taker assured the girl. "Musker has been telling
you about the old Thurstons. He's main proud of them, but you needn't
fear them--it's long since the last one walked. You have a kind heart,
and nothing evil dare hurt you. See! I've tried to make you
comfortable. You were kind to the old place's real master--many a time
I've nursed him--God bless you!"

Helen was not in the least afraid of the dead Thurstons. She was
filled with the common-sense courage which characterizes the
inhabitants of her new country, but she had been affected by the
stories, and she sat for a time with her feet on the hearth irons,
gazing thoughtfully into the blaze. She had met a modern Thurston, and
found the instincts of his forbears strong within him. She considered
that strength, courage, and resolution well became a man, but that
gentleness and chivalrous respect for women were desirable attributes,
too. The Thurstons, however, had taken to bloodshed as a pastime, and
broken most of their wives' hearts until it seemed that they had
brought a curse upon their race. She suspected there was a measure of
their brutality in the one she knew. Remembering something Geoffrey
once had said, her face grew flushed and she clenched a little hand
with an angry gesture, saying, "No man shall ever make a slave of me,
and my husband, if I have one, must be my servant before he is my
master."

Thereupon she dismissed the subject, tried to blot the stories from her
memory, and presently buried her ears in the pillow to shut out the
clamor of the storm. After a sound night's slumber, and an interview
with Miss Thwaite she resumed her journey next morning.

Musker stood in the gate to watch the party ride away, and glancing at
the coins in his hand said to Margery, "I wish they'd come often. Main
interested in my stories they were all of them, and it's double what
any of the shooting folks ever gave me. This one came from the young
lady, and there's a way about her that puzzles me after seeing her."

CHAPTER VI

MILLICENT'S REWARD

The late Autumn evening was closing in. Millicent Leslie stood out on
the terrace of the old North Country hall, where, the year before, she
had first met her husband. A pale moon had climbed above the high
black ridge of moor, which shut in one end of the valley, and the big
beech wood that rolled down the lower hillside had faded to a shadowy
blur, but she could still see the dim, white road running s