New Eden never saw a more beautiful autumn, even in this land of exquisite autumn days, than the first one that Jerry Swaim passed in the Middle West. And Jerry reveled in it. For, while she missed the splendid colorings of the Eastern woodlands, she never ceased to marvel at the clear, bright days, the sweet, bracing air, the wondrous sweeps of landscapes overhung by crystal skies, the mist-wreathed horizons holding all the softer hues, from jasper red to purest amethyst, that range the foundation stones of heaven's walls as Saint John saw them in his dream exquisite.

It had never occurred to Jerry that a beauty impossible to a wooded broken country might be found on the October prairies. Her dream of a Kansas "Eden" exactly like the Pennsylvania "Eden," six times enlarged, had been shattered with one glimpse of her possession—a possession henceforth to be a thing forgotten. But life had opened new pages for her and she was learning to read them rapidly and well.

One thought of the past remained, however. The memory of a romance begun in her Eastern home would not die with the telling. And while Jerry Swaim persuaded herself that what Eugene Wellington called success to her was failure, and while every day widened the breach between the two, time and distance softened her harsher judgment, and she remembered her would-be lover with a tender sadness that made her heart cold to the thought of any other love.

This did not make her the less charming, however—this pretty girl without any trace of coquetry, who knew how to win hearts to her. Sure of the wideness that separated her life from the life of the Sage Brush Valley, she took full measure of interest in living, unconsciously postponing for herself the future's need for the solace of love. The small income from her lease to the Macpherson Mortgage Company filled her purse temporarily, and she began at once upon a course of economic estimates worthy of Jim Swaim's child, however seemingly impossible in Lesa Swaim's pretty, dueless daughter. Another trait, undeveloped heretofore, began to be emphasized—namely, that while she could chatter glibly on embroideries and styles, and prettily on art, and seriously and intelligently on affairs of national interest, as any all-round American girl should do—she was discreet and uncommunicative regarding her business affairs. Not that she meant to be secretive; she was simply following the inherited business ability of an upright, well-balanced man, her father. Coupled with this was a pride in her determination to win—to prove to Aunt Jerry Darby and Eugene Wellington that she had made no mistake; and until victory was hers she would be silent about her endeavors.

The Macphersons had insisted that Jerry should remain their guest at least until the opening of the school in September. And if the girl imagined that she found a faint hint of fervor gone from Laura Macpherson's urging, her hostess made up for it in the abundant kindness of little acts of hospitality. Jerry was frankly troubled, and yet she could not say why, for it was all the impressions of a mind sensitized to comprehend unspoken things. Jerry's memory would call up that incident of the lost purse found in her hand-bag, and of Laura's excuse for it, which she, Jerry, knew was impossible. And yet the girl felt that it was a contemptible thing to impute a distrust to Laura that, placed in the same position, she herself would scorn to harbor.

"I see no way but the everlasting run of events. I wish they would run fast and clear it up," Jerry said to herself, dismissing the matter entirely, only to have it bobbing up for consideration again on the first occasion.

At the close of a hot summer day Jerry was in her room, finishing a letter to Jerusha Darby, to whom she wrote faithfully, but from whom she had rarely received a line. York and Laura were on the porch, as usual. The hammock that day had been swung to a shadier position, on account of the slipping southward of the late summer sun; and Laura forgot that Jerry's window opened almost against it now, so that she could hear all that was said at that corner of the porch. As Jerry finished her letter she caught a sentence outside that interested her. She was innocent of any intention of eavesdropping afterward, but what she heard held her motionless.

"The leak has opened again, York," Laura was saying. "Things are beginning to disappear, especially money."

York's face took on a sort of bulldog grimness, but he made no reply.

Inside, Jerry glanced at her beaded hand-bag lying on the top of the little desk, saying to herself:

"I'll open a bank-account to-morrow. I've been foolish to leave that roll of bills lying around; all I have, too, between me and the last resort in Kansas—'to go mad or go back East.' I'm certainly a brilliant business woman—I am."

