very good friends.

In half an hour Mr. Lavine appeared from the cottage dressed in Mr.
Jarley's best suit of clothes. He shook hands with Polly, and then
suddenly drew her to him and kissed her on the forehead.

"You are a dear girl, Polly," he declared, with some emotion. "I have to
thank you for my little girl's life; and now I am going to thank your
father for _mine_."

He walked straight down to the landing where Mr. Jarley was apparently
very busy.

"Bill, here, says he will row you over to that camp if you care to go,
Mr. Lavine," said the boatman.

"I don't want to see Bill, John," said the real estate man. "I want to
see _you_. I am going to take advantage of my position as your
guest, John. You cannot turn me off, or refuse to talk with me. You
always were a gentleman, John, and I am sure you will listen to me now."

Mr. Jarley looked at him a good deal as Polly had looked (at first) at
Wyn Mallory.

"Come! don't hold a grudge, John, just because _I_ have been wicked
enough to hold one all these years. I was wrong. I freely admit it. Come
and sit down here, old man, and let's talk all that old matter over and
see where our misunderstanding lay."

"Misunderstanding?"

"Aye," said the other, warmly. "Misunderstanding. For I am convinced now
that a brave and generous man like you, John Jarley, would never have
knowingly done what--all these years--I have held you to be guilty of!"

He had put his arm through the boatman's. Together they walked aside and
sat down upon an upturned skiff. And they were sitting there long after
it grew pitch dark upon the landing, with only the glow of Polly's lamp
in the kitchen window and that uncertain radiance upon the lake which
seems the reflection of the distant stars.

Finally the two men stepped into a skiff and Mr. Jarley rowed it over to
Green Knoll Camp. They did not reach the camp until nearly bedtime, and
they came so softly to the shore that the girls did not hear the
scraping of the boat's keel.

Lavine seized his old friend's hand before leaping ashore.

"Then it's understood, John? You're to get out of this place and come
back to Denton? I'm sorry Dr. Shelton is ahead of me in giving Polly
something substantial; but you and I are going to begin just where we
left off in that Steel Rivet Corporation deal, John.

"About next month I'll have a bigger thing than _that_ in sight,
and you shall have the same share in it that you would have had in the
old