ing the necessities, but he was never asked. Men spoke to him
again, even some of the women. That was all.

"I think it was then that a curious, perpetual dread fastened on his
mind--a fear of the wind in the night, of breaking twigs or sudden
voices. He ordered things to be left on the steps, and he would peer
out from under the blind to make sure that the walk was empty before
he opened the door.

"You must realize," she said in a sharper voice, "that my father was
not a pure coward at first. He was an extremely sensitive man who
hated the rude stir of living and who simply asked to be left
undisturbed with his portfolios. But life's not like that. The war
hunted him out and ruined him; it destroyed his being, just as it
destroyed the fortunes of others.

"Then he began to think--it was absolute fancy--that there was a
conspiracy in the town to kill him. He sent some of his things away,
got together what money he had, and one night left his home secretly
on foot. He tramped south for weeks, living for a while in small place
after place, until he reached Georgia, and then a town about fifty
miles from here----"

She broke off, sitting rigidly erect, looking out over the level black
sea with its shifting, chalky line of light, and a long silence
followed. The antiphonal crying of the owls sounded over the bubbling
swamp, the mephitic perfume hung like a vapor on the shore. John
Woolfolk shifted his position.

"My mother told me this," his companion said suddenly. "Father
repeated it over and over through the nights after they were married.
He slept only in snatches, and would wake with a gasp and his heart
almost bursting. I know almost nothing about her, except that she had
a brave heart--or she would have gone mad. She was English and had
been a governess. They met in the little hotel where they were
married. Then father bought this place, and they came here to live."

Woolfolk had a vision of the tenuous figure of Lichfield Stope; he was
surprised that such acute agony had left the slightest trace of
humanity; yet the other, after forty years of torment, still survived
to shudder at a chance footfall, the advent of a casual and harmless
stranger.

This, then, was by implication the history of the woman at his side;
it disposed of the mystery that had veiled her situation here. It was
surprisingly clear, even to the subtle influence that, inherited from
her father, had set the shadow of his own obsession upon