part goes regular
enough.

"She don't slacken up on her plain duty. What the ole Doc left she
shares right enough with Larry; she keeps the house like it should be
kept, and she's a good second to Polly here, where fodder is
concerned. But something happened when Larry was last home that leaked
out somehow. A girl called Jan-an let it slip. Not a quarrel exactly,
but a thing that wasn't rightfully settled. Larry was ordered off,
sudden, by Maclin, but take it from me, when Larry comes back he'll
get his innings. Larry isn't what you could call a sticker, but he
gets there all the same. He ain't going to let any woman go too far
with him. That's where Larry comes out strong--with women."

"I don't know as you ought to talk so free, brother." Polly looked
dubious.

"In the meantime," Northrup said quietly, "the little wife lives alone
in the yellow house, waiting?" He hadn't heard Polly's caution.

He was thinking of Mary-Clare's look when she confronted him the day
of his coming. Was she expecting her husband? Had she learned to love
him? Was she that kind of woman? The kind that thrives on neglect and
indifference?

"Not alone, as you might say," Heathcote's voice drawled. "There's
Noreen, her little girl, you know. Noreen seems at times to be about a
thousand years older than her mother, but by actual count she's going
on six, ain't that it, Polly?"

Again Northrup felt as he had that day by the lightning-shattered
tree.

"Her little girl?" he asked slowly, and Aunt Polly raised her eyes to
his face. She looked troubled, vaguely uneasy.

"Yep!" Peter rose stiffly. He wanted to go to bed. "Noreen's the
saving from the litter. How many was there, Polly?"

Polly got upon her feet, the trouble-look growing in her eyes.

"Noreen had a twin as was dead," she said tenderly. "Then the last one
lived two hours--that's all, brother." She walked to the window. "The
storm is setting this way," she went on. "Just listen to that lake
acting up as if it was the ocean."

The riotous swish of the water sounded distant but insistent in the
warm, quiet room, and faintly, at rare intervals, the bell, rung by
unseen forces, struck dully. It had given up the struggle.

Northrup, presently, had a strong inclination to say to his host that
he had changed his mind and must leave on the morrow. That course
seemed the only safe and wise one.

"But why?" Something new and uncontrolled demanded an answer. Why,
indeed? Why should