ard of it." Then she turned
and, keeping her feet carefully from the dust, went on again.

It seemed to Dorcas that night as if she could not wait to finish the
bowl of bread and milk that made her supper, and to put on her white
muslin and seat herself by the window. She felt as if the world were
rushing fast, the flowers in the garden hurrying to open, the sun to get
into the sky and make it redder than ever it had been before, and all
happy people to be happier. Something seemed sweeping after her, and she
dared not turn and look it in the face. But her heart told her it was
the moment that would come after her work had been accomplished and
Newell had found Alida. As if she had known it would be so, she saw him
coming down the road and called to him. He was walking very fast, his
head up, and his hands, she presently saw, clenched as they swung.

"Newell!" she cried, "come in."

He strode up the path and she rose to meet him. She remembered now that
she had many things to tell him, and the knowledge of them choked her.

"Newell," she began, "you mustn't go--I don't know where you're
goin'--but down that way, you mustn't go till eight o'clock. An' then I
guess you'll see her. It'll be better than the house, because her
mother's there. Why," her voice faltered and she ended breathlessly,
"what makes you look so?"

He looked like wrath. It was upon his knotted brow, the iron lips, and
in the blazing of his eyes.

"What's this I've been told?" he said, in a voice she had never heard
from him, "about Clayton Rand?"

She laughed, relieved and pleased at her own cleverness.

"It's all right, Newell," she called gleefully. "He hasn't been there
for two weeks. He's comin' to-night to take me to ride, an' I'll make
him go the turnpike road, an' she'll be down by Pine Hollow, an' you can
snap her up under her mother's nose--an' she's got on her blue."

Newell put out his hands and grasped her wrists. He held them tight and
looked at her. She gazed back in wonder. In all the months of his
repining she had not seen him so, full of warm passion, of a steady
purpose.

"Dorcas," he said, "I won't have it!"

She answered in pure wonder and with great simplicity:--

"What, Newell? What won't you have?"

He spoke slowly, leaving intervals between the words.

"I won't have you ridin' with him, nor walkin' with him, nor with any
man. If I'd known it, I'd put a stop to it before. Why, Dorcas, don't
you know whose girl yo