And then, unconscious at first that she was listening, her ear caught what followed outside:

"York, the queer thing is that it's just at 'Castle Cluny' that things are disappearing right now. Mrs. Bahrr was over to-day and told me the Lenwells had even gone to Kansas City and forgot to lock their back door, and not a thing was missing, although Clare Lenwell left five silver dollars stacked up on the dresser in plain view."

"If anybody would know the particulars it would be the Big Dipper," York declared.

"Oh, now don't begin on that tune, York, for I'm really uneasy," Laura began.

"For why?" York inquired.

And then Laura told him the story of her lost purse, omitting Stellar Bahrr's part in the day's events, and adding:

"Of course, I hate myself for even daring to carry a hint of suspicion for a minute, but Jerry knew as well as I did that I hadn't put my purse in her hand-bag by mistake, for she carried it with her up-town that day. But I could forget the whole thing if it had ended there. I know that the dear girl was dreadfully short of money until just recently. Now her purse is full of bills. I couldn't help seeing that when she displays it so indifferently. She says she will have no funds from Philadelphia. Where does she get money when I can't keep a bill around the house?"

"Then I would quit the stocking-toe banking system that mother and all the other women and most of the men back in Winnowoc used to employ. You might try the First National Bank of New Eden. I'm one of the directors, and a comparatively safe man for all that," York advised, gravely.

"The loss of the money is nothing to the possible loss of confidence," Laura went on, ignoring her brother's thrust. "Could such a thing be possible that this dear girl is discouraged and tempted to hide her necessities?" The woman's voice was full of kindly sorrow. "York, couldn't you tell her?"

"I see myself doing that," York fairly exploded. "Laura, there may be a big leak in this house where valuables seep through. I'm not saying otherwise. But as for Jerry Swaim, it's simply preposterous—impossible. Never let such a thing cross your mind, let alone your lips again, you dear best of sisters. You know you don't believe a word of it."

"I know I don't, too, York; of course I don't; but I must have needed you to assure me of it. It all began in circumstance and an ugly suspicion that a story of Stellar Bahrr's suggested. And when I missed my own money and saw that great roll of bills—Oh, I must be crazy or just a plain human creature full of evil—"

"Or both," York added. "We are all more or less human and more than less crazy, especially if we will listen to old wives' tales against the expressed command of our wise brothers. As for Jerry having money"—York suddenly recalled his promise to Jerry not to discuss her affairs—"it's hardly likely she would display carelessly what was acquired by extreme care. Let's call her out here and think of better things."

As Laura looked up she realized for the first time the nearness of the hammock to Jerry's open window. The grief of being overheard by one whom she would not wound for worlds, with the self-rebuke for giving ear to Stellar Bahrr's gossip, almost overcame her.

"You go after Jerry, please," she said, faintly.

York went into the hall, calling at Jerry's open door, but she was not there. He looked in the living-room, but it was empty. Through the dining-room he passed to the side porch, where a dejected, lonely little figure was half hidden by the vines that covered it. At sight of her York stopped to get a grip on himself.

At her host's explosive declaration, "I see myself doing it," Jerry had come to herself. Surprised and wounded, but realizing the justice of the ground for suspicion against her—her—Jerry Swaim, who had always had first concern in those about her—she left her room hastily and passed out of the house by the side door. In the little vine-covered entry she sat down and stared out at the lawn, where the fireflies were beginning to twinkle against the shrubbery bordering the driveway. She had thought the disposition of her estate, and the choice of occupation, and the putting away of Eugene Wellington, had settled things for her future. Here was the fulfilling of a sense of something wrong that had recently possessed her, hardly letting itself be more than a sense till now. What did life mean, anyhow? "To go mad or go back East?" Why should she do either one, who had not offended anybody?

As Jerry gazed out at the shadowy side lawn the sound of a step caught her ear—a shuffling of feet across the grass, and the noise of a hard sole on the cement driveway. Jerry's eyes mechanically followed a short, shambling figure, suggesting a bear almost as much as a human being, as it passed forward a step or two; then, dividing the spirea-bushes on the farther edge, it disappeared into the deeper shadow of the slope toward the town below "Kingussie."

