She suddenly displayed an energy that
made her former activities seem tame.

She brought from the attic an old loom and got Aunt Polly to teach her
to weave; she presently designed quaint patterns and delighted in her
work. She invited several children, neglected little souls, to come to
the yellow house and she taught them with Noreen. She resorted largely
to the method the old doctor had used with her. Adapting, as she saw
possible, her knowledge to her little group, she gave generously but
held her peace.

Northrup often had a hearty laugh after attending one of the "school"
sessions.

"It's like tossing all kinds of feed to a flock of birds," he told
Aunt Polly, "and letting the little devils pick as they can."

"I reckon they pick only as much as their little stomachs can hold,"
Aunt Polly replied, "and it makes _me_ smile to notice how folks as
ain't above saying lies about Mary-Clare can trust their children to
her teaching."

"Oh! well, lies are soon killed," Northrup returned, but his smile
vanished.

Mary-Clare was often troubled by Larry's persistence at the Point. She
could not account for it, but she did not alter her own way of life.
She went, occasionally, to the desolate Point; she rarely saw Larry,
but if she did, she greeted him pleasantly. It was amazing to find how
naturally she could do this. Indeed the whole situation was at the
snapping point.

"I do say," Twombley confided to Peneluna, "it don't seem nater for a
woman not to grieve and fuss at such goings on."

Peneluna tossed her head and sneezed.

"I ain't ever understood," she broke in, "why a woman should fuss and
break herself on account of a man doing what he oughtn't ter do. Let
_him_ do the fussing and breaking."

"She might try and save him." Twombley, like all the male Forest, was
stirred at what he could not understand.

"Women have got their hands full of other things"--Peneluna sneezed
again as if the dust of ages was stifling her--"and I do say that
after a woman does save a man, she's often too worn out to enjoy her
savings."

And Larry, carefully dressed, living alone and to all appearances
brave and steady, simply, according to Maclin's ordering, "let out
more sheet rope" in order that Mary-Clare might sail on to the rocks
and smash herself to atoms before the eyes of her fellow creatures.

Surely the Forest had much to cogitate upon.

"There is just one ledge of rocks for her kind," said Maclin. "You
keep yo