"Gosh! Heathcote; it's like the Judgment Day and no place to hide
in!"

"That's about it, Twombley. No place to hide in."

And then after weeks of strenuous effort Mrs. Dana went away as
suddenly as she had come. She simply disappeared! But there was a
peculiar sense of waiting in the Forest and a going on with what had
been begun. The momentum carried the people along. The church was
repaired, a school house started, the Point cleaned.

* * * * *

The summer passed, another winter--not so cruel as the last--and the
spring came, less violently.

* * * * *

It was early summer when another event shook the none-too-steady
Forest. Larry came home!

Jan-an discovered him sitting on a mossy rock, his back against a
tree. The girl staggered away from him--she thought she saw a vision.

"It is--you, ain't it?" she gasped.

"What's left of me--yes." There was a strange new note in Rivers's
voice.

Jan-an's horror-filled eyes took in the significance of the words.

"Where's--the rest of you?" she gasped.

Larry touched the pinned-up leg of his trousers.

"I paid a debt with the rest," he said, and there was that in his
voice that brought Jan-an closer to him.

"Where yer bound for?" she asked, her dull face quivering.

"I don't know. A fellow gave me a lift and dropped me--here."

"You come along home!" Jan-an bent and half lifted Larry. "Lean on me.
There, now, lean heavy and take it easy."

Mary-Clare was sitting in the living-room, sewing and singing, when
the sound of steps startled her. She looked up, then her face changed
as a dying face does.

"Larry!" she faltered. She was utterly unprepared. She had been kept
in ignorance of the little that others knew.

"I--I'm played out--but I can go on." Larry's voice was husky and he
drooped against Jan-an. Then Mary-Clare came forward, her arms opened
wide, a radiance breaking over her cold white face.

"You have come--home, Larry! Home. Your father's home."

And then Larry's head rested on her shoulder; her arms upheld him, for
the crutch clattered to the floor.

"My father's home," he repeated like a hurt child--"that's it--my
father's home."

CHAPTER XXII

But beyond that exalted moment stretched the plain, drear days. Days
holding subtle danger and marvellous revelations.

Larry, with his superficial gripping of surface things, grew merry and
childishl