It was Fishing Teddy—old Hans Theodore; Jerry recognized him at a glance, and in the midst of her confused struggle to find herself she paused to wonder about him. Intense mental states often experience such pauses, when the mind grappling in an internal combat rests for a moment on an impression coming through the senses.

"What's the old Teddy Bear doing here?" Jerry asked herself, and then she remembered his coming once before almost to this very spot. That was the night Joe Thomson had called—the big farmer whose property her own was helping to destroy. There was something strong and unbreakable about this Joe. A million leagues from her his lot was cast, of course, and yet she hoped somehow that Joe might be near and that the Teddy Bear was waiting for him.

"Jerry! Jerry!" York called through the hall, and then he came out to where she sat on the side porch.

"I was hunting for you. You have a caller, my lady, a gentleman who wants to take you for a ride up the river. It will be gloriously cool on the ridges up-stream. He will give you a splendid hour before the curfew rings—the lucky dog!"

Jerry looked up expectantly. "It must be Joe Thomson," she thought, and she was glad to have him come again.

On the front porch little Junius Brutus Ponk was strutting back and forth, chatting with Laura.

"Good evening, Miss Swaim. I just soared down to invite you to take a little drive in my gadabout. I hope it will suit you to go."

"Nothing would please me more," Jerry said, lightly. "Let me get my wrap." As she returned to her room her eye fell on her hand-bag, lying on her desk. A sense of grief swept over her, for one moment, followed by a strange lightness of heart as if her latest problem had solved itself suddenly.

As they passed down the walk to the little gray car York Macpherson looked after them, conscious of the impossible thing in Ponk's mind, and wondering wherein lay the charm of this pink-and-white inefficient girl to grip with so strong a hold on the heart of a sensible man like Ponk.

"It is her power to be what she has never been, but what she will become," he said to himself. "She's the biggest contradiction to all rules that I ever knew, but she's a dead-sure proposition."

The coming of callers found York in his best mood, and when his sister bade him good night he put his arms around her, saying, gently:

"You are the best woman in the world, Laura, and you mustn't carry a single hidden worry."

"Neither must you, York," Laura replied, and each knew that the other understood.

Meantime, out on the upper Sage Brush road Jerry was letting the beauty of the evening lift the weight from her mind. She was just beginning to understand that, while she had imagined herself to be doing her own thinking heretofore, she had been merely willing that her thinking should be done for her. She was now at the place where her will meant little and her judgment everything in shaping her acts. The recognition brought a sense of freedom she had never known before. What she had overheard from the porch seemed far away, and her wounded spirit grew whole again as she began to find herself standing on her own feet, not commanding that somebody else should hold her up. Jerry's mind worked rapidly, and before the gray car had been turned at the northern end of the evening's ride it was not the Jerry Swaim of an hour ago, but a young warrior, clad in armor, with shining weapons in her hand, who sat beside the adoring little hotel-keeper of the faulty grammar and the kindly heart.

Ponk halted the car at the far end of the drive up-stream, to take in a moonlight view of the Sage Brush Valley.

"Them three lights down yonder's the court-house an' the school-house an' the station. The other town glims are all hid by trees an' bushes and sundry in the wrinkles of the praira." Ponk always said "praira." "But it's a beautiful country when you douse the sunshine and turn on the starlight, or a half-size moon like that young pullet in the west sky yonder. Ever see the blowout by moonlight? Sorta reclaims its cussed ugliness, you might say, an' the dimmer glow softens down an' subdues the infernal old beast considerable."

Jerry turned quickly toward her companion. "Blowout is a word taboo in my presence," she said, gravely. "Anybody who wants to be listed as a friend of mine will never mention it to me, for to me there is no such thing. I have no real estate in Kansas, nor anywhere else, for that matter. I'm just a poor orphan child." The girl smiled brightly. "All the world is mine, even though none of it really belongs to me. If you want my good-will, even my speaking acquaintance, you'll remember the road to it is never to mention that horrid thing to me again."

