r laughed, and said that, had there been a burglar, he must
have fled already, and the young man, laughing too, said that some one
must go anyhow, in all courtesy to defenseless women, and that if Mrs.
Rolfston feared for her front porch, he would lie upon a blanket in the
lawn beside it to set her mind at rest. He had not slept beneath the
stars alone, he said, since the family had left the farm. And there
was much laughing, and Harlson took home the servant girl, and she,
growing bold as they approached the house, ran up the path ahead of
him. The lawn between the better house and street in the lake country
town is often a little forest, so dense the trees and their foliage.
And added to the fragrance of the leaves in later midsummer are the
mingled odors of petunias and pinks and rosemary and bergamot and musk,
for all these flourish late. And the moon comes through the tree-tops
in splashes, and there is a softness and a shade, and it is all like a
scented garden in some old Arabian story, and the senses are affected
and, maybe, the reason. Harlson went up the path, half dreaming, yet
alive in every vein. There was no burglar visible, but a wonderful
woman, in fleecy dishabille, was sure she had heard a sound most
sinister, and endangered women must be guarded of the strong.

And Grant Harlson returned not home that night; yet the moon, shining
through the trees, revealed no form upon a blanket in the garden.

And the summer days drifted by; and the young man fresh from college,
full of ambitions and dreams, found himself a creature he had never
known, a something conscience-stricken, yet half-abandoned, and with a
leaden weight upon his feet to keep them from carrying him away from
the temptation.

He would force himself to a solitary day at times, and go out into the
country with dog and gun, and tramp for miles, and wonder at himself.
He had all sorts of fancies. He thought of his wickedness and his
wasted time, and compared himself with the great men in the books who
had been in similar evil straits,--with Marc Antony, with King Arthur
in Gwendolen's enchanted castle, and with Geraint the strong but
slothful,--rather far-fetched this last comparison,--and of all the
rest. It was a grotesque variety, but amid it all he really suffered.
And he would make good resolves and, for the moment, firm ones, and
return to town when the dew was falling and the moonlight coming, and
the tale was but retold. And th