At a famous hotel in a summer resort where people of wealth gathered, in the bridal suite, pampered and indulged in every whim, Edith Moreland was supposed to be recovering from her illness. She had been greatly disturbed over the money matter. The more she thought of it, the more frequently she said to Junior: “You know, as I have time to study about it, I see that Mahala couldn’t possibly have taken that money, even though she couldn’t account for its disappearance. You see, if I had been calling there instead of being your wife, and if I had been arrested, I couldn’t have proved that I didn’t take it.”

By unlimited and plausible lying, Junior managed to keep her reasonably satisfied. He kept her room filled with flowers. He gave her expensive pieces of jewellery. He spent the greater part of his time with her, but she only grew more irritable and felt worse. Junior could see that she really was ill and that, in spite of his best efforts, she was not regaining her health. He began to fear that she was thinking of Mahala and brooding over her when she was supposed to be talking and thinking of other things.

Junior had been distinctly surprised at himself concerning Edith. In a fit of angry disappointment at Mahala’s rejection and her scathing arraignment of him, he had naturally turned to the girl, who all her life had taken pains to let him see that she highly approved of him. His one thought had been, that since he could not have Mahala it made no difference whom he married. But in courting Mahala, the thought of marriage had strongly entered his mind, and the night of Commencement had shown him that Edith was a woman of distinctive beauty. He worshipped beauty almost as deeply as he worshipped money. From the books in the bank he had been able to gather a very agreeable estimate of Edith’s fortune which was so considerable, that once convinced that Mahala would never marry him, Junior proved the reckless trait in his character by immediately marrying Edith.

She was quite as handsome as he had thought her. He was surprised to find himself enjoying the demonstrations of affection that she lavished upon him. He was willing to wait upon her. His father and mother were consumed with wonder when they saw him fetching and carrying, but if they protested, Junior merely laughed at them and went on doing everything that Edith asked.

One evening, to escape the constant chattering of women on the upstairs veranda, in whose talk Edith was not interested, she arose. She stepped into her room, and picking up a Persian shawl, threw it over her shoulders and walked the length of the veranda. At the corner of the building she turned down a side porch and made her way past the windows of the other guests, pausing occasionally to look down to the grounds below.

Seeing that she appeared ill and pale, a woman sitting before the French doors opening into her room, shoved a chair in Edith’s direction and asked if she did not wish to sit down and rest for a few minutes.

“Thank you,” replied Edith, “you’re very kind. I have been ill, but I am much better now.”

She glanced at the woman, and seeing that her dress and manner indicated that she was not a babbling person who would tire her with senseless chatter, she took the chair and sitting down, leaned against the balcony railing and looked at the people moving through the grounds below. There were wide stretches of beautifully kept lawns, every kind of tree and shrub imaginable. There were fountains around which grew tropical water plants and in which goldfishes swam lazily. It was the first minute of quiet that Edith had experienced outside of her rooms. She enjoyed the night air. She watched big, velvet-winged moths fluttering toward the lights at the entrance to the grounds and to the building. A sense of peace and rest stole through her. The torment of doubt and uncertainty that had racked her ever since her marriage to Junior eased slightly.

She had cared for him so intensely that she found herself doing what he asked without stopping to look into his reasons, but after a few weeks of deliberation, she had reached the conclusion that while he was doing his best to be nice to her, to keep her pleased and happy, he did not love her and he never had. This had bred a bitterness in her heart surpassing anything she ever before had experienced. Undoubtedly, it had been the cause of her illness. Her one hope had been that in time Junior would come to care for her as she knew he always had cared for Mahala. When the real breakdown came, and the mystery of the lost pocket book refused to be solved, Edith was tried to the breaking point. She could not eat; she could not sleep; she could not keep from thinking, and occasionally in her thoughts there would be thrust into her consciousness ugly things that she always had heard said about the elder Moreland and Junior.

Hour by hour, she kept reviewing her whole life in reference to her relations with Mahala. With Junior she never had come in contact except through Mahala. She remembered how she had stood with her programme ready Commencement night and he had not even asked her for one dance as he stood laughingly sprawling his name all over Mahala’s card. Even Henrick Schlotzensmelter had known that it was proper for each boy of the class to ask each girl for at least one dance. For a minute as she descended from the omnibus, Edith had thought that at last Junior had really seen her. His words had furnished her the spur that carried her through her first public appearance triumphantly, when she had started with every expectation that she would fail and be forced to resort to her written speech.

She had her hour of hope, but Junior had seen to it that it was promptly quenched; and then, in a short time, he had come to her urging the hasty marriage to which she had consented because she preferred whatever life might bring to her in his company to what it would bring without him.

