y remarked. She cared more for Mary-Clare than anything
else.

"Or upset 'em," Peter added. He had his mind fixed upon Maclin.

"Well, brother, sailing safe, or struggling in the water, it won't
help matters to stir up the mud."

"No; and just having Brace hanging around like a threat is something.
I allas did hold to them referendum and recall notions. Once a feller
knows he ain't the only shirt in the laundry, he keeps decenter. So
long as Maclin scents Brace, he keeps to his holdings. Did yer hear
how he's cleaning up the Cosey Bar? He thinks maybe he's going to be
attacked from that quarter. Then, again, he's been offering work to
the men around here--and he's letting out that he never understood our
side of things rightly and that he's listening to Larry--get that,
Polly?--listening to Larry and letting _him_ make the folks on the
Point get on to the fact that he's their friend. Gosh! Maclin their
friend."

And Mary-Clare all this time mystified her friends and her foes. She
had foes. Men, and women, too, who looked askance at her. The less
they knew, the more they had to invent. The proprieties of the Forest
were being outraged. The women who envied Mary-Clare her daring fell
upon her first. From their own misery and disillusionment, they sought
to defend their position; create an atmosphere of virtue around their
barren lives, by attacking the woman who refused to be a martyr.

"You can't tell me," said a downtrodden wife of one of Maclin's men,
"that she turned her husband out of doors after wheedling him out of
all he should have had from his father, unless she meant to leave the
door open for another! A woman only acts as she has for some man."

The women, the happy ones, drove down upon Mary-Clare from another
quarter. The happy women are always first to lay down the laws for the
unhappy ones. Not knowing, they are irresponsible. The men of the
Forest did some laughing and side talking, but on the whole they
denounced Mary-Clare because she was a menace to the Established
Code.

"God!" said the speaker of the Cosey Bar, "what's coming to the world,
anyhow? There ain't any rest and peace nowheres, and when it comes to
women taking to naming terms, I say it's time for us to stand for our
rights fierce."

Maclin had delicately and indirectly set forth Mary-Clare's "terms"
and the Forest was staggered.

But Mary-Clare either did not hear, or the turmoil was so insistent
that she had become used to it.