"An outrageous thing!" said Uncle Benjamin violently. "An outrageous thing!"


Which relieved his feelings, but didn't help any one else.


Mrs. Frederick wept. Cousin Stickles took up the refrain between her moans of despair.


"I told her—we both told her—that Roaring Abel had certainly killed his wife in one of his drunken rages and would kill her. She laughed and said, 'I'm not afraid of Roaring Abel. He won't kill me, and he's too old for me to be afraid of his gallantries.' What did she mean? What are gallantries?"


Mrs. Frederick saw that she must stop crying if she wanted to regain control of the conversation.


"I said to her, 'Valancy, if you have no regard for your own reputation and your family's standing, have you none for my feelings?' She said, 'None.' Just like that, 'None!'"


"Insane people never do have any regard for other people's feelings," said Uncle Benjamin. "That's one of the symptoms."


"I broke out into tears then, and she said, 'Come now, Mother, be a good sport. I'm going to do an act of Christian charity, and as for the damage it will do my reputation, why, you know I haven't any matrimonial chances anyhow, so what does it matter?' And with that she turned and went out."


"The last words I said to her," said Cousin Stickles pathetically, "were, 'Who will rub my back at nights now?' And she said—she said—but no, I cannot repeat it."


"Nonsense," said Uncle Benjamin. "Out with it. This is no time to be squeamish."


"She said"—Cousin Stickles' voice was little more than a whisper—"she said—'Oh, darn!'"


"To think I should have lived to hear my daughter swearing!" sobbed Mrs. Frederick.


"It—it was only imitation swearing," faltered Cousin Stickles, desirous of smoothing things over now that the worst was out. But she had never told about the bannister.


"It will be only a step from that to real swearing," said Uncle James sternly.


"The worst of this"—Mrs. Frederick hunted for a dry spot on her handkerchief—"is that every one will know now that she is deranged. We can't keep it a secret any longer. Oh, I cannot bear it!"


"You should have been stricter with her when she was young," said Uncle Benjamin.


"I don't see how I could have been," said Mrs. Frederick—truthfully enough.


"The worst feature of the case is that Snaith scoundrel is always hanging around Roaring Abel's," said Uncle James. "I shall be thankful if nothing worse comes of this mad freak than a few weeks at Roaring Abel's. Cissy Gay can't live much longer."


"And she didn't even take her flannel petticoat!" lamented Cousin Stickles.


"I'll see Ambrose Marsh again about this," said Uncle Benjamin—meaning Valancy, not the flannel petticoat.


"I'll see Lawyer Ferguson," said Uncle James.


"Meanwhile," added Uncle Benjamin, "let us be calm."


Valancy had walked out to Roaring Abel's house on the Mistawis road under a sky of purple and amber, with a queer exhilaration and expectancy in her heart. Back there, behind her, her mother and Cousin Stickles were crying—over themselves, not over her. But here the wind was in her face, soft, dew-wet, cool, blowing along the grassy roads. Oh, she loved the wind! The robins were whistling sleepily in the firs along the way and the moist air was fragrant with the tang of balsam. Big cars went purring past in the violet dusk—the stream of summer tourists to Muskoka had already begun—but Valancy did not envy any of their occupants. Muskoka cottages might be charming, but beyond, in the sunset skies, among the spires of the firs, her Blue Castle towered. She brushed the old years and habits and inhibitions away from her like dead leaves. She would not be littered with them.


Roaring Abel's rambling, tumble-down old house was situated about three miles from the village, on the very edge of "up back," as the sparsely settled, hilly, wooded country around Mistawis was called vernacularly. It did not, it must be confessed, look much like a Blue Castle.


It had once been a snug place enough in the days when Abel Gay had been young and prosperous, and the punning, arched sign over the gate—"A. Gay, Carpenter," had been fine and freshly painted. Now it was a faded, dreary old place, with a leprous, patched roof and shutters hanging askew. Abel never seemed to do any carpenter jobs about his own house. It had a listless air, as if tired of life. There was a dwindling grove of ragged, crone-like old spruces behind it. The garden, which Cissy used to keep neat and pretty, had run wild. On two sides of the house were fields full of nothing but mulleins. Behind the house was a long stretch of useless barrens, full of scrub pines and spruces, with here and there a blossoming bit of wild cherry, running back to a belt of timber on the shores of Lake Mistawis, two miles away. A rough, rocky, boulder-strewn lane ran through it to the woods—a lane white with pestiferous, beautiful daisies.


Roaring Abel met Valancy at the door.


"So you've come," he said incredulously. "I never s'posed that ruck of Stirlings would let you."


Valancy showed all her pointed teeth in a grin.


"They couldn't stop me."


"I didn't think you'd so much spunk," said Roaring Abel admiringly. "And look at the nice ankles of her," he added, as he stepped aside to let her in.


If Cousin Stickles had heard this she would have been certain that Valancy's doom, earthly and unearthly, was sealed. But Abel's superannuated gallantry did not worry Valancy. Besides, this was the first compliment she had ever received in her life and she found herself liking it. She sometimes suspected she had nice ankles, but nobody had ever mentioned it before. In the Stirling clan ankles were among the unmentionables.


Roaring Abel took her into the kitchen, where Cissy Gay was lying on the sofa, breathing quickly, with little scarlet spots on her hollow cheeks. Valancy had not seen Cecilia Gay for years. Then she had been such a pretty creature, a slight, blossom-like girl, with soft, golden hair, clear-cut, almost waxen features, and large, beautiful blue eyes. She was shocked at the change in her. Could this be sweet Cissy—this pitiful little thing that looked like a tired, broken flower? She had wept all the beauty out of her eyes; they looked too big—enormous—in her wasted face. The last time Valancy had seen Cecilia Gay those faded, piteous eyes had been limpid, shadowy blue pools aglow with mirth. The contrast was so terrible that Valancy's own eyes filled with tears. She knelt down by Cissy and put her arms about her.


"Cissy dear, I've come to look after you. I'll stay with you till—till—as long as you want me."


"Oh!" Cissy put her thin arms about Valancy's neck. "Oh—will you? It's been so—lonely. I can wait on myself—but it's been so lonely. It—would just be like—heaven—to have some one here—like you. You were always—so sweet to me—long ago."


Valancy held Cissy close. She was suddenly happy. Here was some one who needed her—some one she could help. She was no longer a superfluity. Old things had passed away; everything had become new.


"Most things are predestinated, but some are just darn sheer luck," said Roaring Abel, complacently smoking his pipe in the corner.


When Valancy had lived for a week at Roaring Abel's she felt as if years had separated her from her old life and all the people she had known in it. They were beginning to seem remote—dream-like—far-away—and as the days went on they seemed still more so, until they ceased to matter altogether.


She was happy. Nobody ever bothered her with conundrums or insisted on giving her Purple Pills. Nobody called her Doss or worried her about catching cold. There were no quilts to piece, no abominable rubber-plant to water, no ice-cold maternal tantrums to endure. She could be alone whenever she liked, go to bed when she liked, sneeze when she liked. In the long, wondrous, northern twilights, when Cissy was asleep and Roaring Abel away, she could sit for hours on the shaky back verandah steps, looking out over the barrens to the hills beyond, covered with their fine, purple bloom, listening to the friendly wind singing wild, sweet melodies in the little spruces, and drinking in the aroma of the sunned grasses, until darkness flowed over the landscape like a cool, welcome wave.


Sometimes of an afternoon, when Cissy was strong enough, the two girls went into the barrens and looked at the wood-flowers. But they did not pick any. Valancy had read to Cissy the gospel thereof according to John Foster: "It is a pity to gather wood-flowers. They lose half their witchery away from the green and the flicker. The way to enjoy wood-flowers is to track them down to their remote haunts—gloat over them—and then leave them with backward glances, taking with us only the beguiling memory of their grace and fragrance."


Valancy was in the midst of realities after a lifetime of unrealities. And busy—very busy. The house had to be cleaned. Not for nothing had Valancy been brought up in the Stirling habits of neatness and cleanliness. If she found satisfaction in cleaning dirty rooms she got her fill of it there. Roaring Abel thought she was foolish to bother doing so much more than she was asked to do, but he did not interfere with her. He was very well satisfied with his bargain. Valancy was a good cook. Abel said she got a flavour into things. The only fault he found with her was that she did not sing at her work.


"Folks should always sing at their work," he insisted. "Sounds cheerful-like."


"Not always," retorted Valancy. "Fancy a butcher singing at his work. Or an undertaker."


Abel burst into his great broad laugh.


"There's no getting the better of you. You've got an answer every time. I should think the Stirlings would be glad to be rid of you. They don't like being sassed back."


During the day Abel was generally away from home—if not working, then shooting or fishing with Barney Snaith. He generally came home at nights—always very late and often very drunk. The first night they heard him come howling into the yard, Cissy had told Valancy not to be afraid.


"Father never does anything—he just makes a noise."


Valancy, lying on the sofa in Cissy's room, where she had elected to sleep, lest Cissy should need attention in the night—Cissy would never have called her—was not at all afraid, and said so. By the time Abel had got his horses put away, the roaring stage had passed and he was in his room at the end of the hall crying and praying. Valancy could still hear his dismal moans when she went calmly to sleep. For the most part, Abel was a good-natured creature, but occasionally he had a temper. Once Valancy asked him coolly:


"What is the use of getting in a rage?"


"It's such a d——d relief," said Abel.


They both burst out laughing together.


"You're a great little sport," said Abel admiringly. "Don't mind my bad French. I don't mean a thing by it. Jest habit. Say, I like a woman that ain't afraid to speak up to me. Sis there was always too meek—too meek. That's why she got adrift. I like you."


"All the same," said Valancy determinedly, "there is no use in sending things to hell as you're always doing. And I'm not going to have you tracking mud all over a floor I've just scrubbed. You must use the scraper whether you consign it to perdition or not."


Cissy loved the cleanness and neatness. She had kept it so, too, until her strength failed. She was very pitifully happy because she had Valancy with her. It had been so terrible—the long, lonely days and nights with no companionship save those dreadful old women who came to work. Cissy had hated and feared them. She clung to Valancy like a child.


There was no doubt that Cissy was dying. Yet at no time did she seem alarmingly ill. She did not even cough a great deal. Most days she was able to get up and dress—sometimes even to work about in the garden or the barrens for an hour or two. For a few weeks after Valancy's coming she seemed so much better that Valancy began to hope she might get well. But Cissy shook her head.


"No, I can't get well. My lungs are almost gone. And I—don't want to. I'm so tired, Valancy. Only dying can rest me. But it's lovely to have you here—you'll never know how much it means to me. But Valancy—you work too hard. You don't need to—Father only wants his meals cooked. I don't think you are strong yourself. You turn so pale sometimes. And those drops you take. Are you well, dear?"


