yet there was a subtle difference in its every aspect. The spray,
the shadows, the lazy windmill, the flowers,--he had seen them
all before, just as they were this morning. They had not changed.
But now, by some strange wizardry, the tranquil setting had been
transformed into a vibrant, exquisite fairyland, throbbing with
life, charged with an appeal to every one of the senses. It was as
if some hand had shaken it out of a sound sleep.

But, for that matter, the whole village of Windomville had undergone
a change. It was no longer the dull, sleepy place of yesterday.
Over night it had blossomed. Courtney Thane alone was aware of this
amazing transformation. It was he who felt the thrill that charged
the air, who breathed in the sense-quickening spice, who heard
the pipes of Pan. All these signs of enchantment were denied the
matter-of-fact, unimaginative inhabitants of Windomville. And you
would ask the cause of this amazing transformation?

Before he left the breakfast table Courtney had consented to give a
talk before the Literary Society on the coming Friday night. Mrs.
Maude Baggs Pollock had been at him for a week to tell of his
experiences at the front. She promised a full attendance.

"I've never made a speech in my life," he said, "and I know I'd be
scared stiff, Mrs. Pollock."

"Pooh! Don't you talk to me about being scared! Anybody who did
the things you did over in France--"

"Ah, but you forget I was armed to the teeth," he reminded her,
with a grin.

"Well," put in Charlie Webster, "we'll promise to leave our pistols
at home. The only danger you'll be in, Court, will come from a lot
of hysterical women trying to kiss you, but I think I can fix it
to have the best lookin' ones up in front so that--"

"I wish you wouldn't always try to be funny, Charlie Webster,"
snapped Mrs. Pollock. "Mr. Thane and I were discussing a serious
matter. If you can postpone--"

"I defy anybody to prove that there's anything funny about being
kissed by practically half the grown-up population of Windomville
with the other half lookin' on and cussin' under their breath."

"Don't pay any attention to him, Mr. Thane," said the poetess
of Windomville. "Alix Crown said last night she was coming to the
meeting this week, and I'd so like to surprise her. Now please say
you will do it."

"I really wouldn't know what to talk about," pleaded the young man.
"You see, as a rule, we fellows who were over there don't feel
half as well qualified to talk about the war as those who stayed
at home and read about it in the papers."

"Nonsense! All you will have to do is just to tell some of your
own personal experiences. Nobody's going to think you are bragging
about them. We'll understand."

"Next Friday night, you say? Well, I'll try, Mrs. Pollock, if
you'll promise to chloroform Charlie Webster," said he, and Charlie
promptly declared he would do the chloroforming himself.




CHAPTER VII

COURTNEY APPEARS IN PUBLIC


The meetings of the Literary Society were held once a month in the
Windomville schoolhouse, a two story brick building situated some
distance back from the main street at the upper edge of the town.
There were four classrooms and three teachers, including the principal,
Miss Angie Miller, who taught the upper grade. Graduates from her
"room" were given diplomas admitting them to the first year of High
School in the city hard-by in case they desired to take advantage
of the privilege. As a rule, however, the parents of such children
were satisfied to call it an honour rather than a privilege, with
the result that but few of them ever saw the inside of the High
School. They were looked upon as being quite sufficiently educated
for all that Windomville could possibly expect or exact of them.
When the old schoolhouse was destroyed by fire in the winter of
1916, Alix Crown contributed fifteen thousand dollars toward the
construction of this new and more or less modern structure, with
the provision that the town board should appropriate the balance
needed to complete the building. On completion the schoolhouse
was found to have cost exactly $14,989.75, and so, at the next
township election, the board was unanimously returned to office by
an appreciative constituency, and Miss Crown graciously notified
by the assessor that she had been credited with ten dollars and
twenty-five cents against her next year's road tax.

The Literary Society always met in Miss Miller's "room," not
because it was more imposing or commodious than any of the others
but on account of its somewhat rarified intellectual atmosphere.
Miss Angie's literary attainments, while confined to absorption
rather than to production, were well known. She was supposed to
have read all of the major poets. At any rate she was able to quote
them. Besides, she had made a study of Dickens and Thackeray and
Trollope, being qualified to discuss the astonishing shortcomings
of those amiable mid-Victorians in a most dependable manner. She
made extensive use of the word "erudite," and confused a great many
people by employing "vicarious" and "didactic" and "raison d'etre"
in the course of ordinary conversation. For example, in complaining
to Mr. Hodges, the school trustee, about the lack of heat in
mid-January, she completely subdued him be remarking that there
wasn't "the least raison d'etre for such a condition." In view of
these and other intellectual associations, Miss Miller's "room"
was obviously the place for the Literary Society to meet.

Mr. George Ade, Mr. Booth Tarkington, Mr. James Whitcomb Riley,
Mr. Meredith Nicholson and other noted Indiana authors had been
invited to "read from their works" before the Society, and while
none of them had been able to accept, each and every one had written
a polite note of regret to the secretary, who not only read them
aloud to the Society but preserved them in her own private scrap
book and spoke feelingly of her remarkable "collection."

The room was crowded to hear the "celebrated air-man" relate his
experiences at the front. The exercises were delayed for nearly an
hour while Mr. Hatch, the photographer, prepared and foozled three
attempts to get a flashlight picture of the gathering. Everybody
was coughing violently when A. Lincoln Pollock arose to introduce
the speaker of the evening. In conclusion he said:

"Mr. Thane was not only wounded in the service of humanity but
he was also gassed. I wish to state here and now that it was not
laughing gas the Germans administered. Far from it, my friends. Mr.
Thane will tell you that it was no laughing matter. He has come
to God's own country to recuperate and to regain his once robust
health. After looking the world over, he chose the health-giving
climate of his native state,--ahem! I should say, his father's
native state,--and here he is not only thriving but enjoying himself.
I take it upon myself to announce that he left all of his medals
at his home in New York. They are too precious to be carried
promiscuously about the country. It is my pleasure, ladies and
gentlemen, to introduce to you one of the real heroes of the Great
War, Mr. Courtney Thane, of New York City, who will now speak to
you."

Alix Crown sat at the back of the room. There were no chairs, of
course. Each person present occupied a scholar's seat and desk.
Courtney had seen her come in. She was so late that he began to
fear she was not coming at all. The little thrill of exultation
that came with her arrival was shortly succeeded by an even greater
fear that she would depart as soon as the meeting was over, without
stopping to meet him at the "reception" which was to follow.

