Jinnie sprang up, unable at first to remember where she was. Then it all came to her. She was locked away from the world in a big house overlooking the gorge. However, the morning brought a clear sun, dissipating some of her fear—filling her with greater hope.

The dreadful dreams during the night had been but dreams of fear and pain—of eternal separation from her loved ones. Such dreams, such fears, were foolish! No one could take her away from Peggy. She wouldn’t go! Ah, the man would return very soon with Molly the Merry.

The clock struck eight. What would Blind Bobbie think—and Peggy? The woman might decide she had left her forever; but no, no, Peg couldn’t think that!

Childlike, she was hungry. If some one had intentionally imprisoned her, they must have left her something to eat. Investigation brought forth some cold meat, a bottle of milk, and some bread. Jinnie ate all she could swallow. Then for an hour and a half she paced up and down, wishing something would happen, some one would come. Anything would be better than such deadly uncertainty.

Perhaps it was the overwhelming stillness of the building, possibly a natural alertness indicative of her fear, that allowed Jinnie to catch the echoes of footsteps at the farther end of the corridor. But before she got to the 286 door, a key grated in the lock, and the man who had brought her there was standing beside her. Their eyes met in a clinging, challenging glance—the blue of the one clashing with the sinister grey, as steel strikes fire from steel. An insolent smile broke over his face and he asked nonchalantly:

“Did you find the food?”

Jinnie did not answer. She stood contemplating his face. How she hated his smile, his white teeth, and his easy, suave manner. Their glances battled again for a moment across the distance.

“Why did you bring me here?” she demanded abruptly.

He spread his feet outward and hummed, toying the while with a smooth white chin.

“Sit down,” said he, with assumed politeness.

Jinnie stared at him with contemptuous dread in her eyes.

“I don’t want to; I want to know why I’m here.”

“Can’t you guess?” asked the stranger with an easy shrug.

“No,” said Jinnie. “Why?”

“And you can’t guess who I am?”

“No,” repeated Jinnie once more, passionately, “and I want to know why I’m here.”

He came toward her, piercing her face with a pair of compelling, mesmeric eyes that made her stagger back to the wall. Then he advanced a step nearer, covering the space Jinnie had yielded.

“I’m Jordan Morse,” he then said, clipping his words off shortly.

If a gun had burst in Jinnie’s face, she could have been no more alarmed. She was frozen to silence, and every former fear her father had given life to almost three years before, beset her once more, only with many times 287 the amount of vigor. Nevertheless, she gave back look for look, challenge for challenge, while her fingers locked and interlocked. Her uncle, who had sent her father to his grave, the man who wanted her money, who desired her own death!

Then her eyes slowly took on a tragic expression. She knew then she was destined to encounter the tragedy of Morse’s terrific vengeance, and no longer wondered why her father had succumbed to his force. He stood looking at her, his gaze taking in the young form avidiously.

“You’re the most beautiful girl in the world,” he averred presently.

Jinnie’s blue eyes narrowed angrily. However, in spite of her rage, she was terribly frightened. An instinct of self-preservation told her to put on a bold, aggressive front.

“Give me that key and let me go,” she insisted, with an upward toss of her head.

She walked to the door and shook it vigorously. Morse followed her and brought her brutally back to the center of the room.

“Not so fast,” he grated. “Don’t ever do that again! I’ve been hunting you for almost three years.... Sit down, I said.”

“I won’t!” cried Jinnie, recklessly. “I won’t! You can’t keep me here. My friends’ll find me.”

The man hazarded a laugh.

“What friends?” he queried.

Jinnie thought quickly. What friends? She had no friends just then, and because she knew she was dependent upon him for her very life, she listened in despair as he threw a truth at her.

“The only friends you have’re out of business! Lafe Grandoken will be electrocuted for murder––” 288

The hateful thing he had just said and the insistence in it maddened her. She covered her face with her hands and uttered a low cry.

“And Theodore King is in the hospital,” went on Morse, mercilessly. “It’ll do no good for you to remember him.”

She was too normally alive not to express the loving heart outraged within her.

“I shall love him as long as I live,” she shivered between her fingers.

“Hell of a lot of good it’ll do you,” grunted the man coarsely.

Keen anxiety empowered her to raise an anguished face.

“You want my money––” she hesitated. “Well, you can have it.... You want it, don’t you?”

Her girlish helplessness made Morse feel that he was without heart or dignity, but he thought of his little boy and of how this girl was keeping from him the means to institute a search for the child, and his desire for vengeance kindled to glowing fires of hate. He remembered that, steadily of late, he had grown to detest the whole child-world because of his own sorrow, and nodded acquiescence, supplementing the nod with a harsh:

“And, by God, I’m going to have it, too!”

“Then let me go back to Lafe’s shop. I’ll give you every cent I have.... I won’t even ask for a dollar.”

It took some time for Morse to digest this idea; then he slowly shook his head.

“You wouldn’t be allowed to give me what would be mine––”

“If I die,” breathed Jinnie, shocked. She had read his thought and blurted it forth.

“Yes, if you die. But I haven’t any desire to kill you.... I have another way.”

“What way? Oh, tell me!” 289

“Not now,” drawled Morse. “Later perhaps.”

The man contemplated the tips of his boots a minute. Then he looked at her, the meditative expression still in his eyes.

“To save your friends,” he said at length, “you’ve got to do what I want you to.”

“You mean—to save Lafe?” gasped Jinnie, eagerly.

Morse gave a negative gesture.

“No, not him. The cobbler’s got to go. He knows too much about me.”

Jinnie thought of Lafe, who loved and helped everybody within helping distance, of his wonderful faith and patience, of the day they had arrested him, and his last words.

