Northrup decided to turn back at once to his own place in life after that revealing afternoon with Mary-Clare. He was not in any sense deceived by conditions. He had, after twenty-four hours, been able to classify the situation and reduce it to its proper proportions. As it stood, it had, he acknowledged, been saved by the rare and unusual qualities of Mary-Clare. But it could not bear the stress and strain of repeated tests. Unless he meant to be a fool and fill his future with remorse, for he was decent and sane, he could do nothing but go away and let the incidents of King’s Forest bear sanctifying fruits, not draughts of wormwood.

Something rather big had happened to him––he must not permit it to become small. He recalled Mary-Clare’s words and face and a great tenderness swept over him.

“Poor little girl,” he thought, “part of a commonplace, dingy tragedy. What is there for her? But what could I have done for her, in God’s name, to better her lot? She saw it clear enough.”

No, there was nothing to do but turn his back on the whole thing and go home! Shorn of the spiritual and uplifting qualities, the situation was bald and dangerous. He must be practical and wise, but deciding to leave and actually leaving were different matters.

The weather jeered at him by its glorious warmth and colour. It held day after day with occasional sharp storms that ended in greater beauty. The thought of the city made Northrup shudder. He tried to work: it was still warm enough in the deserted chapel to write, but he knew that he was accomplishing nothing. There was a gap in the story––the woman part. Every time Northrup came to that he felt 167 as if he were laying a wet cloth over the soft clay until he had time finally to mould it. And he kept from any chance of meeting Mary-Clare.

“I’ll wait until this marvellous spell of weather breaks,” he compromised with his lesser––or better––self. “Then I’ll beat it!”

Looking to this he asked Uncle Peter what the chances were of a cold spell.

“There was a time”––Peter sniffed the air. He was husking golden corn by the kitchen fire––“when I could calculate about the weather, but since the weather man has got to meddling he’s messed things considerable. He’s put in the Middle States, and what-not, until it’s like doing subtraction and division––and by that time the change of weather is on you.”

Northrup laughed.

“Well,” he said, getting up and stretching, “I think I’ll take a turn before I go to bed. Bank the fire, Uncle Peter; I may prowl late.”

Heathcote asked no questions, but those prowls of Northrup’s were putting his simple faith to severe tests. Peter was above gossip, but when it swirled too near him he was bound to watch out.

“All right, son,” he muttered, and ran his hand through his bristling hair.

The night was a dark one. A soft darkness it was, that held no wind and only a hint of frost. Stepping quickly along the edge of the lake, Northrup felt that he was being absorbed by the still shadows and the sensation pleased and comforted him. He was not aware of thought, but thought was taking him into control, as the night was. There would be moments of seeming blank and then a conclusion! A vivid, final conclusion. Of course Mary-Clare occupied these moments of seeming mental inaction. Northrup now wanted to set her free from––what?

“That young beast of a husband!” So much for that conclusion. If the end had come between him and Mary-Clare, Northrup wondered if he could free her from Rivers.

“What for?”

This brought a hurtling mass of conclusions.

“No man has a right to get a stranglehold on a woman. If she has, as the old darkey said, lost her taste for him, why in thunder should he want to cram himself down her throat?”

This was more common sense than moral or legal, and Northrup bent his head and plunged along. He walked on, believing that he was master of his soul and his actions at last, while, in reality, he was but part of the Scheme of Things and was acting under orders.

Presently, he imagined that he had decided all along to go to the Point and have a talk with Twombley. So he kept straight ahead.

Twombley delighted his idle hours. The man, apparently, never went to bed until daylight, and his quaint unmorality was as diverting as that of an impish boy.

“Now, sir,” he had confided to Northrup at a recent meeting, “there’s Peneluna Sniff. Good cook; good manager. I held off while she played up to old Sniff, women are curious! But now that woman ought to be utilized legitimate-like. She’s running to waste and throwing away her talents on that young Rivers as is giving this here Point the creeps. Peneluna and me together could find things out!”

Northrup, hurrying on, believed there was no better way to drive off the blue devils that were torturing him than to pass the evening with Twombley.

Just then he heard quick, light footsteps coming toward him. He hid behind some bushes by the path and waited.

