nt once took me to his house, and greater courtesy I never
found anywhere, though I was not invited to come again. It is known that
he owns a fleet of flatboats, and one of them is usually seen waiting
near Duff's Fort when horses are stolen, and it is always gone before
the dawn of the next day; but there is no proof of this, either. Boats
belonging to other people have a hard time getting past Duff's Fort.
More often than not, they are never seen or heard of after reaching that
fatal point, and the passengers vanish off the face of the earth. That
is what happened to Ruth's parents, as nearly as any one but Alston
knows. Most likely he knows nothing more."

"And knowing this, she loves him, and the judge and his nephew trust
him?"

"The child doesn't know anything about it. Who would tell her? He is
like her father--he could not have been more tender of her had she been
his own child. There is nothing strange in her loving him; it would be
far more strange if she did not. She is a gentle, loving nature, and he
has done everything to win her love, and you know what he is."

"How can any creature in human form be so utterly unnatural--so wholly
a monster? How can he endure to see her, much less profess fondness for
her, knowing what he has done?"

"I have thought a good deal about that, and I have never been able to
make up my mind. You see we don't know that he has done anything wrong.
Yet it may be an unconscious expiation. Who knows? The human heart is a
mysterious thing. But it is most likely that he simply began to love her
when she was a baby, just because she was so lovely that he couldn't
help it. She won all hearts in her cradle--the little witch. I remember
very well how she used to keep me from my work, by curling her rose leaf
of a hand around one of my rough fingers, before she could talk."

"But why--loving her--should he wish to marry her against her will?"

"We do not know that it is against her will. That is to say, I know
nothing of the kind, and I have no reason even to think it."

There was a silence after this. Paul Colbert was suddenly realizing that
he also had no reason to think her unwilling; but this did not comfort
him or change his feeling. It is the delight and misery of love never to
have anything to do with reason.

"It is not likely that Alston would approve anything that he did not
believe was for her happiness," Father Orin went on after a brief
silence. "But there may have been