nd that rise, through virtue, was slow
and beset with barriers. His ambition had become impatient. Now that
he was a figure of local power and importance, temptation began to
assail him with offers of rapid elevation if only he would be
complaisant. In this situation, the father in him rose into the
ascendency; he had compromised and yielded, though always managing to
keep his dubious transactions secret. And now at length ambition ruled
him--though as yet not undisturbed, for conscience sometimes rose in
unexpected revolt and gave him many a bitter battle.

When his stenographer told Blake that Doctor and Mrs. Sherman were
waiting at the curb, he descended with something more like his usual
cast of countenance. Elsie and her husband were in the tonneau, and as
Blake crossed the sidewalk to the car she stretched out a nervous hand
and gave him a worn, excited smile.

"It is so good of you to take us out to The Sycamores for over night!"
she exclaimed. "It's such a pleasure--and such a relief!"

She did not need to explain that it was a relief because the motion,
the company, the change of scene, would help crowd from her mind the
dread of to-morrow when her husband would have to take the stand
against Doctor West; she did not need to explain this, because Blake's
eyes read it all in her pale, feverish face.

Blake shook hands with Doctor Sherman, dismissed his chauffeur, and
took the wheel. They spun out of the city and down into the River
Road--the favourite drive with Westville folk--which followed the
stream in broad sweeping curves and ran through arcades of
thick-bodied, bowing willows and sycamores lofty and severe, their
foliage now a drought-crisped brown. After half an hour the car turned
through a stone gateway into a grove of beech and elm and sycamore. At
a comfortable distance apart were perhaps a dozen houses whose outer
walls were slabs of trees with the bark still on. This was The
Sycamores, a little summer resort established by a small group of the
select families of Westville.

Blake stopped the car before one of these houses--"cabins" their
owners called them, though their primitiveness was all in that outer
shell of bark. A rather tall, straight, white-haired old lady, with a
sweet nobility and strength of face, was on the little porch to greet
them. She welcomed Elsie and her husband warmly and graciously. Then
with no relaxation of her natural dignity into emotional effusion, she
embraced her