ll stones rattling in her
throat.

"Well, Motherly, Philander was a cruel old man. Just being dead don't
make him anything different but--dead."

"Noreen, you must keep quiet. Jan-an, tell me about it."

Mary-Clare's voice commanded the situation. Jan-an's stony gurgle
ceased and she began relating what she had come to tell.

"I took his supper over to him, same as usual, and set it down on the
back steps, and when he opened the door I said, like I allas done,
'Peneluna says good-night,' and he took in the food and slammed the
door, same as usual."

"Old Philander Sniff----" began Noreen's chant as she slipped from her
chair intent upon a doll by the hearthside.

Mary-Clare took no notice of her but nodded to Jan-an.

"And then," the girl went on, "I went in to Peneluna and told her and
then we et and went to bed. Long about midnight, I guess, there was a
yell!" Jan-an lost her breath and paused, then rushed along: "He'd
raised his winder and after all the keeping still, he called for
Peneluna to come."

Mary-Clare visualized the dramatic scene that poor Jan-an was mumbling
monotonously.

"And she went! I just lay there scared stiff hearing things an' seeing
'em! Come morning, in walked Peneluna looking still and high and she
didn't say nothing till she'd gone and fetched those togs of hers,
black 'uns, you know, that Aunt Polly gave her long back. She put 'em
on, bonnet and veil an' everything. Then she took an old red rose out
of a box and pinned it on the front of her bonnet--God! but she did
look skeery--and then said to me awful careful, 'Trot on to
Mary-Clare, tell her to fotch the marriage service _and_ the funeral
one, both!' Jes' like that she said it. Both!"

"This is very strange," Mary-Clare said slowly and got up. "I'm going
to the Point, Jan-an, and you will take Noreen to the inn, like a good
girl. I'll call for her in the afternoon."

"Take both!" Jan-an was nodding her willingness to obey. And
Mary-Clare took her prayer-book with her.

Mary-Clare had the quiet Forest to herself apparently, for on the way
to the Point she met no one. On ahead she traced, she believed,
Larry's footprints, but when she turned on the trail to the Point,
they were not there.

All along her way Mary-Clare went over in her thought the story of
Philander Sniff and Peneluna. It was the romance and mystery of the
sordid Point.

Years before, when Mary-Clare was a little child, Philander had
drifted, from no on