his nose and watched him curl up. Then I took him back
today, myself, to his own office, not to let him out of my sight, till
it was all settled. There was a great deal more to it . . . two or three
hours of fight. I bluffed some, about action by the bar-association,
disbarment, a possible indictment for perjury, and seemed to hit a weak
spot. And finally I saw him with my own eyes burn up that fake
warranty-deed. And that's all there is to that. Just as soon as we can
get this certified copy admitted and entered on our Town Records, 'Gene
can have possession of his own wood-land. Isn't that good news?"

He paused and added with a tired, tolerant, kindly accent, "Now Nelly
will have fourteen pairs of new shoes, each laced higher up than the
others, and I won't be the one to grudge them to her."

He waited for a comment and, when none came, went on doggedly making
talk in that resolutely natural tone of his. "Now that you know the end,
and that it all came out right, you ought to listen to some details, for
they are queer. The missing pages weren't in that first town I struck at
all. Nothing there but a record of a family of Simmonses who had come
from Ashley in 1778. They had . . ."

Marise heard nothing more of what he said, although his voice went on
with words the meaning of which she could not grasp. It did not seem to
her that she had really understood with the whole of her brain anything
he had said, or that she had been able to take in the significance of
it. She could think of nothing but a frightening sensation all over her
body, as though the life were ebbing out of it. Every nerve and fiber in
her seemed to have gone slack, beyond anything she had ever conceived.
She could feel herself more and more unstrung and loosened like a violin
string let down and down. The throbbing ache in her throat was gone.
Everything was gone. She sat helpless and felt it slip away, till
somewhere in the center of her body this ebbing of strength had run so
far that it was a terrifying pain, like the approach of death. She was
in a physical panic of alarm, but unable to make a sound, to turn her
head.

It was when she heard a loud insistent ringing in her head, and saw the
stars waver and grow dim that she knew she was fainting away.

* * * * *

Then she was lying on the sofa in Cousin Hetty's sitting-room, Neale
bending over her, holding a handkerchief which smelled of ammonia, and
Agnes, ver