The three girls made up their minds to tell no one of their suspicions concerning the disappearance of Simeon Pace’s money. But Azalea could not but talk it over with Pa McBirney, and Thomas McBirney could not resist cogitating about the matter with Haystack Thompson, and he, in turn, was impelled to go with it to his trusted pastor, Absalom Summers. And Absalom whispered it to his Barbara, and Barbara—but perhaps she told no one. In looking the matter over afterward, she was almost sure that she had told no one. At least she hadn’t told of it right out. And Carin spoke of it only to her father; and he mentioned it merely to the banker Heller, and he only spoke of it to his fellow officers in the bank, and they told no one but their intimate friends.

As for Annie Laurie, she refrained with a mighty effort from confiding her suspicions to her aunts, and she warned her friends not to tell them. Had they mulled that matter over and over during the long, lonely winter evenings, the poor girl would have felt as if she were losing her reason as well as her fortune. Indeed, the winter had settled down heavily over the Pace household. The dairy met with reverses. Two of the best cows died. The accounts would not balance. And worst of all, the helpers were hard to manage and would not take orders willingly from Miss Adnah. The strong will and hand of Simeon Pace were sorely missed.

And along with all this distress was the sense that Annie Laurie and her aunts had of burning injustice. Somewhere in the world was money in abundance, belonging to them. Just how much it was they could not even guess. Of Mr. Carson’s purchase money of twenty thousand dollars they felt sure. He had Simeon Pace’s receipt to show for that. But there was other money beyond question—the savings of years. The old aunts, waking in the night, would arise and fumble in the places in which they had looked so often; and Annie Laurie, strong and sensible as she was, found that it required all of her will to keep from following their example.This girl, so straightforward, so energetic and hopeful by nature, found it almost intolerable to sit around, patient under injustice. She proposed to Mr. Carson that he should go to Hector Disbrow and accuse him of the theft of the money—tell him the whole thing was known, and that he must refund it or be arrested. But Mr. Carson shook his head.

“As a matter of fact, my dear,” he said, “the thing isn’t known at all. It is only surmised. Azalea, in semi-darkness, thought she saw your father put something in his arm. She may have been mistaken. Or even if she were not mistaken about his doing so on that particular occasion, it doesn’t in the least follow that your father carried the money in question there. Above all, it does not follow that it was in the arm the day of his death; or that, even if it was there, that the undertaker stole it. The tin arm must have hung in the room for days. Many persons visited that room. Any one of them might be guilty.”

“Then is there nothing at all that can be done, sir?”

“Nothing at present. I am watching Disbrow—indeed, I may say the whole community has him under suspicion. If he is guilty be sure that sooner or later it will come out.”

“But here we are, getting deeper and deeper in debt to you!”

“Annie Laurie, I am convinced that every cent I have advanced you will be paid back to me in time. You are a brave girl. I trust you completely. I feel that you are going to make a success of life. Meantime, you are living on borrowed capital. But so are thousands of others. Back of it all, you must remember, is the fine farm as security. It is a perfectly clear business proposition. Have no fears, child.”

She strengthened under the tone he used in speaking to her. If he had pitied her, she would have broken down, but he merely put it to her that she was playing her part in the world, and she braced herself to play that part well and not disappoint him or any of her other friends.

She tried to avoid Sam Disbrow, yet it seemed to be her luck to meet him oftener than usual. He was very sorry for her, she could see, and he assumed his brightest and heartiest manner when he was with her, in his efforts to help her to be happy.

One day when there was a feeling of spring in the air, and she had gone along one of the little winding paths through the pine wood, she met him with his gun on his shoulder and his dogs at his heels.

“Why, Annie Laurie,” he cried, “are you out hunting too?”

The deep suspicion and anger she felt toward his father put some irritation into her tone as she said:

“And why are you hunting, Sam? I thought you were working in the box factory office.”

“Well, so I was. You see, I had finished school here and dad couldn’t afford to send me away. I might have gone anyway, and somehow worked my way through Rutherford Academy, but Hannah said I oughtn’t to leave mother. So I stayed—though it didn’t seem to me quite the best thing to do. But now, suddenly, dad says I’m to go away to school. At first I refused. I was afraid it would mean pinching and scrimping for all the rest of them at home. But dad said, no, things were a little easier with him now, and I’d better take the chance while I had it.”

Annie Laurie stood before him in the path staring, while Sam waited in vain for her congratulations.“So, yesterday,” he went on in a somewhat dashed tone, “a fellow came to the factory looking for work. He said he needed it very badly—had his mother to look after. So I spoke up and said I was leaving to go into the Rutherford Academy at the spring term, and that I’d get out and let him have my place. You see, there were a number of things I wanted to do around home before I went away. And I was just crazy to get off in the hills for a day or two. That’s the way with us down here, isn’t it, Annie Laurie? We can keep under roof only about so long. Then we have to go roving for a spell.”