"I'm all right," said Valancy lightly. She would not have Cissy worried. "And I'm not working hard. I'm glad to have some work to do—something that really wants to be done."


"Then"—Cissy slipped her hand wistfully into Valancy's—"don't let's talk any more about my being sick. Let's just forget it. Let's pretend I'm a little girl again—and you have come here to play with me. I used to wish that long ago—wish that you could come. I knew you couldn't, of course. But how I did wish it! You always seemed so different from the other girls—so kind and sweet—and as if you had something in yourself nobody knew about—some dear, pretty secret. Had you, Valancy?"


"I had my Blue Castle," said Valancy, laughing a little. She was pleased that Cissy had thought of her like this. She had never suspected that anybody liked or admired or wondered about her. She told Cissy all about her Blue Castle. She had never told any one about it before.


"Every one has a Blue Castle, I think," said Cissy softly. "Only every one has a different name for it. I had mine—once."


She put her two thin little hands over her face. She did not tell Valancy—then—who had destroyed her Blue Castle. But Valancy knew that, whoever it was, it was not Barney Snaith.


Valancy was acquainted with Barney by now—well acquainted, it seemed, though she had spoken to him only a few times. But then she had felt just as well acquainted with him the first time they had met. She had been in the garden at twilight, hunting for a few stalks of white narcissus for Cissy's room when she heard that terrible old Grey Slosson coming down through the woods from Mistawis—one could hear it miles away. Valancy did not look up as it drew near, thumping over the rocks in that crazy lane. She had never looked up, though Barney had gone racketting past every evening since she had been at Roaring Abel's. This time he did not racket past. The old Grey Slosson stopped with even more terrible noises than it made going. Valancy was conscious that Barney had sprung from it and was leaning over the ramshackle gate. She suddenly straightened up and looked into his face. Their eyes met—Valancy was suddenly conscious of a delicious weakness. Was one of her heart attacks coming on?—But this was a new symptom.


His eyes, which she had always thought brown, now seen close, were deep violet—translucent and intense. Neither of his eyebrows looked like the other. He was thin—too thin—she wished she could feed him up a bit—she wished she could sew the buttons on his coat—and make him cut his hair—and shave every day. There was something in his face—one hardly knew what it was. Tiredness? Sadness? Disillusionment? He had dimples in his thin cheeks when he smiled. All these thoughts flashed through Valancy's mind in that one moment while his eyes looked into hers.


"Good-evening, Miss Stirling."


Nothing could be more commonplace and conventional. Any one might have said it. But Barney Snaith had a way of saying things that gave them poignancy. When he said good-evening you felt that it was a good evening and that it was partly his doing that it was. Also, you felt that some of the credit was yours. Valancy felt all this vaguely, but she couldn't imagine why she was trembling from head to foot—it must be her heart. If only he didn't notice it!


"I'm going over to the Port," Barney was saying. "Can I acquire merit by getting or doing anything there for you or Cissy?"


"Will you get some salt codfish for us?" said Valancy. It was the only thing she could think of. Roaring Abel had expressed a desire that day for a dinner of boiled salt codfish. When her knights came riding to the Blue Castle, Valancy had sent them on many a quest, but she had never asked any of them to get her salt codfish.


"Certainly. You're sure there's nothing else? Lots of room in Lady Jane Grey Slosson. And she always gets back some time, does Lady Jane."


"I don't think there's anything more," said Valancy. She knew he would bring oranges for Cissy anyhow—he always did.


Barney did not turn away at once. He was silent for a little. Then he said, slowly and whimsically:


"Miss Stirling, you're a brick! You're a whole cartload of bricks. To come here and look after Cissy—under the circumstances."


"There's nothing so bricky about that," said Valancy. "I'd nothing else to do. And—I like it here. I don't feel as if I'd done anything specially meritorious. Mr. Gay is paying me fair wages. I never earned any money before—and I like it." It seemed so easy to talk to Barney Snaith, someway—this terrible Barney Snaith of the lurid tales and mysterious past—as easy and natural as if talking to herself.


"All the money in the world couldn't buy what you're doing for Cissy Gay," said Barney. "It's splendid and fine of you. And if there's anything I can do to help you in any way, you have only to let me know. If Roaring Abel ever tries to annoy you——"


"He doesn't. He's lovely to me. I like Roaring Abel," said Valancy frankly.


"So do I. But there's one stage of his drunkenness—perhaps you haven't encountered it yet—when he sings ribald songs——"


"Oh, yes. He came home last night like that. Cissy and I just went to our room and shut ourselves in where we couldn't hear him. He apologised this morning. I'm not afraid of any of Roaring Abel's stages."


"Well, I'm sure he'll be decent to you, apart from his inebriated yowls," said Barney. "And I've told him he's got to stop damning things when you're around."


"Why?" asked Valancy slily, with one of her odd, slanted glances and a sudden flake of pink on each cheek, born of the thought that Barney Snaith had actually done so much for her. "I often feel like damning things myself."


For a moment Barney stared. Was this elfin girl the little, old-maidish creature who had stood there two minutes ago? Surely there was magic and devilry going on in that shabby, weedy old garden.


Then he laughed.


"It will be a relief to have some one to do it for you, then. So you don't want anything but salt codfish?"


"Not tonight. But I dare say I'll have some errands for you very often when you go to Port Lawrence. I can't trust Mr. Gay to remember to bring all the things I want."


Barney had gone away, then, in his Lady Jane, and Valancy stood in the garden for a long time.


Since then he had called several times, walking down through the barrens, whistling. How that whistle of his echoed through the spruces on those June twilights! Valancy caught herself listening for it every evening—rebuked herself—then let herself go. Why shouldn't she listen for it?


He always brought Cissy fruit and flowers. Once he brought Valancy a box of candy—the first box of candy she had ever been given. It seemed sacrilege to eat it.


She found herself thinking of him in season and out of season. She wanted to know if he ever thought about her when she wasn't before his eyes, and, if so, what. She wanted to see that mysterious house of his back on the Mistawis island. Cissy had never seen it. Cissy, though she talked freely of Barney and had known him for five years, really knew little more of him than Valancy herself.


"But he isn't bad," said Cissy. "Nobody need ever tell me he is. He can't have done a thing to be ashamed of."


"Then why does he live as he does?" asked Valancy—to hear somebody defend him.


"I don't know. He's a mystery. And of course there's something behind it, but I know it isn't disgrace. Barney Snaith simply couldn't do anything disgraceful, Valancy."


Valancy was not so sure. Barney must have done something—sometime. He was a man of education and intelligence. She had soon discovered that, in listening to his conversations and wrangles with Roaring Abel—who was surprisingly well read and could discuss any subject under the sun when sober. Such a man wouldn't bury himself for five years in Muskoka and live and look like a tramp if there were not too good—or bad—a reason for it. But it didn't matter. All that mattered was that she was sure now that he had never been Cissy Gay's lover. There was nothing like that between them. Though he was very fond of Cissy and she of him, as any one could see. But it was a fondness that didn't worry Valancy.


"You don't know what Barney has been to me, these past two years," Cissy had said simply. "Everything would have been unbearable without him."


"Cissy Gay is the sweetest girl I ever knew—and there's a man somewhere I'd like to shoot if I could find him," Barney had said savagely.


Barney was an interesting talker, with a knack of telling a great deal about his adventures and nothing at all about himself. There was one glorious rainy day when Barney and Abel swapped yarns all the afternoon while Valancy mended tablecloths and listened. Barney told weird tales of his adventures with "shacks" on trains while hoboing it across the continent. Valancy thought she ought to think his stealing rides quite dreadful, but didn't. The story of his working his way to England on a cattle-ship sounded more legitimate. And his yarns of the Yukon enthralled her—especially the one of the night he was lost on the divide between Gold Run and Sulphur Valley. He had spent two years out there. Where in all this was there room for the penitentiary and the other things?


If he were telling the truth. But Valancy knew he was.


"Found no gold," he said. "Came away poorer than when I went. But such a place to live! Those silences at the back of the north wind got me. I've never belonged to myself since."


Yet he was not a great talker. He told a great deal in a few well-chosen words—how well-chosen Valancy did not realise. And he had a knack of saying things without opening his mouth at all.


"I like a man whose eyes say more than his lips," thought Valancy.


But then she liked everything about him—his tawny hair—his whimsical smiles—the little glints of fun in his eyes—his loyal affection for that unspeakable Lady Jane—his habit of sitting with his hands in his pockets, his chin sunk on his breast, looking up from under his mismated eyebrows. She liked his nice voice which sounded as if it might become caressing or wooing with very little provocation. She was at times almost afraid to let herself think these thoughts. They were so vivid that she felt as if the others must know what she was thinking.


"I've been watching a woodpecker all day," he said one evening on the shaky old back verandah. His account of the woodpecker's doings was satisfying. He had often some gay or cunning little anecdote of the wood folk to tell them. And sometimes he and Roaring Abel smoked fiercely the whole evening and never said a word, while Cissy lay in the hammock swung between the verandah posts and Valancy sat idly on the steps, her hands clasped over her knees, and wondered dreamily if she were really Valancy Stirling and if it were only three weeks since she had left the ugly old house on Elm Street.


The barrens lay before her in a white moon splendour, where dozens of little rabbits frisked. Barney, when he liked, could sit down on the edge of the barrens and lure those rabbits right to him by some mysterious sorcery he possessed. Valancy had once seen a squirrel leap from a scrub pine to his shoulder and sit there chattering to him. It reminded her of John Foster.


It was one of the delights of Valancy's new life that she could read John Foster's books as often and as long as she liked. She could read them in bed if she wanted to. She read them all to Cissy, who loved them. She also tried to read them to Abel and Barney, who did not love them. Abel was bored and Barney politely refused to listen at all.


Of course, the Stirlings had not left the poor maniac alone all this time or refrained from heroic efforts to rescue her perishing soul and reputation. Uncle James, whose lawyer had helped him as little as his doctor, came one day and, finding Valancy alone in the kitchen, as he supposed, gave her a terrible talking-to—told her she was breaking her mother's heart and disgracing her family.


"But why?" said Valancy, not ceasing to scour her porridge pot decently. "I'm doing honest work for honest pay. What is there in that that is disgraceful?"


"Don't quibble, Valancy," said Uncle James solemnly. "This is no fit place for you to be, and you know it. Why, I'm told that jail-bird, Snaith, is hanging around here every evening."


"Not every evening," said Valancy reflectively. "No, not quite every evening."


