om another town and had not asked her mother to the wedding.
Lyda was trying to make it up to her mother in double devotion.

Helen Barton met Dr. Smelter once too often and her father made her
marry him. She had a child born dead. Now she was holding clandestine
meetings with Mr. Daly, a traveling salesman, home on one of his
quarterly visits to his family. He had promised to take Helen away with
him on his next trip and make a home for her in the city.

* * * * *

It was a sweltering hot Saturday in the first part of June. Every now
and then the wind blew in from the east picking up the dust in eddies.
Abe Cohen's store was closed. His children wandered up and down the
street, celebrating their sabbath in best clothes and chastened
behaviour. Jim Dunn was watching a large consignment of goods for the
Company store being unloaded. He was telling Earl Henderson, the
manager's nephew, how much it would cost him to get in with the poker
crowd.

George Brainerd had finished fixing up the Company's accounts. He
whistled as he worked. Dave Fellows was in debt three hundred dollars to
the Company. That would keep him another year. He was a good workman but
a poor manager. Sam Kent was in debt one hundred dollars. He would have
to stay, too. John Simpson had come out even. He could go if he wanted
to. He was a trouble-maker anyway....

Helen Barton sat talking with Daly in the thick woods up back of the
Presbyterian church. They were planning how to get away undetected on
the evening train.... "If she was good enough for you then, she's good
enough now," Mr. Stillman was saying to his defiant son. "You're not fit
for a better woman. You'll take care of her and that's the end of
it...."

Widow Stokes' half-witted son rode up from the Extract Works on an old
bony horse. He brought word that the enemy was at the Kibbard Mill, two
miles beyond the Works. People were throwing their furniture into the
mill pond, he said. Every one laughed. Mottie Stokes was always telling
big stories. The boy, puzzled, went round and round the town, stopping
every one he met, telling his tale. Sweat poured down his pale face.

At last he rode down to Trout Creek Mill and told Dave Fellows. Dave got
on the old grey mule and came up to town to find out further news. The
townsfolk, loafing under the trees around Main Street and going about on
little errands, shouted when they saw Dave come in on his mule beside