in
possession breathed more easily, for he had had secret misgivings.

"You had better look out," another man had said to him. "You have
trodden on the toes of a tiger when you have trodden on the toes of a
Carroll. Sooner or later you will have to pay for it."

No one in the little Kentucky village knew what had become of Arthur
Carroll for some time, with the exception of an aunt of Mrs.
Carroll's, who was possessed of some property and who lived there.
She knew, but she told nothing, probably because she had a fierce
pride of family. After years the Carroll girls, Ina and Charlotte,
had come back to their father's birthplace and attended a small
school some three miles distant from the village, a select young
ladies' establishment at which their mother had been educated, and
they had visited rather often at their great-aunt Catherine's. After
they had finished school, the great-aunt had paid the bills, although
nobody knew it, not even the elderly sisters who kept the school,
since the aunt lied and stated that Captain Carroll had sent the
money. Arthur Carroll was called captain then, and nobody knew why,
least of all Carroll himself. Suddenly he had been called captain,
and after making a disclaimer or two at first, he had let it go; it
was a minor dishonesty, and forced upon him in a measure. The old
aunt calmly stated that he had joined the army, been rapidly
promoted, and had resigned. People laughed a little, but not to her
face. Besides, she had stated that Arthur was a very rich man, and
much thought of among the Yankees, and nobody was in a position to
disprove that. Certainly when the feminine Carrolls visited in the
old place, their appearance carried out the theory of riches. They
were very well dressed, and they looked well fed, with that placid,
assured air which usually comes only from the sense of possession.

The feminine Carrolls had been speaking of this old aunt that spring
day as they sat idly in the little green-curtained temple beside the
pond. They had indulged in a few low, utterly gentle, and unmalicious
laughs of reminiscence at some of her eccentricities; then they had
agreed that she was a good old soul, and said no more of her, but
gazed with languorous delight at the spring scene misty with green
and rose and gold like the smoke of some celestial fire.

Through the emerald dazzle of the trailing willow-boughs could be
seen a small, blooming apple-tree, and a bush full of yellow flow