u,
it's good-bye to Jerry-Jo McAlpin."

Something in the words and tone of humility brought Priscilla, with a
bound, back to a kindlier mood. After all, it was a tribute that McAlpin
was paying her. She must hold him in check, that was all.

They parted with no great change. There had been a flurry, but it had
served to clear the atmosphere--for her at least.

But Nathaniel, that evening in the kitchen, managed to arouse in the girl
the one state of mind needed to drive her on her course.

"What was the meaning of that scuffling by the bars a time back?" he
asked, eyeing Priscilla with the old look of suspicious antagonism. Every
nerve in the girl's body twitched with resentment and her spirit flared
forth. She shielded herself behind the one flimsy subterfuge that Glenn
could never understand or tolerate.

"A kiss you mean. What's a kiss? You call that a scuffle?"

Theodora, who was washing the tea dishes while Priscilla wiped them, took
her usual course and began to cry dispiritedly and forlornly.

"What's between you and--McAlpin?" Nathaniel asked, scowling darkly.

"Between us? What need for anything between us?"

Priscilla ceased smiling and looked defiant.

"Maybe you better marry that half-breed and have done with it."

"It's more like--would _he_ marry me?"

This was unfortunate.

"And why not?" Nathaniel shook the ashes from his pipe angrily. "A little
more such performance as I saw to-day and no decent man will marry you!
As for Jerry-Jo, he'll marry you if I say so! You foul my nest, miss, and
out you go!"

"Husband! husband!" And with this Theodora dropped a cup, one of Glenn's
mother's cups, and somehow this added fire to his fury.

"And when the time comes, wife, you make your choice: Go with her, who
you have trained into what she is, or stay with me who has been defied in
his own home, by them nearest and closest to him."

Priscilla breathed fast and hard. The tangible wall of misunderstanding
between her and her father stifled her to-night as it never had before.
Again she realized the finality of something--the breaking of the old
ties, the helpless sense of groping for what lay hidden, but none the
less real, just on before.

CHAPTER IX

The next day was gloriously clear and threateningly warm. Such days do
not come to Kenmore in September except to lure the unheeding to acts of
folly. And at two o'clock in the afternoon Priscilla, from the kitchen
door, saw Jerry-Jo padd