Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading

Team.

FRAN

BY JOHN BRECKENRIDGE ELLIS

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

W. B. KING

TO MY MOTHER

CONTENTS

I A KNOCK AT THE DOOR.

II A DISTURBING LAUGH.

III ON THE FOOT-BRIDGE.

IV THE WOMAN WHO WAS NOT MRS. GREGORY.

V WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.

VI MRS. GREGORY.

VII A FAMILY CONFERENCE.

VIII WAR DECLARED.

IX SKIRMISHING.

X AN AMBUSCADE.

XI THE NEW BRIDGE AT MIDNIGHT.

XII GRACE CAPTURES THE OUTPOSTS.

XIII ALLIANCE WITH ABBOTT.

XIV FIGHTING FOR HER LIFE.

XV IN SURE-ENOUGH COUNTRY.

XVI A TAMER OF LIONS.

XVII SHALL THE SECRET BE TOLD?

XVIII JUST THIRTY MINUTES.

XIX THE FIRST VICTORY.

XX THE ENEMY TRIUMPHS.

XXI FLIGHT.

XXII THE STREET FAIR.

XXIII THE CONQUEROR.

XXIV NEAR THE SKY.

CHAPTER I

A KNOCK AT THE DOOR

Fran knocked at the front door. It was too dark for her to find the bell; however, had she found it, she would have knocked just the same.

At first, no one answered. That was not surprising, since everybody was supposed to be at the Union Camp-meeting that had been advertised for the last two months. Of course it was not beyond possibility that some one might have stayed at home to invite his soul instead of getting it saved; but that any one in Littleburg should go visiting at half-past eight, and especially that any one should come knocking at the door of this particular house, was almost incredible. No doubt that is why the young woman who finally opened the door— after Fran had subjected it to a second and more prolonged visitation of her small fist—looked at the stranger with surprise which was, in itself, reproof. Standing in the dim light that reached the porch from the hall, Fran's appearance was not above suspicion. She looked very dark, sharp-faced, and small. Her attitude suggested one who wanted something and had come to ask for it. The lady in the doorway believed herself confronted by a "camper"—one of those flitting birds of outer darkness who have no religion of their own, but who are always putting that of others to the proof.

The voice from the doorway was cool, impersonal, as if, by its very aloofness, it would push the wanderer away: "What do you want?"

"I want Hamilton Gregory," Fran answered promptly, without the slightest trace of embarrassment. "I'm told he lives here."

"Mr. Gregory"—offering the name with its title as a palpable rebuke—"lives here, but is not at home. What do you want, little girl?"

"Where is he?" Fran asked, undaunted.

At first the young woman was tempted to close the door upon the impudent gaze that never faltered in watching her, but those bright unwavering eyes, gleaming out of the gloom of straw hat and overshadowing hair, compelled recognition of some sort.

"He is at the camp-meeting," she answered reluctantly, irritated at opposition, and displeased with herself for being irritated. "What do you want with him? I will attend to whatever it is. I am acquainted with all of his affairs—I am his secretary."

"Where is that camp-meeting? How can I find the place?" was Fran's quick rejoinder. She could not explain the dislike rising within her. She was too young, herself, to consider the other's youth an advantage, but the beauty of the imperious woman in the doorway—why did it not stir her admiration?

Mr. Gregory's secretary reflected that, despite its seeming improbability, it might be important for him to see this queer creature who came to strange doors at night-time.

"If you will go straight down that road"—she pointed—"and keep on for about a mile and a half, you will come to the big tent. Mr. Gregory will be in the tent, leading the choir."

"All right." And turning her back on the door, Fran swiftly gained the front steps. Half-way down, she paused, and glanced over her thin shoulder. Standing thus, nothing was to be seen of her but a blurred outline, and the shining of her eyes.

"I guess," said Fran inscrutably, "you're not Mrs. Gregory."

"No," came the answer, with an almost imperceptible change of manner— a change as of gradual petrifaction, "I am not Mrs. Gregory." And with that the lady, who was not Mrs. Gregory, quietly but forcibly closed the door.

It was as if, with the closing of that door, she would have shut Fran out of her life.

CHAPTER II

A DISTURBING LAUGH

A long stretch of wooden sidewalks with here and there a leprous breaking out of granitoid; a succession of dwellings, each in its yard of bluegrass, maple trees, and whitewashed palings, with several residences fine enough to excite wonder—for modest cottages set the architectural pace in the village; a stretch of open country beyond the corporate limits, with a footbridge to span the deep ravine—and then, at last, a sudden glow in the darkness not caused by the moon, with a circle of stamping and neighing horses encompassing the glow.

The sermon was ended, the exhortation was at the point of loudest voice and most impassioned earnestness. A number of men, most of them young, thronged the footpath leading from the stiles to the tent. A few were smoking; all were waiting for the pretty girls to come forth from the Christian camp. Fran pushed her way among the idlers with admirable nonchalance, her sharp elbow ready for the first resistive pair of ribs.

