LIDA did not wait to be admitted to her grandfather’s house in the conventional manner; she did not dare to test her new resolution by a pause on the steps, and she was afraid that Rickety Dick would enforce the Flagg injunction against a woman.

Gasping for breath after her run across the ledges, she flung herself into the presence of her grandfather.

Dick was holding a flaming splint of wood to the bowl of Flagg’s pipe. Startled, he dropped the splint, and the fire burned out unheeded on the bare floor.

She held on to the cap and the jacket and with her free hand she beat upon her breast and tried to pour out a confession of her part in the mischief which had been done. She could not tell Flagg who she was; she was telling him what she was. She made herself a part of the Vose-Mern conspiracy; that seemed to be the best way. She did not try to make herself better than her associates; she admitted that she was an operative; in no other way could she account for her presence in the north country; and the old man’s keen eyes warned her that a less plausible statement would endanger her secret. Therefore, she arraigned herself bitterly as the cause of Latisan’s undoing, and to explain her new attitude she pleaded love and resulting repentance. There seemed to be no other way of giving Flagg a good reason why she was interested in speeding the fortunes of Latisan and the Flagg drive.

She began to babble rather incoherently. His silence troubled her. His gaze was intent.

After a time, allowing her to talk on, he ordered Dick to bring more fire for the pipe, and then he puffed and listened a little longer.

At last he jabbed his pipe stem toward the door, and Dick obeyed the silent command and left the room.

“Now, my girl, hold up a moment and get your breath. Sit down!” She obeyed.

“I see that you’re hanging on to Latisan’s cap and jacket. Did he pull himself out of the jacket whilst you were clinging to his collar?” In spite of the seriousness of the news which she had brought to him, there was a touch of dry humor in his tone. “He must have had a pretty desperate change of heart to run away from such a girl, after what he told me of his feelings this morning.”

He talked on, allowing her to recover. “Your words have been tumbling along like logs coming down the Hulling Machine Falls, but I reckon I understand that a detective agency sent you up here to Delilah my Samson. I’ve just been reading about that case in the Old Testament. And you’re sorry, eh? It’s a start in the right direction—being sorry. He told me this morning that he was going back to the drive in spite of me—he said it was because you had torched him on to do so. I’ll admit I haven’t got over being thankful to you for that help. And now it’s all tipped upside down, eh? I’m not surprised. It’s the Latisan nature to blow up! I knew his grandfather well—and I remember! We seem to have made a bad mess of it, you and I. I’ll own to it that I haven’t been careful in the management of my tongue where he’s concerned. If I had, all the girls this side o’ Tophet couldn’t have made him jump his job in this style. You see, I’m willing to admit my mistake, and that makes me feel kinder toward you, now that you admit yours.”

Her courage was coming back to her. Only a veritable frenzy of despair had forced her into the presence of that old man who had declared his unalterable hostility to her and hers. She found him singularly and surprisingly mild in this crisis. Wreathed in the tobacco smoke, his countenance was full of sympathy. It was an amazing alteration in Echford Flagg, so those who knew him would have stated, had they been there to behold.

“I suppose you have to slap on a lot of deceit in that detective business.”

“I’m done with deceit. I’ve left that work forever.”

“So I reckoned whilst I looked at you and heard you talk. I’ve got quite an eye for a change of heart in persons. I hate to see young folks in trouble. ’Most always I’m pretty hard on people. I’ve grown to be that way. Had good reasons! But you seem to have caught me to-day in a different frame of mind. I didn’t get a good look at you last evening. I’ve just been telling myself that you remind me very much of somebody I used to know. There was a time,” he went on, wrinkling his forehead, “when I would have ordered you out of this house, simply on your looks. But to-day, somehow, I like to keep my eyes on you. Old age has a lot of whims, you know.”

She did not venture to speak. Tears were rolling down her cheeks.

“It’s too bad, sis! Too bad! ’Tis a tough thing to work out, this Latisan matter. You have started the old John devil a-roaring in him! And I reckon that now you’re falling in love with the fool, even if you did come up-country to do something mean to him!”

She nodded; her emotions were too deeply stirred to permit evasion or more deceit.

“I have to depend on hired help, sis. And the trouble with any other drive master than Latisan is that the opposition crowd can hire away what Latisan wouldn’t sell—I’ll say that for the boy! It’s a matter of principle with him—this fight for the independents.”

“But your men will keep on working, won’t they, sir?”

“They’ll work—yes! But they won’t fight without Latisan to lead ’em. That’s why the Three C’s folks are so hot on the trail of one man. They’re going to trig my drive at the Skulltree dam unless we are through ahead of ’em. Conservation of water, that’s what they will call it when they make their play for a court order,” he snarled. “But it’s only devilish theft of the rights I hold in common—and that’s where lawyers have their chance to argue, when rights are common.” He found himself becoming garrulous in his emotion. He frowned. “But why talk such matters to you; you can’t understand!”

