She was very beautiful that night, I thought.

I did not know as well then as I came to know afterward, what a struggle
she was facing to save the _Star_, what she had sacrificed to keep green
the memory of her father and to cherish the old Captain. And she had a
love for Hempfield and Hempfield folk that Nort could not have guessed.
Life might be a huge joke to Nort, who had never, up to this time, in
all his life, had to fight or suffer for anything--but Anthy, Anthy was
already meeting the great adventure.

But there was another and a deeper Nort, which few people at that time
had ever seen. This was the Nort who had fled impulsively from New York,
and this was the Nort who now strode out along the country roads toward
Hawleyville, his head hot with great thoughts. This was the Nort who was
tasting the sweets of editorship, who had more than half begun to
believe what he had told Anthy, on the spur of the moment, when he
walked home with her. Why not a wonderful new country journalism? Why
not a paper right in Hempfield which, by virtue of its profound thought,
its matchless wit, its charming humour, its saving sympathy, its superb
handling of great topics, its--its---- Why not? And why not Norton Carr,
editor?

"Matchless" was the adjective that Nort had in his mind at the moment,
and he imagined a typical comment in the New York _Times_:

"We quote this week from the Hempfield _Star_, that matchless exponent
of rural thought in America, edited by Mr. Norton Carr----" etc., etc.

This would naturally be copied in the _Literary Digest_ and made the
subject of an editorial in _Life_.

This was the Nort who walked the country roads, neither seeing the stars
above nor feeling the clods beneath, but living in a fairer land than
this is, the perfect spring weather of the soul of youth. It was thus
that Nort lived his deeper life, as the hero of his own hot imaginings.

And this, too, was the Nort who returned to Hempfield--without any
conscious intention on his part, for how can one think of two things at
once--by the road which led past Anthy's home. He did not stop, he
scarcely looked around, and yet he had an intense and vivid undersense
of a dim light in one of the upper windows of the dark house.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XI

IN WHICH GREAT PLANS ARE EVOLVED, AND THERE IS A SURPRISING EVENT

Since we had come to know the _Star_, Sunday afternoons were important
occasions for Harriet and me. Nort