In his most agreeable drawl and with the barest reference to his
own exploits, he described, quite simply, a number of incidents
that had come under his personal observation while with the American
Ambulance and afterwards in the British Flying Corps. Most of his
talk was devoted to the feats of others and to the description of
scenes and events somewhat remote from the actual fighting zone.
He confessed that he knew practically nothing of the work of the
American Expeditionary Force, except by hearsay, as he did not
come in contact with the American armies, except an occasional unit
brigaded with British troops in the Cambrai section of the great
line. His listeners, no doubt, knew a great deal more about the
activities and achievements of the Americans than he, so he was
quite sure there was nothing he could say that would interest or
enlighten them. In concluding he very briefly touched upon his own
mishap.

"We were returning from a bombing flight over the German positions
when somebody put a bullet into our petrol and down we came in
flames. There was a gas attack going on at the time. We managed to
land in a cloud of it, and--somehow we got back to our own lines,
a little the worse for wear and all that sort of thing, you know.
It wasn't as bad as you'd think,--except for the gas, which isn't
what you would call palatable,--and I came out not much worse off
than a chap who has been through a hard football scrimmage. Knee
and ankle bunged up a little,--and a dusty uniform,--that's about
all. I hope you will excuse me from talking any longer. My silly
throat goes back on me, you see. My mother probably would tell
you, 'too many cigarettes.' Perhaps she is right. Thank you for
listening to all this rot, ladies and gentlemen. You are very kind
to have given me this undeserved honour."

Not once during his remarks did he allow his gaze to rest upon Alix
Crown. It was his means of informing her that she had not made the
slightest impression upon him.

As he resumed his seat beside Mr. Pollock, and while the generous
hand-clapping was still going on, Pastor Mavity arose and benignly
waited for the applause to cease. Mr. Mavity invariably claimed
the ecclesiastical privilege of speech. No meeting was complete,
no topic exhausted, until he had exercised that right. It did not
matter whether he had anything pertinent to say, the fact still
remained that he felt called upon to say something:

"I should like to ask Mr. Thane if he thinks the Germans are
preparing for another war. We have heard rumours to that effect.
Many of our keenest observers have declared that it is only a
matter of a few years before the Germans will be in a position to
make war again, and that they will make it with even greater ferocity
than before. We all know of the conflict now raging in Russia,
and the amazing rebellion of De Annunzio in Fiume, and the--er--as
I was saying, the possibility of the Kaiser seizing his bloody
throne and calling upon his minions to--ah--er--renew the gigantic
struggle. The history of the world records no such stupendous sacrifice
of life on the cruel altars of greed and avarice and--er--ambition.
We may turn back to the vast campaigns of Hannibal and Hamilcar
and Julius Caesar and find no--er--no war comparable to the one we
have so gloriously concluded. Our own Civil War, with all its,--but
I must not keep you standing, Mr. Thane. Do you, from your experience
and observation, regard another war as inevitable?"

"I do," was Courtney's succinct reply.

There was a distinctly audible flutter throughout the room. Here,
at last, was something definite to support the general contention
that "we aren't through with the Germans yet." A lady up in front
leaned across the aisle and whispered piercingly to her husband:

"There! What did I tell you?"

Another lady arose halfway from her seat and anxiously inquired:

"How soon do you think it will come, Mr. Thane?"

She had a son just turning seventeen.

"That is a question I am afraid you will have to put to God or the
German Emperor," said Courtney, with a smile.

"When David Strong was home this spring I asked him what he thought
about it," said Editor Pollock. "I published the interview in the
Sun. He was of the opinion that the Germans had had all they wanted
of war. I tried to convince him that he was all wrong, but all I
could get him to say was that if they ever did make war again it
would be long after the most of us were dead."

"David Strong didn't see anything of the war except what he saw in
the hospitals," said a woman contemptuously.

"Permit me to correct you, Mrs. Primmer," said Alix Crown, without
arising. "David Strong was under fire most of the time. He was not
in a base hospital. He was attached to a field hospital,--first with
the French, then with the British, and afterwards with the Americans."

"In that case," said Courtney, facing her, "he was in the thick
of it. Every man in the army, from general down to the humblest
private, takes his hat off to the men who served in the field
hospitals. While we may differ as to the next war, I do not hesitate
to say that Dr. Strong saw infinitely more of the last one than I
did. It may sound incredible to you, ladies and gentlemen, but my
job was a picnic compared to his. As a matter of fact, I have always
claimed that I was in greater danger when I was in the American
Ambulance than when I was flying, quite safely, a couple of miles
up in the air. At any rate, I FELT safer."

"Oh, but think of falling that distance," cried Miss Angie Miller.

"It was against the rules to think of falling," said he, and every
one laughed.

The "reception" followed. Every one came up and shook hands with
Courtney and told him how much his address was enjoyed. As the
group around him grew thicker and at the same time more reluctant
to move on, he began to despair of meeting Alix Crown. He could
see her over near the door conversing with Alaska Spigg and Charlie
Webster. Then he saw her wave her hand in farewell to some one
across the room and bow to Charlie. There was a bright, gay smile
on her lips as she said something to Charlie which caused that
gentleman to laugh prodigiously. All hope seemed lost as she and
little old Alaska turned toward the open door.

It was not fate that intervened. It was Pastor Mavity. Disengaging
himself from the group and leaving a profound sentence uncompleted,
he dashed over to her, calling out her name as he did so.

"Alix! Just a moment, please!"

She paused,--and Courtney discreetly turned his back. Presently
a benevolent hand was laid on his shoulder and the voice of the
shepherd fell upon his ear.

"I want you to meet Miss Crown, Mr. Thane. She has just been
telling me how interested she was in your remarks. Miss Crown, my
very dear friend, Mr. Courtney Thane. Mr. Thane, as you may already
know, is sojourning in our midst for--"

"I am delighted to meet you, Miss Crown," broke in Courtney,
with an abashed smile. "Formally, I mean. I have a very distinct
recollection of meeting you informally," he added wrily.

"Dear me!" exclaimed Mr. Mavity, elevating his eyebrows.

Courtney's humility disarmed her. She allowed her lips to curve
slightly in a faint smile. The merest trace of a dimple flickered
for an instant in her smooth cheek.

"I suppose it was the old story of forbidden fruit, Mr. Thane,"
said she. Then, impulsively, she extended her hand. He clasped it
firmly, and there was peace between them.

