nk everybody's like a feather in the wind,"
replied she. "About love--and everything."

He laughed. "Except those people who are where there isn't any wind."

CHAPTER XII

FOR some time Spenser had been rowing well in toward the
Kentucky shore, to avoid the swift current of the Kentucky River
which rushes into the Ohio at Carrollton. A few yards below its
mouth, in the quiet stretch of backwater along shore, lay the
wharf-boat, little more than a landing stage. The hotel was but
a hundred feet away, at the top of the steep levee. It was
midnight, so everyone in the village had long been asleep. After
several minutes of thunderous hammering Roderick succeeded in
drawing to the door a barefooted man with a candle in his huge,
knotted hand--a man of great stature, amazingly lean and long of
leg, with a monstrous head thatched and fronted with coarse,
yellow-brown hair. He had on a dirty cotton shirt and dirty
cotton trousers--a night dress that served equally well for the
day. His feet were flat and thick and were hideous with corns
and bunions. Susan had early been made a critical observer of
feet by the unusual symmetry of her own. She had seen few feet
that were fit to be seen; but never, she thought, had she seen
an exhibition so repellent.

"What t'hell----" he began. Then, discovering Susan, he growled,
"Beg pardon, miss."

Roderick explained--that is, told the prearranged story. The man
pointed to a grimy register on the office desk, and Roderick set
down the fishing bag and wrote in a cramped, scrawly hand, "Kate
Peters, Milton, Ky."

The man looked at it through his screen of hair and beard, said,
"Come on, ma'am."

"Just a minute," said Roderick, and he drew "Kate" aside and said
to her in a low tone: "I'll be back sometime tomorrow, and then
we'll start at once. But--to provide against everything--don't be
alarmed if I don't come. You'll know I couldn't help it. And wait."

Susan nodded, looking at him with trustful, grateful eyes.

"And," he went on hurriedly, "I'll leave this with you, to take
care of. It's yours as much as mine."

She saw that it was a pocketbook, instinctively put her hands
behind her.

"Don't be silly," he said, with good-humored impatience. "You'll
probably not need it. If you do, you'll need it bad. And you'll
pay me back when you get your place."

He caught one of her hands and put the pocketbook in it. As his
argument was unanswerable, she