always with the problems of Anthy and
Nort uppermost in my mind. Sometimes when I could get away, and
sometimes when I couldn't (Harriet smiling discreetly), I went up in the
daytime to lend a hand in the office (especially on press days), and
often in the evening I went for a talk with Nort or Anthy or the old
Captain, or else for a good comfortable silence with Fergus while he sat
tipped back in his chair on the little porch of the office, and smoked a
pipe or so--and the daylight slowly went out, the moist evening odours
rose up from the garden, and the noises in the street quieted down.

As I have said, the incident of the fan marked the end of the era of
Nort the subdued. From that time onward, for a time, it was Nort the
ascendant--yes, Nort the obstreperous! As I look back upon it now I have
an amusing vision of one after another of us hanging desperately to the
coat tails of our Phaeton to prevent him from driving the chariot of the
_Star_ quite to destruction.

It was this way with Nort. He had begun to recover from the remorse and
discouragement which had brought him to Hempfield. If he had been in the
city he would probably have felt so thoroughly restored and so virtuous
that he would have sought out his old companions and plunged with
renewed zest into the old life of excitement. But being in the quiet of
the country he had to find some outlet for his high spirits, some food
for his curious, lively, inventive mind. What a fascinator he was in
those days, anyway! I think he put his spell upon all of us, even to a
certain extent upon Ed Smith at first. To me, in particular, who have
grown perhaps too reflective, too introspective, with the years of
quietude on my farm, he seemed incredibly alive, so that I was never
tired of watching him. He was like the boy I had been, or dreamed I had
been, and could never be again.

And yet I did not then accept him utterly, as the loyal old Captain had
done. I was not sure of him. His attitude toward life in those days,
while I dislike the comparison, was similar to that of Ed Smith, though
the end was different. If Ed was looking for his own aggrandizement,
Nort was not the less eagerly in pursuit of his own amusement and
pleasure. I had a feeling that he would play with us a while because we
amused him, and when he got tired or bored--that would be the end of us.
Up to that moment Nort had never really become entangled with life: life
had never hurt him. Things and e