"On the contrary, Miss Crown, it was an unpardonable piece of
impudence, for which I am so heartily ashamed that I wonder how I
can look you in the face."

"I was tremendously interested in your talk tonight," she said, coolly
dismissing the subject. "Thank you for giving us the pleasure. It
is just such adventures as you have had that makes me wish more
than ever that I had not been born a girl."

He bowed gallantly. "What would the world be like if God had
neglected to create the rose?"

"Bravo!" cried Mr. Mavity, slapping him on the back. "Spoken like
a knight of old."

"Good night, Mr. Thane,--and thank you again," she said. Nodding
to Mr. Mavity, she turned to leave the group.

Again the parson intervened. "My dear Alix, I can't let you go
without saying a word about your splendid defence of David Strong.
It was fine. And you, sir, were--ah--what shall I say?--you were
most generous in saying what you did. David is a fine fellow. He--"

"I should have said the same about any doctor who was up at the
front," said Courtney simply. "Is he an old friend, Miss Crown?"

"I have known him ever since I can remember," she replied, and he
detected a slight stiffness in her manner.

"Ahem! Er--ah--" began Mr. Mavity tactfully. "David was born here,
Mr. Thane. Well, good night, Alix,--good night."

When she was quite out of hearing, the flustered parson lowered
his voice and said to Courtney:

"They--er--don't get along very well, you see. I couldn't explain
while she was here. Something to do with money matters,--nothing of
consequence, I assure you,--but very distressing, most distressing.
It is too bad,--too bad."

Mrs. Pollock overheard. "They're both terribly set in their ways,"
she remarked. "Stubborn as mules. For my part, I think Alix is too
silly for words about it. Especially with his mother living in the
same house with her. Now, mind you, I'm not saying anything against
Alix. I love her. But just the same, she can be the most unreasonable--"

"They haven't spoken to each other for over three years," inserted
Angie Miller. "When they were children they were almost inseparable.
David Windom took a fancy to little David. The story is that he
was trying to ease his conscience by being nice to a blacksmith's
son. You see, his own daughter ran away with a blacksmith's
son,--and you've heard what happened, Mr. Thane. David was in my
class for two years before he went up to High School, and I remember
he always used to get long letters from Alix when she was in England.
Then, when she came home,--she was about twelve I think,--they were
great friends. Always together, playing, studying, reading, riding
and--"

"Everybody used to say old David Windom was doing his best to make
a match of it," interrupted Mrs. Pollock, who had been out of the
conversation longer than she liked. "Up to the time the old man
died, we used to take it for granted that some day they would get
married,--but, my goodness, it's like waving a red flag at a bull
to even mention his name to Alix now. She hates him,--and I guess
he hates her."

"Oh, my dear friend," cried Mr. Mavity, "I really don't think you
ought to say that. Hate is a very dreadful word. I am sure Alix
is incapable of actually hating any one. And as for David, he is
kindness, gentleness itself. It is just one of those unfortunate
situations that cannot be accounted for."

Charlie Webster came up at that juncture.

"Say, Court, why didn't you tell 'em about the time you called
Colonel What's-His-Name down,--the French guy that--" The scowl
on Courtney's brow silenced the genial Charlie. He coughed and
sputtered for a moment or two and then said something about "taking
a joke."

As Charlie moved away, Miss Angie Miller sniffed and said, without
appreciably lowering her voice:

"I wonder where he gets it. There isn't supposed to be a drop in
Windomville." Suddenly her eyes flew wide open. "Furman! Oh, Furman
Hatch!" she called out to a man who was sidling toward the door in
the wake of the pernicious Mr. Webster.

While there was nothing to indicate that Mr. Hatch heard her, the
most disinterested spectator would have observed a perceptible
acceleration of speed on his part.

"You promised to tell me how to--" But Mr. Hatch was gone. Mr.
Webster turned a surprised and resentful look upon him as he felt
himself being pushed rather roughly through the door ahead of the
hurrying photographer. When Miss Angie reached the door,--she had
lost some little time because of the seats and the stupidity of
Mrs. Primmer who blocked the way by first turning to the right,
then to the left, and finally by not turning at all,--Mr. Hatch was
nowhere in sight, even though Mr. Webster was barely two-thirds of
the way down the stairs.

A pleasant, courteous voice accosted her from behind as she stood
glaring after the chubby warehouseman.

"Do you mind if I walk home with you, Miss Miller?"

"Oh, is--is that you, Mr. Thane?" she fairly gasped. Then she
simpered. "I'm really not a bit afraid. Still,"--hastily--"if you
really wish to, I should be delighted."

If Mr. Hatch was lurking anywhere in the shadows, he must have been
profoundly impressed by the transformation in Miss Angie Miller as
she strode homeward at the side of the tall young New Yorker, her
hand on his arm, her head held high,--he might also have noticed
that she stepped a little higher than usual.




CHAPTER VIII

ALIX THE THIRD


October came, with its red and golden trees, its brown pastures,
its crisp nights and its hazy, smoky days. Fires were kindled in
old-fashioned fireplaces; out in the farmyards busy housewives were
making soap and apple butter in great iron kettles suspended over
blazing logs; wagons laden with wheat and corn rumbled through
country roads and up to the Windom elevator; stores were thriving
under the spur of new-found money; the school was open, Main Street
childless for hours at a time,--and Courtney Thane was still in
Windomville.

He was a frequent, almost constant visitor at the red-brick house
on the knoll. The gossips were busy. Sage winks were exchanged when
Alix and he were seen together in her automobile; many a head was
lowered so that its owner might peer quizzically over the upper
rims of spectacles as they strolled past the postoffice and other
public porches; convicting feminine smiles pursued the young
man up the lane leading to Alix's home. There were some doubtful
head-shakings, but in the main Windomville was rather well pleased
with the prospect. Opinion, though divided, was almost unanimous:
few there were who held that "nothin' would come of it."

Charlie Webster was one of the latter. His early intimacy with the
ex-aviator had suffered a decided slump. His jovial attempts to
plague the young man about his intentions met with the frostiest
reception. Indeed, on one memorable occasion, the object of these
good-natured banterings turned upon him coldly and said:

"See here, Webster, you're getting to be considerable of a nuisance.
Cut it out, will you? You are not half as funny as you think you
are. I'm pretty well fed up with your freshness--understand?"

