e knew where, to the mines and the Point. He lived
in one of the ramshackle huts; gave promise of paying for it, did, in
fact, pay a few dollars to old Doctor Rivers, and then became a
squatter. He was injured at the mines and could do no more work and at
that juncture Peneluna had arrived upon the scene from the same
unknown quarter apparently whence Philander had hailed. She took the
empty cottage next Philander's and paid for it by service in Doctor
Rivers's home. She was clean, thrifty, and strangely silent. When
Philander first beheld her he was shaken, for a moment, out of his
glum silence. "God Almighty!" he confided to Twombly who had worked in
the mines with him and had looked after him in his illness; "yer can't
shake some women even when it's for their good."

That was all. Through the following years the two shacks became the
only clean and orderly ones on the Point. When Philander hobbled from
his quarters, Peneluna went in and scrubbed and scoured. After a time
she cooked for the old man and left the food on his back steps. He
took it in, ate it, and had the grace to wash the dishes before
setting them back.

"Some mightn't," poor Peneluna had said to Aunt Polly in defence of
Sniff.

As far as any one knew the crabbed old man never spoke to his devoted
neighbour, but she had never complained.

"I wonder what happened before they came here?" After all the years of
taking the strange condition for granted, it sprang into quickened
life. Mary-Clare was soon to know and it had a bearing upon her own
highly sensitive state.

She made her way to the far end of the Point, passing wide-eyed
children at play and curious women in doorways.

"Philander's dead!" The words were like an accompaniment, passing from
lip to lip. "An' she won't let a soul in." This was added.

"She will presently," Mary-Clare reassured them. "She'll need you all,
later."

There was a little plot of grass between Peneluna's shack and
Philander's and a few scraggy autumn flowers edged a well-worn path
from one back door to the other!

At Philander's front door Mary-Clare knocked and Peneluna responded at
once. She was dressed as Jan-an had described, and for a moment
Mary-Clare had difficulty in stifling her inclination to laugh.

The gaunt old woman was in the rusty black she had kept in readiness
for years; she wore gloves and bonnet; the long crepe veil and the
absurd red rose wobbled dejectedly as Peneluna moved about.

"Co