"It's—it's insufferable!" said Uncle James violently. "Valancy, you must come home. We won't judge you harshly. I assure you we won't. We will overlook all this."


"Thank you," said Valancy.


"Have you no sense of shame?" demanded Uncle James.


"Oh, yes. But the things I am ashamed of are not the things you are ashamed of." Valancy proceeded to rinse her dishcloth meticulously.


Still was Uncle James patient. He gripped the sides of his chair and ground his teeth.


"We know your mind isn't just right. We'll make allowances. But you must come home. You shall not stay here with that drunken, blasphemous old scoundrel——"


"Were you by any chance referring to me, Mister Stirling?" demanded Roaring Abel, suddenly appearing in the doorway of the back verandah where he had been smoking a peaceful pipe and listening to "old Jim Stirling's" tirade with huge enjoyment! His red beard fairly bristled with indignation and his huge eyebrows quivered. But cowardice was not among James Stirling's shortcomings.


"I was. And, furthermore, I want to tell you that you have acted an iniquitous part in luring this weak and unfortunate girl away from her home and friends, and I will have you punished yet for it——"


James Stirling got no further. Roaring Abel crossed the kitchen at a bound, caught him by his collar and his trousers, and hurled him through the doorway and over the garden paling with as little apparent effort as he might have employed in whisking a troublesome kitten out of the way.


"The next time you come back here," he bellowed, "I'll throw you through the window—and all the better if the window is shut! Coming here, thinking yourself God to put the world to rights!"


Valancy candidly and unashamedly owned to herself that she had seen few more satisfying sights than Uncle James' coat-tails flying out into the asparagus bed. She had once been afraid of this man's judgment. Now she saw clearly that he was nothing but a rather stupid little village tin-god.


Roaring Abel turned with his great broad laugh.


"He'll think of that for years when he wakes up in the night. The Almighty made a mistake in making so many Stirlings. But since they are made, we've got to reckon with them. Too many to kill out. But if they come here bothering you I'll shoo 'em off before a cat could lick its ear."


The next time they sent Dr. Stalling. Surely Roaring Abel would not throw him into asparagus beds. Dr. Stalling was not so sure of this and had no great liking for the task. He did not believe Valancy Stirling was out of her mind. She had always been queer. He, Dr. Stalling, had never been able to understand her. Therefore, beyond doubt, she was queer. She was only just a little queerer than usual now. And Dr. Stalling had his own reasons for disliking Roaring Abel. When Dr. Stalling had first come to Deerwood he had had a liking for long hikes around Mistawis and Muskoka. On one of these occasions he had got lost and after much wandering had fallen in with Roaring Abel with his gun over his shoulder.


Dr. Stalling had contrived to ask his question in about the most idiotic manner possible. He said, "Can you tell me where I'm going?"


"How the devil should I know where you're going, gosling?" retorted Abel contemptuously.


Dr. Stalling was so enraged that he could not speak for a moment or two and in that moment Abel had disappeared in the woods. Dr. Stalling had eventually found his way home, but he had never hankered to encounter Abel Gay again.


Nevertheless he came now to do his duty. Valancy greeted him with a sinking heart. She had to own to herself that she was terribly afraid of Dr. Stalling still. She had a miserable conviction that if he shook his long, bony finger at her and told her to go home, she dared not disobey.


"Mr. Gay," said Dr. Stalling politely and condescendingly, "may I see Miss Stirling alone for a few minutes?"


Roaring Abel was a little drunk—just drunk enough to be excessively polite and very cunning. He had been on the point of going away when Dr. Stalling arrived, but now he sat down in a corner of the parlour and folded his arms.


"No, no, mister," he said solemnly. "That wouldn't do—wouldn't do at all. I've got the reputation of my household to keep up. I've got to chaperone this young lady. Can't have any sparkin' going on here behind my back."


Outraged Dr. Stalling looked so terrible that Valancy wondered how Abel could endure his aspect. But Abel was not worried at all.


"D'ye know anything about it, anyway?" he asked genially.


"Sparking," said Abel coolly.


Poor Dr. Stalling, who had never married because he believed in a celibate clergy, would not notice this ribald remark. He turned his back on Abel and addressed himself to Valancy.


"Miss Stirling, I am here in response to your mother's wishes. She begged me to come. I am charged with some messages from her. Will you"—he wagged his forefinger—"will you hear them?"


"Yes," said Valancy faintly, eyeing the forefinger. It had a hypnotic effect on her.


"The first is this. If you will leave this—this——"


"House," interjected Roaring Abel. "H-o-u-s-e. Troubled with an impediment in your speech, ain't you, Mister?"


"—this place and return to your home, Mr. James Stirling will himself pay for a good nurse to come here and wait on Miss Gay."


Back of her terror Valancy smiled in secret. Uncle James must indeed regard the matter as desperate when he would loosen his purse-strings like that. At any rate, her clan no longer despised her or ignored her. She had become important to them.


"That's my business, Mister," said Abel. "Miss Stirling can go if she pleases, or stay if she pleases. I made a fair bargain with her, and she's free to conclude it when she likes. She gives me meals that stick to my ribs. She don't forget to put salt in the porridge. She never slams doors, and when she has nothing to say she don't talk. That's uncanny in a woman, you know, Mister. I'm satisfied. If she isn't, she's free to go. But no woman comes here in Jim Stirling's pay. If any one does"—Abel's voice was uncannily bland and polite—"I'll spatter the road with her brains. Tell him that with A. Gay's compliments."


"Dr. Stalling, a nurse is not what Cissy needs," said Valancy earnestly. "She isn't so ill as that, yet. What she wants is companionship—somebody she knows and likes just to live with her. You can understand that, I'm sure."


"I understand that your motive is quite—ahem—commendable." Dr. Stalling felt that he was very broad-minded indeed—especially as in his secret soul he did not believe Valancy's motive was commendable. He hadn't the least idea what she was up to, but he was sure her motive was not commendable. When he could not understand a thing he straightway condemned it. Simplicity itself! "But your first duty is to your mother. She needs you. She implores you to come home—she will forgive everything if you will only come home."


"That's a pretty little thought," remarked Abel meditatively, as he ground some tobacco up in his hand.


Dr. Stalling ignored him.


"She entreats, but I, Miss Stirling,"—Dr. Stalling remembered that he was an ambassador of Jehovah—"I command. As your pastor and spiritual guide, I command you to come home with me—this very day. Get your hat and coat and come now."


Dr. Stalling shook his finger at Valancy. Before that pitiless finger she drooped and wilted visibly.


"She's giving in," thought Roaring Abel. "She'll go with him. Beats all, the power these preacher fellows have over women."


Valancy was on the point of obeying Dr. Stalling. She must go home with him—and give up. She would lapse back to Doss Stirling again and for her few remaining days or weeks be the cowed, futile creature she had always been. It was her fate—typified by that relentless, uplifted forefinger. She could no more escape from it than Roaring Abel from his predestination. She eyed it as the fascinated bird eyes the snake. Another moment—


"Fear is the original sin," suddenly said a still, small voice away back—back—back of Valancy's consciousness. "Almost all the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something."


Valancy stood up. She was still in the clutches of fear, but her soul was her own again. She would not be false to that inner voice.


"Dr. Stalling," she said slowly, "I do not at present owe any duty to my mother. She is quite well; she has all the assistance and companionship she requires; she does not need me at all. I am needed here. I am going to stay here."


"There's spunk for you," said Roaring Abel admiringly.


Dr. Stalling dropped his forefinger. One could not keep on shaking a finger forever.


"Miss Stirling, is there nothing that can influence you? Do you remember your childhood days——"


"Perfectly. And hate them."


"Do you realise what people will say? What they are saying?"


"I can imagine it," said Valancy, with a shrug of her shoulders. She was suddenly free of fear again. "I haven't listened to the gossip of Deerwood teaparties and sewing circles twenty years for nothing. But, Dr. Stalling, it doesn't matter in the least to me what they say—not in the least."


Dr. Stalling went away then. A girl who cared nothing for public opinion! Over whom sacred family ties had no restraining influence! Who hated her childhood memories!


Then Cousin Georgiana came—on her own initiative, for nobody would have thought it worth while to send her. She found Valancy alone, weeding the little vegetable garden she had planted, and she made all the platitudinous pleas she could think of. Valancy heard her patiently. Cousin Georgiana wasn't such a bad old soul. Then she said:


"And now that you have got all that out of your system, Cousin Georgiana, can you tell me how to make creamed codfish so that it will not be as thick as porridge and as salt as the Dead Sea?"


"We'll just have to wait," said Uncle Benjamin. "After all, Cissy Gay can't live long. Dr. Marsh tells me she may drop off any day."


Mrs. Frederick wept. It would really have been so much easier to bear if Valancy had died. She could have worn mourning then.


When Abel Gay paid Valancy her first month's wages—which he did promptly, in bills reeking with the odour of tobacco and whiskey—Valancy went into Deerwood and spent every cent of it. She got a pretty green crêpe dress with a girdle of crimson beads, at a bargain sale, a pair of silk stockings, to match, and a little crinkled green hat with a crimson rose in it. She even bought a foolish little beribboned and belaced nightgown.


She passed the house on Elm Street twice—Valancy never even thought about it as "home"—but saw no one. No doubt her mother was sitting in the room this lovely June evening playing solitaire—and cheating. Valancy knew that Mrs. Frederick always cheated. She never lost a game. Most of the people Valancy met looked at her seriously and passed her with a cool nod. Nobody stopped to speak to her.


Valancy put on her green dress when she got home. Then she took it off again. She felt so miserably undressed in its low neck and short sleeves. And that low, crimson girdle around the hips seemed positively indecent. She hung it up in the closet, feeling flatly that she had wasted her money. She would never have the courage to wear that dress. John Foster's arraignment of fear had no power to stiffen her against this. In this one thing habit and custom were still all-powerful. Yet she sighed as she went down to meet Barney Snaith in her old snuff-brown silk. That green thing had been very becoming—she had seen so much in her one ashamed glance. Above it her eyes had looked like odd brown jewels and the girdle had given her flat figure an entirely different appearance. She wished she could have left it on. But there were some things John Foster did not know.


Every Sunday evening Valancy went to the little Free Methodist church in a valley on the edge of "up back"—a spireless little grey building among the pines, with a few sunken graves and mossy gravestones in the small, paling-encircled, grass-grown square beside it. She liked the minister who preached there. He was so simple and sincere. An old man, who lived in Port Lawrence and came out by the lake in a little disappearing propeller boat to give a free service to the people of the small, stony farms back of the hills, who would otherwise never have heard any gospel message. She liked the simple service and the fervent singing. She liked to sit by the open window and look out into the pine woods. The congregation was always small. The Free Methodists were few in number, poor and generally illiterate. But Valancy loved those Sunday evenings. For the first time in her life she liked going to church. The rumour reached Deerwood that she had "turned Free Methodist" and sent Mrs. Frederick to bed for a day. But Valancy had not turned anything. She went to the church because she liked it and because in some inexplicable way it did her good. Old Mr. Towers believed exactly what he preached and somehow it made a tremendous difference.