It was a slap in the face that Charlie DID understand, and one
he never forgot. As the rebuke was uttered on the porch of Dowd's
Tavern and in the presence of Flora Grady, Maude Baggs Pollock and
one or two others, the sting was likely to endure.

While Courtney's manner had undergone a decided change so far as
nearly all of his fellow-lodgers were concerned, he still maintained
a very friendly and courteous attitude toward the Dowd sisters and
Mr. and Mrs. Pollock. For some reason known only to himself,--(but
doubtless plain to the reader of this narrative),--he devoted most
of his attention to the editor and his wife and to the two spinsters
who were such close friends of the young lady of his dreams. As
for the others, he made no attempt to conceal his disdain.

It was not long before the Irish in Miss Flora Grady was aroused.
She announced to Miss Angie Miller that he was a "stuck up smart-Aleck,"
and sooner or later he'd get a piece of her mind that would "take
him down a couple of pegs." Miss Miller, while in complete accord
with Flora's views, was content to speak of him as "supercilious."

Charlie Webster grew more and more thoughtful under the weight of
indignity.

"I certainly missed my guess as to that feller," he remarked to
Doc Simpson and Hatch one day. "I had him sized up as a different
sort of feller altogether. Why, up to a couple of weeks ago, he
was as nice as pie to all of us,--'specially to me. He used to come
over to my office and sit around for hours, chatting and smoking
cigarettes and joshing like a good feller. But I've got it all
figgered out, boys. He was simply workin' me. He always led the
conversation round to Alix Crown, and then, like a dern' fool, I'd
let him pump me dry. Why, there's nothing he don't know about that
girl,--and all through me. Now he's got in with her,--just as he
wanted to all along,--and what does he do but tie a can to me and
give me a swift kick. And there's another thing I might as well
say to you fellers while I'm about it. I've been doing a lot of
thinking lately,--sort of putting things together in my mind,--and
it's my opinion that he is one of the blamedest liars I've ever
come across."

He paused to see the effect of this startling assertion. Hatch
removed the corn-cob pipe from between his lips and laconically
observed:

"Well, I know of one lie he's told."

"You do?"

"Remember him telling us at the supper table one night that a German
submarine fired three torpedoes at the steamer he was coming home
on with a lot of other sick and wounded? Well, a couple of nights
ago he forgot himself and made the statement that he was in a
hospital in England for nearly two months after the armistice was
signed."

"By gosh, that's right," cried Doc Simpson.

"And what's more," went on Hatch, "wasn't he serving in the British
Army? What I'd like to know is this: why would England be sending
her wounded soldiers over to America? You can bet your life England
wasn't doing anything like that."

"There's another thing that don't sound just right to me," said
Charlie, his brow furrowed. "He says one night he got lost driving
his ambulance and the first thing he knew he was away behind the
German lines. I may be wrong, but I've always thought both sides
had trenches. What puzzles me is how the dickens he managed to
drive that Ford of his over the German trenches without noticin'
'em,--and back again besides."

"Well," said Doc, desiring to be fair, "it seems to be the habit
of soldiers to lie a little. That's where we get the saying, 'he
lied like a trooper.' I know my Uncle George lied so much about what
he did in the Civil War that he ought to have had twenty pensions
instead of one. Still, there's a big change in Court, as you say,
Charlie. I wonder if Alix is really keen about him. He's up there
all the time, seems to me. Or is she just stringin' him?"

Charlie frowned darkly. "He's a slick one. I--I'd hate to see Alix
fall for him."

The sententious Mr. Hatch: "The smartest women in the world lose
their heads over a feller as soon as they find out he's in poor
health."

"He's in perfect health," exploded Charlie.

"I know,--but that don't prevent him from coughing and holding
his side and walking with a cane, does it? That's what gets 'em,
Charlie. The quickest way to get a girl interested is to let her
think you're in need of sympathy."

"It don't work when you're as fat as I am," said Charlie gloomily.

Conscious or unconscious of the varying opinions that were being
voiced behind his back, Courtney went confidently ahead with
his wooing. He congratulated himself that he was in Alix's good
graces. If at times she was perplexingly cool,--or "upstage," as
he called it,--he flattered himself that he knew women too well to
be discouraged by these purely feminine manifestations.

This was a game he knew how to play. The time was not yet ripe for
him to abandon his well-calculated air of indifference. That he was
desperately in love with her goes without saying. If at the outset
of his campaign he was inspired by the unworthy motive of greed,
he was now consumed by an entirely different desire,--the desire
to have her for his own, even though she were penniless.

Those whirlwind tactics that had swept many another girl off her
feet were not to be thought of here. Alix was different. She was
not an impressionable, hair-brained flapper, such as he had come in
contact with in past experiences. Despite her sprightly, thoroughly
up-to-the-moment ease of manner, and an air of complete sophistication,
she was singularly old-fashioned in a great many respects. While
she was bright, amusing, gay, there was back of it all a certain
reserve that forbade familiarity,--sufficient, indeed, to inspire
unexampled caution on his part. She invited friendship but not
familiarity; she demanded respect rather than admiration.

He was not slow in arriving at the conclusion that she knew men.
She knew how to fence with them. He was distinctly aware of this.
Other men, of course, had been in love with her; other men no doubt
had dashed their hopes upon the barrier in their haste to seize the
treasure. It was inconceivable that one so lovely, so desirable,
so utterly feminine should fail to inspire in all men that which
she inspired in him. The obvious, therefore, was gratifying. Granted
that she had had proposals, here was the proof that the poor fools
who laid their hearts at her feet had gone about it clumsily. Such
would not be the case with him. Oh no! He would bide his time, he
would watch for the first break in her enchanted armour,--and then
the conquest!

There were times, of course, when he came near to catastrophe,--times
when he was almost powerless to resist the passion that possessed
him. These were the times when he realized how easy it would have
been to join that sad company of fools in the path behind her.

He had no real misgivings. He felt confident of winning. True, her
moods puzzled him at times, but were they not, after all, omens of
good fortune? Were they not indications of the mysterious changes
that were taking place in her? And the way was clear. So far as he
knew, there was no other man. Her heart was free. What more could
he ask?

