Two months passed before Millerstown settled down, from the excited speculation which followed Katy Gaumer's flash of memory and its remarkable effects, into its usual level of excitement. Millerstown was usually excited over something. By the end of two months Sarah Ann and Bevy and Susannah Kuhns had ceased to gather on one another's porches or in one another's houses to discuss the strange Hartmans. By the end of three months all possible explanations had been offered, all possible questions answered, or proved unanswerable. Had Cassie known of the hiding-place of the silver service? Had Cassie died of a broken heart? Did persons ever die of broken hearts? Why, and again why, why, why, did John Hartman push the silver service into the hole? And why, having pushed it in, did John Hartman not take it out? Why had not Katy remembered the strange incident long before this?

"My belief is it was to be so," said Susannah Kuhns, a vague conclusion which Millerstown applied to all inexplicable affairs.

In all their speculations, no one ever thought of John Hartman or alluded to John Hartman as a thief. For once, Millerstown accepted the incomprehensible. Of the sad causes of John Hartman's behavior Millerstown knew nothing, could never know anything.

Sarah Ann, being more tender-hearted than the rest, and seeing a little more deeply into the lives of her fellow men and women, thought longest about the Hartmans. Sarah Ann's husband had been a disagreeable and parsimonious man and Sarah Ann knew something of the misery of a divided hearthstone. She often laid down the Millerstown "Star," fascinating as it was with its new stories, of a man driven by house cleaning to suicide in a deep well, of a dog which spoke seven words, or of a snake creeping up a church aisle, and took off her spectacles and thought of the Hartmans and of the Koehlers and of Katy Gaumer's strange part in their affairs.

Millerstown was not entirely deprived of subject-matter by its exhaustion of the Hartman mystery. David Hartman had employed a housekeeper and had opened his great mansion from top to bottom. All Millerstown walked past during the first few days of his occupancy to see whether it was true that there were lights in the parlor and that the squire and the preacher went in and out the front door to visit David. David had been carefully inspecting his orchards and farms, had visited again the land on the mountain-side with its double treasure. David had brought his riding-horse to Millerstown and Millerstown flew once more to doors and windows to see him pass. David consulted with his farmers; David asked a thousand questions of the squire; David was busy from morning till night.

"And David is nice and common," boasted Bevy Schnepp, who behaved as though she were David's mother and grandmother and maiden aunt in one. "He is never proud; you would never know he was so rich and educated."

David had gone himself in midsummer to bring William Koehler home to his house on the mountain-side. William seemed to understand now the startling information brought him by the squire and David. At last he realized who David was, and all the kindliness of his intentions. As he drove up the street, his old neighbors came out with pitying looks to speak to him and at his home his daughter-in-law received him with her placid kindness.

An addition had been built to the little house, but otherwise all was as it had been. The garden had been restored, onions and peas and tomatoes had been planted, though July was at hand, so that William might find immediate occupation. Back in the chicken house were cheerful duckings and crowings, and about the hives the bees buzzed as of old.

At first William tended his garden and sat on the porch in the sunshine and was satisfied and happy. Then he grew restless; the line deepened again in his forehead. It was plainly to be seen that all was not right with William.

But all was made right. One afternoon Sarah Ann Mohr put on her sunbonnet and donned a white apron over her immaculate gingham one and took a basket on her arm and an umbrella in her hand, to be used now for sunshade, now for staff, and climbed the mountain road. She talked with William and gave Essie a little housewifely advice about the making of soap, in which occupation Essie was engaged; she emptied her basket, then she rose to go.

"William," said Sarah Ann, "I have a little plastering that should have been done this long time. I wonder if you would have the time to do it for me?"

It was not every one, Bevy Schnepp said proudly afterwards, who would ride on horseback to Allentown to fetch a mason's white suit and the best kind of trowel, but David had them ready for William in the morning. William accepted them eagerly and began to work at once. Presently he went all about Millerstown. Sometimes he even ventured to the Hartman house to speak to David. David learned after a long while to see him and talk to him without heartache. One day William made in a whisper an astonishing confidence.

"People talk too much about themselves," said William. "I was queer once, out of my head, but I never let on and the people never found it out."

Thus mercifully was the past dulled.

By September Alvin was settled in his store in what had once been a little shoemaker's shop next the post-office. Like the good housewife she was, Essie made the place all clean and tidy and banished all odor of leather. Then the little shop was painted and Alvin's glass cases for ties and collars and the low chairs for the trying on of shoes were put in place. Millerstown was curious, and went to see and remained to buy, and upon them waited Alvin in immaculate if sober clothes. Sometimes, alas! when there was no danger of Essie's coming into the shop, he wore a red necktie!

