ct that all, everything, is
bound by a chain, the links of which must hold, or, if they are
broken, they must be welded again together. The world; people;
everything in time must pause while repairs were made, and he had done
his best toward the mending of a damaged world: toward righting his
own mistakes.

It was slow work. Good God! how slow, and oh, the suffering!

He had paid a high price but he could now look at his city without
shame.

This was a fortifying thought, but a lonely one, and it did not lead
to constructive work. The days were listless and empty.

Northrup got out his manuscript--there was life in it, he made sure of
that, but it was feeble and would require intelligent concentration in
order to justify its existence.

But the intelligence and concentration were not in his power to
bestow.

After a few days he regarded his new freedom with strange exhilaration
mingled with fear and distrust.

So much had gone down in the wreck with Kathryn. So much that was
purely himself--not her--that readjustment was slow. How would it have
been, he wondered, back in the King's Forest days, had he not been
upheld by a sense of duty to what was now proven false and wrong?

One could err in duty, it seemed.

He was free! He had not exacted freedom! It had been thrust upon him
so brutally, that it had, for a spell, sent him reeling into space.

Not being able to resume his work, Northrup got to thinking about
King's Forest with concentration, if not intelligence.

He had purposely refrained, while he was away, from dwelling upon it
as a place in which he had some rights. He used, occasionally, to
think of Twombley, sitting like a silent, wary watch-dog, keeping an
eye on his interests. He had heard of the Maclin tragedy--Helen
Northrup felt it wise to give him that information while withholding
much more; that was, in a way, public knowledge.

Things were at least safe now in the Forest, Northrup believed. This
brought him to the closer circle. He felt a sudden homesickness for
the inn and the blessed old pair. A kind of mental hunger evolved from
this unwholesome brooding that drove Northrup, as hunger alone can, to
snatch whatever he could for his growing desire to feed upon.

He shifted his thoughts from Mary-Clare and the Heathcotes to Larry
Rivers. Where was he? Had he kept his part of the bargain? What had
Mary-Clare done with her hard-won freedom?

Sitting alone under his dome of changing light