ployer who trusted her. But after a while she resolutely
broke away from the petty business of weighing the right and the wrong
against each other; she was bold enough to term it petty business in her
thoughts and realized fully, when she did so, that her Vose-Mern
occupation had damaged her natural rectitude more than she had
apprehended.

But there was something more subtle, on that miasmatic metropolitan
night, something farther back than the new determination to break away
from Mern and all his works of mischief. It was not merely a call of
family loyalty, a resolve to stand by the grandfather who had disowned
his kin. She was not sure how much she did care for the hard old man of
the woods. But right then, without her complete realization of what the
subtle feeling was, the avatar of the spirit of the Open Places was
rising in her. She longed avidly for the sight and the sound of many
soughing trees. She was urged to go to her own in some far place where
her feet could touch the honest earth instead of being insulated by the
pavements which were stropped glossy by the hurry of the multitude.

That urge really was just as insistent as consideration of the personal
elements involved, though she did not admit it, not being able to
analyze her emotions very keenly right then. Family affection needs
propinquity and service to develop it. Her sentiments in regard to
Echford Flagg were vague. This Latisan, whoever he was, was plainly a
rough character with doubtful morals who was loyal to a grudge instead
of to her grandfather. She knew what the Elsham girl had been able to
with other men, in the blase city; it stood to reason that in the woods,
having no rivals to divert the attentions of a victim, Elsham would be
still more effective.

At last, having kept her thoughts away from an especial topic because of
the shame that still dwelt with her, Lida faced what she knew was the
real and greater reason for her growing determination to step between
Echford Flagg and his enemies. Alfred Kennard had stolen money from
Echford Flagg. Sylvia Kennard had grieved her heart out over the thing.
There were the bitter letters which Lida had found among her mother's
papers after Sylvia died. The mother had torn the name from the bottoms
of those letters; it was as if she had endeavored to shield Echford
Flagg from the signed proof of utter heartlessness.

The debt to Echford Flagg had not been canceled. Could the daughter of
Alfred