Oddly enough, Roaring Abel disapproved of her going to the hill church as strongly as Mrs. Frederick herself could have done. He had "no use for Free Methodists. He was a Presbyterian." But Valancy went in spite of him.


"We'll hear something worse than that about her soon," Uncle Benjamin predicted gloomily.


Valancy could not quite explain, even to herself, just why she wanted to go to that party. It was a dance "up back" at Chidley Corners; and dances at Chidley Corners were not, as a rule, the sort of assemblies where well-brought-up young ladies were found. Valancy knew it was coming off, for Roaring Abel had been engaged as one of the fiddlers.


But the idea of going had never occurred to her until Roaring Abel himself broached it at supper.


"You come with me to the dance," he ordered. "It'll do you good—put some colour in your face. You look peaked—you want something to liven you up."


Valancy found herself suddenly wanting to go. She knew nothing at all of what dances at Chidley Corners were apt to be like. Her idea of dances had been fashioned on the correct affairs that went by that name in Deerwood and Port Lawrence. Of course she knew the Corners' dance wouldn't be just like them. Much more informal, of course. But so much the more interesting. Why shouldn't she go? Cissy was in a week of apparent health and improvement. She wouldn't mind staying alone in the least. She entreated Valancy to go if she wanted to. And Valancy did want to go.


She went to her room to dress. A rage against the snuff-brown silk seized her. Wear that to a party! Never. She pulled her green crêpe from its hanger and put it on feverishly. It was nonsense to feel so—so—naked—just because her neck and arms were bare. That was just her old maidishness. She would not be ridden by it. On went the dress—the slippers.


It was the first time she had worn a pretty dress since the organdies of her early teens. And they had never made her look like this.


If she only had a necklace or something. She wouldn't feel so bare then. She ran down to the garden. There were clovers there—great crimson things growing in the long grass. Valancy gathered handfuls of them and strung them on a cord. Fastened above her neck they gave her the comfortable sensation of a collar and were oddly becoming. Another circlet of them went round her hair, dressed in the low puffs that became her. Excitement brought those faint pink stains to her face. She flung on her coat and pulled the little, twisty hat over her hair.


"You look so nice and—and—different, dear," said Cissy. "Like a green moonbeam with a gleam of red in it, if there could be such a thing."


Valancy stooped to kiss her.


"I don't feel right about leaving you alone, Cissy."


"Oh, I'll be all right. I feel better tonight than I have for a long while. I've been feeling badly to see you sticking here so closely on my account. I hope you'll have a nice time. I never was at a party at the Corners, but I used to go sometimes, long ago, to dances up back. We always had good times. And you needn't be afraid of Father being drunk tonight. He never drinks when he engages to play for a party. But—there may be—liquor. What will you do if it gets rough?"


"Nobody would molest me."


"Not seriously, I suppose. Father would see to that. But it might be noisy and—and unpleasant."


"I won't mind. I'm only going as a looker-on. I don't expect to dance. I just want to see what a party up back is like. I've never seen anything except decorous Deerwood."


Cissy smiled rather dubiously. She knew much better than Valancy what a party "up back" might be like if there should be liquor. But again there mightn't be.


"I hope you'll enjoy it, dear," she repeated.


Valancy enjoyed the drive there. They went early, for it was twelve miles to Chidley Corners, and they had to go in Abel's old, ragged top-buggy. The road was rough and rocky, like most Muskoka roads, but full of the austere charm of northern woods. It wound through beautiful, purring pines that were ranks of enchantment in the June sunset, and over the curious jade-green rivers of Muskoka, fringed by aspens that were always quivering with some supernal joy.


Roaring Abel was excellent company, too. He knew all the stories and legends of the wild, beautiful "up back," and he told them to Valancy as they drove along. Valancy had several fits of inward laughter over what Uncle Benjamin and Aunt Wellington, et al., would feel and think and say if they saw her driving with Roaring Abel in that terrible buggy to a dance at Chidley Corners.


At first the dance was quiet enough, and Valancy was amused and entertained. She even danced twice herself, with a couple of nice "up back" boys who danced beautifully and told her she did, too.


Another compliment came her way—not a very subtle one, perhaps, but Valancy had had too few compliments in her life to be over-nice on that point. She overheard two of the "up back" young men talking about her in the dark "lean-to" behind her.


"Know who that girl in green is?"


"Nope. Guess she's from out front. The Port, maybe. Got a stylish look to her."


"No beaut but cute-looking, I'll say. 'Jever see such eyes?"


The big room was decorated with pine and fir boughs, and lighted by Chinese lanterns. The floor was waxed, and Roaring Abel's fiddle, purring under his skilled touch, worked magic. The "up back" girls were pretty and prettily dressed. Valancy thought it the nicest party she had ever attended.


By eleven o'clock she had changed her mind. A new crowd had arrived—a crowd unmistakably drunk. Whiskey began to circulate freely. Very soon almost all the men were partly drunk. Those in the porch and outside around the door began howling "come-all-ye's" and continued to howl them. The room grew noisy and reeking. Quarrels started up here and there. Bad language and obscene songs were heard. The girls, swung rudely in the dances, became dishevelled and tawdry. Valancy, alone in her corner, was feeling disgusted and repentant. Why had she ever come to such a place? Freedom and independence were all very well, but one should not be a little fool. She might have known what it would be like—she might have taken warning from Cissy's guarded sentences. Her head was aching—she was sick of the whole thing. But what could she do? She must stay to the end. Abel could not leave till then. And that would probably be not till three or four in the morning.


The new influx of boys had left the girls far in the minority and partners were scarce. Valancy was pestered with invitations to dance. She refused them all shortly, and some of her refusals were not well taken. There were muttered oaths and sullen looks. Across the room she saw a group of the strangers talking together and glancing meaningly at her. What were they plotting?


It was at this moment that she saw Barney Snaith looking in over the heads of the crowd at the doorway. Valancy had two distinct convictions—one was that she was quite safe now; the other was that this was why she had wanted to come to the dance. It had been such an absurd hope that she had not recognised it before, but now she knew she had come because of the possibility that Barney might be there, too. She thought that perhaps she ought to be ashamed for this, but she wasn't. After her feeling of relief her next feeling was one of annoyance with Barney for coming there unshaved. Surely he might have enough self-respect to groom himself up decently when he went to a party. There he was, bareheaded, bristly-chinned, in his old trousers and his blue homespun shirt. Not even a coat. Valancy could have shaken him in her anger. No wonder people believed everything bad of him.


But she was not afraid any longer. One of the whispering group left his comrades and came across the room to her, through the whirling couples that now filled it uncomfortably. He was a tall, broad-shouldered fellow, not ill-dressed or ill-looking but unmistakably half drunk. He asked Valancy to dance. Valancy declined civilly. His face turned livid. He threw his arm about her and pulled her to him. His hot, whiskied breath burned her face.


"We won't have fine-lady airs here, my girl. If you ain't too good to come here you ain't too good to dance with us. Me and my pals have been watching you. You've got to give us each a turn and a kiss to boot."


Valancy tried desperately and vainly to free herself. She was being dragged out into the maze of shouting, stamping, yelling dancers. The next moment the man who held her went staggering across the room from a neatly planted blow on the jaw, knocking down whirling couples as he went. Valancy felt her arm grasped.


"This way—quick," said Barney Snaith. He swung her out through the open window behind them, vaulted lightly over the sill and caught her hand.


"Quick—we must run for it—they'll be after us."


Valancy ran as she had never run before, clinging tight to Barney's hand, wondering why she did not drop dead in such a mad scamper. Suppose she did! What a scandal it would make for her poor people. For the first time Valancy felt a little sorry for them. Also, she felt glad that she had escaped from that horrible row. Also, glad that she was holding tight to Barney's hand. Her feelings were badly mixed and she had never had so many in such a brief time in her life.


They finally reached a quiet corner in the pine woods. The pursuit had taken a different direction and the whoops and yells behind them were growing faint. Valancy, out of breath, with a crazily beating heart, collapsed on the trunk of a fallen pine.


"Thanks," she gasped.


"What a goose you were to come to such a place!" said Barney.


"I—didn't—know—it—would—be like this," protested Valancy.


"You should have known. Chidley Corners!"


"It—was—just—a name—to me."


Valancy knew Barney could not realise how ignorant she was of the regions "up back." She had lived in Deerwood all her life and of course he supposed she knew. He didn't know how she had been brought up. There was no use trying to explain.


"When I drifted in at Abel's this evening and Cissy told me you'd come here I was amazed. And downright scared. Cissy told me she was worried about you but hadn't liked to say anything to dissuade you for fear you'd think she was thinking selfishly about herself. So I came on up here instead of going to Deerwood."


Valancy felt a sudden delightful glow irradiating soul and body under the dark pines. So he had actually come up to look after her.


"As soon as they stop hunting for us we'll sneak around to the Muskoka road. I left Lady Jane down there. I'll take you home. I suppose you've had enough of your party."


"Quite," said Valancy meekly. The first half of the way home neither of them said anything. It would not have been much use. Lady Jane made so much noise they could not have heard each other. Anyway, Valancy did not feel conversationally inclined. She was ashamed of the whole affair—ashamed of her folly in going—ashamed of being found in such a place by Barney Snaith. By Barney Snaith, reputed jail-breaker, infidel, forger and defaulter. Valancy's lips twitched in the darkness as she thought of it. But she was ashamed.


And yet she was enjoying herself—was full of a strange exultation—bumping over that rough road beside Barney Snaith. The big trees shot by them. The tall mulleins stood up along the road in stiff, orderly ranks like companies of soldiers. The thistles looked like drunken fairies or tipsy elves as their car-lights passed over them. This was the first time she had even been in a car. After all, she liked it. She was not in the least afraid, with Barney at the wheel. Her spirits rose rapidly as they tore along. She ceased to feel ashamed. She ceased to feel anything except that she was part of a comet rushing gloriously through the night of space.


All at once, just where the pine woods frayed out to the scrub barrens, Lady Jane became quiet—too quiet. Lady Jane slowed down quietly—and stopped.


Barney uttered an aghast exclamation. Got out. Investigated. Came apologetically back.


