t she continues to write him constantly," said Emma Ellis.

"Well, if she does, it's _her_ business, that's all I've got to say,"
said the older woman, dangerously. "Jane Vail never ran after anybody
yet and I don't believe she's going to begin now. He says--and _she_
says--she's doing some special work, and I suppose maybe he's advising
her about it."

"I've never understood before that Mr. Daragh was a literary authority,"
said the Settlement worker in her little, smothered voice.

"Well, I'm free to say it beats me. But all I know is, Jane Vail's
nobody's fool."

And Michael Daragh, meanwhile, read his letters in his room, monklike in
its simplicity, three times, and then he tore them up, quickly, the line
of his lean jaw salient. The second one to come had been dated at six in
the morning, on the wharf at Bath, and ran--

I'm shivering, Michael Daragh,--shivering in September! The
incredible freshness of this morning, the bracing miracle of cold! I
left Boston on the night boat and the stewardess rapped me firmly up
at three-thirty to see the sun rise. I stayed stubbornly in my berth,
at first, but presently a length of Quaker gray sky interlined with
faintest rose brought me to my elbow and then to the window. The
little steamer was feeling her cautious way up a river of dull silver
between banks of taupe and mauve. After a moment I could pick up
objects here and there in somber silhouette--a windmill, a battered
barn, crude landings reaching out to graze the boat. In that
tremulous moment before the break of day, shore and stream and sky
melted and ran together in the liquid pattern of an abalone shell.
Then, suddenly, the sun shot up over the rim of the world, "out of
the gates of the day," a clear persimmon, gorgeous as a Chinese
lantern, and the realm of faery warmed into reality,--river and river
banks, houses and little hummocky hills.

I must walk now to keep warm. There is a young old woman in shabby
corduroy footing it briskly to and fro, who may be going to take my
toy steamer,--tossing a mane of smoke and champing its bit at the
upper wharf--and I'm going to speak to her.

_7 A.M. Going up the River._

She was taking the down boat, but she gave her valuable
experience to me. She asked me for which island I was heading,
and when I said I didn't know,--that I meant to line them up and
say,--"My-mo