on, and the
putting away of Eugene Wellington, had settled things for her future.
Here was the fulfilling of a sense of something wrong that had recently
possessed her, hardly letting itself be more than a sense till now. What
did life mean, anyhow? "To go mad or go back East?" Why should she do
either one, who had not offended anybody?

As Jerry gazed out at the shadowy side lawn the sound of a step caught
her ear--a shuffling of feet across the grass, and the noise of a hard
sole on the cement driveway. Jerry's eyes mechanically followed a
short, shambling figure, suggesting a bear almost as much as a human
being, as it passed forward a step or two; then, dividing the
spirea-bushes on the farther edge, it disappeared into the deeper shadow
of the slope toward the town below "Kingussie."

It was Fishing Teddy--old Hans Theodore; Jerry recognized him at a
glance, and in the midst of her confused struggle to find herself she
paused to wonder about him. Intense mental states often experience such
pauses, when the mind grappling in an internal combat rests for a moment
on an impression coming through the senses.

"What's the old Teddy Bear doing here?" Jerry asked herself, and then
she remembered his coming once before almost to this very spot. That was
the night Joe Thomson had called--the big farmer whose property her own
was helping to destroy. There was something strong and unbreakable about
this Joe. A million leagues from her his lot was cast, of course, and
yet she hoped somehow that Joe might be near and that the Teddy Bear was
waiting for him.

"Jerry! Jerry!" York called through the hall, and then he came out to
where she sat on the side porch.

"I was hunting for you. You have a caller, my lady, a gentleman who
wants to take you for a ride up the river. It will be gloriously cool
on the ridges up-stream. He will give you a splendid hour before the
curfew rings--the lucky dog!"

Jerry looked up expectantly. "It must be Joe Thomson," she thought, and
she was glad to have him come again.

On the front porch little Junius Brutus Ponk was strutting back and
forth, chatting with Laura.

"Good evening, Miss Swaim. I just soared down to invite you to take a
little drive in my gadabout. I hope it will suit you to go."

"Nothing would please me more," Jerry said, lightly. "Let me get my
wrap." As she returned to her room her eye fell on her hand-bag, lying
on her desk. A sense of grief swept over her, for one m