ome at last, have you!"

She knew that tone of voice and what it portended. She put her fingers
in her ears to shut out further sound of it, and ran down the hall to
the back passageway, closed the door behind her and stood there
trembling from nervousness.--Had Mrs. Googe obtained some inkling that
she had a message to deliver from that son?--a message she neither could
nor would deliver? Did Champney Googe's mother know that she had seen
that son in the quarry woods? Mrs. Googe's friends had told her the
truth of the affair at the sheepfold, when it was found that her
unanswered suspicions were liable to unsettle her reason.--Could she
know of that message? Could any one?

The mere presence in the house of this suffering woman set Aileen's
every nerve tingling with sickening despair. She determined to wait
there in the dimly lighted back hall until Octavius should make his
appearance, be it soon or late; he always came through here on his way
to the ell.

Aurora Googe looked neither to right nor left on entering the room. She
went straight to the library table, on the opposite side of which Mrs.
Champney was still sitting where Octavius had left her nearly two hours
before. She stemmed both hands on it as if finding the support
necessary. Fixing her eyes, already beginning to glaze with the
increasing fever, upon her sister-in-law, she spoke, but with apparent
effort:

"Yes, I've come, at last, Almeda--I've come to ask help for my boy--"

Mrs. Champney interrupted her; she was trembling visibly, even Aurora
Googe saw that.

"I suppose this is Octavius Buzzby's doings. When I gave him that
message it was final--_final_, do you hear?"

She raised her voice almost an octave in the intense excitement she was
evidently trying to combat. The sound penetrated to Aileen, shut in the
back hall, and again she thrust her fingers into her ears. At that
moment Octavius entered from the outer door.

"What are you doing here, Aileen?" For the first time in his life he
spoke roughly to her.

She turned upon him her white scared face. "What is _she_ doing?" she
managed to say through chattering teeth.

Octavius repented him, that under the strain of the situation he had
spoken to her as he had. "Go to bed, Aileen," he said firmly, but
gently; "this ain't no place for you now."

She needed but that word; she was half way up the stairs before he had
finished. He heard her shut herself into the room. He hung up his coat,
n