st fiercely upon her.

"What do you know about it?" he demanded. "You're neither wife nor
mother, but you might show a little more feeling, being a woman. Do you
realize what this thing means to us--to Flamsted--to the family?"

"Tave," she turned her gray eyes full upon him, the pupils were
unnaturally enlarged, "I don't suppose I do know what it means to all of
you--but it makes me sick to talk about it--please don't--I can't bear
it--take me home as quick as you can."

She grew whiter still.

"Ain't you well, Aileen?" he asked in real anxiety, repenting of his
hard word to her.

"Not very, Tave; the truth is I ate too many checkerberries and had an
attack of indigestion--I shall be all right soon--and they sent over for
Mrs. Caukins just at that time, and when Dulcie came back she told
me--it's awful--but it's different with you; he belongs to you all here
and you've always loved him."

"Loved him!"--Octavius Buzzby's voice shook with suppressed emotion--"I
should say loved him; he's been dear to me as my own--I thank God Louis
Champney isn't living to go through this disgrace!"

He drew up in the road to let a gang of workmen separate--he had been
driving the mare at full speed. Both he and Aileen caught fragments of
what they were saying.

"It's damned hard on his mother--"

"They say there's a woman in the case--"

"Generally is with them highflyers--"

"I'll bet he'll make for the old country, if he can get clear he'll--"

"Europe's full of 'em--reg'lar cesspool they say--"

"Any reward offered?"

"The Company'll have to fork over or there'll be the biggest strike in
Flamsted that the stone-cutting business has seen yet--"

"The papers don't say what the shortage is--"

"What's Van Ostend's daughter's name, anybody know?--they say he was
sweet on her--"

"She's a good haul," a man laughed hoarsely, insultingly, "but she
didn't bite, an' lucky for her she didn't."

"You're 'bout right--them high rollers don't want to raise nothing but
game cocks--no prison birds, eh?"

The men passed on, twenty or more. Octavius Buzzby, and the one who in
the last hour had left her girlhood behind her, drove homewards in
silence. Her eyes were lowered; her white cheeks burned again, but with
shame at what she was obliged to hear.

XII

The strike was averted; the men were paid in full on the Wednesday
following that Saturday the events of which brought for a time Flamsted,
its families, and its great