ne."

Miranda looked him in the face with noble scorn, and with a sudden motion
of her brown hand sent the coin flying on the stone pavement.

"I tell you I'm not your friend, and I don't want your money. I wouldn't
trust its goodness any more than your face. As fer keepin' still I'll do
as I see fit about it. I intend to know what this means, and if you've
made _her_ any trouble you'd better leave this town, for I'll make it too
unpleasant fer you to stay here!"

With a stealthy glance about him, cautious, concerned, the young man
suddenly hurried down the street. He wanted no more parley with this
loud-voiced avenging maiden. His fear came back upon him in double force,
and he was seen to glance at his watch and quicken his pace almost to a
run as though a forgotten engagement had suddenly come to mind. Miranda,
scowling, stood and watched him disappear around the corner, then she
turned back and began to pick raspberries with a diligence that would have
astonished her grandmother had she not been for the last hour engaged with
a calling neighbor in the room at the other side of the house, where they
were overhauling the character of a fellow church member.

Miranda picked on, and thought on, and could not make up her mind what she
ought to do. From time to time she glanced anxiously toward the woods, and
then at the lowering sun in the West, and half meditated going after
Marcia, but a wholesome fear of her grandmother held her hesitating.

At length she heard a firm step coming down the street. Could it be? Yes,
it was David Spafford. How was it he happened to come home so soon?
Miranda had heard in a round-about-way, as neighbors hear and know these
things, that David had taken the stage that morning, presumably on
business to New York, and was hardly expected to return for several days.
She had wondered if Marcia would stay all night alone in the house or if
she would go to the aunts. But now here was David!

Miranda looked again over the wheat, half expecting to see the flying
figure returning in haste, but the parted wheat waved on and sang its song
of the harvest, unmindful and alone, with only a fluttering butterfly to
give life to the landscape. A little rusty-throated cricket piped a
doleful sentence now and then between the silences.

David Spafford let himself in at his own door, and went in search of
Marcia.

He wanted to find Marcia for a purpose. The business which had taken him
away in the morn