Alvin had paid his debt to Katy, and in the paying had achieved a moral victory worthy of a braver man. When the little store was planned and the fittings all but bought, he had gone to David Hartman and had confessed his debt.

"She helped me, she was the only one who ever helped me. She thought perhaps something could be made of me. And I could never pay her back."

"She helped you," repeated David. "You could never pay her back."

"That was it," explained Alvin. "When she could not go to school and had all this money, she thought somebody should use it and she helped me."

David blinked rapidly. Then he went to the safe and counted a roll of money into Alvin's hand.

"Go pay your debts, Alvin. The store will be all right."

Alvin started briskly down the street, but his step grew slower and slower. He was, to tell the truth, desperately afraid of Katy Gaumer. Instead of going on to Grandfather Gaumer's he stopped in at the squire's, awful though the squire always seemed.

"Here is Katy's money," said he.

The squire put out a prompt hand and took the money, counted it, and put the roll into his pocket. It was just as well for the development of Alvin's soul that it had not been offered to Katy, who might not have accepted it.

"Thank you," said the squire. "I'll give you a receipt, Alvin. I am coming to your shop to get me a pair of shoes," added the squire with twinkling eyes.

July changed to August and August to September. The cock's-comb in Grandmother Gaumer's garden—it is, to this day, Grandmother Gaumer's garden—thrust its orange and crimson spikes up through the low borders of sweet alyssum, the late roses bloomed, the honeysuckle put out its last and intensely fragrant sprays. In Millerstown busy life went on. Apple-butter boiling impended; already Sarah Ann and Bevy Schnepp saw in their minds' eyes a great kettle suspended from a tripod at the foot of Sarah Ann's yard, from which should presently rise into Sarah Ann's apple tree odors fit to propitiate the angry gods, odors compounded of apples and grape juice and spices. Round this pleasant caldron, with kilted skirts and loud chatterings, the women would move like energetic priestesses, guarding a sacred flame.

There came presently occasional evenings when it was not pleasant to be out of doors, when mothers called their children earlier into the warm kitchens and when men gathered in the store. Fall was at hand; Millerstown became quieter—if, an unobservant, unappreciative stranger would have said, Millerstown could have become any quieter than it was!

But Millerstown was still talking. Millerstown was now interested in another amazing event. Katy Gaumer was going away! The Millerstonians imparted it, the one to the other, with great astonishment.

"She will have her education now," said Sarah Ann with satisfaction. Then Sarah Ann's eyes filled with tears. Katy seemed to her to belong to the past; sometimes, indeed, to Sarah Ann's own generation. "I will miss Katy."

"Going to school!" cried little Mary Kuhns, who was now Mrs. Weimer. "Going to school when we are of an age and I have two children!"

"But I am not so fortunate as you, Mary," answered Katy.

Katy spoke with the ease of the preacher or the doctor; she seemed older than all her contemporaries.

"Going to school!" cried Susannah Kuhns. "You will surely be an old maid, Katy!"

"There are worse things to be," said Katy.

"Going to school!" Bevy's outcry was the loudest of all. "Now! Are you crazy, Katy?"

"Yes," laughed Katy as of old.

"Do you remember what learning you had?"

"Yes, indeed!"

"Pooh! I forget this long time everything I learned in school. It was mostly A, B, C, I guess. But there are better things than learning. I can cook. Was that why you went so often to the preacher this summer? Were you studying again?"

"Exactly," said Katy.

Bevy looked at her half in admiration, half in disapproval. Katy had reached her full height; her dresses almost touched the floor; her curly braid was coiled on the top of her head; her eyes had darkened. But Katy's mouth smiled as it had smiled when she was a little girl. Bevy felt dimly that here was a different person from Mary Weimer with her babies and Louisa Kuhns, who, married a month, came to the store without having curled her hair.

"But you ought to get married sometime, Katy!" exploded Bevy. The wild dream which Bevy had cherished for her darling had faded. "What will you do in this world all alone?"

Presently Katy's new dresses were finished, her work with the preacher was concluded, and her new trunk was sent out from the county seat. Edwin's Sally and little Adam wept daily. Edwin shook his head solemnly over the impending separation.

In the few days which remained before her departure, the affairs of David Hartman and the Koehlers and the prospective apple-butter boilings were entirely forgotten. The gifts of friends who came to say good-bye would have filled two trunks, if Aunt Sally had not wisely discriminated between them.