“No,” she admitted, sadly. “I haven’t any knowledge about drives. I can only understand that through me a great mischief has been done.”

“Well, it might have been worse for young Latisan if they hadn’t got rid of him by this underhand way. Now that he has quit and has gone larruping off on his own hook, you may as well get what comfort out of it you can,” he said, trying to ameliorate her distress. “There’s no telling what they might have been savage enough to do to him if he had stayed to make the fight as he intended to make it.”

“Do you give up the fight?”

With the left hand he lifted his helpless right arm across his knees. “It’s a two-fisted proposition this year. I guess I’m licked. They’ll buy in my logs at what price they have a mind to pay and will turn ’em into paper. The sawmills will have to shut down, and the chap who wants to build a home will keep on cussing the price of lumber. I have made a good try of it, sis, but the big combinations are bound to have their way in the end.”

“It isn’t right for anybody to have his own way without giving the other man a square deal,” she cried, adding, with bitterness, “though I’m the last person entitled to preach on that subject.”

“It’s all in the way of progress, so the syndicate fellows tell us,” he remarked, dryly. “Maybe they know. Whilst they’re grabbing in all the money, they may be getting control of all the brains, too.”

She flung up her arms and accused herself, passionately: “I have been a fool. I’d give my very heart to make matters right again!”

“I think so,” he admitted. “I reckon you’re in earnest.”

Again his fixed, appraising stare was disturbing her.

“About Mr. Latisan——” she hurried on. “I can’t believe that he’ll stay away long.”

“I guess you know as little about the ways of men up here as you know about the drives, my girl. There’s plenty of iron in their natures, but there isn’t much brass in their cheeks. He’s done—he can’t face the Big Laugh. He’s seen what it has done to others. But you city folks don’t understand woods ways and notions!”

She set her firm teeth over her lower lip to control its quivering. Then she ventured. It was a resolve born out of her desperate desire to redeem, if she were able. There was one thing she could do—it seemed a natural thing to do, in that extremity.

“I have something to ask of you. Please don’t be angry! I’m trying to square myself!”

“Go ahead! I’m ready now to be pretty easy natured when somebody is really in earnest about helping me.”

“Give me your permission to go north and explain to your men why Mr. Latisan isn’t on the drive! I’ll tell them everything. I’ll open my soul to those men. They’ll understand.”

“It’s not a girl’s job,” he declared, sternly.

“I have been trained in a hard school, sir. I have been forced to study men and to deal with men. I have been sorry because I have been obliged to do the things I have done. But my knowledge of men may help your affairs. I am glad I have been through my trials. Let me go north to your crews! I beg it of you!”

“I don’t want to have you messing into any such business. There’s something about you—something that makes me want to put a safeguard over you, sis, instead of sending you into danger.”

“You’ll make the danger worse for me if you don’t give me that permission—a word from you to them that I’m your agent.” She arose, flaming with her resolution. “I am going anyway, sir! You can’t stop me from going where I will in the woods.”

“You’re right!” he admitted, sadly. “I’m so old and helpless that I can’t even boss a girl.”

She stood in front of him and put Latisan’s cap on her head; she pulled on the belted jacket. “They’ll know this jacket and cap! I’ll tell the story! Do you think it is folly? No! I can see in your face that you know what those men will do!”

“Yes, I do know! I have been a woodsman in my time, too! After they have listened to you they’ll hammer hell out of anything that gets in front of ’em.”

His face lighted up. He beamed on her. “I told you that old age has its whims. A minute ago a whim made me want to keep you away from trouble. Now, by the gods! the same whim makes me want to send you north. You will stand for Eck Flagg, saying what he’d like to say to his men! The right spirit is in you! I ain’t afraid that you won’t make good!”He pointed to an object on the wall of the room. It was a stout staff of ash tipped with a steel nose and provided with a hook of steel; it was the Flagg cant dog. The ash staff was banded with faded red stripes and there was a queer figure carved on the wood.

“Lift it down and bring it here and lay it across my knees,” he commanded.

She ran and brought it.

“They know that stick along the Noda waters,” he told her, caressing the staff with his hale hand. “I carried it at the head of the drive for many a year, my girl. You won’t need letters of introduction if you go north with that stick in your hand. I would never give it into the hands of a man. It has propped the edge of my shelter tent, to keep the spring snow off my face when I caught a few winks of sleep; that steel dog has rattled nigh my ear when I couldn’t afford to sleep and kept walking. Tell ’em your story, with that stick in your hand when you tell it! Take it and stand up in front of me!”

Her face was white; she trembled when she lifted the staff from his knees.

