been thinking--thinking how it sounded--all that I said," she
mourned. "It all came to me as I was riding home--after what your
grandfather said. I didn't realize what kind of a girl I must seem to
folks that didn't know. But you know. It sounded as though I was
claiming you for myself, when I didn't want you to go away. I'm
ashamed--ashamed!" She averted her eyes from him. The crimson in her
cheeks was deeper. It was a vandal hand that had wrecked the little
shrine of her childhood. His indignation against Thelismer Thornton
blazed higher.

But Dennis Kavanagh knew how to be even more brutal, for that was Dennis
Kavanagh's style of attack. He came out upon the porch, a broad, stocky
chunk of a man, with eyebrows sticking up like the horns on a snail, and
the eyes beneath them keen with humor of the grim and pitiless sort.

"And how do you do to-day, Harlan Thornton?" he asked. "And how is that
old gorilla of a grandfather of yours? Though you needn't tell me, for I
don't want to know--not unless you can lighten me up a bit by telling me
that he's enjoying his last sickness. But right now while I think of it,
I have something to say to you, young Thornton, sir."

The young man stared hard at him. It was an unwonted tone for Kavanagh
to employ. Clare's father, till now, had not included Harlan in his feud
with the grandfather. He had always treated him with a brusqueness that
had a sort of good-humor beneath it. His discourse with the young man
had been curt and satiric and infrequent, and consisted usually in mock
messages of defiance which he asked to have delivered by word of mouth
to the grandfather. But his tone now was crisp and it had a straight
business ring.

"My girl will be sixteen to-morrow. She is done with childhood to-day.
Children may ride cock-horse and play ring-around-a-rosy. I haven't
drawn any particular line on playfellows up to now. But there isn't
going to be any playing at love, sir."

"I never have played at love with your daughter!" cried Harlan, shocked
and indignant at this sudden attack.

"Well, I'm fixing it so you won't. We won't argue about what has
happened, nor we won't discuss what might happen. All is, I don't
propose to have any grandson of old Thornton mixed up in my family. I
don't like the breed. You take that word back to him. I hear he's been
making talk. He made some talk to-day. You needn't look at Clare, young
man. She didn't tell me. But it came across to me mighty sud