In the somewhat frayed and ragged end of the mitten to which the State of Michigan has been likened is a modest bay indenting the left-hand edge, called Little Traverse, to distinguish it from another further down, where a greater rent has been raveled out.

Into this bay a long slim finger of land is thrust out from the northern shore, enclosing in its crook a harbor so safe and possible in all seas that from the earliest navigation of these waters it has been a port. The port, known in the days of New France by the more euphonious name of l'Arbor Croche, is now called prosaically Harbor Springs, but the bay, by the most fortunate reversion to an earlier occupation, is We-que-ton-sing—signifying in the Indian tongue from which it is derived, "A little one within the larger bay."

On this inner bay has grown up, among the white birches, a very beautiful little summer resort, and it was here that Margaret De Jarnette found herself after her flight from the Island. She had had a calm night and had waked with a song of deliverance on her lips. Here, surely, in this peaceful spot was nothing which could molest or make afraid.

Rising early, she had dressed herself and Philip and together they had slipped past Mrs. Pennybacker's door and on out upon the hotel piazza. The only sound of life was the clatter in the kitchen and dining-room. But her soul was so full of relief that she had found it impossible to sleep. As she looked out over the bay, sparkling in the morning sun, her joy bubbled over, and the words of an old anthem rose to her lips. She sang it softly but triumphantly as she and Philip went out upon the pier.

There was a jubilant ascending scale at the last.

"Good morning!" came a voice from behind her. "Your body came perilously near escaping too. I am out of breath trying to catch up with you. I was glad there was water beyond, so that something could stop you!"

It was John Harcourt, every trace of last night's bad humor gone.

"Oh, good morning! Isn't this superb? I don't often sing, but this air is like wine. I think it went to my head. But then I didn't expect to have an audience this time of the morning."

"Where are the others?"

"Not up yet. They are losing the cream of the day, aren't they?" Then turning toward the water, "What place is that across the bay? It looks like quite a city."

"Petoskey. Named for an old Ottawa chief of this locality, I believe. And that place over at our right is Harbor Point."

"I noticed it last night. The lights from both places add immeasurably to the beauty of the night scene, especially the one from the lighthouse. It throws a shaft of glowing red across the water. Did you notice it? I thought I never saw anything so lovely as this bay was by moonlight."

"It is beautiful in all its phases. I have heard it likened to the Bay of Naples. Come and take a morning walk with me. What do you say? It will give you an appetite for the broiled whitefish you will have for breakfast."

"Can I go without my hat?"

"Certainly. Nobody wears hats now but old ladies and men."

She caught the spirit of the hour. "Come, dearest, let's see if we can't outwalk him." Philip ran up ahead in great glee.

"If you get tired, young lady, I'll carry you," Harcourt called after him.

"I can carry my own se'f," was the proud answer.

"That will fix her," said Harcourt. "I never saw a youngster so afraid of being helped."

They walked back to the broad walk running along the bay front and turned east. The walk was some distance back from the water here and lay between clumps of white birches left to their natural irregularity, but growing so thick that they formed a shadowy aisle for them to walk through.

"Now, I will be showman. This house," pointing to a square-built yellow frame house with verandas on three sides, "they say is one of the oldest on the grounds—one of the pioneers, in fact—but it doesn't look it."

"It certainly has an air of solid comfort, and its owner must have had first choice of sites. See those birches there at the east—"

She broke off to say excitedly, "Oh, Philip, look! Did you see that dear little squirrel? there, running up the tree."

"'Philip'!" John Harcourt said to himself. "Well, that's queer!" He did not refer to it when they started on, and she was plainly unaware that she had used the name, but he laid it away in his memory for future reference. Philip!... Bess had said—

In gayest mood they wandered on down the bay until they came to Roaring Brook. Here, taking Philip's hand, Harcourt led the way under low-hanging boughs to a foot-path which took them straight into Nature's solitudes. A board walk (which seemed almost an impertinence in its newness—a parvenue except for its considerateness in walking around instead of over the gentry of the forest) followed the windings of a stream dark and shadowy. In its shallows swam schools of minnows which they watched from the rustic bridges, and flecks of sunlight fell upon it in patches here and there.

They were in a tanglewood of tall timber—mammoth cedars that looked centuries old, and lofty elms and maples and hemlocks lifting their heads defiantly. But it was a pitiful defiance after all, for on every side lay fallen giants that had succumbed as they must one day succumb to a force stronger than themselves, and their stricken forms, their outstretched arms told of the vanquishment. Not even the mosses and the friendly vines clambering from limb to limb could hide their shame.

"Oh, this is nature's tragedy!" cried Margaret. He had observed in her a habit of endowing inanimate objects with life, and suffering or rejoicing with them. "They had to give up! They simply had to give up to a power that was mightier than they!"

