all you up next week some time I have
a lot of things I want to talk over with you."

But he knew she was avoiding him.

And he knew that he ought to see her. Through Mr. Hendricks he had
learned something more about Jim Doyle, the real Doyle and not the
poseur, and he felt she should know the nature of the accusations
against him. Lily mixed up with a band of traitors, Lily of the white
flame of patriotism, was unthinkable. She must not go to the house on
Cardew Way. A man's loyalty was like a woman's virtue; it could not be
questionable. There was no middle ground.

He heard voices as he entered the house, and to his amazement found
Ellen in the parlor. She was sitting very stiff on the edge of her
chair, her hat slightly crooked and a suit-case and brown paper bundle
at her feet.

Mrs. Boyd was busily entertaining her.

"I make it a point to hold my head high," she was saying. "I guess there
was a lot of talk when I took a boarder, but--Is that you, Willy?"

"Why, Miss Ellen!" he said. "And looking as though headed for a
journey!"

Ellen's face did not relax. She had been sitting there for an hour,
letting Mrs. Boyd's prattle pour over her like a rain, and thinking
meanwhile her own bitter thoughts.

"I am, Willy. Only I didn't wait for my money and the bank's closed, and
I came to borrow ten dollars, if you have it."

That told him she was in trouble, but Mrs. Boyd, amiably hospitable and
reveling in a fresh audience, showed no sign of departing.

"She says she's been living at the Cardews," she put in, rocking
valiantly. "I guess most any place would seem tame after that. I do
hear, Miss Hart, that Mrs. Howard Cardew only wears her clothes once and
then gives them away."

She hitched the chair away from the fireplace, where it showed every
indication of going up the chimney.

"I call that downright wasteful," she offered.

Willy glanced at his watch, which had been his father's, and bore the
inscription: "James Duncan Cameron, 1876" inside the case.

"Eleven o'clock," he said sternly. "And me promising the doctor I'd have
you in bed at ten sharp every night! Now off with you."

"But, Willy--"

"--or I shall have to carry you," he threatened. It was an old joke
between them, and she rose, smiling, her thin face illuminated with the
sense of being looked after.

"He's that domineering," she said to Ellen, "that I can't call my soul
my own."

"Good-night," Ellen said briefly.

Willy stood at