"I'm a doddering idiot. Out of gas. I knew I was short when I left home, but I meant to fill up in Deerwood. Then I forgot all about it in my hurry to get to the Corners."


"What can we do?" asked Valancy coolly.


"I don't know. There's no gas nearer than Deerwood, nine miles away. And I don't dare leave you here alone. There are always tramps on this road—and some of those crazy fools back at the Corners may come straggling along presently. There were boys there from the Port. As far as I can see, the best thing to do is for us just to sit patiently here until some car comes along and lends us enough gas to get to Roaring Abel's with."


"Well, what's the matter with that?" said Valancy.


"We may have to sit here all night," said Barney.


"I don't mind," said Valancy.


Barney gave a short laugh. "If you don't, I needn't. I haven't any reputation to lose."


"Nor I," said Valancy comfortably.


"We'll just sit here," said Barney, "and if we think of anything worth while saying we'll say it. Otherwise, not. Don't imagine you're bound to talk to me."


"John Foster says," quoted Valancy, "'If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you'll never be and you need not waste time in trying.'"


"Evidently John Foster says a sensible thing once in a while," conceded Barney.


They sat in silence for a long while. Little rabbits hopped across the road. Once or twice an owl laughed out delightfully. The road beyond them was fringed with the woven shadow lace of trees. Away off to the southwest the sky was full of silvery little cirrus clouds above the spot where Barney's island must be.


Valancy was perfectly happy. Some things dawn on you slowly. Some things come by lightning flashes. Valancy had had a lightning flash.


She knew quite well now that she loved Barney. Yesterday she had been all her own. Now she was this man's. Yet he had done nothing—said nothing. He had not even looked at her as a woman. But that didn't matter. Nor did it matter what he was or what he had done. She loved him without any reservations. Everything in her went out wholly to him. She had no wish to stifle or disown her love. She seemed to be his so absolutely that thought apart from him—thought in which he did not predominate—was an impossibility.


She had realised, quite simply and fully, that she loved him, in the moment when he was leaning on the car door, explaining that Lady Jane had no gas. She had looked deep into his eyes in the moonlight and had known. In just that infinitesimal space of time everything was changed. Old things passed away and all things became new.


She was no longer unimportant, little, old maid Valancy Stirling. She was a woman, full of love and therefore rich and significant—justified to herself. Life was no longer empty and futile, and death could cheat her of nothing. Love had cast out her last fear.


Love! What a searing, torturing, intolerably sweet thing it was—this possession of body, soul and mind! With something at its core as fine and remote and purely spiritual as the tiny blue spark in the heart of the unbreakable diamond. No dream had ever been like this. She was no longer solitary. She was one of a vast sisterhood—all the women who had ever loved in the world.


Barney need never know it—though she would not in the least have minded his knowing. But she knew it and it made a tremendous difference to her. Just to love! She did not ask to be loved. It was rapture enough just to sit there beside him in silence, alone in the summer night in the white splendour of moonshine, with the wind blowing down on them out of the pine woods. She had always envied the wind. So free. Blowing where it listed. Through the hills. Over the lakes. What a tang, what a zip it had! What a magic of adventure! Valancy felt as if she had exchanged her shop-worn soul for a fresh one, fire-new from the workshop of the gods. As far back as she could look, life had been dull—colourless—savourless. Now she had come to a little patch of violets, purple and fragrant—hers for the plucking. No matter who or what had been in Barney's past—no matter who or what might be in his future—no one else could ever have this perfect hour. She surrendered herself utterly to the charm of the moment.


"Ever dream of ballooning?" said Barney suddenly.


"I do—often. Dream of sailing through the clouds—seeing the glories of sunset—spending hours in the midst of a terrific storm with lightning playing above and below you—skimming above a silver cloud floor under a full moon—wonderful!"


"It does sound so," said Valancy. "I've stayed on earth in my dreams."


She told him about her Blue Castle. It was so easy to tell Barney things. One felt he understood everything—even the things you didn't tell him. And then she told him a little of her existence before she came to Roaring Abel's. She wanted him to see why she had gone to the dance "up back."


"You see—I've never had any real life," she said. "I've just—breathed. Every door has always been shut to me."


"But you're still young," said Barney.


"Oh, I know. Yes, I'm 'still young'—but that's so different from young," said Valancy bitterly. For a moment she was tempted to tell Barney why her years had nothing to do with her future; but she did not. She was not going to think of death tonight.


"Though I never was really young," she went on—"until tonight," she added in her heart. "I never had a life like other girls. You couldn't understand. Why,"—she had a desperate desire that Barney should know the worst about her—"I didn't even love my mother. Isn't it awful that I don't love my mother?"


"Rather awful—for her," said Barney drily.


"Oh, she didn't know it. She took my love for granted. And I wasn't any use or comfort to her or anybody. I was just a—a—vegetable. And I got tired of it. That's why I came to keep house for Mr. Gay and look after Cissy."


"And I suppose your people thought you'd gone mad."


"They did—and do—literally," said Valancy. "But it's a comfort to them. They'd rather believe me mad than bad. There's no other alternative. But I've been living since I came to Mr. Gay's. It's been a delightful experience. I suppose I'll pay for it when I have to go back—but I'll have had it."


"That's true," said Barney. "If you buy your experience it's your own. So it's no matter how much you pay for it. Somebody else's experience can never be yours. Well, it's a funny old world."


"Do you think it really is old?" asked Valancy dreamily. "I never believe that in June. It seems so young tonight—somehow. In that quivering moonlight—like a young, white girl—waiting."


"Moonlight here on the verge of up back is different from moonlight anywhere else," agreed Barney. "It always makes me feel so clean, somehow—body and soul. And of course the age of gold always comes back in spring."


It was ten o'clock now. A dragon of black cloud ate up the moon. The spring air grew chill—Valancy shivered. Barney reached back into the innards of Lady Jane and clawed up an old, tobacco-scented overcoat.


"Put that on," he ordered.


"Don't you want it yourself?" protested Valancy.


"No. I'm not going to have you catching cold on my hands."


"Oh, I won't catch cold. I haven't had a cold since I came to Mr. Gay's—though I've done the foolishest things. It's funny, too—I used to have them all the time. I feel so selfish taking your coat."


"You've sneezed three times. No use winding up your 'experience' up back with grippe or pneumonia."


He pulled it up tight about her throat and buttoned it on her. Valancy submitted with secret delight. How nice it was to have some one look after you so! She snuggled down into the tobaccoey folds and wished the night could last forever.


Ten minutes later a car swooped down on them from "up back." Barney sprang from Lady Jane and waved his hand. The car came to a stop beside them. Valancy saw Uncle Wellington and Olive gazing at her in horror from it.


So Uncle Wellington had got a car! And he must have been spending the evening up at Mistawis with Cousin Herbert. Valancy almost laughed aloud at the expression on his face as he recognised her. The pompous, bewhiskered old humbug!


"Can you let me have enough gas to take me to Deerwood?" Barney was asking politely. But Uncle Wellington was not attending to him.


"Valancy, how came you here!" he said sternly.


"By chance or God's grace," said Valancy.


"With this jail-bird—at ten o'clock at night!" said Uncle Wellington.


Valancy turned to Barney. The moon had escaped from its dragon and in its light her eyes were full of deviltry.


"Does it matter?" said Barney, gleams of fun in his eyes.


"Not to me. I only asked out of curiosity," continued Valancy.


"Then I won't tell you. I never satisfy curiosity." He turned to Uncle Wellington and his voice changed subtly.


"Mr. Stirling, I asked you if you could let me have some gas. If you can, well and good. If not, we are only delaying you unnecessarily."


Uncle Wellington was in a horrible dilemma. To give gas to this shameless pair! But not to give it to them! To go away and leave them there in the Mistawis woods—until daylight, likely. It was better to give it to them and let them get out of sight before any one else saw them.


"Got anything to get gas in?" he grunted surlily.


Barney produced a two-gallon measure from Lady Jane. The two men went to the rear of the Stirling car and began manipulating the tap. Valancy stole sly glances at Olive over the collar of Barney's coat. Olive was sitting grimly staring straight ahead with an outraged expression. She did not mean to take any notice of Valancy. Olive had her own secret reasons for feeling outraged. Cecil had been in Deerwood lately and of course had heard all about Valancy. He agreed that her mind was deranged and was exceedingly anxious to find out whence the derangement had been inherited. It was a serious thing to have in the family—a very serious thing. One had to think of one's—descendants.


"She got it from the Wansbarras," said Olive positively. "There's nothing like that in the Stirlings—nothing!"


"I hope not—I certainly hope not," Cecil had responded dubiously. "But then—to go out as a servant—for that is what it practically amounts to. Your cousin!"


Poor Olive felt the implication. The Port Lawrence Prices were not accustomed to ally themselves with families whose members "worked out."


Valancy could not resist temptation. She leaned forward.


Olive bit—stiffly.


"Does what hurt?"


"Looking like that."


For a moment Olive resolved she would take no further notice of Valancy. Then duty came uppermost. She must not miss the opportunity.


"Doss," she implored, leaning forward also, "won't you come home—come home tonight?"


"You sound like a revival meeting," she said. "You really do."


"If you will come back——"


"All will be forgiven."


"Yes," said Olive eagerly. Wouldn't it be splendid if she could induce the prodigal daughter to return? "We'll never cast it up to you. Doss, there are nights when I cannot sleep for thinking of you."


"And me having the time of my life," said Valancy, laughing.


"Doss, I can't believe you're bad. I've always said you couldn't be bad——"


"I don't believe I can be," said Valancy. "I'm afraid I'm hopelessly proper. I've been sitting here for three hours with Barney Snaith and he hasn't even tried to kiss me. I wouldn't have minded if he had, Olive."


Valancy was still leaning forward. Her little hat with its crimson rose was tilted down over one eye. Olive stared. In the moonlight Valancy's eyes—Valancy's smile—what had happened to Valancy! She looked—not pretty—Doss couldn't be pretty—but provocative, fascinating—yes, abominably so. Olive drew back. It was beneath her dignity to say more. After all, Valancy must be both mad and bad.


"Thanks—that's enough," said Barney behind the car. "Much obliged, Mr. Stirling. Two gallons—seventy cents. Thank you."


Uncle Wellington climbed foolishly and feebly into his car. He wanted to give Snaith a piece of his mind, but dared not. Who knew what the creature might do if provoked? No doubt he carried firearms.


Uncle Wellington looked indecisively at Valancy. But Valancy had turned her back on him and was watching Barney pour the gas into Lady Jane's maw.


"Drive on," said Olive decisively. "There's no use in waiting here. Let me tell you what she said to me."


"The little hussy! The shameless little hussy!" said Uncle Wellington.


