er lap. "I--I
will look through this scenario, if you like. There is something down
there on the Point that I want."

"Sure. Be glad to have your company," he said, letting in his clutch after
pushing the starter. "We're off."

Ruth did not speak again just then. With widening eyes she began to devour
the first pages of the hermit's manuscript.

CHAPTER XVIII

UNCERTAINTIES

The automobile purred along the shell road, past the white-sided,
green-blinded houses of the retired ship captains and the other well-to-do
people of Herringport. The car ran so smoothly that Ruth might have read
all the way.

But after the first page or two--those containing the opening scenes of
"Plain Mary"--she dared not read farther.

Not yet. It was not that there was a familiar phrase in the upright
chirography of the old hermit. The story merely suggested a familiar
situation to Ruth's mind. Thus far it was only a suggestion.

There was something else she felt she must prove or disprove first of all.
She sat beside Mr. Hammond quite speechless until they came to the camp on
the harbor shore of Beach Plum Point.

He went off cheerfully to his letter writing, and Ruth entered the shack
she occupied with Helen and Jennie. She opened her locked writing-case.
Under the first flap she inserted her fingers and drew forth the wrinkled
scrap of paper she had picked up on the sands.

A glance at the blurred writing assured her that it was the same as that
of the hermit's scenario.

"Flash:

"As in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be----"

Shakingly Ruth sat down before the cheap little maple table. She spread
open the newspaper wrapper and stared again at the title page of "Plain
Mary."

That title was nothing at all like the one she had given her lost
scenario. But a title, after all, meant very little.

The several scenes suggested in the beginning of the hermit's story did
not conflict with the plot she had evolved, although they were not her
own. She had read nothing so far that would make this story different from
her own. The names of the characters were changed and the locations for
the first scene were different from those in her script. Nevertheless the
action and development of the story might prove to be exactly like hers.

She shrank from going deeper into the hermit's script. She feared to find
her suspicions true; yet she _must_ know.

Finally she began to read. Page after page of the large a