The oncomer was Larry Rivers on his way from the Point. His hat was pulled down over his face and his hands were plunged in his pockets. A lighted cigar in his mouth illumined his features––Larry rarely needed his hands to manipulate his cigar; a shift seemed to be all that was essential, until the ashes fell and the cigar was almost finished.

Larry walked on, and when he was beyond sound Northrup proceeded on his way.

The Point seemed wrapped in decent slumber. A light 169 frankly burned in Twombley’s hovel, but for the rest, darkness!

Oddly enough, Northrup passed Twombley’s place without halting, and presently found himself nearing Rivers’s. This did not surprise him. He had quite forgotten his plan.

It was seeing Larry that had suggested this new move, probably; at any rate, Northrup was curiously interested in the fact that Larry was headed away from the Point and toward the yellow house.

The loose rubbish and garbage presently got into Northrup’s consciousness and made him think, as they always did, of Maclin’s determination to get possession of the ugly place.

“It is the very devil!” he muttered, almost tumbling over a smelly pile. “What’s that?” He crouched in the darkness. His eyes were so accustomed to the gloom now that he saw quite distinctly the door of Peneluna’s shack open, close softly, and someone tiptoeing toward Rivers’s shanty. Keeping at a distance, Northrup followed and when he was about twenty feet behind the other prowler, he saw that it was Jan-an and that she was cautiously going from window to window of Larry’s empty house, peeping, listening, and then finally muttering and whimpering.

“Well, what in thunder!” Northrup decided to investigate but keep silent as long as he could.

A baby in the distance broke into a cry; a man’s rough voice stilled it with a threat and then all was quiet once more.

The next thing that occurred was the amazing sight of Jan-an nimbly climbing into the window of Larry’s kitchen! Jan-an had either pried the sash up or Larry had been careless. Northrup went up to the house and listened. Jan-an was moving rapidly about inside and presently she lighted a lamp, and through the slit between the shade and the window ledge Northrup could watch the girl’s movements.

Jan-an wore an old coat, a man’s, over a coarse nightgown; her hair straggled down her back; her vacant face was twitching and worried, but a decent kind of dignity touched it, too. She was bent upon a definite course, but was confused and uncertain as to details.

Over the papers scattered on the table Jan-an bent like a hungry beast of prey. Her long fingers clutched the loose sheets; her devouring eyes scanned them, compared them with others, while over and again a muttered curse escaped the girl’s lips.

Northrup took a big chance. He went to the door and tapped.

He heard a quick, frightened move toward the window––Jan-an was escaping as she had entered. As the sash was raised, Northrup was close to the window and the girl reeled back as she saw him.

“Jan-an,” he said quietly, controllingly, “let me in. You can trust me. Let me in.”

Poor Jan-an was in sore need of someone in whom she might trust and she could not afford to waste time. She raised the sash again, climbed in, and then opened the door. Northrup entered and locked the door after him.

“Now, then,” he said, sitting opposite to the girl who dropped, rather than seated herself, in her old place. “Jan-an, what are you up to?”

To his surprise, the girl burst into tears.

“My God,” she moaned, “what did I have feelin’s for––and no sense? I can’t read!” she blurted. “I can’t read.”

This was puzzling, but Northrup saw that the girl had confidence in him––a desperate, unknowing confidence that had grown slowly.

“Why do you want to read, Jan-an?” he asked in a low, kindly tone.

“I know you ain’t his friend, are you?” The wet, pitiful face was lifted. Old fears and distrust rose grimly.

“Whose?”

“Maclin’s, ole divil-man Maclin?”

“Certainly not! You know better than to ask that, Jan-an.”

“Nor his––Larry Rivers?”

“No, I am not his friend.”

Thus reassured once more, Jan-an ventured nearer:

“You don’t aim to hurt––her?”

“Whom do you mean?” Northrup was perplexed by the growing intelligence in the face across the table. It was like a slow revealing of a groping power.

“I mean them––Mary-Clare and Noreen.”

“Hurt them? Why, Jan-an, I’d do anything to help them, make them safe and happy.” Northrup felt as if he and the girl opposite were rapidly becoming accomplices in a tense plot. “What does all this mean?”

“As God seeing yer, yer mean that?” Jan-an leaned forward.