The next thing the Stirlings heard was that Valancy had been seen with Barney Snaith in a movie theatre in Port Lawrence and after it at supper in a Chinese restaurant there. This was quite true—and no one was more surprised at it than Valancy herself. Barney had come along in Lady Jane one dim twilight and told Valancy unceremoniously if she wanted a drive to hop in.


"I'm going to the Port. Will you go there with me?"


His eyes were teasing and there was a bit of defiance in his voice. Valancy, who did not conceal from herself that she would have gone anywhere with him to any place, "hopped in" without more ado. They tore into and through Deerwood. Mrs. Frederick and Cousin Stickles, taking a little air on the verandah, saw them whirl by in a cloud of dust and sought comfort in each other's eyes. Valancy, who in some dim pre-existence had been afraid of a car, was hatless and her hair was blowing wildly round her face. She would certainly come down with bronchitis—and die at Roaring Abel's. She wore a low-necked dress and her arms were bare. That Snaith creature was in his shirt-sleeves, smoking a pipe. They were going at the rate of forty miles an hour—sixty, Cousin Stickles averred. Lady Jane could hit the pike when she wanted to. Valancy waved her hand gaily to her relatives. As for Mrs. Frederick, she was wishing she knew how to go into hysterics.


"Was it for this," she demanded in hollow tones, "that I suffered the pangs of motherhood?"


"I will not believe," said Cousin Stickles solemnly, "that our prayers will not yet be answered."


"Who—who will protect that unfortunate girl when I am gone?" moaned Mrs. Frederick.


As for Valancy, she was wondering if it could really be only a few weeks since she had sat there with them on that verandah. Hating the rubber-plant. Pestered with teasing questions like black flies. Always thinking of appearances. Cowed because of Aunt Wellington's teaspoons and Uncle Benjamin's money. Poverty-stricken. Afraid of everybody. Envying Olive. A slave to moth-eaten traditions. Nothing to hope for or expect.


And now every day was a gay adventure.


Lady Jane flew over the fifteen miles between Deerwood and the Port—through the Port. The way Barney went past traffic policemen was not holy. The lights were beginning to twinkle out like stars in the clear, lemon-hued twilight air. This was the only time Valancy ever really liked the town, and she was crazy with the delight of speeding. Was it possible she had ever been afraid of a car? She was perfectly happy, riding beside Barney. Not that she deluded herself into thinking it had any significance. She knew quite well that Barney had asked her to go on the impulse of the moment—an impulse born of a feeling of pity for her and her starved little dreams. She was looking tired after a wakeful night with a heart attack, followed by a busy day. She had so little fun. He'd give her an outing for once. Besides, Abel was in the kitchen, at the point of drunkenness where he was declaring he did not believe in God and beginning to sing ribald songs. It was just as well she should be out of the way for a while. Barney knew Roaring Abel's repertoire.


They went to the movie—Valancy had never been to a movie. And then, finding a nice hunger upon them, they went and had fried chicken—unbelievably delicious—in the Chinese restaurant. After which they rattled home again, leaving a devastating trail of scandal behind them. Mrs. Frederick gave up going to church altogether. She could not endure her friends' pitying glances and questions. But Cousin Stickles went every Sunday. She said they had been given a cross to bear.


On one of Cissy's wakeful nights, she told Valancy her poor little story. They were sitting by the open window. Cissy could not get her breath lying down that night. An inglorious gibbous moon was hanging over the wooded hills and in its spectral light Cissy looked frail and lovely and incredibly young. A child. It did not seem possible that she could have lived through all the passion and pain and shame of her story.


"He was stopping at the hotel across the lake. He used to come over in his canoe at night—we met in the pines down the shore. He was a young college student—his father was a rich man in Toronto. Oh, Valancy, I didn't mean to be bad—I didn't, indeed. But I loved him so—I love him yet—I'll always love him. And I—didn't know—some things. I didn't—understand. Then his father came and took him away. And—after a little—I found out—oh, Valancy,—I was so frightened. I didn't know what to do. I wrote him—and he came. He—he said he would marry me, Valancy."


"And why—and why?——"


"Oh, Valancy, he didn't love me any more. I saw that at a glance. He—he was just offering to marry me because he thought he ought to—because he was sorry for me. He wasn't bad—but he was so young—and what was I that he should keep on loving me?"


"Never mind making excuses for him," said Valancy a bit shortly. "So you wouldn't marry him?"


"I couldn't—not when he didn't love me any more. Somehow—I can't explain—it seemed a worse thing to do than—the other. He—he argued a little—but he went away. Do you think I did right, Valancy?"


"Yes, I do. You did right. But he——"


"Don't blame him, dear. Please don't. Let's not talk about him at all. There's no need. I wanted to tell you how it was—I didn't want you to think me bad——"


"I never did think so."


"Yes, I felt that—whenever you came. Oh, Valancy, what you've been to me! I can never tell you—but God will bless you for it. I know He will—'with what measure ye mete.'"


Cissy sobbed for a few minutes in Valancy's arms. Then she wiped her eyes.


"Well, that's almost all. I came home. I wasn't really so very unhappy. I suppose I should have been—but I wasn't. Father wasn't hard on me. And my baby was so sweet while he lived. I was even happy—I loved him so much, the dear little thing. He was so sweet, Valancy—with such lovely blue eyes—and little rings of pale gold hair like silk floss—and tiny dimpled hands. I used to bite his satin-smooth little face all over—softly, so as not to hurt him, you know——"


"I know," said Valancy, wincing. "I know—a woman always knows—and dreams——"


"And he was all mine. Nobody else had any claim on him. When he died, oh, Valancy, I thought I must die too—I didn't see how anybody could endure such anguish and live. To see his dear little eyes and know he would never open them again—to miss his warm little body nestled against mine at night and think of him sleeping alone and cold, his wee face under the hard frozen earth. It was so awful for the first year—after that it was a little easier, one didn't keep thinking 'this day last year'—but I was so glad when I found out I was dying."


"'Who could endure life if it were not for the hope of death?'" murmured Valancy softly—it was of course a quotation from some book of John Foster's.


"I'm glad I've told you all about it," sighed Cissy. "I wanted you to know."


Cissy died a few nights after that. Roaring Abel was away. When Valancy saw the change that had come over Cissy's face she wanted to telephone for the doctor. But Cissy wouldn't let her.


"Valancy, why should you? He can do nothing for me. I've known for several days that—this—was near. Let me die in peace, dear—just holding your hand. Oh, I'm so glad you're here. Tell Father good-bye for me. He's always been as good to me as he knew how—and Barney. Somehow, I think that Barney——"


But a spasm of coughing interrupted and exhausted her. She fell asleep when it was over, still holding to Valancy's hand. Valancy sat there in the silence. She was not frightened—or even sorry. At sunrise Cissy died. She opened her eyes and looked past Valancy at something—something that made her smile suddenly and happily. And, smiling, she died.


Valancy crossed Cissy's hands on her breast and went to the open window. In the eastern sky, amid the fires of sunrise, an old moon was hanging—as slender and lovely as a new moon. Valancy had never seen an old, old moon before. She watched it pale and fade until it paled and faded out of sight in the living rose of day. A little pool in the barrens shone in the sunrise like a great golden lily.


But the world suddenly seemed a colder place to Valancy. Again nobody needed her. She was not in the least sorry Cecilia was dead. She was only sorry for all her suffering in life. But nobody could ever hurt her again. Valancy had always thought death dreadful. But Cissy had died so quietly—so pleasantly. And at the very last—something—had made up to her for everything. She was lying there now, in her white sleep, looking like a child. Beautiful! All the lines of shame and pain gone.


Roaring Abel drove in, justifying his name. Valancy went down and told him. The shock sobered him at once. He slumped down on the seat of his buggy, his great head hanging.


"Cissy dead—Cissy dead," he said vacantly. "I didn't think it would 'a' come so soon. Dead. She used to run down the lane to meet me with a little white rose stuck in her hair. Cissy used to be a pretty little girl. And a good little girl."


"She has always been a good little girl," said Valancy.


Valancy herself made Cissy ready for burial. No hands but hers should touch that pitiful, wasted little body. The old house was spotless on the day of the funeral. Barney Snaith was not there. He had done all he could to help Valancy before it—he had shrouded the pale Cecilia in white roses from the garden—and then had gone back to his island. But everybody else was there. All Deerwood and "up back" came. They forgave Cissy splendidly at last. Mr. Bradly gave a very beautiful funeral address. Valancy had wanted her old Free Methodist man, but Roaring Abel was obdurate. He was a Presbyterian and no one but a Presbyterian minister should bury his daughter. Mr. Bradly was very tactful. He avoided all dubious points and it was plain to be seen he hoped for the best. Six reputable citizens of Deerwood bore Cecilia Gay to her grave in decorous Deerwood cemetery. Among them was Uncle Wellington.


The Stirlings all came to the funeral, men and women. They had had a family conclave over it. Surely now that Cissy Gay was dead Valancy would come home. She simply could not stay there with Roaring Abel. That being the case, the wisest course—decreed Uncle James—was to attend the funeral—legitimise the whole thing, so to speak—show Deerwood that Valancy had really done a most creditable deed in going to nurse poor Cecilia Gay and that her family backed her up in it. Death, the miracle worker, suddenly made the thing quite respectable. If Valancy would return to home and decency while public opinion was under its influence all might yet be well. Society was suddenly forgetting all Cecilia's wicked doings and remembering what a pretty, modest little thing she had been—"and motherless, you know—motherless!" It was the psychological moment—said Uncle James.


So the Stirlings went to the funeral. Even Cousin Gladys' neuritis allowed her to come. Cousin Stickles was there, her bonnet dripping all over her face, crying as woefully as if Cissy had been her nearest and dearest. Funerals always brought Cousin Stickles' "own sad bereavement" back.


And Uncle Wellington was a pall-bearer.


Valancy, pale, subdued-looking, her slanted eyes smudged with purple, in her snuff-brown dress, moving quietly about, finding seats for people, consulting in undertones with minister and undertaker, marshalling the "mourners" into the parlour, was so decorous and proper and Stirlingish that her family took heart of grace. This was not—could not be—the girl who had sat all night in the woods with Barney Snaith—who had gone tearing bareheaded through Deerwood and Port Lawrence. This was the Valancy they knew. Really, surprisingly capable and efficient. Perhaps she had always been kept down a bit too much—Amelia really was rather strict—hadn't had a chance to show what was in her. So thought the Stirlings. And Edward Beck, from the Port road, a widower with a large family who was beginning to take notice, took notice of Valancy and thought she might make a mighty fine second wife. No beauty—but a fifty-year-old widower, Mr. Beck told himself very reasonably, couldn't expect everything. Altogether, it seemed that Valancy's matrimonial chances were never so bright as they were at Cecilia Gay's funeral.


