heights, to
feel impulses coming out of the dark that tremble like the blare of
trumpets in the soul,--this is the way of youth.

With all his loyalty for Laura Nesbit--loyalty that enshrined her as a
comrade and friend, such is the contradiction of youth that he was madly
jealous of every big boy at the country school who cast eyes at Margaret
Mueller. And because she was ages older than he, she knew it; and it
pleased her. She knew that she could make all his combs and crests and
bands and wattles and spurs glisten, and he knew in some deep instinct
that when she sang the emotion in her voice was a call to him that he
could not put into words. Thus through the autumn, Margaret and Grant
were thrown together daily in the drab little house by the river. Now a
boy and a girl thrown together commonly make the speaking donkeys of
comedy. Yet one never may be sure that they may not be the dumb
struggling creatures of the tragic muse. Heaven knows Margaret Mueller
was funny enough in her capers. For she related her antics--her grand
pouts, her elaborate condescensions, her crass coquetry and her hidings
and seekings--into what she called a "case." In the only wisdom she
knew, to open a flirtation was to have a "case." So Margaret ogled and
laughed and touched and ran and giggled and cried and played with her
prey with a practiced lore of the heart that was far beyond the boy's
knowledge. Grant did not know what spell was upon him. He did not know
that his great lithe body, his gripping hands, his firm legs and his
long arms that had in their sinews the power that challenged her to
wrestle when she was with him--he did not know what he meant to the girl
who was forever teasing and bantering him when they were alone. For it
was only when Margaret and Grant were alone or when no one but little
Jasper was with them, that Margaret indulged in the joys of the chase.
Yet often when other boys came to see her--the country boys from the
Prospect school district perhaps, or lorn swains trailing up from Spring
Township--Margaret did not conceal her fluttering delight in them from
Mary Adams. So the elder woman and the girl had long talks in which
Margaret agreed so entirely with Mary Adams that Mary doubted the
evidence of her eyes. And Amos in those days was much interested in
certain transcendental communications coming from his Planchette board
and purporting to be from Emerson who had recently passed over. So Amos
had no eyes for