She could not plan for herself nor think of her danger, only of the cobbler, her friend,––the man who had taken her, a little forlorn fugitive, when she had possessed no home of her own—he who had taught her about the angels and the tenderness of Jesus. From her uncle’s last statement she had received an impression that he knew who had fired those shots. He could have Lafe released if he would. She would beg for the cobbler’s life, beg as she had never begged before.

“Please, please, listen,” she implored, throwing out her hands. “You must! You must! Lafe’s always been so good. Won’t you let him live?... I’ll tell him about your wanting the money.... You shall have it! I’ll make any promise for him you want me to, and he’ll keep it.... He didn’t kill Maudlin Bates, and I believe you know who did.”

Morse lowered his lids until his eyes looked like grey slits across his face.

“Supposing I do,” he taunted. “As I’ve said, Grandoken knows too much about me. He won’t be the first one I’ve put out of my way.” 290

He said this emphatically; he would teach her he was not to be thwarted; that when he desired anything, Heaven and earth, figuratively speaking, would have to move. He frowned darkly at her as Jinnie cut in swiftly:

“You killed my father. He told me you did.”

Morse flicked an ash from a cigar he had lighted, and his eyes grew hard, like rocks in a cold, gray dawn.

“So you know all my little indiscretions, eh?” he gritted. “Then don’t you see I can’t give you—your liberty?”

Liberty! What did he mean by taking her liberty away? She asked him with beating heart.

“Just this, my dear child,” he advanced mockingly. “There are places where people’re taken care of and—the world thinks them dead. In fact, your father had a taste of what I can do. Only he happened to––”

“Did you put him somewhere?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Same kind of a place I’m going to put you––” He hesitated a moment and ended, “A mad house!”

“Did you let him come home to me?”

“Not I. Damn the careless keepers! He skipped out one day, and I didn’t know until he’d a good start of me. I followed as soon as possible, but you were gone. Now—now—then, to find such a place for you!”

Jinnie’s imagination called up the loathsome thing he mentioned and terrified her to numbness. At that moment she understood what her father had written in that sealed letter to Lafe Grandoken.

But she couldn’t allow her mind to dwell upon his threat against herself.

“What’d you mean when you said I could save my friends?”

“You’re fond of Mrs. Grandoken, aren’t you?” 291

Jinnie nodded, trying to swallow a lump in her throat.

“And—and there’s a—a—blind child too—who could be hurt easily.”

Jinnie’s living world reeled before her eyes. During this speech she had lost every vestige of color. She sprang toward him and her fingers went blue-white from the force of her grip on his arm.

“Oh, you couldn’t, you wouldn’t hurt poor little Bobbie?” she cried hysterically. “He can’t see and he’s sick, terribly ill all the time. I’ll do anything you say—anything to help ’em.”

Then she fell to the floor, groveling at his feet.

“Get up! You needn’t cry; things’ll be easy enough for you if you do exactly as I tell you. The first order I give you is to stay here quietly until I come again.”

As he spoke, he lifted her up, and she stood swaying pitiably.

“Can’t I let Peg know where I am?” she entreated when she could speak. “Please! Please!”

“I should think not,” scoffed Morse. Then, after a moment’s consideration, he went on, “You might write her a note, if you say what I dictate. I’ll have it mailed from another town. I don’t want any one to know you’re still in Bellaire.”

“Could I send her a little money, too?” she asked.

“Yes,” replied Morse.

“Then tell me what to write, and I will.”

After he had gone and Jinnie was once more alone, she sat at the window, her eyes roving over the landscape. Her gaze wandered in melancholy sadness to the shadowy summit of the distant hills, in which the wild things of nature lived in freedom, as she herself had lived with Lafe Grandoken in Paradise Road, long before her uncle’s menacing shadow had crossed her life. Then her eyes lowered 292 to the rock-rimmed gorge, majestic in its eternal solitude. She was on the brink of some terrible disaster. She knew enough of her uncle’s character to realize that. She spent the entire day without even looking at her beloved fiddle, and after the night closed in, she lay down, thoroughly exhausted.

Peggy took a letter from the postman’s hand mechanically, but when she saw the well-known writing, she trembled so she nearly dropped the missive from her fingers. She went into the shop, where Bobbie lay face downward on the floor. At her entrance, he lifted a white face.

“Has Jinnie come yet?” he asked faintly.

“No,” said Peg, studying the postmark of the letter. Then she opened it. A five-dollar bill fell into her lap, and she thrust it into her bosom with a sigh.

“Peggy Darling,” she read with misty eyes.

“I’ve had to go away for a little while. Don’t worry. Here’s some money. Use it and I’ll send more. Kiss Bobbie for me and tell him Jinnie’ll come back soon. And the baby, oh, Peggy, hug him until he can’t be hugged any more. Don’t tell Lafe I’m away.

“With all my love,
“Jinnie.”

Peggy put down the letter.

“Bobbie!” she said.

The boy looked up. “I ain’t got any stars, Peggy,” he wailed tragically. “I want Jinnie and Lafe.”

“I’ve got a letter from Jinnie here,” announced Peggy.

The boy got to his feet instantly.

“When she’s comin’ back?”

“She don’t say, but she sends a lot of kisses and love to you. She had to go away for a few days.... Now 293 don’t snivel!... Come here an’ I’ll give you the kisses she sent.”

He nestled contentedly in Peggy’s arms.

“Let me feel the letter,” came a faltering whisper presently.

Bobbie ran his fingers over the paper, trying with sensitive finger tips to follow the ink traces.

“Can I keep it a little while?” he begged.... “Please, Peggy!”

“Sure,” said Peg, putting him down, and when the baby cried, Mrs. Grandoken left the blind child hugging Happy Pete, with Jinnie’s letter flattened across his chest between him and the dog.