s
rapidly as we had assembled and more quietly.

"Thank you, and bless you," he said to me, as I went past him in the
darkness, and for just a second I suspected that his hand was laid on my
black braids but I was not sure. I knew the gratitude was for my
getting Martha off the scene of action so quietly and swiftly.

"A bit of raw life for you, Charlotte," Nickols remarked as he went with
me through the fragrant night back to Mark's and Nell's feast. "The
eternal girl, two-men melee."

"In this case it was girl--three men, the third skunking it," I answered
in words as coarse and as forcible as the scene I had just witnessed.
"I'd like to get my bare hands around the throat of the man who is
hiding behind Martha and that little child."

"That remark from you, my dear Charlotte, just goes to show that when
women get even the smell of bloodshed they become fiercer than the
male," said Nickols with a cool laugh that further infuriated me.

"Yes, I do feel like a female jaguar," I answered hotly and then
collapsed inside at the use of that name for myself in conjunction with
my secret title for the Reverend Mr. Goodloe.

"It would be better if you felt yourself in the character of a ferret if
you intend to go out on a still hunt for all unacknowledged paternity,
even in dear, simple, little old Goodloets," Nickols further jeered as
we came up the steps of the Morgan house from where the others were just
going into the dining room to resume their eating and drinking and being
merry.

"I'll find that one man," I answered as I swept into the dining room,
seated myself in my place and drained my glass of flat wine.

"Heaven help him!" laughed Nickols wickedly, and he raised Mr. Goodloe's
full glass as he slipped into his place beside me.

For a week after the shooting fray my soul sulked darkly in its tent and
meditated while I went on my usual gay rounds of self-enjoyment. The
garden was being brought to a most glorious mid-August triumph and the
inhabitants for miles around were coming to see it. All of father's old
friends, from whom he had shrunk in the last years, hung around him in
the old way. He sat with them under the old graybeard poplars around
which had been planted a plantation of slim young larches by the wizard
of White Plains. From discussions about gardening and Americanisms all
the old Solons of the local bar, and even of the towns around, gradually
led their fallen leader back into his place and we