"What will you do with three woolen quilts, Katy, when I gave you already nice blankets? These we will put in a chest in the garret. It will go for your Haus Steir [wedding outfit]."

Susannah Kuhns brought two jars of peaches and a glass or two of jelly, being firmly of the conviction that boarding-schools and colleges were especially constructed for the starving of the young.

"The English people do not eat anyhow like we do. I was once to some English people in Allentown and they had no spread at all for on their bread. Now you will have spreads, Katy."

Finally even Alvin Koehler caught the spirit and brought a present for Katy, a tie from his store. Alvin allowed no cloudy recollections of the past to darken his sunshine.

Sarah Ann came, too, with a silk quilt and a silk sofa pillow of the "Log Cabin" pattern, the product of long saving of brightly colored scraps.

"You are to have these things, Katy," said she. "You would 'a' had them anyhow when I was gone, and—"

"Now, Sarah Ann!" laughed Katy. "That will be years to come, Sarah Ann!"

Thus cheered, Sarah Ann dried her tears.

"Everybody in Millerstown is sorry you are going away," said she. "You are like the church or the schoolhouse, you are ours."

"I love Millerstown," said Katy: "I love Millerstown dearly."

Presently the trunk was packed, the last day was at hand. The squire came to a dinner such as Grandmother Gaumer used to prepare on holidays. He was as excited as a child over the prospect of his journey with Katy in the morning. He would see her established; it was almost as though he were going to school himself!

Aunt Sally refused any help with the dishes. Katy must not work; she might read, she might sew, she might go to see Sarah Ann, she might walk with little Adam to the schoolhouse, but she should not lay hand to dish-towel on her last day in Millerstown!

Katy chose the taking of little Adam to school. With his hand held tight in hers, she went out the gate, past the garden, and along the open fields toward the church and the schoolhouse set on the hill together. She glanced into the schoolroom, a dull place now, no longer the scene of the prancings of a Belsnickel or the triumphs of a studious Katy; then, leaving Adam, she set off toward the mountain road. From the first ascent she looked down at the house of David Hartman. The foliage about it was thinning; she was near enough to see the golden and scarlet flowers in the garden and a cat sleeping comfortably on the wide porch. She saw David almost daily, taking the two steps into the squire's office at a bound, sitting in his father's pew at church, riding about on his tall gray horse. She could not help hearing Millerstown's discussions of his doings, of his generosity to the Koehlers, of his subscriptions to the church, of his free-and-easy ways.

Presently there was a sudden motion on the Hartman porch; a tall figure appeared, the cat rose and went with arched back to meet her master, a clear whistle lifted to the ears of Katy. She started and went on her way, angry with herself for watching. She meant to climb to the Sheep Stable and sit there upon the great rock and look down upon the valley. There she could be alone, there she could look her fill upon Millerstown, there she could fortify herself for the future.

Before the Koehler house, William was puttering about in the yard. He called to her and gave her some flowers. He had been told of Katy's part in his deliverance, and though he seemed to have forgotten the specific reason for his kindly feeling toward her, he was more friendly only with David Hartman. He seemed not so much to have lost his mind and found it as to have harked back to his childhood.

Walking more rapidly after this delay, Katy went up the mountain road. The afternoon would pass all too quickly.

"I cannot make many plans," said Katy, soberly, as she went along. "If I make plans there is a hex on them. I must educate myself for whatever comes. It would be easier to educate myself if I were sure that something would come!" cried Katy, with sudden passion. "But there is nothing any more before me!"

The woods thickened; there was the chatter of an angry squirrel, a flash of gold as a flicker floated downward through the sunshine, showing the bright lining of his wings; there was the rich odor of ripening nuts, of slippery elm. On each side of the road and arching above rose the flaming trees, the golden brown beeches, the yellow hickories and maples, the crimson oaks. It was a beautiful, beautiful world, though one's heart was sad.

At the Sheep Stable Katy climbed out on the rocky parapet and sat with half-closed, half-blinded eyes. There was not a cloud in the sky; all was clear and bright. Far to the right lay the county seat; in the middle distance stood the blast furnace, the smoke rising lazily from its chimney; far away against the horizon rose the Blue Ridge with its three gaps where the Lehigh and the Schuylkill and the Delaware Rivers made their way through its barrier to the sea.