Annie Laurie hardly heard what he said. She could with difficulty keep from breaking out with:

“But where is the money coming from that is to send you away to the academy? Didn’t you ask your father how he came by this money so suddenly? Have you no notion of what he has done to earn this money? Can you be living a lie—just as he is?”

There swept back to her memory the words the minister had said that day in church when she had caught Sam’s eye, and had known what he was thinking.“Plant a lie in the garden of your soul,” he had said, “and it will flourish worse than any poisonous weed. Do not think you can uproot it when you will, for it will grow and grow till it is stronger than you, and not all your prayers and tears can rend its terrible roots out of your life.”

Sam had wondered, as she had, why the preacher should have talked like that to a congregation of good people. For they had all seemed good to her; but now she realized that if the Disbrows were living a lie perhaps other persons whom she knew and liked were doing so, too. For the first time in Annie Laurie’s life a tidal wave of suspicion, distrust and hatred of the world swept over her, and it seemed like a wicked place—a place made up of beings who tried to injure each other.

She felt so ill that she leaned against a tree.

Sam seemed to take no notice, however. He was watching his dogs, and talking on and on in his cheerful way.

“And another fine thing is going to happen,” he said. “Dad has got up spunk enough at last to send Hannah up to Williamsburg to have her eyes operated upon, and sis has found the courage to go. Do you know, I believe that after she gets those poor eyes of hers straightened she won’t be so shy and queer as she is now. I suppose she loathes going out where she’ll meet people, when she has to look all over the premises whenever she tries to fix her eyes on the person she’s talking to. Then, if dad could only get some one in to take care of poor mother, Hannah could go away to school too, perhaps, and grow to be a little more like other folks.”

Annie Laurie knew that Sam would not have talked about his own people in this free way to anyone but her. The two had spoken out their minds to each other for years, and it had come to be second nature for them to do it.

And now here they were with a black secret between them. She, Annie Laurie, who had meant always to be Sam’s true friend, was suspicious of him! Yet she could not look at him, standing there smiling in the spring sunlight, his eyes full of enthusiasm, and think him guilty of any knowledge of wrong-doing on the part of his father.

How very, very strange life seemed! Once she had thought it like a road. One had only to walk ahead, doing right and nodding to the passers-by, and all would be well. Now she saw how it twisted, turned, and split—this road—and how difficult it was to tell which turning to take, or which by-path to seek.

Then an impulse came over her almost as strong and swift as one of those which were forever besetting Azalea.

“Sam,” she said, “I haven’t been in your house for years. Do you know, I would like to go. I’d like to go now. Do you think I might?”

Sam flushed a little and hesitated a moment.

“Why, yes, Annie, I don’t know why you shouldn’t. Mother doesn’t see many people, as you know; and they won’t be expecting you, but if you’ll take things as you find them—”

“Oh, yes, Sam,” she aid dryly. “That’s just what I mean. I want to take them as they are. I want to get acquainted with your family.”

He looked pleased and softened at that.

“Do you, Annie Laurie?” he said with a little thrill in his voice. “Well, that sure is nice of you. Not very many of the neighbors seem to care whether they live or die. Come along, then. Let’s go now.”

So they turned in the direction of the Disbrow house, Annie Laurie leading and Sam walking behind, nervously smiling, the dogs at his heels.

They turned in at the Disbrow place, passing through the sagging gate, and Sam uttered his first apology.

“I’ve tried and tried to get that old gate to stay up on the level,” he said. “But seems like we never have the proper tools to do anything with; and anyhow, the wood’s so rotten it won’t hold a nail, hardly.”

“Oh, a sagging gate is nothing,” answered Annie Laurie dully.

The little garden had not yet felt the influence of spring, and it looked dejected enough. Fragments of last year’s mosquito netting dangled at the windows; the paint of the little house was weather-worn; the arms were off the bench on the porch. Green shades kept the light from making its way into the low rooms. Indeed, so dim was the room into which Annie Laurie stepped that at first she could see nothing. The heat was fairly sweltering, and the atmosphere was lifeless and stale-smelling.

“Mother,” said Sam gently, “I’ve brought a friend to see you—Annie Laurie Pace.”

“Oh,” sighed a voice from the gloom, struggling between reproachfulness and natural politeness, “have you? How do you do, Annie Laurie?”

“I’m very well, thank, you ma’am. Are you feeling any better?”

“No—no, I don’t seem to get any better. Sam, you’ll have to pull up a shade. Annie Laurie won’t be able to see a thing.”

