near him, seemed to travel back from a far place before he saw her.
Farwell was an old-young man; he cultivated the appearance of age, but
only the very youthful were deceived. His long, dark hair fell about his
thin face lankly, and it was an easy matter, by dropping his head, to
hide his features completely.

He was tall and, from much stooping over books or the work of his garden,
was round-shouldered. When he looked you fully in the face, which he
rarely did, it was noticed that his eyes were at once childishly friendly
and deathly sad.

The older people of Kenmore had ceased to wonder about him. Having
accepted him, they let matters drop. To the children, to all helpless
animals, he was an enduring solace and power. When all else failed they
looked to him for solution. For this had Priscilla come.

"To be sure!" cried Farwell at length. "It's Priscilla Glenn. Bad child!
It's many a day since we had a lesson. There! there! no excuses. Sit down
and--own up!"

While he was speaking Farwell replenished the wood on the fire and
brushed the ashes from the hearth. Priscilla, in a chair, sat upright and
rather breathlessly wondered how she could manage all she wanted to say
and hear in the small space of time that was hers.

Anton's back was toward her when she uttered her first question and the
words brought him to an upright position, facing her at once.

"Mr. Farwell, where did you come from--I mean before the wreck?"

For a moment the master looked as if about to spring forward to lock the
door and bar the windows. Real alarm was in his eyes.

"Who told you to ask that?" he whispered.

"No one. No one has to tell me questions; I have more of my own than I
can ask. I never thought before about you, Mr. Farwell, we're so used to
you, but now it's because of _me_. I want to know. Somebody has got to
help me--I feel it coming again."

"Feel what coming?" Farwell sat limply down in the chair he had lately
occupied.

"Why, the lure. It comes to the boys, Mr. Farwell. They just get it and
go off to the States, and it's come to me! I've always known it would.
You see, I've got to go away; not just now, but some time. I'm going out
through the Secret Portage. I'm going away, away to find my real place.
I'm going to do something--out where the States are. I hoped you came
from there; could tell me--how to go about it. Do you know, I feel as if
I had been dropped in Kenmore just to rest before I went on!"

Farwell