some, if you talked to her as
you feel now; and then, too, Dick, and mother, and all of you, I don't
care who says it, or thinks it, it's a big lie! Ethie never went off
with a man--never! I know she didn't. She wasn't that kind. I'll swear
to it in the court. I won't hear anybody say that about her. I'll fight
'em, first, even if 'twas my own kin who did it!" And in his
excitement, Andy began to shove back his wrist-bands from his strong
wrists, as if challenging someone to the fight he had threatened.

Andy was splendid in his defense of Ethie, and both James and John
stepped up beside him, showing their adhesion to the cause he pleaded so
well. Ethie might have ran away, but she had surely gone alone, they
said, and their advice was that Richard should follow her as soon as
possible. But Richard would not listen to such a proposition now, and
quietly aided and abetted by his mother, he declared his intention of
"letting her alone." She had chosen her course, he said, and she must
abide by it. "If she has gone with that villain"--and Richard ground his
teeth together--"she can never again come back to me. If she has not
gone with him, and chooses to return, I do not say the door is shut
against her."

Richard seemed very determined and unrelenting, and, knowing how useless
it was to reason with him when in so stern a mood, his brothers gave up
the contest, Andy thinking within himself how many, many times a day he
should pray for Ethie that she might come back again. Richard would not
return to Camden that day, he said. He could not face his acquaintance
there until the first shock was over and they were a little accustomed
to thinking of the calamity which had fallen upon him. So he remained
with his mother, sitting near the window which looked out upon the
railroad track over which Ethie had gone. What his thoughts were none
could fathom, save as they were expressed by the dark, troubled
expression of his face, which showed how much he suffered. Perhaps he
blamed himself as he went over again the incidents of that fatal night
when he kept Ethelyn from the masquerade; but if he did, no one was the
wiser for it, and so the first long day wore on, and the night fell
again upon the inmates of the farmhouse. The darkness was terrible to
Richard, for it shut out from his view that strip of road which seemed
to him a part of Ethie. She had been there last, and possibly looked up
at the old home--her first home after her