“God seeing me! Yes, Jan-an.”

“Yer ain’t hanging around her to do her––dirt?”

“Good Lord, no!” Northrup recoiled. Apparently new anxiety was overcoming the girl.

Then, by a sudden dash, Jan-an swept the untidy mass of papers over to him; she abdicated her last stronghold.

“What’s them?” she demanded huskily. Northrup brought the smelly kerosene lamp nearer and as he read he was conscious of Jan-an’s mutterings.

“Stealing her letters––what is letters, anyway? And I’ve counted and watched––he’s took one to her to-night. Just one. One he has made. Writing day in and out––tearing up writing––sneaking and lying. God! And new letters looking like old ones, till I’m fair crazy.”

For a few moments Northrup lost the sound of Jan-an’s guttural whimpers, then he caught the words:

“And her crying and wanting the letters. Just letters!” Northrup again became absorbed.

He placed certain old sheets on one side of the table; newer sheets on the other; some half sheets in the middle. It was like an intricate puzzle, and the same one that Maclin had recently tackled.

That he was meddling with another’s property and reading another’s letters did not seem to occur to Northrup. He was held by a determined force that was driving him on and an intense interest that justified any means at his disposal.

“Some day I will read my old doctor’s letters to you––I have kept them all!”

Northrup looked up. Almost he believed Jan-an had voiced the words, but they had been spoken days ago by Mary-Clare during one of those illuminating talks of theirs and here were some old letters of the doctor’s. Were these Mary-Clare’s letters? Why were they here and in this state?

Suddenly Northrup’s face stiffened. The old, yellowed letters were, apparently, from Doctor Rivers to his son! But there were other letters on bits of fresh paper, the handwriting identical, or nearly so. Northrup’s more intelligent eye saw differences. The more recent letters were, evidently, exercises; one improved on the other; in some cases parts of the letters were repeated. All these Northrup sorted and laid in neat piles.

“She set a store by them old letters,” Jan-an was rambling along. “I’d have taken them back to her, but I ’clar, ’fore God, I don’t know which is which, I’m that cluttered. Why did he want to pest her by taking them and then making more and more?”

“I’m trying to find out.” Northrup spoke almost harshly. He wanted to quiet the girl.

The last scrap of paper had been torn from an old, greasy bag and bore clever imitation. It was the last copy, Northrup believed, of what Jan-an said he had just carried away with him.

Northrup grew hot and cold. He read the words and his brain reeled. It was an appeal, or supposed to be one, from a dead man to one whom he trusted in a last emergency.

“So he’s this kind of a scoundrel!” muttered Northrup, dazed by the blinding shock of the fear that became, moment by moment, more definite. “And he’s taken the thing to her in order to get money.”

Northrup could grope along, but he could not see clearly. By temperament and training he had evolved a peculiar sensitiveness in relation to inanimate things. If he became receptive and passive, articles which he handled or fixed his eyes upon often transmitted messages for him.

So, now, disregarding poor Jan-an, who rambled on, Northrup gazed at the letters near him, and held close the brown-paper 173 scrap which was, he believed, the final copy before the finished production which was undoubtedly being borne to Mary-Clare now. Rivers would have a scene with his wife in the yellow house. With no one to interfere! Northrup started affrightedly, then realized that before he could get to the crossroads whatever was to occur would have occurred.

Larry would return to the shack. There was every evidence that he had not departed finally. Believing that no one would disturb his place so late at night he had taken a chance and––been caught by the last person in the world one would have suspected.

As an unconscious sleuth Jan-an was dramatic. Northrup let his eyes fall upon the girl with new significance. She had given him the power to set Mary-Clare free!

Her dull, tear-stained face was turned hopefully to him; her straight, coarse hair hung limply on her shoulders––the old coat had slipped away and the ugly nightgown but partly hid the thin, scraggy body. Lost to all self-consciousness, the poor creature was but an evidence of faith and devotion to them who had been kind to her. Something of nobility crowned the girl. Northrup went around to her and pulled the old coat close under her chin.

“It’s all right, Jan-an,” he comforted, patting the unkempt head.

“Are them the letters he stole?”

“Some of them, yes, Jan-an.”

