led the
old coat close under her chin.

"It's all right, Jan-an," he comforted, patting the unkempt head.

"Are them the letters he stole?"

"Some of them, yes, Jan-an."

"Kin I take 'em back to her?"

"Not to-night. I think Rivers will take them back."

"S'pose he won't."

"He will."

"You, you're going to fetch him one?" The instinct of the savage rose
in the girl.

"If necessary, yes!" Northrup shared the primitive instinct at that
moment. "And now you trot along home, my girl, and don't open your
lips to any one."

"And you?"

"I'll wait for Mr. Larry Rivers here!"

"My God!" Jan-an burst forth. Then: "There's a sizable log back of
the stove. Yer can fetch a good one with that."

"Thanks, Jan-an. Go now."

Jan-an rose stiffly and shuffled to the door, unlocked it, and went
into the blackness outside.

Then Northrup sat down and prepared to wait.

The stove was rusty and cold, but Rivers had evidently had a huge fire
on the hearth during the day. Now that he noticed, Northrup saw that
there were scraps of burned paper fluttering like wings of evil omens
stricken in their flight.

He went over to the hearth, poked the ashes, and discovered life. He
laid on wood, slowly feeding the hungry sparks, then he took his old
place by the table, blew out the light of the lamp and in the dark
room, shot by the flares of the igniting logs, he resigned himself to
what lay before.

Rivers might return with Maclin. This was a new possibility and
disconcerting; still it must be met.

"I may kill a flock of birds by one interview," Northrup grimly
thought and then drifted off on Maclin's trail. The ever-recurring
wonder about the Point was intensified; he must leave that still in
doubt.

"I'll get the damned thing in my own control, if I can," he concluded
at length. "Buy it up for safety; keep still about it and watch how
Maclin reacts when he knocks against the fact, eventually. That will
make things safe for the present."

But to own the Point meant to hold on to King's Forest just when he
had decided to turn from it forever--after setting Mary-Clare free.

The sense of a spiritual overlord for an instant daunted Northrup. It
was humiliating to realize how he had been treading, all along, one
course while believing he was going another. And then--it was close
upon midnight and vitality ran sluggish--Northrup became part of one
of those curious mental experiences that go far to prove how narrow
the b