go over to the store to say
'Thank you' to Miss Radford and her brother for their goodness to
my father? I would not have left him if you had not been here, but
now I can go easily enough, and I do want them to know how really
grateful I am."

"Go, by all means. I will take care of Mr. Selincourt and write my
letter at the same time," Jervis answered, taking a fountain pen
and a notebook from his pocket, and beginning to write forthwith.

Mary walked out of the house and down to the river just as she was,
for the sun had gone down sufficiently to render a hat unnecessary.
The two men were busy with their boat still, but one of them left
his work and put Mary across the river in one of the other boats
which lay drawn up on the bank.

The Indians, who had been crowding the store half an hour before,
were encamped on the bank now, a little lower down, and were busy
cooking fish for their supper. There were no other customers
visible either inside the store or out. Now that the fishing was
in full swing the fishermen had little time for lounging about the
store; so, although the work of delivering goods was greater, there
were compensating circumstances in not having the store always
crowded up with men and lads, who had come more for the sake of
talking than buying.

Mary walked up the steep bank and across the open space to the
store door with a sense of the strangest unreality all about her.
It was herself who walked and moved, yet all the time she seemed to
stand aside and let another self think and feel and act. A
composite odour of groceries, bacon, tobacco, and cheap clothes met
her as she entered the rough, homely shed, which was a typical
emporium of the backwoods; but she had no time to analyse the
odours, being at once attracted by Katherine, who stood at a tall
desk by the window, entering items in a ledger. At the same time
Katherine glanced up and saw the visitor entering the door. She
flushed at the sight, and became suddenly nervous, acutely
conscious, too, of her poor, shabby clothes, old-fashioned and ill
cut, as contrasted with the picturesque house gown in which Mary
was garbed, a soft grey woollen, which, though simple enough to
have been worn upon any occasion, yet suggested London or Paris in
every line.

"You are Miss Radford, I think," said Mary in that quiet, cultured
voice which somehow matched, or at least harmonized, with her gown,
"and I have come to say 'Thank you' for your good