What the Stirlings and Edward Beck would have thought had they known the back of Valancy's mind must be left to the imagination. Valancy was hating the funeral—hating the people who came to stare with curiosity at Cecilia's marble-white face—hating the smugness—hating the dragging, melancholy singing—hating Mr. Bradly's cautious platitudes. If she could have had her absurd way, there would have been no funeral at all. She would have covered Cissy over with flowers, shut her away from prying eyes, and buried her beside her nameless little baby in the grassy burying-ground under the pines of the "up back" church, with a bit of kindly prayer from the old Free Methodist minister. She remembered Cissy saying once, "I wish I could be buried deep in the heart of the woods where nobody would ever come to say, 'Cissy Gay is buried here,' and tell over my miserable story."


But this! However, it would soon be over. Valancy knew, if the Stirlings and Edward Beck didn't, exactly what she intended to do then. She had lain awake all the preceding night thinking about it and finally deciding on it.


When the funeral procession had left the house, Mrs. Frederick sought out Valancy in the kitchen.


"My child," she said tremulously, "you'll come home now?"


"Home," said Valancy absently. She was getting on an apron and calculating how much tea she must put to steep for supper. There would be several guests from "up back"—distant relatives of the Gays' who had not remembered them for years. And she was so tired she wished she could borrow a pair of legs from the cat.


"Yes, home," said Mrs. Frederick, with a touch of asperity. "I suppose you won't dream of staying here now—alone with Roaring Abel."


"Oh, no, I'm not going to stay here," said Valancy. "Of course, I'll have to stay for a day or two, to put the house in order generally. But that will be all. Excuse me, Mother, won't you? I've a frightful lot to do—all those "up back" people will be here to supper."


Mrs. Frederick retreated in considerable relief, and the Stirlings went home with lighter hearts.


"We will just treat her as if nothing had happened when she comes back," decreed Uncle Benjamin. "That will be the best plan. Just as if nothing had happened."


On the evening of the day after the funeral Roaring Abel went off for a spree. He had been sober for four whole days and could endure it no longer. Before he went, Valancy told him she would be going away the next day. Roaring Abel was sorry, and said so. A distant cousin from "up back" was coming to keep house for him—quite willing to do so now since there was no sick girl to wait on—but Abel was not under any delusions concerning her.


"She won't be like you, my girl. Well, I'm obliged to you. You helped me out of a bad hole and I won't forget it. And I won't forget what you did for Cissy. I'm your friend, and if you ever want any of the Stirlings spanked and sot in a corner send for me. I'm going to wet my whistle. Lord, but I'm dry! Don't reckon I'll be back afore tomorrow night, so if you're going home tomorrow, good-bye now."


"I may go home tomorrow," said Valancy, "but I'm not going back to Deerwood."


"You'll find the key on the woodshed nail," interrupted Valancy, politely and unmistakably. "The dog will be in the barn and the cat in the cellar. Don't forget to feed her till your cousin comes. The pantry is full and I made bread and pies today. Good-bye, Mr. Gay. You have been very kind to me and I appreciate it."


"We've had a d——d decent time of it together, and that's a fact," said Roaring Abel. "You're the best small sport in the world, and your little finger is worth the whole Stirling clan tied together. Good-bye and good-luck."


Valancy went out to the garden. Her legs trembled a little, but otherwise she felt and looked composed. She held something tightly in her hand. The garden was lying in the magic of the warm, odorous July twilight. A few stars were out and the robins were calling through the velvety silences of the barrens. Valancy stood by the gate expectantly. Would he come? If he did not——


He was coming. Valancy heard Lady Jane Grey far back in the woods. Her breath came a little more quickly. Nearer—and nearer—she could see Lady Jane now—bumping down the lane—nearer—nearer—he was there—he had sprung from the car and was leaning over the gate, looking at her.


"Going home, Miss Stirling?"


"I don't know—yet," said Valancy slowly. Her mind was made up, with no shadow of turning, but the moment was very tremendous.


"I thought I'd run down and ask if there was anything I could do for you," said Barney.


Valancy took it with a canter.


"Yes, there is something you can do for me," she said, evenly and distinctly. "Will you marry me?"


For a moment Barney was silent. There was no particular expression on his face. Then he gave an odd laugh.


"Come, now! I knew luck was just waiting around the corner for me. All the signs have been pointing that way today."


"Wait." Valancy lifted her hand. "I'm in earnest—but I want to get my breath after that question. Of course, with my bringing up, I realise perfectly well that this is one of the things 'a lady should not do.'"


"But why—why?"


"For two reasons." Valancy was still a little breathless, but she looked Barney straight in the eyes, while all the dead Stirlings revolved rapidly in their graves and the living ones did nothing because they did not know that Valancy was at that moment proposing lawful marriage to the notorious Barney Snaith. "The first reason is, I—I"—Valancy tried to say "I love you" but could not. She had to take refuge in a pretended flippancy. "I'm crazy about you. The second is—this."


She handed him Dr. Trent's letter.


Barney opened it with the air of a man thankful to find some safe, sane thing to do. As he read it his face changed. He understood—more perhaps than Valancy wanted him to.


"Are you sure nothing can be done for you?"


Valancy did not misunderstand the question.


"Yes. You know Dr. Trent's reputation in regard to heart disease. I haven't long to live—perhaps only a few months—a few weeks. I want to live them. I can't go back to Deerwood—you know what my life was like there. And"—she managed it this time—"I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. That's all."


Barney folded his arms on the gate and looked gravely enough at a white, saucy star that was winking at him just over Roaring Abel's kitchen chimney.


"You don't know anything about me. I may be a—murderer."


"No, I don't. You may be something dreadful. Everything they say of you may be true. But it doesn't matter to me."


"You care that much for me, Valancy?" said Barney incredulously, looking away from the star and into her eyes—her strange, mysterious eyes.


"I care—that much," said Valancy in a low voice. She was trembling. He had called her by her name for the first time. It was sweeter than another man's caress could have been just to hear him say her name like that.


"If we are going to get married," said Barney, speaking suddenly in a casual, matter-of-fact voice, "some things must be understood."


"Everything must be understood," said Valancy.


"I have things I want to hide," said Barney coolly. "You are not to ask me about them."


"I won't," said Valancy.


"You must never ask to see my mail."


"And we are never to pretend anything to each other."


"We won't," said Valancy. "You won't even have to pretend you like me. If you marry me I know you're only doing it out of pity."


"And we'll never tell a lie to each other about anything—a big lie or a petty lie."


"Especially a petty lie," agreed Valancy.


"And you'll have to live back on my island. I won't live anywhere else."


"That's partly why I want to marry you," said Valancy.


Barney peered at her.


"Thank you," said Valancy, with a sudden return of primness. She would have been much less embarrassed if he had refused her.


"I suppose I haven't any right to make conditions. But I'm going to make one. You are never to refer to my heart or my liability to sudden death. You are never to urge me to be careful. You are to forget—absolutely forget—that I'm not perfectly healthy. I have written a letter to my mother—here it is—you are to keep it. I have explained everything in it. If I drop dead suddenly—as I likely will do——"


"It will exonerate me in the eyes of your kindred from the suspicion of having poisoned you," said Barney with a grin.


"Exactly." Valancy laughed gaily. "Dear me, I'm glad this is over. It has been—a bit of an ordeal. You see, I'm not in the habit of going about asking men to marry me. It is so nice of you not to refuse me—or offer to be a brother!"


"I'll go to the Port tomorrow and get a license. We can be married tomorrow evening. Dr. Stalling, I suppose?"


"Heavens, no." Valancy shuddered. "Besides, he wouldn't do it. He'd shake his forefinger at me and I'd jilt you at the altar. No, I want my old Mr. Towers to marry me."


"Will you marry me as I stand?" demanded Barney. A passing car, full of tourists, honked loudly—it seemed derisively. Valancy looked at him. Blue homespun shirt, nondescript hat, muddy overalls. Unshaved!


"Yes," she said.


Barney put his hands over the gate and took her little, cold ones gently in his.


"Valancy," he said, trying to speak lightly, "of course I'm not in love with you—never thought of such a thing as being in love. But, do you know, I've always thought you were a bit of a dear."


The next day passed for Valancy like a dream. She could not make herself or anything she did seem real. She saw nothing of Barney, though she expected he must go rattling past on his way to the Port for a license.


Perhaps he had changed his mind.


But at dusk the lights of Lady Jane suddenly swooped over the crest of the wooded hill beyond the lane. Valancy was waiting at the gate for her bridegroom. She wore her green dress and her green hat because she had nothing else to wear. She did not look or feel at all bride-like—she really looked like a wild elf strayed out of the greenwood. But that did not matter. Nothing at all mattered except that Barney was coming for her.


"Ready?" said Barney, stopping Lady Jane with some new, horrible noises.


"Yes." Valancy stepped in and sat down. Barney was in his blue shirt and overalls. But they were clean overalls. He was smoking a villainous-looking pipe and he was bareheaded. But he had a pair of oddly smart boots on under his shabby overalls. And he was shaved. They clattered into Deerwood and through Deerwood and hit the long, wooded road to the Port.


"Haven't changed your mind?" said Barney.


That was their whole conversation on the fifteen miles. Everything was more dream-like than ever. Valancy didn't know whether she felt happy. Or terrified. Or just plain fool.


Then the lights of Port Lawrence were about them. Valancy felt as if she were surrounded by the gleaming, hungry eyes of hundreds of great, stealthy panthers. Barney briefly asked where Mr. Towers lived, and Valancy as briefly told him. They stopped before the shabby little house in an unfashionable street. They went in to the small, shabby parlour. Barney produced his license. So he had got it. Also a ring. This thing was real. She, Valancy Stirling, was actually on the point of being married.


They were standing up together before Mr. Towers. Valancy heard Mr. Towers and Barney saying things. She heard some other person saying things. She herself was thinking of the way she had once planned to be married—away back in her early teens when such a thing had not seemed impossible. White silk and tulle veil and orange-blossoms; no bridesmaid. But one flower girl, in a frock of cream shadow lace over pale pink, with a wreath of flowers in her hair, carrying a basket of roses and lilies-of-the-valley. And the groom, a noble-looking creature, irreproachably clad in whatever the fashion of the day decreed. Valancy lifted her eyes and saw herself and Barney in the little, slanting, distorting mirror over the mantelpiece. She in her odd, unbridal green hat and dress; Barney in shirt and overalls. But it was Barney. That was all that mattered. No veil—no flowers—no guests—no presents—no wedding-cake—but just Barney. For all the rest of her life there would be Barney.


