h
her eyes fixed on the old man. To her in that moment came a vision of
Uncle Cornie in the rose-arbor when the colorless old man had pleaded
with her to become as her father had been.

"I got into trouble back there. This is a secret session, hain't it?"
The old man hesitated again.

"Yes, dead secret," Ponk assured him. "Nothin' told outside of here
before it's first told inside, which is unusual in such secret
proceedings, so you are among friends. Go on."

Stellar Bahrr sat with her eyes piercing the old man like daggers, while
his own faded yellow-brown eyes drooped with a sorrowful expression.

"I won't say how it happened, but I got mixed up in some stealin'
scrape--that's why I changed my name or, ruther, left off the last of
it. I'd gone to the Pen--though ever' scrap I ever stole, or its money
value, was actually returned to them that had lost it. Jim Swaim stood
by me, helpin' me through, an' I paid him as I earnt it. Then he give me
money to get started here, an' befriended me every way, just 'cause it
was in him. I've lived out here on the Sage Brush alone 'cause I ain't
fit to live with folks. But when the old _mainy_, as you say of crazy
folk, comes, why, things is missin' up in town. They land in my shack
sometimes, an' sometimes I'm honest enough to bring 'em back when I can
do it. I'm the one that hangs around in the shadders, an' if you ketch
sight of strange men at side doors, Mrs. Bahrr, it's me. An' when this
Jerry Swaim (I knowed her when she was a baby; I carried her in my arms
'cross the Winnowoc once, time of a big flood up in Pennsylvany)--when
her purseful of money was stole, three years ago, an' she comes down to
my shack and finds it all there, why, she done by me then jus' like her
own daddy 'd 'a' done, she never told on me at all. An' she hain't told
all these years, and wa'n't goin' to tell on me now. I don't know what
you mean 'bout these stories on her. She never done nothin' to be
ashamed of in her life. 'Tain't in her family to be ashamed. They dunno
how. If they's blame for stealin' in New Eden, though, jus' lay it on
old Fishin' Teddy. You 'quit her now."

The old man's voice quavered as he squeaked out his words, and he
shuffled aside, to be less in evidence in the parlor, where he had for
the one time in his life been briefly the central figure.

The silence that followed his words was broken by Jerry's clear, low
voice. Her face was beautiful in the soft light there. To P