On her side, the situation was not so complex. He came from the
great outside world, he brought the outside world to the lonely
little village on the bank of the river. He was bright, amusing,
cultivated,--at least he represented cultivation as it exists in
open places and on the surface of a sea called civilization. He
possessed that ineffable quality known as "manner." The spice of the
Metropolis clung to him. He could talk of the things she loved,--not
as she loved the farm and village and the home of her fathers, but
of the things she loved because they stood for that which represented
the beautiful in intellect, in genius, in accomplishment. The breath
of far lands and wide seas came with him to the town of Windomville,
grateful and soothing, and yet laden with the tang of turmoil, the
spice of iniquity.

Alix was no Puritan. She had been out in the world, she had come
up against the elemental in life, she had learned that God in His
wisdom had peopled the earth with saints and sinners,--and she was
tolerant of both! In a word, she was broad-minded. She had been
an observer rather than a participant in the passing show. She had
absorbed knowledge rather than experience.

The conventions remained unshaken so far as she was personally
concerned. In others she excused much that she could not have
excused in herself,--for the heritage of righteousness had come
down to her through a long line of staunch upholders.

She loved life. She craved companionship. She could afford
to gratify her desires. Week-ends found two or more guests at her
home,--friends from the city up the river. Sometimes there were
visitors from Chicago, Indianapolis and other places,--girls she
had met at school, or in her travels, or in the canteen. Early in
the war her house was headquarters for the local Red Cross workers,
the knitters, the bandage rollers, and so on, but after the entry
of the United States into the conflict, most of her time was spent
away from Windomville in the more intense activities delegated to
women.

She attended the theatre when anything worth while came to the
city, frequently taking one or two of the village people with her.
Once, as she was leaving the theatre, she heard herself discussed
by persons in the aisle behind.

"That's Alix Crown. I'll tell you all about her when we get home.
Her father and mother were murdered years ago and buried in a well
or something. I wish she'd turn around so that you could get a good
look at her face. She's quite pretty and--"

And she had deliberately turned to face the speaker, who never
forgot the cold, unwavering stare that caused her to lower her own
eyes and her voice to trail off into a confused mumble.

Alix was a long time in recovering from the distress caused by the
incident. She avoided the city for weeks. It was her first intimation
that she was an object of unusual interest to people, that she was
the subject of whispered comment, that she was a "character" to be
pointed out to strangers. Even now, with the sting of injury and
injustice eased by time and her own good sense, there still remained
the disturbing consciousness that she was,--for want of a milder
term,--a "marked woman."

She was thoroughly acquainted with every detail connected with the
extensive farms and industries that had been handed down to her. A
great deal of her time was devoted to an intelligent and comprehensive
interest in the management of the farms. She was never out of
touch with conditions. Her tenants respected and admired her; her
foremen and superintendents consulted with her as they would not
have believed it possible to consult with a woman; her bankers
deferred to her.

She would have laughed at you if you had suggested to her that she
had more than a grain of business-sense, or ability, or capacity,
and yet she was singularly far-sighted and capable,--without being
in the least aware of it. Her pleasures were not allowed to interfere
with her obligations as a landlord, a citizen and a taxpayer.
A certain part of each day was set aside for the business of the
farms. She repaired bright and early to the little office at the
back of the house where her grandfather had worked before her,
and there she struggled over accounts, reports, claims,--and her
cheque-book. And like her grim, silent grandsire, she "rode" the
lanes that twined through field and timber,--only she rode gaily,
blithely, with sunshine in her heart. The darkness was always behind
her, never ahead.

Courtney undoubtedly had overcome the prejudice his visit to
Quill's Window had inspired in her. They never spoke of that first
encounter. It was as a closed book between them. He had forgotten
the incident. At any rate, he had put it out of his mind. He sometimes
wondered, however, if she would ever invite him to accompany her
to the top of that forbidden hill. In their rambles they had passed
the closed gate on more than one occasion. The words, "No Trespass,"
still met the eye. Some day he would suggest an adventure: the
descent to the cave in quest of treasure! The two of them! Rope
ladder and all! It would be great fun!

He was assiduous in his efforts to amuse her house guests. He laid
himself out to be entertaining. If he resented the presence of young
men from the city, he managed to conceal his feelings remarkably
well. On one point he was firm: he would not accompany her on any
of her trips to the city. Once she had invited him to motor in with
her to a tea, and another time she offered to drive him about the
city and out to the college on a sight-seeing tour. It was then
that he said he was determined to obey "doctor's orders." No city
streets for him! Even SHE couldn't entice him! He loved every inch
of this charming, restful spot,--every tree and every stone,--and
he would not leave it until the time came for him to go away forever.

He was very well satisfied with the fruits of this apparently
ungracious refusal. She went to the city less frequently than before,
and only when it was necessary. This, he decided, was significant.
It could have but one meaning.

Her dog, Sergeant, did not like him.




CHAPTER IX

A MID-OCTOBER DAY


One chilly, rainy afternoon in mid-October Courtney appeared at the
house on the knoll half an hour earlier than was his custom. Alix
was expecting friends down from the city for tea. From the hall
where he was removing his raincoat he had a fair view through
an open door of the north end of the long living-room. Logs were
blazing merrily in the fireplace. Alix was standing before the fire,
tearing a sheet of paper into small pieces. She was angry. She threw
rather than dropped the bits of paper into the flames,--unmistakably
she was furious. He waited a moment before entering the room. Her
back was toward him. She turned in response to his discreet cough.
Even in the dim light that filtered in from the grey, leaden day
outside, he could detect the heightened colour in her cheeks, and
as he advanced he saw that her eyes were wet with illy-suppressed
tears. She bit her lip and forced a smile.

He possessed the philanderer's tact. There was nothing in his
manner to indicate that he noticed anything unusual. He greeted
her cheerfully and then, affecting a shiver, passed on to spread
his hands out over the fire.

"This is great," he exclaimed, his back to her. He was giving her
a chance to compose herself. "Nothing like a big log fire to warm
the cockles of your heart,--although it isn't my heart that needs
warming. Moreover, I don't know what cockles are. I must look 'em
up in the dictionary. Come here, Sergeant,--there's a good dog!
Come over and get warm, old fellow. Toast your cockles. By Jove,
Miss Crown, isn't he ever going to make friends with me?"

"They are 'one man' dogs, Mr. Thane," she replied. "Come, Sergeant,--if
you're going to be impolite you must leave the room. Excuse me a
moment. Sergeant! Do you hear me, sir? Come!"

The big grey dog followed her slowly, reluctantly, from the room.
Courtney heard her going up the stairs.

"That nasty brute is going to take a bite out of me some day," he
muttered under his breath. "Fat chance I'd have to kiss her with
that beast around."