"Mrs. Snaith, I hope you will be very happy," Mr. Towers was saying.


He had not seemed surprised at their appearance—not even at Barney's overalls. He had seen plenty of queer weddings "up back." He did not know Valancy was one of the Deerwood Stirlings—he did not even know there were Deerwood Stirlings. He did not know Barney Snaith was a fugitive from justice. Really, he was an incredibly ignorant old man. Therefore he married them and gave them his blessing very gently and solemnly and prayed for them that night after they had gone away. His conscience did not trouble him at all.


"What a nice way to get married!" Barney was saying as he put Lady Jane in gear. "No fuss and flub-dub. I never supposed it was half so easy."


"For heaven's sake," said Valancy suddenly, "let's forget we are married and talk as if we weren't. I can't stand another drive like the one we had coming in."


Barney howled and threw Lady Jane into high with an infernal noise.


"And I thought I was making it easy for you," he said. "You didn't seem to want to talk."


"I didn't. But I wanted you to talk. I don't want you to make love to me, but I want you to act like an ordinary human being. Tell me about this island of yours. What sort of a place is it?"


"The jolliest place in the world. You're going to love it. The first time I saw it I loved it. Old Tom MacMurray owned it then. He built the little shack on it, lived there in winter and rented it to Toronto people in summer. I bought it from him—became by that one simple transaction a landed proprietor owning a house and an island. There is something so satisfying in owning a whole island. And isn't an uninhabited island a charming idea? I'd wanted to own one ever since I'd read Robinson Crusoe. It seemed too good to be true. And beauty! Most of the scenery belongs to the government, but they don't tax you for looking at it, and the moon belongs to everybody. You won't find my shack very tidy. I suppose you'll want to make it tidy."


"Yes," said Valancy honestly. "I have to be tidy. I don't really want to be. But untidiness hurts me. Yes, I'll have to tidy up your shack."


"I was prepared for that," said Barney, with a hollow groan.


"But," continued Valancy relentingly, "I won't insist on your wiping your feet when you come in."


"No, you'll only sweep up after me with the air of a martyr," said Barney. "Well, anyway, you can't tidy the lean-to. You can't even enter it. The door will be locked and I shall keep the key."


"Bluebeard's chamber," said Valancy. "I shan't even think of it. I don't care how many wives you have hanging up in it. So long as they're really dead."


"Dead as door-nails. You can do as you like in the rest of the house. There's not much of it—just one big living-room and one small bedroom. Well built, though. Old Tom loved his job. The beams of our house are cedar and the rafters fir. Our living-room windows face west and east. It's wonderful to have a room where you can see both sunrise and sunset. I have two cats there. Banjo and Good Luck. Adorable animals. Banjo is a big, enchanting, grey devil-cat. Striped, of course. I don't care a hang for any cat that hasn't stripes. I never knew a cat who could swear as genteelly and effectively as Banjo. His only fault is that he snores horribly when he is asleep. Luck is a dainty little cat. Always looking wistfully at you, as if he wanted to tell you something. Maybe he will pull it off sometime. Once in a thousand years, you know, one cat is allowed to speak. My cats are philosophers—neither of them ever cries over spilt milk.


"Two old crows live in a pine-tree on the point and are reasonably neighbourly. Call 'em Nip and Tuck. And I have a demure little tame owl. Name, Leander. I brought him up from a baby and he lives over on the mainland and chuckles to himself o' nights. And bats—it's a great place for bats at night. Scared of bats?"


"No; I like them."


"So do I. Nice, queer, uncanny, mysterious creatures. Coming from nowhere—going nowhere. Swoop! Banjo likes 'em, too. Eats 'em. I have a canoe and a disappearing propeller boat. Went to the Port in it today to get my license. Quieter than Lady Jane."


"I thought you hadn't gone at all—that you had changed your mind," admitted Valancy.


Barney laughed—the laugh Valancy did not like—the little, bitter, cynical laugh.


"I never change my mind," he said shortly.


They went back through Deerwood. Up the Muskoka road. Past Roaring Abel's. Over the rocky, daisied lane. The dark pine woods swallowed them up. Through the pine woods, where the air was sweet with the incense of the unseen, fragile bells of the linnæas that carpeted the banks of the trail. Out to the shore of Mistawis. Lady Jane must be left here. They got out. Barney led the way down a little path to the edge of the lake.


"There's our island," he said gloatingly.


Valancy looked—and looked—and looked again. There was a diaphanous, lilac mist on the lake, shrouding the island. Through it the two enormous pine-trees that clasped hands over Barney's shack loomed out like dark turrets. Behind them was a sky still rose-hued in the afterlight, and a pale young moon.


Valancy shivered like a tree the wind stirs suddenly. Something seemed to sweep over her soul.


"My Blue Castle!" she said. "Oh, my Blue Castle!"


They got into the canoe and paddled out to it. They left behind the realm of everyday and things known and landed on a realm of mystery and enchantment where anything might happen—anything might be true. Barney lifted Valancy out of the canoe and swung her to a lichen-covered rock under a young pine-tree. His arms were about her and suddenly his lips were on hers. Valancy found herself shivering with the rapture of her first kiss.


"Welcome home, dear," Barney was saying.


Cousin Georgiana came down the lane leading up to her little house. She lived half a mile out of Deerwood and she wanted to go in to Amelia's and find out if Doss had come home yet. Cousin Georgiana was anxious to see Doss. She had something very important to tell her. Something, she was sure, Doss would be delighted to hear. Poor Doss! She had had rather a dull life of it. Cousin Georgiana owned to herself that she would not like to live under Amelia's thumb. But that would be all changed now. Cousin Georgiana felt tremendously important. For the time being, she quite forgot to wonder which of them would go next.


And here was Doss herself, coming along the road from Roaring Abel's in such a queer green dress and hat. Talk about luck. Cousin Georgiana would have a chance to impart her wonderful secret right away, with nobody else about to interrupt. It was, you might say, a Providence.


Valancy, who had been living for four days on her enchanted island, had decided that she might as well go in to Deerwood and tell her relatives that she was married. Otherwise, finding that she had disappeared from Roaring Abel's, they might get out a search warrant for her. Barney had offered to drive her in, but she had preferred to go alone. She smiled very radiantly at Cousin Georgiana, who, she remembered, as of some one known a long time ago, had really been not a bad little creature. Valancy was so happy that she could have smiled at anybody—even Uncle James. She was not averse to Cousin Georgiana's company. Already, since the houses along the road were becoming numerous, she was conscious that curious eyes were looking at her from every window.


"I suppose you're going home, dear Doss?" said Cousin Georgiana as she shook hands—furtively eyeing Valancy's dress and wondering if she had any petticoat on at all.


"Sooner or later," said Valancy cryptically.


"Then I'll go along with you. I've been wanting to see you very especially, Doss dear. I've something quite wonderful to tell you."


"Yes?" said Valancy absently. What on earth was Cousin Georgiana looking so mysterious and important about? But did it matter? No. Nothing mattered but Barney and the Blue Castle up back in Mistawis.


"Who do you suppose called to see me the other day?" asked Cousin Georgiana archly.


Valancy couldn't guess.


"Edward Beck." Cousin Georgiana lowered her voice almost to a whisper. "Edward Beck."


Why the italics? And was Cousin Georgiana blushing?


"Who on earth is Edward Beck?" asked Valancy indifferently.


Cousin Georgiana stared.


"Surely you remember Edward Beck," she said reproachfully. "He lives in that lovely house on the Port Lawrence road and he comes to our church—regularly. You must remember him."


"Oh, I think I do now," said Valancy, with an effort of memory. "He's that old man with a wen on his forehead and dozens of children, who always sits in the pew by the door, isn't he?"


"Not dozens of children, dear—oh, no, not dozens. Not even one dozen. Only nine. At least only nine that count. The rest are dead. He isn't old—he's only about forty-eight—the prime of life, Doss—and what does it matter about a wen?"


"Nothing, of course," agreed Valancy quite sincerely. It certainly did not matter to her whether Edward Beck had a wen or a dozen wens or no wen at all. But Valancy was getting vaguely suspicious. There was certainly an air of suppressed triumph about Cousin Georgiana. Could it be possible that Cousin Georgiana was thinking of marrying again? Marrying Edward Beck? Absurd. Cousin Georgiana was sixty-five if she were a day and her little anxious face was as closely covered with fine wrinkles as if she had been a hundred. But still——


"My dear," said Cousin Georgiana, "Edward Beck wants to marry you."


Valancy stared at Cousin Georgiana for a moment. Then she wanted to go off into a peal of laughter. But she only said:


"Yes, you. He fell in love with you at the funeral. And he came to consult me about it. I was such a friend of his first wife, you know. He is very much in earnest, Dossie. And it's a wonderful chance for you. He's very well off—and you know—you—you——"


"Am not so young as I once was," agreed Valancy. "'To her that hath shall be given.' Do you really think I would make a good stepmother, Cousin Georgiana?"


"I'm sure you would. You were always so fond of children."


"But nine is such a family to start with," objected Valancy gravely.


"The two oldest are grown up and the third almost. That leaves only six that really count. And most of them are boys. So much easier to bring up than girls. There's an excellent book—'Health Care of the Growing Child'—Gladys has a copy, I think. It would be such a help to you. And there are books about morals. You'd manage nicely. Of course I told Mr. Beck that I thought you would—would——"


"Jump at him," supplied Valancy.


"Oh, no, no, dear. I wouldn't use such an indelicate expression. I told him I thought you would consider his proposal favourably. And you will, won't you, dearie?"


"There's only one obstacle," said Valancy dreamily. "You see, I'm married already."


"Married!" Cousin Georgiana stopped stock-still and stared at Valancy. "Married!"


"Yes. I was married to Barney Snaith last Tuesday evening in Port Lawrence."


There was a convenient gate-post hard by. Cousin Georgiana took firm hold of it.


"Doss, dear—I'm an old woman—are you trying to make fun of me?"


"Not at all. I'm only telling you the truth. For heaven's sake, Cousin Georgiana,"—Valancy was alarmed by certain symptoms—"don't go crying here on the public road!"


Cousin Georgiana choked back the tears and gave a little moan of despair instead.


"Oh, Doss, what have you done? What have you done?"


"I've just been telling you. I've got married," said Valancy, calmly and patiently.


"To that—that—aw—that—Barney Snaith. Why, they say he's had a dozen wives already."


"I'm the only one round at present," said Valancy.


"What will your poor mother say?" moaned Cousin Georgiana.


"Come along with me and hear, if you want to know," said Valancy. "I'm on my way to tell her now."