and was moving away down the valley, a gray mist
of rain with a slowly following flood of sunshine. Oliver got up and
said without enthusiasm:

"We must go now, we have an errand we must do. Come along, Janet."

She rose to go with him but looked back wistfully several times as she
went, with lagging feet, down the hill. She had wished that the story
might last forever, so that she need not face Anthony Crawford at the
end of it.

They said nothing to each other as they climbed into the car and
threaded the twisting lanes and byroads that would take them to the
house they sought. Oliver was rehearsing within himself what he should
say when they presented the picture. "My sister carried this away by
mistake, we thought that we should return it to you as soon as
possible.

"And then he will say something sharp and unkind, and I won't know
what to answer," he reflected drearily. "I will want to say that I am
sure it isn't his anyway and that Janet did well to take it, even by
accident. But what is the use of stirring up more trouble? Well, I can
only explain and then get away as quickly as we can."

It is probable that Janet, who sat by him in low-spirited silence, was
really suffering less than he. Oliver had undertaken the
responsibility of returning the picture, and Oliver was a dependable
boy who could manage it far better than she could. She thought little
of what was to be said or done and was only anxious to have the affair
over.

They left the car in the lane and walked together toward the sagging
gate. A man was just coming through it, who proved, as they came near,
to be John Massey. His good-natured, friendly face was pale under its
sunburn and drawn into unfamiliar lines of anger and despair.

"Mr. Peyton sent me the money to settle up my rent," he told them,
"and I came up here to pay it and arrange about leaving. Crawford
wants me to stay until the first of the month, but I am going to-day.
He has never stocked the farm with the tools and machinery a landlord
is supposed to furnish, so I've bought them myself, what I could, and
now he says they are his. He wants to know how I can prove that I paid
for them, when every one knows that it was his place to do it. He
laughed at me when I said it would ruin me entirely. He said one man's
gain was always from another man's loss. I vow there is the spirit of
a devil in him."

He looked back at the house among the trees, clenching his big hands
and mutterin