Kennard repay in some degree for the sake of the father? That
sense of duty surmounted all qualms involved in the betrayal of an
employer, if it could be called betrayal, considering the ethics that
had been adopted and preached by Mern.

It was midnight when she reached her firm decision. She would go to the
north country. She would do her best, single-handed, as opportunity
might present itself. She would fight without allowing her grandfather
to know her identity. Perhaps she might tell him when it was all over,
if she won. The debt was owed by the father; it might help if it was
known that the daughter had paid. Then she would go away; it was not in
her mind to gain any favor for herself. If she merely ran to him,
tattling an exposure of the plot, Echford Flagg, if her well-grounded
estimate of his character were correct, might repudiate her as a mere
tale-bearer; she remembered enough to know that he was a square fighter.
She felt that she had some of the Flagg spirit of that sort in her. She
had been fighting her battle with the world without asking odds of
anybody or seeking favors from her only kin.

She would go north and do her best, for her own, according to the code
she had laid down.

She was conscious then, having made up her mind, of the subtle longing
that was back of the fierce impatience to repay her father's debt: the
woods of the north and the hale spirit of the Open Places were calling
her home again.

She would not admit to herself that she was engaged in a quixotic
enterprise, and in order to keep herself from making that admission she
resolutely turned her thoughts away from plans. To ponder on plans would
surely sap her courage. She could not foresee what would confront her in
the north country and she was glad because her ideas on that point were
hazy. It was not in her mind to hide herself from the other operatives
of the Vose-Mern agency when she was at the scene; her experience had
acquainted her with the efficacy of guile in working with human nature,
and she was well aware that her bold presence where the operatives were
making their campaign would prove such a mixture of honesty and guile
that Miss Elsham and Crowley, and even Mern, himself, when he learned,
would be obliged to expend a portion of their energy on guessing.

She did not know how or whether one girl could prevail against the
organization threatening her grandfather and Latisan, but she was fully
determined to find out