ed Thurston wanted Withrow herself. I can't
swear to it, even now; but I suspected it sufficiently to feel that some
one, for Withrow's sake had better see Kathleen besides his exuberant
and slangy cousin. She danced a little too much on Kathleen Somers's
grave. I determined to go myself, and not to take the trouble of asking
vainly for an invitation. I left New York at the end of June.

With my perfectly ordinary notions of comfort in traveling, I found that
it would take me two days to get to Hebron. It was beyond all the
resorts that people flock to: beyond, and "cross country" at that. I
must have journeyed on at least three small, one-track railroads after
leaving the Pullman at some junction or other.

It was late afternoon when I reached Hebron; and nearly an hour later
before I could get myself deposited at Kathleen Somers's door. There was
no garden, no porch; only a long, weed-grown walk up to a stiff front
door. An orchard of rheumatic apple-trees was cowering stiffly to the
wind in a far corner of the roughly fenced-in lot; there was a windbreak
of perishing pines.

In the living-room Kathleen Somers lay on a cheap wicker chaise-longue,
staring at a Hindu idol that she held in her thin hands. She did not
stir to greet me; only transferred her stare from the gilded idol to
dusty and ungilded me. She spoke, of course; the first time in my life,
too, that I had ever heard her speak ungently.

"My good man, you had better go away. I can't put you up."

That was her greeting. Melora Meigs was snuffling in the hallway
outside--listening, I suppose.

"Oh, yes, you can. If you can't I'm sure Joel Blake will. I've come to
stay a while, Miss Somers."

"Can you eat porridge and salt pork for supper?"

"I can eat tenpenny nails, if necessary. Also I can sleep in the barn."

"Melora!" The old woman entered, crooked and grudging of aspect. "This
friend of my father's and mine has come to see me. Can he sleep in the
barn?"

I cannot describe the hostility with which Melora Meigs regarded me. It
was not a pointed and passionate hatred. That, one could have examined
and dealt with. It was, rather, a vast disgust that happened to include
me.

"There's nothing to sleep on. Barn's empty."

"He could move the nurse's cot out there, if he really wants to. And I
think there's an extra washstand in the woodshed. You'll hardly need
more than one chair, just for a night," she finished, turning to me.

"Not for any num