and windows, again in
the half-darkness near the fence. Once for fully five minutes they
lingered at the gate while the silent spectator of their movements
leaned tense and rigid against the balustrade. The promenade was quite
in accordance with rural propriety and custom, but John could not
understand why that pair in particular should be the only ones in the
entire company to engage in it. It did not seem right. How could it be
right?

The music, the sonorous calls to the dancers, the tripping of feet,
pounded his tortured brain. The whole world in its new aspect seemed to
meet him with fangs and claws exposed. He wanted to fight something
physically, to express by oaths and blows the resentment packed within
his primitive breast. He felt his gnarled and hardened fingers at Joel
Eperson's thin neck. He saw the long hair sway back and forth as he
shook the love-smitten man. His clutch tightened till Joel's eyes bulged
from their sockets, and then, in gloating fancy, John dashed him to the
ground, where he lay exposed to Tilly's view. But reality has little to
do with the tricks of the imagination, and there stood Eperson at the
fence with Tilly by his side.

Two girls were approaching. One was Sally Teasdale, the other Martha
Jane Eperson.

"They've told the truth about you," the former greeted John, with a
teasing laugh, as she introduced the slight, plain, dark girl whose
hand she held. "You are really a woman-hater, or you would not be off
here by yourself when all the girls want to know you."

Again he was scarcely conscious of what he was saying or leaving unsaid,
and suddenly waked to the fact that his hostess had hurried away, and
that the plain girl was in his care. After all, she was Eperson's
sister, and he eyed her curiously, wondering if she, too, were his
enemy.

"You've met my brother," she began. "He spoke about it the day the
corner-stone was laid. There he is out there with Tilly now. I didn't
want to come to-night, but he was crazy to be here so that he could see
her."

"I thought that was it," John permitted his slow lips to say. "They have
been going together a long time. That is, I've heard so."

"Yes, and I thought--we all thought that Tilly would end up by taking
him, but it is all off now," Miss Eperson sighed, her eyes on the pair
at the fence.

"All off?" John in his sober senses would have wondered at his ability
to talk so freely with a girl he had just met. "Why, what do you mea