I know it. But I do know it; and you know that _it's_ for you to take
the first step. You must say how much money you brought with you, and
where it is, and how it can be got at. I should think," said Pinney,
with a drop in his earnestness, and as if the notion had just occurred
to him, "you would want to see that place of yours again."

Northwick gave a gasp in the anguish of homesickness the words brought
upon him. In a flash of what was like a luminous pang, he saw it all as
it looked the night he left it in the white landscape under the high,
bare wintry sky. "You don't know what you're talking about," he said,
with a kind of severity.

"No," Pinney admitted, "I don't suppose any one can begin to appreciate
it as you do. But I was there, just after you skipped--"

"Then I _was_ the kind of man who would skip," Northwick swiftly
reflected--

"And I must say I would take almost any chance of getting back to a
place like that. Why," he said, with an easy, caressing cordiality, "you
can't have any idea how completely the thing's blown over. Why, sir,
I'll bet you could go back to Hatboro' now, and be there twenty-four
hours before anybody would wake up enough to make trouble for you. Mind,
I don't say that's what we want you to do. We couldn't make terms for
you half as well, with you on the ground. We want you to keep your
distance for the present, and let your friends work for you. Like a
candidate for the presidency," Pinney added, with a smile. "Hello! Who's
this?"

A little French maid, barefooted, black-eyed, curly-headed, shyly
approached Northwick, and said, "Diner, Monsieur."

"That means dinner," Northwick gravely interpreted. "I will ask you to
join me."

"Oh, thank you, I shall be very glad," said Pinney rising with him. They
had been sitting on the steps of a structure that Pinney now noticed was
an oddity among the bark-sheathed cabins of the little hamlet. "Why,
what's this?"

"It's the studio of an American painter who used to come here. He hasn't
been here for several years."

"I suppose you expect to light out if he comes," Pinney suggested, in
the spirit of good fellowship towards Northwick now thoroughly
established in him.

"He couldn't do me any harm, if he wanted to," answered Northwick, with
unresentful dignity.

"No," Pinney readily acquiesced, "and I presume you'd be glad to hear a
little English, after all the French you have around."

"The landlord speaks a little; and the pri