"I never won't," Ponk declared, seriously. "If that's the only restriction, I'm in the middle of your good-will so far I'll never find the outside gate again."

"I hope you won't," Jerry said, lightly.

"I'm seriouser than you are, Miss Swaim, and I asked you to take this ride for three reasons," Ponk returned.

"Name them," Jerry demanded, in the dim light noting the flush on his round cheeks.

"Firstly, and mainly, just selfish pleasure. Secondly, because I wanted to do you a favor if I might presume, and thirdly, to tell you why I wanted to do it."

"You are very kind," Jerry said, sincerely.

"What I want to say in that favor business is the same I told York to say that Sunday we met you in the cemetery, where I'd been callin' on mother, and you come to get away from New Eden and all that in it is, for a little while. You remember York came trailing after you with some excuse or other, an' right behind him comes another trailer, a womankind?"

"I remember York, that's all," Jerry replied, trying to recall the woman, whom she had forgotten.

"Well, she didn't forget you. It's that Stellar Bahrr, and she made capital, principal, and compound interest out of the innocent event, as she does out of every move everybody in that burg makes. But don't let it disturb you a mite."

"I won't," Jerry replied, indifferently. "But tell me why she should make capital out of me?"

"'Cause she hates you," Ponk said, calmly.

"Me? Why?" Jerry's eyes were black now, and the faintly gleaming ripples above her white forehead and her faintly pink cheeks in the light of the moon made a delicious picture.

"Just because you are you, young, admired. I don't dare to say no more, no matter what I feel. It's a snaky jealousy, and she'll trail you constant. It's got to be the habit of her life, and it's ruined her as it will any person."

"Well, let her trail." Jerry's voice had a clear defiance now. "I'm here to earn an honest living by my own efforts. I shall pay my bills and take care of my own business. I have not intentionally injured anybody."

She paused and remembered Laura Macpherson, her shapely hands gripped together, emphasizing her unbreakable determination.

"And you are goin' to win. Don't never be afraid of the end and finis. But, knowin' Sage Brush, an' how scared it is of Mrs. Bahrr, yet listenin' constant to every word she says, I felt it my duty to warn you of breakers ahead. I've known more 'n one, bein' innocent, to fall for her tricks. And I'm telling you out of pure kindness. There's only two ways to handle her—keep still and try to live above her, or stand straight up an' tell her to go to the devil. Excuse me, Miss Swaim, I'm not really a profane man, but I mean well by you, and I'm not just settin' here to gossip about a fellow-citizenness."

"I know you mean well, Mr. Ponk. You have been more than kind to me ever since the night I reached New Eden, and I do appreciate your friendship and good-will," Jerry said, earnestly. "Now as to Mrs. Bahrr, which course do you advise me to follow?"

Junius Brutus Ponk was hanging on every word of Jerry's, and his face was a full moon of pleasure, for he was frankly and madly in love with her, and he knew it.

"I can't advise at all; it just ain't for me to do that. You are honorin' us by stoppin' in our midst. What I want you to do is to be on the lookout, an' if things start wrong, anywhere—school or church or with your friends, the Macphersons, for instance, as they might—just run down old Stellar before you go to guessin', or misunderstandin', and if you can't do it alone"—Ponk smote his broad bosom dramatically—"I'm here to help. That leads me to the thirdly of my triplet purpose in askin' the pleasure of your company."

Jerry looked up with a smile. The little man was so thoroughly good, and yet so impossible. York Macpherson seemed head and shoulders above any other man she had ever known in her life—except her father. In fact, he seemed like a sort of father to her—and Joe Thomson. That was just a shadow across her consciousness, for all these men belonged here and at heart were not of her world.

