ll be my brother; your invalid mother will receive abundant
care. I will even ask you to love me!"

An instant's blushes overspread Podge's worn, pale face, and an
expression of restful joy. Then recurring indignation made her pale
again to the very roots of her golden hair.

"Betray my friend!" she exclaimed. "Never, till she will give me leave."

"I have lost my confidence in you both," said Duff Salter coldly,
releasing Podge's arm. "You have been so indifferent in the face of this
crime and public opinion as to receive your lovers in the very parlor
where my dead friend lay. Agnes has admitted it by silence. I have seen
your lover releasing you from his arms. Miss Byerly, I thought you
artless, even in your arts, and only the dupe, perhaps, of a stronger
woman. I hoped that you were pure. You have made me a man of suspicion
and indifference again." His face grew graver, yet unbelieving and hard.

Podge fled from his side with alarm; he saw her handkerchief staunching
her tears, and people watching her as she nearly ran along the sidewalk.

"Jericho! Jerichoo! Jer--"

Duff Salter did not finish the sneeze, but with a long face called for a
boat and rower to take him across to Treaty Island.

Podge arrived at school just as the bell was ringing, and, still in
nervousness and tears, took her place in her division while the Bible
was read. She saw the principal's eye upon her as she took off her
bonnet and moistened her face, and the boys looked up a minute or two
inquiringly, but soon relapsed to their individual selfishness. When the
glass sashes dividing the rooms were closed and the recitations began,
the lapping sound of the river started anew. A film grew on her eyes,
and in it appeared the distant Jersey and island shore, with the
uncertain boundary of point, cove, and marsh, like a misty cold line,
cheerless and void of life or color, as it was every day, yet standing
there as if it merely came of right and was the river's true border, and
was not to be hated as such. Podge strained to look through the
illusion, and walked down the aisle once, where it seemed to be, and
touched the plaster of the wall. She had hardly receded when it
reappeared, and all between it and her mind was merely empty river,
wallowing and lapping and sucking and subsiding, as if around submerged
piers, or wave was relieving wave from the weight of floating things
like rafts, or logs, or buoys, or bodies. Into this wide waste of mud