Directly below lay Millerstown, thickly shaded, still. Looking upon it, Katy felt her eyes fill with tears. She could see the golden light which the maples cast now upon its streets; she could see also the blanket of snow which would presently cover it, the moonlight which would light it enchantingly.

"But I will not be here!" mourned Katy. "Everything will go on in the same way, but I will not be here. I will be far away with those who do not know me. But I will not forget!" cried Katy. "I will not forget anything. I will have Millerstown graven on my heart!"

Then Katy bent her head. She was still cruelly obsessed. She thought of David Hartman, of his steady, gray eyes; she thought of his great house, of his fine mind, of his great prospects. Katy had grown up; remembering now the affection of her youth, she set her teeth and wept. Life and love were not devotion to a pair of dark eyes; life and love meant growth of one's heart and soul and mind, they meant possessions and power and great experiences which she could not now define. David was them all. Katy was not worldly or calculating, she had only learned to understand herself aright.

"I would like to talk to him," said Katy. "I would like him to know that I have some sense at last. Then I could be more satisfied to go away."

Then Katy turned her head and looked round at the little path which led through the woodland to the parapeted rock. The winding mountain road was out of sight from the Sheep Stable; a person could approach close to the little plateau without being seen. A rustle of the leaves betrayed a visitor. He walked briskly, leaping over rocks, thrusting aside branches like one whose mind is not upon the way but upon the goal. From the porch of his house he had seen Katy climbing the hill.

He lifted himself to a seat on the great rock beside Katy and raised his hand to shelter his eyes while he looked over the wide prospect.

"It's beautiful up here, isn't it, Katy?"

Katy caught her breath. Her chance to talk had come; she seemed to be filling her lungs to make the best of it. "Yes," said she.

"I'm sorry I frightened you." David did not speak very earnestly; his apology was perfunctory, as though he would just as soon have frightened her as not.

"It's all right," said Katy.

David looked about the little plateau. There was the little cairn; he wondered, with amusement whether he had taken all evidences of his early wickedness away. Then he looked smilingly down upon his companion, who seemed unable to make use of the air which she had taken into her lungs, but sat silently with scarlet cheeks. The cheeks flushed now a still more brilliant color.

"We've met here before," said David, still smiling.

Katy filled her lungs with air again.

"I was abominable," she confessed, trembling. She began to be a little frightened. Here she had laid hands on David, had taken sides with his enemy, had thrust him violently down upon the ground, had screamed insulting things at him. She had a cold fear that he might be going to punish her for that miserable, compromising episode.

But David's tone was fairly pleasant.

"Yes," he agreed, "you were."

Katy's head bent a little lower. She said to herself that all the education in the world would not remove the hateful stain of her association with poor Alvin. There was nothing she could say, though she had now ample opportunity; all she could do would be to remove herself as soon as possible from close proximity to this tall, gray figure, to the amused smile of these gray eyes. A moth on a pin could flutter no more feebly than Katy fluttered inwardly.

"I wish you would forgive me," said she, by way of preparation for a humble departure.

"But I won't," replied David. "I won't forgive you ever."

Katy's heart beat more and more rapidly. Was he really going to punish her in some strange way? Was he—she glanced rapidly about, then remembered how firmly that hand beside her controlled the great horse. There was no escape unless he let her go.

Then, in spite of herself, Katy looked up, to find David looking down upon her. An incredible notion came into her mind, an astounding premonition of what he meant to say. If she had waited an instant David would have spoken, would have mastered the overwhelming fear that, after all, the hunger of his heart was not to be satisfied. But being still Katy, she could not wait, would not wait, but rushed once more into speech, broken, tearful.

"I was crazy in my youth," gasped Katy. "I was wild. I cannot understand myself. Perhaps there are years when we are crazy. But I got over it. I got some sense. I was made to have sense. Trouble came upon me. I was tamed. Then I went to live at your house and I read your books, and you used to come home, and you were so wise and—and—so—so different from everybody—" Did any one think for an instant that Katy's day of romance was past?—"I thought it would kill me because I had been such a fool and you knew it. I thought you must do worse than hate me, I thought you must despise me. I thought—"

David put out his arm. With shaking voice he laughed.

"Oh, foolishness!" said David. He bent his cheek upon her forehead. "I have loved you as long as I can remember, Katy."

Katy clasped her hands across her beating heart, and closed her eyes.

"I am not prepared," said she in a whisper. "I am not educated! I am nothing! But, oh!" cried Katy Gaumer in the language of the Sunday-School book, "If you will give me a little time, I will bring home my sheaves!"