will be sacred to me, another place for me to go to, another
interest. I'll be having you both closer. Now, don't cry, little girl.
I've found you out and found myself, too!"

Kathryn was shedding tears--tears of gratitude for the material Helen
was putting at her disposal.

"My dear little Kathryn! It is going to be all right, all right. Why,
childie, when he comes home I am going to insist upon the wedding. I
am not a young woman, really, though I put up a bit of a bluff--and
the time isn't very long, no matter how you look at it--so, darling,
you and Brace must humour me, do the one big thing to make me
happy--you must be married!"

Kathryn looked up. The tears hung to her long lashes.

"You want this?" she faltered with quivering lips.

Helen believed she understood at last.

"My darling!" she said tenderly, "it is the one great longing of my
heart."

Then she dropped back on her pillow and closed her eyes while the pain
gripped her. But the pain, for a moment, seemed a friend, not a foe.
It might be the thing that would open the door--out.

Helen had spoken truth as truth should be but never quite is, to a
mother. She had taken her place in the march, her colours flying. But
her place was the mother's place, lagging in the rear.

Such an effort as she had just made caused angels to weep over her.

CHAPTER X

By a kind of self-hypnotism Northrup had gained his ends so far as
drifting with the slow current of King's Forest was concerned, and in
his relation toward his book. The unrest, as to his duty in a
world-wide sense, was lulled. Whatever of that sentiment moved him was
focussed on Maclin who, in a persistent, vague way became a haunting
possibility of danger almost too preposterous to be considered
seriously. Still the possibility was worth watching. Maclin's attitude
toward Northrup was interesting. He seemed unable to ignore him, while
earnestly desiring to do so. The fact was this: Maclin looked upon
Northrup as he might have upon a slow-burning fuse. That he could not
estimate the length of the fuse, nor to what it was attached, did not
mend matters. One cannot ignore a trail of fire, and a guilty
conscience is never a sleeping one.

The people on the Point had long since come to the conclusion that
Northrup was a trailer of Maclin, not their enemy. The opinion was
divided as to his relations with Mary-Clare, but that was a different
matter.

"I'll bet my last dollar," Twombley mut