rbour with his clothes on because some one dared him, and was nearly
drowned with the tide coming in or going out, I forget which; and another
day he got on the engine at Charleston station and started the train,
drove it too, till they managed to climb over the top of the carriages or
something and stop him--at least that's the story. He'll come to a bad
end, that boy, unless he mends his ways. Lots of people say he's got good
in him. So he has, perhaps, but it's just that sort that come to the worst
end, unless the good manages to fight the bad and get it under in time."

Phyl said nothing. Her mind was disturbed. She had slept scarcely at all
during the night, and her feelings towards Silas Grangerson, now that she
was beyond his reach, were alternating in the strangest way between
attraction and repulsion.

They would have repelled the thought of him entirely but for the
instinctive recognition of the fact that his conduct had been the result
of impulse, the impulse of a child, ill governed, and accustomed to seize
what it wanted. Added to that was the fact of his entire naturalness. From
the moment of their first meeting he had talked to her as though they were
old acquaintances. Unless when talking to his father, everything in his
manner, tone, conversation was free, unfettered by convention, fresh, if
at times startling. This was his great charm, and at the same time his
great defect, for it revealed his want of qualities no less than his
qualities.

Do what she could she was unable to escape from the incident of last
night, it was as though those strong arms had not quite released their
hold upon her, as though Pan had broken from the bushes, shown her by his
magic things she had never dreamed of, and vanished.

It was nearly two o'clock when they reached Vernons. Richard Pinckney was
at home, and at the sight of him Phyl's heart went out towards him. Clean,
well groomed, honest, kindly, he was like a breath of fresh sea air after
breathing tropical swamp atmosphere.

Strange to say Miss Pinckney seemed to feel somewhat the same.

"Yes, we're back," said she, as they passed into the dining-room where
some refreshments were awaiting them, "and glad I am to be back. Vernons
smells good after Grangersons. Oh, dear me, what is it that clings to that
place? It's like opening an old trunk that's been shut for years. I told
Seth Grangerson, right out flat, he ought to get away from there into the
world somewhere,