Annie Laurie closed her eyes for an instant. She dreaded what she would see, and yet she had long wished to know the truth—to know what Sam’s strange home was like. She heard the shade being raised, and with something of an effort she opened her eyes and looked about. What she saw gave her a shock. Her own home was ugly enough, as she knew well; but poverty was here, and worse than poverty—indifference to appearances. The almost bare apartment wore that dejected and unhappy aspect of a room for which no one cares and in which no one hopes. It was a sad room—a sick room—with a long couch and its occupant for the chief objects.

Yes, the couch was long and wide, though the woman who lay on it was so small. Figured brown calico covered the bed, and the woman was dressed in a wrapper of faded blue. There was no collar about her throat—only the coarse open neck-band, showing a shriveled neck. Her face was bloodless and bleached like a vegetable that has grown in the dark, and out of it looked a pair of weary eyes, beneath which were deep, dark circles. Her hair—brown, touched with gray—was brushed back straight and flat from her bulging brow, and this, with her high-arched eyebrows, gave her an almost Chinese look. Her hands, thinner and more apathetic than any hands Annie Laurie ever had seen, lay on the calico cover.

“It’s not very often I have light let in here,” she said. “It makes my head ache so.”

Annie Laurie did not say that she ought not to have let it in for her, if that was the case. She couldn’t really feel that this was the case. She was glad the light was in the room for once, and by it, she moved toward Mrs. Disbrow’s bed, her hand outstretched with something almost like satisfaction, for she knew as she looked in that woman’s face, that if her fortune had been stolen from her by the undertaker, his wife did not know it. She was as convinced of this woman’s innocence when she looked at her, as she was of her pitiful condition. So she took one of the claw-like hands in her own strong grasp and sat down beside her. Mrs. Disbrow’s face was quivering with the excitement of meeting a stranger.

“Sam often talks of you,” said his mother in her fluttering voice. “I’ve been wanting to see you. You’re a strong, fine girl, Annie.”

“Yes, I’m strong and well,” the girl answered. “I’m very thankful.”

“Well, I haven’t known a well day for years,” said the invalid. “Here I lie, racked with pain, and I declare I don’t know whether it’s one day or another.”

Annie Laurie felt herself bracing against this discouraged tone.

“Well,” she said, “I don’t suppose you really have to worry about what day it is. You have nothing to do—no Monday washing to think of, or Saturday baking. Some one else does all that for you.”

She spoke merely to present a cheerful side, but Mrs. Disbrow flushed a trifle. Annie Laurie saw that she had said something that annoyed her.

“Yes,” the sick woman replied still more dejectedly, “I’m nothing but a drag on my family. I often say to them that it would be better if I was out of their way.”

“I don’t suppose that makes them very happy—hearing you say that.” Annie Laurie replied in her hearty way. It really seemed to her as if that was the unkindest thing a mother could say to her children. “If only I could have my mother, sick or well, or any way at all, I’d be the happiest girl in the world. It’s terribly lonely being without a mother—or a father,” she added almost in a whisper.

Mrs. Disbrow reached out her hand and laid it on Annie Laurie’s.

“Poor girl,” she murmured with what was almost her first thought of anyone save herself, that winter.

“And—Oh, I feel so sorry for Sam and Hannah, with you ill always,” went on Annie Laurie. “Of course it spoils their happiness. It seems such a pity! Isn’t there anything that can be done, Mrs. Disbrow? Doesn’t any doctor know how to cure you? Haven’t you any idea yourself of what ought to be done?”

“Well, my husband talks of going West soon,” answered Mrs. Disbrow with something like vivacity—or rather, like a shadow of it. “I’m looking forward to that. If we could get to a new place and to a new house, and if there was something to look forward to, and hope for the children to make something of themselves, I don’t know—maybe—” her voice trailed off and her eyes fixed themselves in an aimless reverie on the opposite wall.

So they were going West! That was the plan. The man who had been unable to give his family a chance, who had been broken by this long illness of his wife’s, who had failed to make his place among men, was going West. His chance had come to him at last. Had it come through theft? Annie Laurie found herself wishing that they might indeed have the chance, these poor people who seemed never to have been able to step out into the sunshine. Yet had they a right to this chance—if it meant her defeat? Could she let them go this way, while she was left to struggle with poverty?

The door opened and a girl entered. Hannah! She was so slender that Annie Laurie, who was broad of shoulder, with a backbone that might have been made of steel, wondered how the poor thing managed to keep upright. Her face was ivory-colored, her frock an ill-fitting gingham of a hideous “watermelon” pink. She turned her dreadfully crossed eyes on Annie Laurie—or to be correct, turned one of them on her—and looked at her resentfully.

