y treachery of Rose added its injury. He pitched the
box in his hands upon the clay floor, and the accordion fell out,
quivering like a live thing.

"Hey!" William Vibard remonstrated; "don't do like that ... delicate--"
He knelt, with an expression of concern, and, tenderly fingering the
instrument, replaced it in the box.

Gordon turned sharply and returned to the house. Rose was in her room. He
could hear her moving rapidly about, pulling at the bureau drawers.
Depression settled upon him; he carried the lantern into the bedroom,
where he sat bowed, troubled. He was aroused finally by the faint strains
of William's latest melodic effort drifting discreetly from the stable.

The next morning the Vibards departed. Rose was silent, her face, red and
swollen, was vindictive. On the back of the vehicle that conveyed them to
the parental Berrys was securely tied the square bundle that had "fixed
good" William Vibard musically for life.

XII

Gordon Makimmon, absorbed in the difficult and elusive calculations of his
indefinable project was unaware of the change wrought by their departure,
of the shifting of the year, the familiar acts and living about him. He
looked up abruptly from the road when Valentine Simmons, upon the platform
of the store, arrested his progress homeward.

Simmons' voice was high and shrill, as though time had tightened and dried
his vocal cords; his cheeks were still round and pink, but they were
sapless, the color lingered like a film of desiccated paint.

The store remained unchanged: Sampson, the clerk, had gone, but another,
identical in shirt sleeves upheld by bowed elastics, was brushing the
counters with a turkey wing; the merchandise on the shelves, unloaded from
the slow procession of capacious mountain wagons, flowed in endless,
unvaried stream to the scattered, upland homes.

Valentine Simmons took his familiar place in the glass enclosure,
revolving his chair to fix on Gordon a birdlike attention.

"As an old friend," he declared, "an old Presbyterian friend, I want to
lay some of my experience before you. I want to complain a little, Gordon;
I have the right ... my years, Pompey's associate. The fact is--you're
hurting the County, you're hurting the people and me; you're hurting
yourself. Everybody is suffering from your--your mistaken generosity. We
have all become out of sorts, unbalanced, from the exceptional condition
you have brought about. It won't do, Gordon; cred