had followed Ardea's lead up the steep bit
of path climbing from the road and the pasture wall, and it evoked
memories. Often in the boyhood days, when the Nazarite fit was on, he
had climbed to the deserted solitude of the glen to sit on the broad
door-stone of the dog-keeper's cabin as a hermit at large,--monarch for
the monastic moment of a kingdom as remote as that of John the Baptist
in the Wilderness of Sin.

"I thought of it last night," said Ardea, nodding toward the cabin. "It
is just the place for Nancy, if she can not, or will not, go back to her
father. After breakfast, I shall send Dinah and a man up to set things
in order, and she can come as soon as she likes. She won't mind the
loneliness?"

Tom shook his head. "I should think not; she has never been used to
anything else. I'll bring her and the youngster over in the buggy any
time you telephone." He had quite forgotten his lesson of the previous
evening.

"Indeed, you will do nothing of the kind," was the quick reply. "Japheth
will go after her when we are ready; and if you are prudently wise you
will have business in South Tredegar for the next few days."

The blue-grass, seeded once in the dog-keeper's dooryard, had spread to
the farthest limits of the glen, and the autumn rains had given it a
spring-like start. Tom let Saladin crop a dozen mouthfuls unchecked
before he said:

"That looks like dodging; and I don't like to dodge."

"You will have to do many things you don't like before you say your _ave
atque vale_," she remarked. "But you shall be permitted to carry your
full share of the burden. I mean to let you give me some money, if you
can afford it, and I'll spend it for you."

"Charity itself couldn't be kinder," he asseverated. "And, luckily, I
can afford it. But--"

He was looking at her wistfully, and the old longing for sympathy, for
the sympathy which has been quite to the bottom of the well where truth
lies, was about to cry out against this riveting of the fetters of
misunderstanding and false accusation.

"But you would rather spend it yourself?" she broke in, fancying she had
divined his thought. "That cannot be. The one condition on which I shall
consent to help is the completest isolation for Nan. You must promise me
you will not try to see her. I am hoping against hope that none of the
Mountain View Avenue people will find out what you did last night."

"Oh, confound their gossiping tongues!" he railed; adding hastily: "