“Kin I take ’em back to her?”

“Not to-night. I think Rivers will take them back.”

“S’pose he won’t.”

“He will.”

“You, you’re going to fetch him one?” The instinct of the savage rose in the girl.

“If necessary, yes!” Northrup shared the primitive instinct at that moment. “And now you trot along home, my girl, and don’t open your lips to any one.”

“And you?”

“I’ll wait for Mr. Larry Rivers here!”

“My God!” Jan-an burst forth. Then: “There’s a sizable 174 log back of the stove. Yer can fetch a good one with that.”

“Thanks, Jan-an. Go now.”

Jan-an rose stiffly and shuffled to the door, unlocked it, and went into the blackness outside.

Then Northrup sat down and prepared to wait.

The stove was rusty and cold, but Rivers had evidently had a huge fire on the hearth during the day. Now that he noticed, Northrup saw that there were scraps of burned paper fluttering like wings of evil omens stricken in their flight.

He went over to the hearth, poked the ashes, and discovered life. He laid on wood, slowly feeding the hungry sparks, then he took his old place by the table, blew out the light of the lamp and in the dark room, shot by the flares of the igniting logs, he resigned himself to what lay before.

Rivers might return with Maclin. This was a new possibility and disconcerting; still it must be met.

“I may kill a flock of birds by one interview,” Northrup grimly thought and then drifted off on Maclin’s trail. The ever-recurring wonder about the Point was intensified; he must leave that still in doubt.

“I’ll get the damned thing in my own control, if I can,” he concluded at length. “Buy it up for safety; keep still about it and watch how Maclin reacts when he knocks against the fact, eventually. That will make things safe for the present.”

But to own the Point meant to hold on to King’s Forest just when he had decided to turn from it forever––after setting Mary-Clare free.

The sense of a spiritual overlord for an instant daunted Northrup. It was humiliating to realize how he had been treading, all along, one course while believing he was going another. And then––it was close upon midnight and vitality ran sluggish––Northrup became part of one of those curious mental experiences that go far to prove how narrow the boundary is that lies between the things we understand and those that are yet to be understood.

For some moments––or was it hours?––Northrup was not conscious of time or place; not even conscious of himself as 175 a body; he seemed to be a condition, over which a contest of emotions swept. He was not asleep. He recalled later, that he had kept his eyes on the fire; had once attended to it, casting on a heavy log that dimmed its ferocious ardour.

Where Jan-an had recently sat, struggling with her doubts and fears, Mary-Clare seemed to be. And yet it was not so much Mary-Clare, visually imagined, as that which had gone into the making of the woman.

The black, fierce night of her birth; her isolated up-bringing with a man whose mentality had overpowered his wisdom; the contact with Larry Rivers; the forced marriage and the determined effort to live up to a bargain made in the dark, endured in the dark. It came to Northrup, drifting as he was, that a man or woman can go through slime and torment and really escape harm. The old, fiery furnace legend was based on an eternal truth; that and the lions’ den! It put a new light on that peculiar quality of Mary-Clare. She had never been burnt or wounded––not the real woman of her. That explained the maddening thing about her––her aloofness. What would she be now when she stood alone? For she was going to stand alone! Then Northrup felt new sensations driving across that state which really was himself shorn of prejudice and limitations. His relation to Mary-Clare was changed!

There were primitive forces battling for expression in his lax hour. Setting the woman free from bondage––what for?

That was the world-old call. Not free for herself, but free that another might claim her. He, sitting there, wanted her. She had not altered that by her heroism. Who would help her free herself, for herself? Who would cut her loose and make no claims? Would it be possible to help her and not put her under obligation? Could any one trust a higher Power and go one’s way unasking, refusing everything? Was there such a thing as freedom for a woman when two men were so welded into her life?

Northrup set his teeth hard together. In the stillness he had his fight! And just then a shuffling outside brought him back to reality.

Rivers came in, not noticing the unlocked door; he had been drinking. Northrup’s eyes, accustomed to the gloom, marked his unsteady gait; smiled as Larry, unconscious of his presence, sank into a chair––the one in which Jan-an had sat––reached out toward the lamp, struck a match, lighted the wick and then, appalled, fixed his eyes upon Northrup!