strange
words and faltering through the difficult passages, but vibrant to the
beauty and the pathos of it all. On and on she read, and the sun went
down, and the fragrance of dying locust bloom came faintly from the
hill, and overhead in the tree-tops the evening breeze murmured its
world-old plaint of loneliness and longing.

Suddenly Guinevere's voice faltered, then steadied, then faltered again,
then without warning she flung her arms across the back of the bench,
and, dropping her head upon them, burst into passionate sobs.

Hinton, who had been sitting for a long time with his hands pressed over
his eyes, sprang up to go to her.

"Guinevere," he said, "what's the matter? Don't cry, dear!" Then, as he
stumbled, a look of terror crossed his face and he caught at the railing
for support. "Where are you?" he asked sharply. "Speak to me! Give me
your hand! I can't see--I can't--oh, my God, it has come!"

XV

The warning note sounded by Mrs. Fallows at the beginning of the oil
boom was echoed by many before the summer was over. The coldest thing in
the world is an exhausted enthusiasm, and when weeks slipped into
months, and notes fell due, and the bank became cautious about lending
money, a spirit of distrust got abroad, and a financial frost settled
upon the community.

Notwithstanding these conditions, "The Opp Eagle" persistently screamed
prosperity. It attributed the local depression to the financial
disturbance that had agitated the country at large, and assured the
readers that the Cove was on the eve of the greatest period in its
history.

"The ascending, soaring bubble of inflated prices cannot last much
longer," one editorial said; "the financial flurry in the Wall Streets
of the North were pretty well over before we become aware of it, in a
major sense. 'The Opp Eagle' has in the past, present, and future waged
noble warfare against the calamity jays. Panic or no panic, Cove City
refuses to remain in the backgrounds. There has been a large order for
job-work in this office within the past ten days, also several new and
important subscribers, all of which does not make much of a showing for
hard times, at least not from our point of looking at it."

But in the same issue, in an inconspicuous corner, were a couple of
lines to the effect that "the editor would be glad to take a load of
wood on subscription."

The truth was that it required all of Mr. Opp's diplomacy to rise to the
occasion. T