An old man’s whim! The girl believed that she understood better than he the instinct which was prompting him to deliver over the scepter which he had treasured for so long.

And some sort of instinct, trickling in the blood from that riverman forebear, prompted her strike a pose, which brought a yelp of admiration from the old man. She had set the steel nose close to her right foot and propped the staff, with right arm fully extended, swinging the stick with a man-fashion sweep.“Sis, where did ye learn the twist of the Flagg wrist when ye set that staff?” It was a compliment rather than a question, and the girl did not reply. She was not able to speak; a sob was choking her. Her grip on that badge of the family authority thrilled her; here was the last of her kin; he was intrusting to her, as his sole dependence, the mission of saving his pride and his fortunes. Her tear-wet eyes pledged him her devoted loyalty.

“God bless you!” he said.

“And may God help me,” she added fervently. Impulse was irresistible. She succumbed. She dropped the staff and ran to the old man and threw her arms convulsively about his neck and kissed him.

“I’m sorry,” she faltered, stepping back. “I’m afraid I startled you.”

“No,” he told her, after a moment of reflection, “I guess I rather expected you’d do that before you went away. Some more of that whim, maybe! When do you think of leaving?”

“I’d like to go at once. I cannot stay any longer in this village.”

“You’d best get to my drivers as soon as the Three C’s slander does.”

He shouted at a door and old Dick appeared.

“Move spry now!” commanded the master. “Have Jeff hitch the big bays into the jumper. And Jeff will be able to tend and do for me whilst you’re away. For here’s the job I’m sending you on. Take this young woman north to the drive. She’s tending to some business for me. See to it that she’s taken good care of. And bring her back when she feels that she’s ready to come.”

“Am I to come here—back to your house to-to——” she faltered.

“To report? Of course you are!” He was suddenly curt and cold after his softness of the moment before. He looked as if he were impatient for her to be gone.

“Have Dick stop at the tavern for your belongings.”

“There’s only a small bag, sir.”

“If you’re short of clothes—well, I advise you to wear Latisan’s cap and jacket. They’ll keep you warm—and they’ll keep you—reminded!” He put much meaning in his emphasis of the last word.

She bowed her head humbly; the clutch at her throat would not permit her to reply to him. Then, bearing with her the Flagg scepter, she went out to where the horses were being put to the jumper.

When he was alone the old man laid his hand on the Bible at his side. For a long time he gazed straight ahead, deep in his ponderings. Then he opened the volume and leaved the pages until he came to the family register, midway in the book. After the New England custom, there were inscribed in faded ink the names of the Flaggs who had been born, the names of those who had died, the records of the marriages. Echford Flagg’s father had begun the register; the son had continued it. Across the marriage record of Alfred Kennard and Sylvia Flagg were rude penstrokes. On the page of births was the name of Lida Kennard, and he slowly ran his finger under it. When he gazed down at the floor again in meditation he met the stare of the cat that Rickety Dick loved and petted.

The cat was bestowing no friendly look on Flagg. He had often cuffed her whenever she ventured to leap into his lap. He had repulsed the cat as he repelled human beings who had sought to make up to him. Now he called to her softly, inviting her with his hand. She backed away with apprehensive haste.

“I’m starting late, pussy,” he muttered. “And I was never much of a hand at coaxing anybody to come to me. But I wish you’d hop up here on my knee. Come, kitty! Please come!”

It was a long time before he was able to gain her confidence. He heard the big bays go trampling away down the ledges. At last the cat came cautiously, climbing up his leg, and sat on his knees and stared up at his face in a questioning way.

“She’s too much like her mother for me not to know her—like her mother looked when she went away,” he informed the cat. “I reckon I’m a whole lot different right now than I ever was before. I’m old and sick—and I’m different. I don’t blame you for looking hard at me, kitty. I’m so lonesome that I’m glad to have a cat to talk to. She’s got her mother’s looks—and the Flagg grit. She wants to do it her own way—like I’d want to do it my way, without being bothered. And I’m letting her do it. It wouldn’t be a square deal if I didn’t let her. And she’ll do it! It’s in her! She’s trying to pay back. It’s the style of the Flaggs. She didn’t come up here to smash me or Latisan. I didn’t believe what she said—a Flagg knows when another Flagg is lying. She came to help—and she’ll do it yet! She’s Lida, kitty, Lida!” His tone caressed the name. His hand caressed the written name.

Then he turned the pages slowly, going forward in the volume—to the New Testament.

And after a time he found words which fitted his new mood and he read aloud to his feline auditor.

“‘Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another——’”

Jeff, the servitor, hearing the mumble of the old man’s voice, tiptoed to the door and peeped in. He goggled at the tableau and listened to the words. He was in the state of mind of that oft-quoted doubter who spat on the giraffe’s hoof and remarked to the bystanders, “Hell! There ain’t no such animile!”