"Miss Swaim, will you let me, without no recompense, be a friend at court whenever you need my help? You seem to me like a sort of female Robinson Crusoe cast away on the desert island of the Sage Brush country in Kansas. Let me be your Man Friday. I'd like to be your Saturday and Sunday and Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. York Macpherson would come lopin' in to claim Thursday, I reckon."

The sincerity of the fat little man offset the pompous ridiculousness of his speech.

"If I seem cuttin' into the Macpherson melon-patch it's because I got on to some of Stellar Bahrr's gossip that set me thinkin'. She's up to turnin' Miss Laury against you because of York's admiring you so much."

Jerry grasped the situation now. The hotel-keeper was not only wishing to befriend and shield her—he thought he was in love with her. And he thought that York Macpherson was also in love. Was he? The girl's mind worked rapidly. Little as she cared for the opinion of New-Edenites, outside of these three good friends, she realized that these same New-Edenites were interested in her and dared to discuss her affairs; and that if she stayed here, as she meant to do, she must meet them and be, in a way, of them. How much of this newly discovered admiration which her companion evidently felt, and which he felt sure York Macpherson possessed, might be really the outgrowth of pity for her in the new position in which she found herself? And there was Laura. Stellar Bahrr had hinted about her being neglected by her brother for other women. Whatever might be the real motive, Jerry and love had parted company on the day that Eugene Wellington's letter had come telling of his renunciation of his art for an easy clerkship. But Laura didn't know that, and she might have heard the town-meddler—Oh, bother Stellar and all her works! Jerry Swaim would have none of them. And Laura was such a sweet, companionable, refined friend. This thing must be overcome in some way.

"Tell me, Mr. Ponk, why do the New Eden people listen to a sharp-tongued trouble-maker, since they know her power?" Jerry asked, after a pause.

"Why? 'Cause they enjoy it when 'tain't about them—all of us do that, bein' human. Are you right sure you wouldn't believe her yourself, much as you despised any story of hers you'd be forced to listen to? Well as I know her, I have to keep pinchin' my right arm to see if it's got nerve enough to strike back if I'm hit, you might say."

On Jerry's cheeks the bloom deepened. She had let a word of Mrs. Bahrr's set her to wondering about both her host and hostess.

"They's one more thing I want to say, the third reason for askin' you out this evenin'," Ponk went on, and the pompous manner fell from him somewhat in his earnestness. "I don't want you to leave Macpherson's home for anything, right now. They want you and—well, I hope you won't. Even at the loss of a boarder for myself at the hotel and gurrage I hope you won't. But if some time—if it was ever possible you'd find a need for me more 'n what we spoke of—I ain't no show. I'm clear below your society back East, but, if you ever needed a real, devoted, honest man who tried to be a Christian—"

Jerry caught his full meaning now. "You are a Christian, Mr. Ponk. I'm not. You are kind to me in my need, and I shall rely on your sincerity and your friendship, and if there is any way in which I could return it, even in a small measure, I would be so happy. We will be the best of friends."

Jerry's smile was winsome as she frankly put out her hand to seal the bond in a clasp of good-fellowship. And Junius Brutus Ponk understood.

"It's no use," he said to himself, sadly. "I wish it might have been, but it ain't. I ain't such a fool I can't see a door when it's shut right before me. I'm blessed to be her friend, and I'll be it if the heavens drop. I'm in my Waterloo an' must just wade across an' shake myself. That's all."

His sunny nature always overcame his disappointments, but from that hour in an upper niche of his heart's shrine he placed Jerry's image, one of the beautiful things of life he might do homage to but could never possess.

"They's just one favor I want to ask of you," he said, aloud, "an' that is that you'll go with me to call on mother out to the cemetery sometimes. I'd like her to know you, too. She was good, and a good mother just lives on."

Jerry's cheek paled a shade, but she said, graciously: "I'll be glad to do that, Mr. Ponk. Maybe it will make me a little less rebellious, and you will be doing me the favor."

Ponk's face beamed with pleasure at her words the while a real tear rolled unnoticed down his cheek. That night marked the beginning of a new spiritual life for Jerry Swaim.