it lifelessly, and with no defiance in his eyes, stating only a
wearisome fact. He had seen the Colonel's face through a kind of red
mist in the Judge's office, and felt reckless and strong. He did not
feel like a hero now. He was tired.

He would hardly have cared just now if you had told him that back in
Judge Saxon's office two men who had not moved from their chairs since
he left them, and who would not move until several vital points were
settled, were discussing something he would not have believed them
capable of discussing at such length and with so much feeling--the
fortunes of the Donovan family.

He did not care just now for the little sights and sounds of spring that
were all around him, the cluster of arbutus leaves at his feet, the
faint, nestling bird noises, sweeter than song, and the stir and rustle
of tiny, unclassified sounds that were signs of the pulse of spring
beating everywhere, of change and growth going on whether human beings
perceived or denied it.

"I can't stand any more," said the boy.

Up the cliff to his right, strewn with pine needles that were brown-gold
in the sun, a steep and tiny trail led the way to the top of the hill
and his rendezvous. Now the boy crushed Judith's letter into his pocket,
turned to the trail with a sigh, and began to climb.

CHAPTER TEN

"They won't like it, Judith," said Mrs. Randall for the last time, as
she slipped into her evening coat.

"They? If you mean the Colonel----"

"I do."

Judith, looking up at her mother from the chaise-longue, could not have
seen the radiant vision that she had adored as a child, when the spring
and the Everards and the habit of evening dress all returned at once to
Green River. Mrs. Randall's blue gown was the creation of a Wells
dressmaker, but lacked the charm of earlier evening frocks, anxiously
contrived with the help of a local seamstress, when the clear blue that
was still her favourite colour had been her best colour, when there was
a touch more pink in the warm white of her complexion, and before the
tiny, worried line in her broad, low forehead was there to stay. But
there was no reflection of these changes in her daughter's big, watching
eyes.

"It will do him good not to like it," said Judith sweetly.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing, Mamma. Is that the carriage? Don't be
late."

Minna Randall looked down at her daughter in puzzled silence a moment,
with the little line in her forehead deep