He heard the closing of an upstairs door. His thoughts were still
of the police dog.

"There's one thing sure," he said to himself. "That dog and I can't
live in the same house." Then his thoughts rose swiftly to that
upstairs room,--he was sure it was a dainty, inviting room,--to
picture her before the mirror erasing all visible evidence of
agitation. He found himself wondering what it was that caused this
exhibition of temper. A letter? Of course,--a letter. A letter that
contained something she resented, something that infuriated her.
A personal matter, not a business one. She would not have treated
a business matter in such a way. He knew her too well for that. The
leaping flames gave no hint of what they had destroyed. Was it an
anonymous letter? Had it anything to do with him?

His eye fell upon several envelopes on the library table. After a
moment's hesitation and a quick glance toward the door, he strode
over to inspect them. They were all unopened. Two were postmarked
Chicago, one New York; on the others the postmarks were indistinct.
The handwriting was feminine on most of them. A narrow, folded slip
of paper lay a little detached from the letters. He picked it up
and quickly opened it. It proved to be a check on a Philadelphia
bank. A glance sufficed to show that it was for two hundred and
fifty dollars, payable to the order of Alix Crown, and signed "D.
W. Strong."

The door upstairs was opened and closed. Replacing the bit of
paper on the table, he resumed his position before the fire. Quite
a different Alix entered the room a few seconds later. She was
smiling, her eyes were soft and tranquil. All traces of the passing
tempest were gone.

"Sit down,--draw this big chair up to the fire,--do. It IS raw and
nasty today, isn't it? I think the Mallons are coming out in an
open car. Isn't it too bad?"

"Bad for the curls," he drawled. "Mind if I smoke?"

"Certainly not. Don't you know that by this time?"

He had drawn a chair up beside hers. Her reply afforded him a very
definite sense of elation.

"It seems to me that the world is getting to be a rather heavenly
place to live in," he said, and there was a trace of real feeling
in his voice. "You don't mind my saying it's entirely due to you,
do you?"

"Not in the least," she said calmly. "Charlie Webster once paraphrased
a time-honoured saying. He said 'In the fall an old man's fancy
slightly turns to thoughts of comfort.' I sha'n't deprive my fireplace
and my big armchair of their just due by believing a word of what
you say."

He tossed the match into the fire, drew in a deep breath of smoke,
settled himself comfortably in the chair before exhaling, and then
remarked:

"But I don't happen to be an old man. I happen to be a rather young
one,--and a very truthful one to boot."

"Do you always tell the truth?"

He grinned. "More or less always," was his reply. "I never lie in
October."

"And the other eleven months of the year?"

"Oh, I merely change the wording. In July I say 'I never lie in
July,'--and so on throughout the twelve-month. I don't slight a
single month. By the by, I hope I didn't pop in too far ahead of
time this afternoon. You asked me to come at four. I'm half an hour
early. Were you occupied with anything--"

"I was not busy. A few letters,--but they can wait." He caught the
faint shadow of a cloud as it flitted across her eyes. "They are
all personal,--nothing important in any of them, I am sure."

She shot a quick glance at the folded check and, arising abruptly,
went over to the table where, with apparent unconcern, she ran
through the little pile of letters. He saw her pick up the check
and thrust it into the pocket of her sport skirt. Then she returned
to the fireplace. The cloud was on her brow again as she stared
darkly into the crackling flames. He knew now that it was Strong's
letter she had destroyed in anger. He would have given much to
know what the man she despised so heartily had written to her. If
he could have seen that brief note he would have read:

DEAR ALIX:

I enclose my checque for two-fifty. If all goes well I hope to
clean up the indebtedness by the first of the year. In any case, I
am sure it can be accomplished by early spring. You may thank the
flu for my present prosperity. It has been pretty bad here in the
East again, although not so virulent as before. Please credit me
with the amount. This leaves me owing you five hundred dollars. It
should not take long to wipe it out entirely, interest and all.

Sincerely yours,

DAVID.

Courtney eyed her narrowly as she stood for a moment looking into
the fire before resuming her seat. He realized that her thoughts
were far away and that they were not pleasant.

"It's queer," he said presently, "that you have never learned to
smoke."

She started slightly at the sound of his voice. As she turned to
sit down, he went on:

"Almost every girl I know smokes. I will not say that I like to
see it,--especially in restaurants and all that sort of thing,--but
it's rather jolly if there's a nice, cosy fire like this,--see
what I mean? Sort of intimate, and friendly, and--soothing. Don't
you want to try one now?"

"Thank you, no. If it weren't so shocking, I think I should like to
learn how to smoke a pipe,--but I suppose that isn't to be thought
of. Somehow I feel that a pipe might be a pal, a good old stand-by,
or even a relative,--something to depend upon in all sorts of
weather, fair and foul. I've noticed that the men on the place who
smoke pipes appear to be contented and jolly and good humoured,--and
efficient. Yes, I think I should like to smoke a pipe."

"Would you like me better if I cut out the cigarettes, and took up
the pipe of peace--and contentment?" he inquired thoughtfully.

"I doubt it," she replied, smiling. "I can't imagine you smoking
a pipe."

"Is that supposed to be flattering or scornful?"

"Neither. It is an impression, that's all."

He frowned slightly. "I used to smoke a pipe,--in college, you know.
Up to my sophomore year. It was supposed to indicate maturity. But
I don't believe I'd have the courage to tackle one now, Miss Crown.
Not since that little gas experience over there. You see, my throat
isn't what it was in those good old freshman days. Pipe smoke,--you
may even say tobacco smoke, for heaven only knows what these
cigarettes are made of,--pipe smoke is too strong. My throat is so
confounded sensitive I--well, I'd probably cough my head off. That
beastly gas made a coward of me, I fear. You've no idea what it does
to a fellow's throat and lungs. If I live to be a thousand years
old, I'll never forget the tortures I went through for weeks,--yes,
ages. Every breath was like a knife cutting the very--But what a
stupid fool I am! Distressing you with all these wretched details.
Please forgive me."

