ld not understand that tigerish onslaught of
Monohan's. It was more the action she would have expected from her
husband.

It puzzled her, grieved her, added a little to the sorrowful weight that
settled upon her. They were turbulent spirits both. The matter might not
end there.

In the next ten days three separate incidents, each isolated and
relatively unimportant, gave Stella food for much puzzled thought.

The first was a remark of Fyfe's sister in the first hours of their
acquaintance. Mrs. Henry Alden could never have denied blood kinship
with Jack Fyfe. She had the same wide, good-humored mouth, the blue eyes
that always seemed to be on the verge of twinkling, and the same fair,
freckled skin. Her characteristics of speech resembled his. She was
direct, bluntly so, and she was not much given to small talk. Fyfe and
Stella met the Aldens at Roaring Springs with the _Waterbug_. Alden
proved a genial sort of man past forty, a big, loose-jointed individual
whose outward appearance gave no indication of what he was
professionally,--a civil engineer with a reputation that promised to
spread beyond his native States.

"You don't look much different, Jack," his sister observed critically,
as the _Waterbug_ backed away from the wharf in a fine drizzle of rain.
"Except that as you grow older, you more and more resemble the pater.
Has matrimony toned him down, my dear?" she turned to Stella. "The last
time I saw him he had a black eye!"

Fyfe did not give her a chance to answer.

"Be a little more diplomatic, Dolly," he smiled. "Mrs. Jack doesn't
realize what a rowdy I used to be. I've reformed."

"Ah," Mrs. Alden chuckled, "I have a vision of you growing meek and
mild."

They talked desultorily as the launch thrashed along. Alden's profession
took him to all corners of the earth. That was why the winter of Fyfe's
honeymoon had not made them acquainted. Alden and his wife were then in
South America. This visit was to fill in the time before the departure
of a trans-Pacific liner which would land the Aldens at Manila.

Presently the Abbey-Monohan camp and bungalow lay abeam. Stella told
Mrs. Alden something of the place.

"That reminds me," Mrs. Alden turned to her brother. "I was quite sure I
saw Walter Monohan board a train while we were waiting for the hotel car
in Hopyard. I heard that he was in timber out here. Is he this Monohan?"

Fyfe nodded.

"How odd," she remarked, "that you should be in the same reg