lfishness all rises before me and
the punishment is fearful. If there is a God, may He bless you and
guard you, my innocent little girl.

Your unworthy
FATHER

Geraldine's hungry heart drank in the tender message. Again and again
she kissed the letter while tears of grief ran down her cheeks. A tiny
hope sprang in her breast. She read her father's words over and over,
striving to glean from them a contradiction of the accusation that he
had planned and carried out a deliberate crime.

Rufus Carder had promised her father to treat her as a daughter. How
that assertion soothed the wound to her filial affection, and warmed her
heart with the assurance that her father had not sold her into the worst
slavery!

She soon crept into bed, but not to sleep. Her father's exhortation
seemed to give her permission to speculate on those words of the
stranger knight:

"Courage. Walk in meadow. Wear white."

CHAPTER VIII

The Meadow

The knight was doubly dusty when, returning from his quest in the late
twilight, he halted his noisy steed before Upton's Fancy Goods and
Notions. He was confronted by a sign: "Closed. Taking account of stock."

The young man tried the door which resisted vigorous turns of its
handle. Nothing daunted, he knocked peremptorily, then waited a space.
Getting no response, he renewed his assaults with such force that at
last the lock turned, the door opened, and an irate face with a
one-sided slit of a mouth was projected at him threateningly.

"Can't you read, hey?" was the exasperated question, followed by an
energetic effort to close the door which was foiled by the interposition
of a masculine foot.

"Yes, Mrs. Whipp, I learned last year. I'm awfully sorry, but I have to
come in." As he spoke the visitor opened the door in spite of the
indignant resistance of Charlotte's whole body, and walked into the
empty shop where kerosene lamps were already burning. "I have to see
Miss Upton. Awfully sorry to disturb you like this," he added, smiling
down at the angry, weazened face which gradually grew bewildered. "Why,
it's Mr. Barry," she soliloquized aloud. "Just the same," she added, the
sense of outrage holding over, "we'd ruther you'd 'a' come to-morrer."

Ben strode through the shop and out to the living-room, Mrs. Whipp
following impotently, talking in a high, angry voice.

"'T ain't my fault, Miss Upton. He would come in. Some folk'll do jest
what they please, wha