foot-path gate for them.]

"You were going to tell me about your father," he said, striving to hold
the interruption as if it had not been, and yet tingling in every nerve
to be free. "Did you come all the way down the mountain to warn me?"

She nodded, adding: "But that didn't make no differ'; I had to come
anyway. He run me out, paw did."

"Heavens!" ejaculated Tom, prickling now with a new sensation. "And you
haven't any place to stay?"

She shook her head.

"No. I was allowin' maybe your paw'd let me sleep where you-uns keep the
hawsses--jest for a little spell till I could make out what-all I'm
goin' to do."

He was too rageful to be quite clear-sighted. Yet he conceived that he
had a duty laid on him. Once in the foolish, infatuated long-ago he had
told her he would take care of her; he remembered it; doubtless she was
remembering it, too. But her suggestion was not to be considered for a
moment.

"I can't let you go to the stables," he objected. "The horse-boys sleep
there. But I'll put a roof over you, some way. Wait here a minute till I
come back."

His thought was to go to his mother and ask her help; but half-way to
the house his courage failed him. Since the breach in spiritual
confidence he had been better able to see the lovable side of his
mother's faith; but he could not be blind to that quality of hardness in
it which, even in such chastened souls as Martha Gordon's, finds
expression in woman's inhumanity to woman. Besides, Ardea and her cousin
were still in the way.

He swung on his heel undecided. On the hillside back of the new foundry
there was a one-roomed cabin built on the Gordon land years before by a
hermit watchman of the Chiawassee plant. It was vacant, and Tom
remembered that the few bits of furniture had not been removed when the
old watchman died. Would the miserable shack do for a temporary refuge
for the outcast? He concluded it would have to do; and, making a wide
circuit of the house, he went around to the stables to harness
Longfellow to the buggy. Luckily, the negroes were all in the detached
kitchen, eating their supper, so he was able to go and come undetected.

When he drove down to the gate he found Nan waiting where he had left
her; but now she had a bundle in her arms. As he got out to swing the
driveway grille, the house door opened; a flood of light from the hall
lamp banded the lawn, and there were voices and footsteps on the
veranda. He flung a nervous glance