"If they had only bent," he said, "they might have been standing yet."

"How can an oak bend?" she cried. "Even a tree must live according to its nature, and then—when the storm overpowers it—go down. So must we all."

He stood idly throwing pieces of bark into the black depths of the stream and watching them float off. He was thinking. "What an intense creature she is!"

When next she spoke it was to repeat the opening lines of Bryant's "Forest Hymn,"—her hands clasped on her heaving breast and her head thrown back. It would not have surprised him much if she had dropped to her knees and begun crossing herself, or have prostrated herself upon the walk, her forehead in the dust.

"It is not altogether flattering to my vanity," he mused, "but I'll bet a nickel she has forgotten that I am in the world. She is up in the clouds to-day for some reason. And yet—I could bring her down with a word—one little word." A boyish impulse came over him to try it. He called softly to the child who had run on up the walk,

"Philip!"

And yet more softly,

"Philip!"

She turned toward him with a look of such abject terror that he repented the experiment. The color had simply dropped from her face, leaving it white and rigid.

"Why do you call him—why do you use that name?" she asked with dry lips.

"I heard you say it."

"I?" she said incredulously, "when?"

"Not a half hour ago. It sounded to me as if you dropped into it from habit."

She laughed uneasily, but her color was coming back. "Her name is Philippa. You probably heard me say that and thought I said Philip. She—she doesn't often get her real name."

He was looking at her with a quizzical smile. He knew from Bess—or thought he did—that the child's name was Margaret.

"You don't lie as if you were used to it," he said coolly. "Try it again."

"How dare you talk to me like that?" she cried. "And by what right do you question me?"

"I haven't questioned you. What you have told has been told voluntarily. I hardly think you would stick to it if I should question you, but I have no intention of doing it." Then he came nearer to her and spoke very seriously.

"Mrs. Osborne, I beg your pardon for speaking as I did. My foolish habit of flippancy has misled me into doing a thing I had no right to do, or rather into speaking in a manner that I had no right to use toward you. I really think that my friendship for you, which you have not forbidden, at any rate, does give me the right to put you on your guard. I have not the remotest idea of the reason for the deception that you are practising, but surely it is a dangerous thing to keep it up."

His kindly tone and the manliness of his apology completely disarmed her.

"Oh," she said, clasping her hands in distress, "it is because there is so much at stake that I must keep it up. I am driven to it."

They were walking along the woodsy path now, but neither was noticing tree or fern or stream. After all, it is the human interest that overpowers every other.

"I do not wish to force your confidence, but—if I could help you—"

She shook her head. "You cannot help me. There is only one person in all the world that could help me, and he—"

She broke off abruptly, saying later, "Mr. Harcourt, I—I cannot explain, but will you not trust me that it is all right?"

"You have not set me a good example in trust," he said, looking down into her troubled eyes, "but certainly there has been nothing to shake my confidence in you—except in your judgment. If the time ever comes that I can help you, you know where to find me."

She put out her hand and he held it for a moment in his. Then looking at his watch he said, "I think it is time we are getting back." He whistled to Philip who was still proudly walking ahead, and when he came back took him by the hand and relieved the situation by devoting himself entirely to the child, showing him all manner of wonderful things that the woods contained.

He did not speak to Margaret again until they were in the bay path, and then it was only to call her attention to the different kinds of evergreens growing along the road, and to show her how to identify them.

Over the broiled whitefish at breakfast they discussed their walk and plans for the day. Harcourt was his old irrepressible self, and Margaret's equilibrium was restored though he noticed that her buoyancy of the early morning was gone. He could not help wondering many times through the day what the trouble was that so darkened her life, and who the one person was who could help her.

Toward the middle of the afternoon, two days later, they all sat on the piazza talking intermittently. It seemed very pleasant to sit idly watching the changing lights on the water, and listening to the sound of the wind blowing where it listed. Around them was the faint hum of the insect world that somehow tells us summer is nearly gone. One by one they had declined the bay trip that Mr. Harcourt had proposed. He turned his attention then to an acorn basket he was carving for Philip, looking up after a while to remark, "By the way, I ran across that man Smeltzer up at the station a little while ago. Strange that he should come to a place like this for his vacation, isn't it? You'd think now—"

"Did you talk with him?" interrupted Mrs. Pennybacker, looking startled.

"Yes. I had some curiosity to see if he would remember me.... Oh, yes, perfectly."

"Is he registered here?"

It occurred to Harcourt that Mrs. Pennybacker was taking an unusual interest in Smeltzer.

"Must be, I guess. This is the only hotel on the grounds. He says he has left Washington. I rather guess from something he said that he is with the Pinkertons."

Margaret had risen hastily and gone to the end of the porch.

"Who are the Pinkertons?" asked Bess.