ance of their going lashed her brain
to quick revolt. It had been working, that shrewd, small brain, through
all their talk, ever since Madame Beattie had denied Jeff's having taken
the necklace, and now it offered its result.

"You didn't take it at all," she called after them. "It was that girl
that's had the entry to this house. It's Lydia French."

XXX

At the words Alston turned to Jeff in an involuntary questioning. Jeff
was inscrutable. His face, as Alston saw it, the lines of the mouth, the
down-dropped gaze, was sad, tender even, as if he were merely sorry.
They walked along the street together and it was Choate who began
awkwardly.

"Miss Lydia came to me, some weeks ago, about these jewels."

Here Jeff stopped him, breaking in upon him indeed when he had got thus
far.

"Alston, let's go down under the old willow and smoke a pipe."

Alston was rather dashed at having the tentative introduction of Lydia
at once cut off, and yet the proposition seemed to him natural. Indeed,
as they turned into Mill Street it occurred to him that Jeff might be
providing solitude and a fitting place to talk. As they went down the
old street, unchanged even to the hollows worn under foot in the course
of the years, something stole over them and softened imperceptibly the
harsh moment. There was Ma'am Fowler's where they used to come to buy
doughnuts. There was the house where the crippled boy lived, and sat at
the window waving signals to the other boys as they went past. At the
same window a man sat now. Jeff was pretty sure it was the boy grown up,
and yet was too absorbed in his thought of Lydia to ask. He didn't
really care. But it was soothing to find the atmosphere of the place
enveloped him like a charm. It wasn't possible they were so old, or
that they had been mightily excited a minute before over a foolish
thing. Presently after leaving the houses they turned off the road and
crossed the shelving sward to the old willow, and there on a bench
hacked by their own jackknives they sat down to smoke. Jeff remembered
it was he who had thought to give the bench a back. He had nailed the
board from tree to tree. It was here now or its fellow--he liked to
think it was his own board--and he leaned against it and lighted up. The
day's perturbation had taken Choate in another way. He didn't want to
smoke. But he rolled a cigarette with care and pretended to take much
interest in it. He felt it was for Jeff to begin.