"Persons who will lie and steal will do anything."

"Why shouldn't people do anything they wants to?"

"And you knew the pin was mine."

"I saw you a-wearing of it," admitted Zora easily.

"Then you have stolen it, and you are a thief."

Still Zora appeared to be unimpressed with the heinousness of her fault.

"Did you make that pin?" she asked.

"No, but it is mine."

"Why is it yours?"

"Because it was given to me."

"But you don't need it; you've got four other prettier ones--I counted."

"That makes no difference."

"Yes it does--folks ain't got no right to things they don't need."

"That makes no difference, Zora, and you know it. The pin is mine. You
stole it. If you had wanted a pin and asked me I might have given you--"

The girl blazed.

"I don't want your old gifts," she almost hissed. "You don't own what
you don't need and can't use. God owns it and I'm going to send it back
to Him."

With a swift motion she whipped the pin from her pocket and raised her
arm to hurl it into the swamp. Bles caught her hand. He caught it
lightly and smiled sorrowfully into her eyes. She wavered a moment, then
the answering light sprang to her face. Dropping the brooch into his
hand, she wheeled and fled toward the cabin.

Bles handed it silently to Miss Taylor. Mary Taylor was beside herself
with impatient anger--and anger intensified by a conviction of utter
helplessness to cope with any strained or unusual situations between
herself and these two.

"Alwyn," she said sharply, "I shall report Zora for stealing. And you
may report yourself to Miss Smith tonight for disrespect toward a
teacher."

_Eight_

MR. HARRY CRESSWELL

The Cresswells, father and son, were at breakfast. The daughter was
taking her coffee and rolls up stairs in bed.

"P'sh! I don't like it!" declared Harry Cresswell, tossing the letter
back to his father. "I tell you, it is a damned Yankee trick."

He was a man of thirty-five, smooth and white, slight, well-bred and
masterful. His father, St. John Cresswell, was sixty, white-haired,
mustached and goateed; a stately, kindly old man with a temper and much
family pride.

"Well, well," he said, his air half preoccupied, half unconcerned, "I
suppose so--and yet"--he read the letter again, aloud: "'Approaching you
as one of the most influential landowners of Alabama, on a confidential
matter'--h'm--h'm--'a combination of capital and power, such as this
nation has never see