She was looking at him wonderingly. "You are so different from the
poor fellows I saw in New York," she said slowly. "I mean the men
who had been gassed and shell-shocked. I saw loads of them in the
hospitals, you know,--and talked with them. I was always tremendously
affected by their silence, their moodiness, their unwillingness to
speak of what they had been through. The other men, the ones who
had lost legs or arms or even their eyes,--were as a rule cheerful
and as chatty as could be,--oh, how my heart used to ache for
them,--but the shell-shock men and the men who had been gassed,
why, it was impossible to get them to talk about themselves. I
have seen some of them since then. They are apparently well and
strong, and yet not one word can you get out of them about their
sufferings. You are almost unique, Mr. Thane. I am glad you feel
disposed to talk about it all. It is a good sign. It--"

"I didn't say much about it at first," he interrupted hurriedly.
"Moreover, Miss Crown," he went on, "a lot of those chaps,--the
majority of them, in fact,--worked that dodge for all it was worth.
It was a deliberate pose with them. They had to act that way or
people wouldn't think they'd been hurt at all. Bunk, most of it."

"I don't believe that, Mr. Thane. I saw too many of them. The ones
with whom I came in contact certainly were not trying to deceive
anybody. They were in a pitiable condition, every last one of
them,--pitiable."

"I do not say that all of them were shamming,--but I am convinced
that a great many of them were."

"The doctors report that the shell-shock cases--"

"Ah, the doctors!" he broke in, shrugging his shoulders. "They were
all jolly good fellows. All you had to do was to even hint that
you'd been knocked over by a shell that exploded two hundred yards
away and--zip! they'd send you back for repairs. As for myself,
the only reason I didn't like to talk about my condition at first
was because it hurt my throat and lungs. It wasn't because I was
afflicted with this heroic melancholy they talk so much about.
I was mighty glad to be alive. I couldn't see anything to mope
about,--certainly not after I found out I wasn't going to die."

"I daresay there were others who took it as you did. I wish there
could have been more."

He hesitated a moment before speaking again. Then he hazarded the
question:

"What does your friend, Dr. Strong, have to say about the general
run of such cases?"

"I don't know. I have not seen Dr. Strong since the war ended."

He looked mildly surprised. "Hasn't he been home since the war?"

"I believe so. I was away at the time."

"How long was he in France?"

"He went over first in 1916 and again in the fall of 1917, and
remained till the end of the war. His mother is here with me, you
know."

"Yes, I know. By Jove, I envy him one thing,--lucky dog." She
remained silent. "You were playmates, weren't you?"

"Yes," she said, lifting her chin slightly.

"Well, that's why I envy him. To have been your playmate,--Why,
I envy him every minute of his boyhood. When I think of my own
boyhood and how little there was to it that a real boy should have,
I--I--confound it, I almost find myself hating chaps like Strong,
chaps who lived in the country and had regular pals, and girl
sweethearts, and went fishing and hunting, and played hookey as it
ought to be played, and grew up with something fine and sweet and
wholesome to look back upon,--and to have had you for a playmate,--maybe
a sweetheart,--you in short frocks, with your hair in pigtails,
barefooted in summertime, running--"

She interrupted him. "Your imagination is at fault there, Mr.
Thane," she said, smiling once more. "I never went barefooted in
my life."

"At any rate, HE did. And he played all sorts of games with you;
he--"

"My impression of David Strong is that he was a boy's boy," she broke
in rather stiffly. "His games were with the boys of the town,--and
they were rough games. Football, baseball, shinney, circus,--things
like that."

"I don't mean sports, Miss Crown. I was thinking of those wonderful
boy and girl games,--such as 'playing house,' 'getting married,'
'hide-and-go-seek,'--all that sort of thing."

"Yes, I know," she admitted. "We often played at getting married,
and we had very large but inanimate families, and we quarrelled
like real married people, and I used to cry and take my playthings
home, and he used to stand outside our fence and make faces at me
till I hated him ferociously. But all that was when we were very
small, you see."

"And as all such things turn out, I suppose he grew up and went
off and got married to some one else."

"He is not married, Mr. Thane."

"Well, for that matter, neither are you," said he, leaning forward,
his eyes fixed intently on hers. She did not flinch. "I wonder just
how you feel toward him today, Miss Crown."

She was incapable of coquetry. "We are not the best of friends,"
she said quietly. "Now, if you please, let us talk of something
else. Did I tell you that an old Ambulance man is coming down for
a day or two nest week? A Harvard man who lives in Chicago. His
sister and I went to New York together to take our chances there
on getting over to France. I think I've told you about her,--Mary
Blythe?"

"Blythe?" repeated Courtney thoughtfully. "Blythe. Seems to me
I heard of a chap named Blythe over there in the Ambulance, but
I don't remember whether I ran across him anywhere or not. He may
have been after my time, however. I was with the Ambulance in '15
and the early part of '16, you see."

"Addison Blythe. He was afterwards a Field Artillery captain. I've
known Mary Blythe for years, but I know him very slightly. He went
direct from Harvard to France, you see."

"What section was he with?"

"I don't know. I only know he was at Pont-a-Mousson for several
months. You were there too at one time, I remember. I've heard him
speak of the Bois le Pretre. You may have been there at the same
time."

"Hardly possible. I should have known him in that case. My section
was sent up to Bar le Duc just before the first big Verdun battle."

"Why, he was all through the first battle of Verdun. His section
was transferred from Pont-a-Mousson at an hour's notice. Were there
more than one section at Pont-a-Mousson?"

"I don't know how they were fixed after I left. You see, I was
trying to get into the aviation end of the game along about that
time. I was in an aviation camp for a couple of months, but went
back to the Ambulance just before the Verdun scrap. They slapped
me into another section, of course. I used to see fellows from my
own section occasionally, but I don't recall any one named Blythe.
He probably was sent up while I was at Toul,--or it may have been
during the time I was with a section in the Vosges. I was up near
Dunkirk too for a while,--only for a few weeks. When did you say
he was coming?"

"Next Tuesday. They are stopping off on their way to attend a
wedding in Louisville. You two will have a wonderful time reminiscing."

"Blythe. I'll rummage around in my memory and see if I can place
him. There was a fellow named Bright up there at one time,--at
least I got the name as Bright. It may have been Blythe. I'll be
tickled to death to meet him, Miss Crown."

"You will love Mary Blythe. She is a darling."

"I may be susceptible, Miss Crown, but I am not inconstant," said
he, with a gallant bow.

She was annoyed with herself for blushing.

"Will you throw another log or two on the fire, please?" she said,
arising. "I think I hear a car coming up the drive. The poor Mallons
will be chilled to the bone."