“This is sister Hannah, Annie Laurie,” said Sam in rather a stifled voice. “You two girls ought to know each other, you know.”

“How do you do?” said Hannah, miserable with shyness.

“Oh, I’m pretty well, thank you, Hannah,” Annie Laurie answered, and then she added: “But I can’t say I’m very happy. You wouldn’t expect that. I’m very, very lonely without my father.”

She had risen and stood before the girl, with her bald little statement of sorrow, and Hannah, forgetting herself and her fears for a moment, looked up at Annie Laurie with sympathy in her face.

“Oh,” she said, “it’s too bad. I—I cried after I heard of it.”

She seemed astonished at herself for saying so much, and Sam looked at her with amazement. Had Hannah actually cried over some one else’s troubles?“Did you?” exclaimed Annie Laurie. “Oh, that was sweet of you, Hannah.”

She forgot her Aunt Adnah’s axiom that the Paces seldom kissed, and leaned forward and planted a warm kiss on Hannah’s cheek.

“I like to know that,” she went on. “You see I feel so—so friendless.”

“Why, with your aunts and all?” inquired Mrs. Disbrow.

“I feel as if I ought to be protecting my aunts, you see,” explained Annie. “They are old and terribly broken by father’s death. And then, everything has gone so wrong with us. We haven’t been able to find father’s money anywhere, you know, and we’re really poor. We’ve no money to run the dairy on, and the men need overseeing, and I’ve blundered along with my bad bookkeeping. Altogether, it looks as if things were going to ruin, and I just can’t bear that, Mrs. Disbrow.”

“Why, you’ve always been so prosperous!” exclaimed Mrs. Disbrow. “My husband often has spoken of how prosperous your father was, and has contrasted him with himself. You see, Mr. Disbrow never has got on well here. His farm has paid poorly, and of course the undertaking business is of very little consequence in a community like this. I declare I can’t blame him for being discouraged and bitter and sort of half-hating the men who are successful. It’s hard to like people when everything is going against you.”

Annie Laurie swept her glance around the room again, taking in the brother and sister, and resting it at last on the sick woman.

“I suppose it is,” she said slowly. “I suppose it is. But Mrs. McBirney says you have to give out liking to have people like you, and that you have to think you are going to succeed in order to do it.”

“And you have to think well in order to be well, I suppose,” said the invalid angrily. “I suppose that’s her idea. Well, you can tell her for me that she’s mistaken.”

Annie Laurie did not look rebuked. She sat still, thinking.

“I know so little about sickness,” she said slowly, “that I can’t even sympathize the way I ought to, I suppose. Oh, Mrs. Disbrow, don’t you suppose you could go riding with me? I’m such a good driver, I wouldn’t let you be shaken up at all. Sam and Hannah could sit beside you to keep you from being joggled.”

“A pretty sight I’d make!” cried Mrs. Disbrow. “There’s too many of the neighbors would be peeking out to see what I looked like, after all these years of being shut away. No, thank you, child, I don’t believe I want to try.”

“But you could go at twilight. We could go when the neighbors are at supper. Wouldn’t it be fun, Sam? Could you sit up, ma’am?”

“No, I don’t believe I could. And even if I did, like as not I’d pay for it the next day.”

“But why not try? Maybe you wouldn’t have to pay for it. Oh, ma’am, it’s so wonderful to be out of doors. You can’t think what you miss staying in here—can she, Sam?”

“No,” said Sam, “she can’t have an idea. Oh, mother, you never would listen to me, though truly I believe you’d be ever so much better if you would get out. Please try. The three of us will be able to take good care of you.”

There was a moment’s silence, and then the boy flung out his arms with sudden passion.

“Oh, mother, mother, please try! Why need we all be so unhappy? Why can’t we have a little joy like other people?”Annie Laurie felt the tears leap into her eyes. She had never before seen Sam as other than the cheerful, hearty boy, but now she knew that the cheerfulness and heartiness had been an imitation of the real thing. They had been but his courage masquerading as something else.

Mrs. Disbrow raised herself on her elbow and looked at her son. Suddenly a great light broke over her. She had not been the only sufferer in that house. Before her were the two whose youth she had shadowed with her pain.

“I’ll go,” she said in a strange voice. “When shall it be?”

“Now,” cried Annie Laurie. “I’ll run right home and have the men hitch up. Oh, Hannah, be sure she’s dressed warm enough. I’ll have something warm put in for her feet. Oh, Sam, maybe she’ll like it!”

She turned toward the boy with outstretched hands and he caught and held them for a moment. Then she was off, running as fast as she could to serve the people into whose house she had gone with the motives of a spy.