beneficent ideals of Northern capital. At the same time he could not
consider the Easterlys and the Taylors and such folk as the social
equals of the Cresswells, and his prejudice on this score must still be
reckoned with.

Below, Mary Taylor lingered on the porch in strange uncertainty. Harry
Cresswell would soon be coming downstairs. Did she want him to find her?
She liked him frankly, undisguisedly; but from the love she knew to be
so near her heart she recoiled in perturbation. He wooed her--whether
consciously or not, she was always uncertain--with every quiet
attention and subtle deference, with a devotion seemingly quite too
delicate for words; he not only fetched her flowers, but flowers that
chimed with day and gown and season--almost with mood. He had a woman's
premonitions in fulfilling her wishes. His hands, if they touched her,
were soft and tender, and yet he gave a curious impression of strength
and poise and will.

Indeed, in all things he was in her eyes a gentleman in the fine
old-fashioned aristocracy of the term; her own heart voiced all he did
not say, and pleaded for him to her own confusion.

And yet, in her heart, lay the awful doubt--and the words kept ringing
in her ears! "You will marry this man--but heaven help you if you do!"

So it was that on this day when she somehow felt he would speak, his
footsteps on the stairs filled her with sudden panic. Without a word she
slipped behind the pillars and ran down among the oaks and sauntered out
upon the big road. He caught the white flutter of her dress, and smiled
indulgently as he watched and waited and lightly puffed his cigarette.

The morning was splendid with that first delicious languor of the spring
which breathes over the Southland in February. Mary Taylor filled her
lungs, lifted her arms aloft, and turning, stepped into the deep shadow
of the swamp.

Abruptly the air, the day, the scene about her subtly changed. She felt
a closeness and a tremor, a certain brooding terror in the languid
sombre winds. The gold of the sunlight faded to a sickly green, and the
earth was black and burned. A moment she paused and looked back; she
caught the man's silhouette against the tall white pillars of the
mansion and she fled deeper into the forest with the hush of death about
her, and the silence which is one great Voice. Slowly, and mysteriously
it loomed before her--that squat and darksome cabin which seemed to
fitly set in the centre of the wi