half-stripped house. Then, watching the boy's dumb
lack of understanding, the enormity of the whole horrible complication
dawned upon him for the first time. He had forgotten Dryad Anderson's
going--forgotten that the house upon the ridge was no longer the
property of the man who had entrusted it to him.

When the light behind that half-drawn shade flared up, far across on
the crest of the opposite hill, and Young Denny wheeled to plunge into
the black mouth of the path that led deeper into the valley, he too
started swiftly forward. He swept off in desperate haste up the long
hill road that led to the Bolton homestead.

The light was still there in that front room when he poked a
tentatively inquiring head in at the open door; he paused in a
dull-eyed examination of the silken garments draped over the table top
in the kitchen after he had roamed vaguely through the silent house.
But he was too tired in mind to give them much attention just then.

Outside, buried in the shadow of Young Denny's squat, unpainted barn,
he still waited doggedly--he waited ages and ages, a lifetime of
apprehension. And then he saw them coming toward him, up out of the
shadow of the valley into the moonlight that bathed the hill in
silver.

They paused and stood there--stood and stared out across the valley at
Judge Maynard's great box of a house on the hill and that bit of a
wedge-shaped acre of ruin that clung like an unsightly burr to the hem
of his immaculate pastures.

Slender and boy-like in her little blouse and tight, short skirt the
girl was half-hidden in the hollow of his shoulder. Once, watching
with his head cocked pertly, sparrowlike, on one side, the old man's
eyes went to the white-bandaged knuckles of Denny's right hand; once
while he waited Old Jerry saw her lift her face--saw the big,
shoulder-heavy figure fold her in his arms and bend and touch the
glory of her hair with his lips while she clung to him, before she
turned and went slowly toward the open kitchen door.

Then he started. He shrank farther back into the shadow and edged a
noiseless way around the building. But with the tavern lights
beckoning to him he waited an introspective moment or two.

"Godfrey 'Lisha," he sighed thunderously, "but that takes a load offen
my mind!"

And he ruminated.

"But what's the use of my tryin' to explain now? What's the use--when
they ain't nothing to explain! It's all come out all right, ain't it?
Well, then, hedn't I