He smiled to himself as he took the long hickory logs from the wood
box and placed them carefully on the fire. He had seen the swift
flood of colour mount to her cheeks, and the odd little waver in
her eyes before she turned them away. She was at the window, looking
out, when he straightened himself and gingerly brushed the wood
dust from his hands. Instead of joining her, he remained with his
back to the fire, his feet spread apart, his hands in his coat
pockets, comforting himself with the thought that she was wondering
why he had not followed her. It was, he rejoiced, a very clever
bit of strategy on his part. He waited for her to turn away from
the window and say, with well-assumed perplexity: "I was sure I
heard a car, Mr. Thane."

And that is exactly what she did say after a short interval, adding:

"It must have been the wind in the chimney."

"Very likely," he agreed.

She remained at the window. He held his position before the fire.

"If I were just a plain damned fool," he was saying to himself,
"I'd rush over there and spoil everything. It's too soon,--too
soon. She's not ready yet,--not ready."

Alix, looking out across the porch into the grey drizzle that drenched
the lawn, thrust her hand into her skirt pocket and, clutching the
bit of paper in her fingers, crumpled it into a small ball. Her
eyes were serene, however, as she turned away and walked back to
the fireplace.

"I don't believe they are coming, after all. I think they might
have telephoned," she said, glancing up at the old French ormula
clock on the mantelpiece. "Half-past four. We will wait a few
minutes longer and then have tea."

His heart gave a sudden thump. Was it possible--but no! She would
not stoop to anything like that. The little thrill of exultation
departed as quickly as it came.

"Tire trouble, perhaps," he ventured.

Tea was being brought in when the belated guests arrived. Courtney,
spurred by the brief vision of success ahead, was never in better
form, never more entertaining, never so well provided with polite
cynicisms. Later on, when he and Alix were alone and he was putting
on his raincoat in the hall, she said to him impulsively:

"I don't know what I should have done without you, Mr. Thane. You
were splendid. I was in no mood to be nice or agreeable to anybody."

"Alas!" he sighed. "That shows how unobserving I am. I could have
sworn you were in a perfectly adorable mood."

"Well, I wasn't," she said stubbornly. "I was quite horrid."

"Has anything happened to--to distress you, Miss Crown?" he inquired
anxiously. His voice was husky and a trifle unsteady. "Can't you
tell me? Sometimes it helps to--"

"Nothing has happened," she interrupted nervously. "I was--just
stupid, that's all."

"When am I to see you again?" he asked, after a perceptible pause.
"May I come tonight?"

"Not tonight," she said, shaking her head.

She gave no reason,--nothing more than the two little words,--and
yet he went away exulting. He walked home through the light, gusty
rain, so elated that he forgot to use his cane,--and he had limped
quite painfully earlier in the afternoon, complaining of the
dampness and chill. He had the habit of talking to himself when
walking alone in the darkness. He thought aloud:

"She wants to be alone,--she wants to think. She has suddenly realized.
She is frightened. She doesn't understand. She is bewildered. She
doesn't want to see me tonight. Bless her heart! I'll bet my head
she doesn't sleep a wink. And tomorrow? Tomorrow I shall see her.
But not a word, not a sign out of me. Not tomorrow or next day or
the day after that. Keep her thinking, keep her guessing, keep her
wondering whether I really care. Pretty soon she'll realize how
miserable she is,--and then!"




CHAPTER X

THE CHIMNEY CORNER


A. Lincoln Pollock was full of news at supper that evening. Courtney,
coming in a little late,--in fact, Miss Margaret Slattery already
had removed the soup plates and was beginning to wonder audibly
whether a certain guy thought she was a truck-horse or something
like that,--found the editor of the Sun anticipating by at least
twelve hours the forthcoming issue of his paper. He was regaling
his fellow-boarders with news that would be off the press the first
thing in the morning,--having been confined to the composing-room
for the better part of a week,--and he was enjoying himself.
Charlie Webster once made the remark that "every time the Sun goes
to press, Link Pollock acts for all the world like a hen that's
just laid an egg, he cackles so."

"I saw Nancy Strong this morning and she was telling me about a
letter she had from David yesterday. He wants her to pack up and
come to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to live with him. He says he'll
take a nice little apartment, big enough for the two of 'em, if
she'll only come. She can't make up her mind what to do. She's so
fond of Alix she don't see how she can desert her,--at least, not
till she gets married,--and yet she feels she owes it to her son
to go and make a home for him. Every once in a while Alix makes
her a present of a hundred dollars or so,--once she gave her three
hundred in cold, clean cash,--and actually loves her as if she was
her own mother. Nancy's terribly upset. She is devoted to Alix,
and at the same time she's devoted to her son. She seemed to want
my advice, but of course I couldn't give her any. It's a thing
she's got to work out for herself. I couldn't advise her to leave
Alix in the lurch and I couldn't advise her to turn her back on
her only son,--could I?"

"How soon does David want her to come?" inquired Miss Molly Dowd.

"Before Christmas, I believe. He wants her to be with him on
Christmas day."

"Well, it would work out very nicely," said Mrs. Pollock, "if Alix
would only get married before that time."

"I guess that's just what Nancy is kind of hoping herself," stated
Mr. Pollock. "It would simplify everything. Of course, when she
told Alix about David's letter and what he wanted her to do, Alix
was mighty nice about it. She told Nancy to go by all means, her
place was with her son if he needed her, and she wouldn't stand in
the way for the world. Nancy says she had about made up her mind
to go, but changed it last night. She was telling me about sneaking
up to Alix's bedroom door and listening. Alix was crying, sort of
sobbing, you know. That settled it with Nancy,--temporarily at any
rate. Now she's up in the air again, and don't know what to do.
She's gone and told Alix she won't leave her, but all the time she
keeps wondering if Davy can get along without her in that great big
city, surrounded by all kinds of perils and traps and pitfalls,--night
and day. Evil women and--"

"Has Alix said anything to you about it, Mr. Thane?" inquired Maude
Baggs Pollock.

"Not a word," replied Courtney, secretly irritated by the discovery
that Alix had failed to take him into her confidence. "She doesn't
discuss servant troubles with me."

"Oh, good gracious!" cried Miss Dowd. "If Nancy Strong ever heard
you speak of her as a servant she'd--".

"She'd bite your head off," put in Miss Margaret Slattery. "Are you
through with your soup, Mr. Thane?" Without waiting for an answer,
she removed the plate with considerable abruptness.

"Are you angry with

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