To-night she was realizing more keenly than usual that it might be going to bring her a very sorry scheme of things. Leaning upon the railing, she forgot the woman sitting a few yards away, as she sat staring down into the rapidly deepening shadows.

Then her eyes widened. Her breath caught in a gasp. One hand crept up to her heart, as she leaned forward, peering down intently. She must be mistaken, yet certainly a man passing through the shadows from the back of the building, accompanied by one of the maids, was Junior. Gazing earnestly to convince herself that she must be mistaken, she saw them pause and look around them to assure themselves that no one was watching. As the man turned, she saw for a certainty that he was Junior. With her lips parted and her eyes incredulous, she sat an instant watching him indulge in familiarities with the maid. She saw him give her money. She saw him take her in his arms and kiss her.

Quite unconscious of what she was doing, possibly in order to make sure of what was really happening, Edith arose, leaning far over the balcony. As the maid started to go, Junior caught her back and kissed her repeatedly. A terrible cry broke from Edith’s lips. The hand upon which she was leaning, slipped. Head first she plunged over the railing and down to the stone walk far below.

At the sound of her voice, Junior looked up. The next instant he saw her plunging fall. He stopped a second, cautioning the maid to disappear. He was the first to reach Edith. He gathered her in his arms and carried her down the walk, offering the plausible explanation that in leaning over the railing to speak to him as he was passing below, she had lost her balance and fallen.

He carried her to their room and physicians were summoned, but it was found that her neck was broken. So it was Junior’s task to take her back to Ashwater, lay her away with every outward sign of mourning and lavish expenditure, and ingratiate himself as deeply as possible with her relatives by a clever semblance of heart-broken grief.

The morning after the funeral, Junior entered the president’s room of the bank and closing the door behind him, went to the table and sat down, facing his father.

“Dad,” he said, “you’ve looked so ghastly ever since I’ve been home that I’ve come to put you out of your misery. Cheer up! Things are not as bad as they might be. In the first place, you will be rejoiced to know that I’ve got complete control of all of Edith’s finances. And in the second place, if I don’t mistake my guess, for once you will be even more rejoiced to know that what happened really and truly was an accident. I was downstairs. Edith did lose her balance and fall. There was a woman on the veranda with her near enough to see what happened and there were people on the veranda below when she came smashing down. I got to her first because I was coming that way and it wasn’t far. But it was an accident pure and simple.”

Moreland Senior leaned back in his chair and breathed to the depth of his lungs.

“Well, Junior,” he said. “I don’t know that I ever heard anything in all my life with which I was better pleased. I may, or I may not, have a few things I regret on my own soul, but I’d hate to undertake the strain of carrying a burden like that concerning you. As a man grows older, he doesn’t sleep so well as he did when he had the cast-iron constitution of youth, and there are times when the night gets pretty bad if a man’s conscience is not altogether clean. Of course, I’m not intimating that I’ve got anybody’s blood on my hands, but in the wild, hot-headed days of youth I may have done two or three things and been through a few experiences that I’d hate to see measured out to you. I want you to have a good time and get all you can out of my money—which is really your money—but be slightly careful. See to it that you don’t get into anything that’ll raise the hair on your head about three o’clock in the morning twenty years from now.”

Junior laughed. “Sure!” he said. “Don’t worry, Governor, I’ll be careful. I’ve never done anything so terrible and I’m not planning to do anything except go on with the work I’d started before I went away. Has anything come up concerning Mahala?”

Mr. Moreland shook his head.

“That’s one of the things, Junior,” he said, “that I’m not quite easy about. It was a big sum to disappear and I was after the Spellmans and I didn’t hesitate to give it to them as hard as I could, but to tell you the plain truth, I haven’t an idea where that money went. I don’t know how it got out of the house, or whether it was out of the house. Are you sure you put that pocket book on the table when Edith told you to?”

“I certainly am,” said Junior. “I went into the room, laid it beside her coat, and stepped back. You’ll remember that Mahala testified that it was there when she finished Edith’s hat and laid it with the things she was going to wear.”

Mr. Moreland slowly nodded his head.

“I remember,” he said. “That piece of testimony of hers is about the only alleviation I’ve got when Elizabeth Spellman looks at me too hard, at three in the morning. Sometimes I’m tempted to send to Chicago for a real detective and put him on the case. I find that there are things that I can do with impunity, and then there are some that I can’t. I’d rather see Mahala Spellman freed from that ugly charge against her than anything that could happen on earth right now. It’s beginning to react against us, pretty strongly, my boy.”

“In the present circumstances,” said Junior, “so would I. But money is a material thing. The earth doesn’t open and swallow it up. It’s somewhere, and I cautioned you before I left to do the most thorough piece of searching of Mahala Spellman’s home that could possibly be done. I was sure you’d find the money there. I don’t see yet how it happens that you didn’t.”

