abbily dull by contrast.

Standing at the window in the dark front room of the house, peering
out from under cupped palms that hid her eyes, Dryad could almost pick
out each separate picket of the straggling old fence that bounded the
garden of the little drab cottage across from her. In that searching
light she could even make out great patches where the rotting
sheathing of the house had been torn away, leaving the framework
beneath naked and gaunt and bare.

It was scarcely two months since the day when she had gone herself to
Judge Maynard with her offer to sell that unkempt acre or so which he
had fought so long and bitterly to force into the market. And it had
been a strange one, too--that interview. His acceptance had been
quick--instantaneously eager--but the girl was still marvelling a
little over his attitude throughout that transaction, whenever her
mind turned back to it.

When she mentioned the mortgage which Young Denny had secured only a
few days before, he had seemed to understand almost immediately why
she had spoken of it, without the explanation which she meant to
give.

Once again she found him a different Judge Maynard from all the others
she had known, and he had in the years since she could remember, been
many different men to her imagination. It puzzled her almost as much
as did his opinion upon the value of the old place, which, somehow,
she could not bring herself to believe was worth all that he insisted
upon paying. But then, too, she did not know either that the town's
great man had been riding a-tilt at his own soul, for several days on
end, and just as Old Jerry had done, was seizing upon the first
opportunity to salve the wounds resultant.

And yet this was the first day that the girl had seen him so much as
inspect his long-coveted property; the first time she had known him to
set foot within the sagging gate since he had placed in her hands that
sum of money which was greater than any she had ever seen before.
Under his directions men had commenced clearing away the rank
shrubbery that afternoon--commenced to tear down the house itself.

Time after time since morning she had entered the front room to stand
and peer out across the valley at this new activity which the Judge
himself was directing with an oddly suppressed lack of his usual
violent gestures. There was something akin to apology in his every
move.

It brought a little homesick ache into the girl's throat; it set her