sat, her head
bent, quietly weeping. On this, Barbara who spoke out clearly,

"Those were the last words you will ever say to me, Mr. Cummings, unless
you should some time be man enough to take back your aspersions and
apologize for them."

He gave ground instantly. I had not thought that dry voice of his could
contain what now came into it.

"Barbara, I didn't mean--you don't understand--"

But without turning her head, she spoke to me: "Mr. Boyne, will you take
Laura and me home?" gathering up Mrs. Bowman's hat and veil, shaking the
latter out, getting her charge ready as a mother might a child. "She's
not going back to him--ever again." Her glance passed over the sleeping
lump of a man in his chair. "Sarah'll make a place for her at our house
to-night."

"See here," Cummings got between us and the door. "I can't let you go
like this. I feel--"

"Mr. Dykeman," Barbara turned quietly to her employer, "could we pass
out through your room?"

"Certainly," the little man was brisk to make a way for us. "I want you
to know, Miss Wallace, that I, too, feel--I, too, feel--"

I don't know what it was that Dykeman felt, but Cummings felt my rude
elbow in his chest as I pushed him unceremoniously aside, and opened the
door he had blocked, remarking,

"We go out as we came in. This way, Barbara."

It was as I parted with the two of them at the Capehart gate that I drew
out and handed Mrs. Bowman a small piece of dull blue silk, a round hole
in it, such as a bullet or a cigarette might have made, with,

"I guess you'll just have to forgive me that."

"I don't need to forgive it," her gaze swam. "I saw your mistake. But it
was for Worth you were fighting even then; he's been so dear to me
always--I'd have to love any one for anything they did for his sake."

CHAPTER XXVII

THE BLOSSOM FESTIVAL

Two hours sleep, bath, breakfast, and I started on my early morning run
for the county seat. Nobody else was going my way; but even at that
hour, the road was full of autos, buggies, farm wagons, pretty much
everything that could run on wheels, headed for the festival, all
trimmed and streaming with the blossoming branches of their orchards.
These were the country folks, coming in early to make a big day of it;
orchardists; ranchers from the cattle lands in the south end of the
county; truck and vegetable farmers; flower-seed gardeners; the Japs and
Chinese from their little, closely cultivated patches; this tide