ok her head. She was afraid the child
was "taking something."

"Don't do much today, Siddy," she said kindly. "Just lie around and
take it easy till you get rested up. I'll fix you a dose of quinine."

Sidney refused to lie around and take it easy. She swallowed the
quinine meekly enough, but she worked fiercely all day, hunting out
superfluous tasks to do. That night she slept the sleep of exhaustion,
but her dreams were unenviable and the awakening was terrible.

Any day, any hour, might bring John Lincoln to Plainfield. What should
she do? Hide from him? Refuse to see him? But he would find out the
truth just the same; she would lose his friendships and respect just
as surely. Sidney trod the way of the transgressor, and found that its
thorns pierced to bone and marrow. Everything had come to an
end--nothing was left to her! In the untried recklessness of twenty
untempered years she wished she could die before John Lincoln came to
Plainfield. The eyes of youth could not see how she could possibly
live afterward.

* * * * *

Some days later a young man stepped from the C.P.R. train at
Plainfield station and found his way to the one small hotel the place
boasted. After getting his supper he asked the proprietor if he could
direct him to "The Evergreens."

Caleb Williams looked at his guest in bewilderment. "Never heerd o'
such a place," he said.

"It is the name of Mr. Conway's estate--Mr. James Conway," explained
John Lincoln.

"Oh, Jim Conway's place!" said Caleb. "Didn't know that was what he
called it. Sartin I kin tell you whar' to find it. You see that road
out thar'? Well, just follow it straight along for a mile and a half
till you come to a blacksmith's forge. Jim Conway's house is just this
side of it on the right--back from the road a smart piece and no other
handy. You can't mistake it."

John Lincoln did not expect to mistake it, once he found it; he knew
by heart what it appeared like from Sidney's description: an old
stately mansion of mellowed brick, covered with ivy and set back from
the highway amid fine ancestral trees, with a pine-grove behind it, a
river to the left, and a harbour beyond.

He strode along the road in the warm, ruddy sunshine of early evening.
It was not a bad-looking road at all; the farmsteads sprinkled along
it were for the most part snug and wholesome enough; yet somehow it
was different from what he had expected it to be. And there wa