Mr. Moreland drew another deep breath. He picked up a letter in one hand and a letter opener in the other. Junior suddenly realized that his face was drawn and haggard and that the eyes that were lifted to him had a hunted look.

“Well, it happens, no doubt, because it wasn’t there,” he said. “If it had been I’d have found it. I’ve worn myself out searching our house and when I haven’t been at the job, your mother has. This thing has hurt her a great deal worse than it has either one of us. I strongly suspect, that among the old hens of this town, she’s likely getting hers. Since people have had time to think things over, I get a hint once in a while that the thing I cautioned you would happen is slowly happening. As people have time to calm down and to study things, there’s a kind of sentiment growing that Mahala never could have taken that money. After all, she didn’t really need it. Jemima had furnished her shelter; she was honestly earning her daily bread, while that damned Rich dug up a forty-acre piece of land that doesn’t need anything but cultivation to make it as fine river bottom as you ever laid your eyes on. She knew about it before this thing happened. She wasn’t what you might call destitute or in extremes, and she had a kind of pride that made her meet the thing in a way that her mother couldn’t have done. I’ve got a notion in my head that Elizabeth Spellman would have been prouder of her girl if she’d laid down beside her and died with her, instead of putting on an apron and beginning to sew for a living.”

Junior arose and stood looking at his father.

“No doubt you’re right, Dad,” he said quietly. “You most generally are. But since you didn’t have anything to do with this, since you are in no way to blame for it, don’t you think you’d better stop worrying about it? Let it go for what it’s worth.”

“Well,” said Mr. Moreland, “my dear friends and my devoted neighbours are beginning to make me feel that I’m none too popular in this community. That little ape of a Spellman, feeling and flecking and scraping, could make himself a commanding and respected figure, and I thought I’d done it, but I’m none too sure that I have. I’m none too sure that it wouldn’t take only one more little slip on my part to have every dog in the county worrying at my throat. I understand that Albert Rich, Peter Potter, and Jason Peters, are pooling issues against us. They’re doing everything in their power to find some hook or crook by which they can clear Mahala, and if the thing happens, and happens to our discredit——” The Senior Moreland paused and drew fine lines down the side of a blotter with a sharp pencil.

Junior stood waiting, studying him intently. At last the elder Moreland resumed: “If the thing happens, and happens to our discredit, I’m not any too sure that things won’t go pretty rough with us.”

Junior laughed outright, but it wasn’t a hearty laugh, and not a mirthful one.

“Don’t you think it!” he cried. “Don’t you think it!”

Martin Moreland drew a line so deep that it cut through the blotter. “I don’t think it,” he said with a terse, cold incision that arrested Junior’s deepest attention. “I don’t think it. I know it.”

Junior stiffened slightly and stood studying him.

“There’s just one thing that can save the situation,” said the elder Moreland. “If you’re ready to go to work, go to work now on the task of finding out where that pocket book went. Find it in such a way that it will be a credit to us to have found it. Find it in such a way that it will turn public opinion in our favour. Give me the chance to be the leader in doing anything that could be done to reinstate Mahala.”

As he finished, Junior laughed again, this time more naturally. “That’s something of a job that you’ve set for me, Pater,” he said. “I haven’t an idea in ten states where that pocket book is, but if that’s the way you feel about it, I’ll get on the job and see if I can resurrect it, or duplicate it, or do something. And in the meantime, is there anything you want me to do in connection with putting a small slice of the fear of God into the hearts of Albert Rich, and old Potter and Jason?”

The Senior Moreland thought intently a few minutes and then he said quietly: “Right there you had better stay your hand. They happen to be on the popular side right now. You had better just drop that and evade it, and get around it the best you can, and in the meantime, you had better spend some time and money on seeing how popular you can make yourself in this town right now.”

“All right,” said Junior, “at least one of the jobs you’ve set me is agreeable. I don’t mind in the least seeing how popular I can make myself. As a matter of fact, I deeply enjoy it, and in about ten days I’ll show you an altogether different atmosphere. It’s evident to my young mind that this village has needed me, that I’m of importance on this job, and in the meantime, I think you had better take Mother and go on a vacation. If you’ll allow me to say so confidentially, you’re looking as if a keen blast of the wrath of Heaven had struck you.”

Junior left the room. Martin Moreland went on decorating the blotter. No one kept any account of the length of time he spent or the intricacy of the designs that he drew. He heard the whistles blowing for noon before he arose and reached for his hat, and as he left the room he was saying softly to himself: “‘The wrath of Heaven.’ I wonder what the wrath of Heaven can do to me?”