lding in her arm, and
pulled the blanket up so that it framed her face bewitchingly.

"Mose can bring up the mince-meat when he comes--since he isn't here,"
she said hurriedly. "We weren't looking for you back, but dinner will be
ready in half an hour or so, I think." She pulled open the door and went
out into the storm.

Rock stared at the door, still quivering with the slam she had given it.
Then he looked at Ford, and afterward sat down weakly upon a stool, and
began dazedly pulling the icicles from his mustache.

"Well--I'll--be--cremated!" he said in a whisper.

"And what's eating you, Rock?" Ford quizzed gayly. He had seen
something in the eyes of Josephine, when he met her, that had set his
blood jumping again. "Did Miss Melby--"

"Miss Melby my granny!" grunted Rock, in deep disgust. "That there is
your wife!"

Ford backed up against the wall and stared at him blankly. Afterward he
took a deep breath and went out as though the place was on fire.

CHAPTER XVII

What Ford Found at the Top

Ford Campbell was essentially a man of action; he did not waste ten
seconds in trying to deduce the whys and hows of the amazing fact; he
would have a whole lifetime in which to study them. He started for the
house, and the tracks he made in the loose, shifting snow were
considerably more than a yard apart. He even forgot to stamp off the
clinging snow and scour his boot-soles upon the porch rug, and when he
went striding in, he pushed the door only half shut behind him, so that
it swung in the wind and let a small drift collect upon the parlor
carpet, until Mrs. Kate, feeling a draught, discovered it, and was
shocked beyond words at the sacrilege.

Ford went into the dining-room, crossed it in just three strides, and
ran his quarry to earth in the kitchen, where she was distraitly
setting out biscuit materials. He started toward her, realized suddenly
that the all-observing Buddy was at his very heels, and delayed the
reckoning while he led that terrible man-child to his mother.

"I wish you'd close-herd this kid for about four hours," he told Mrs.
Kate bluntly, and left her looking scared and unconsciously posing as
protective motherhood, her arm around the outraged Robert Chester Mason.
Mrs. Kate was absolutely convinced that Ford was at last really drunk
and "on the rampage," and she had a terrible vision of slain girlhood in
the kitchen, so that she was torn between mother-love and her desire to
protec