The crowd outside did not argue a scarcity of seats under the canvas. Fran found a plank without a back, loosely disposed, and entirely unoccupied. She seated herself, straight as an Indian, and with the air of being very much at ease.

The scene was new to her. More than a thousand villagers, ranged along a natural declivity, looked down upon the platform of undressed pine. In front of the platform men and women were kneeling on the ground. Some were bathed in tears; some were praying aloud; some were talking to those who stood, or knelt beside them; some were clasping convulsive hands; all were oblivious of surroundings.

Occasionally one heard above the stentorian voice of the exhorter, above the prayers and exclamations of the "seekers", a sudden shout of exultation—"Bless the Lord!" or a rapturous "A-a-MEN!" Then a kneeling figure would rise, and the exhorter would break off his plea to cry, "Our brother has found the Lord!"

From the hundred members of the choir, Fran singled out the man she had been seeking for so many years. It was easy enough to distinguish him from the singers who crowded the platform, not only by his baton which proclaimed the choir-leader, but by his resemblance to the picture she had discovered in a New York Sunday Supplement.

Hamilton Gregory was clean-shaved except for a silken reddish mustache; his complexion was fair, his hair a shade between red and brown, his eyes blue. His finely marked face and striking bearing were stamped with distinction and grace.

It was strange to Fran that he did not once glance in her direction. True, there was nothing in her appearance to excite especial attention, but she had looked forward to meeting him ever since she could remember. Now that her eyes were fastened on his face, now that they were so near, sheltered by a common roof, how could he help feeling her presence?

The choir-leader rose and lifted his baton. At his back the hundred men and women obeyed the signal, while hymn-books fluttered open throughout the congregation. Suddenly the leader of the choir started into galvanic life. He led the song with his sweet voice, his swaying body, his frantic baton, his wild arms, his imperious feet. With all that there was of him, he conducted the melodious charge up the ramparts of sin and indifference. If in repose, Fran had thought him singularly handsome and attractive, she now found him inspiring. His blue eyes burned with exaltation while his magic voice seemed to thrill with more than human ecstasy. The strong, slim, white hand tensely grasping the baton, was the hand of a powerful chieftain wielded in behalf of the God of Battles.

On the left, the heavy bass was singing,

"One thing we know,
Wherever we go—
We reap what we sow,
We reap what we sow."

While these words were being doled out at long and impressive intervals, like the tolling of a heavy bell, more than half a hundred soprano voices were hastily getting in their requisite number of half notes, thus—

"So scatter little, scatter little, scatter little, scatter
little,
Scatter little seeds of kindness."

In spite of the vast volume of sound produced by these voices, as well as by the accompaniment of two pianos and a snare-drum, the voice of Hamilton Gregory, soaring flute-like toward heaven, seemed to dart through the interstices of "rests", to thread its slender way along infinitesimal crevices of silence. One might have supposed that the booming bass, the eager chattering soprano, the tenor with its thin crust of upper layers, and the throaty fillings of the alto, could have left no vantage points for an obligato. Yet it was Hamilton Gregory's voice that bound all together in divine unity. As one listened, it was the inspired truth as uttered by Hamilton Gregory that brought the message home to conscience. As if one had never before been told that one reaps what one sows, uneasy memory started out of hidden places with its whisper of seed sown amiss. Tears rose to many eyes, and smothered sobs betrayed intense emotion.

Of those who were not in the least affected, Fran was one. She saw and heard Hamilton Gregory's impassioned earnestness, and divined his yearning to touch many hearts; nor did she doubt that he would then and there have given his life to press home upon the erring that they must ultimately reap what they were sowing. Nevertheless she was altogether unmoved. It would have been easier for her to laugh than to cry.

Although the preacher had ceased his exhortations for the singing of the evangelistic hymn, he was by no means at the end of his resources. Standing at the margin of the platform, looking out on the congregation, he slowly moved back and forth his magnetic arms in parallel lines. Without turning his body, it was as if he were cautiously sweeping aside the invisible curtain of doubt that swung between the unsaved and the altar. "This way," he seemed to say. "Follow my hands."

Not one word did he speak. Even between the verses, when he might have striven against the pianos and the snare-drum, he maintained his terrible silence. But as he fixed his ardent eyes upon space, as he moved those impelling arms, a man would rise here, a woman start up there—reluctantly, or eagerly, the unsaved would press their way to the group kneeling at the front. Prayers and groans rose louder. Jubilant shouts of religious victory were more frequent. One could, now hardly hear the choir as it insisted—

"We reap what we sow,
We reap what we sow."

Suddenly the evangelist smote his hands together, a signal for song and prayer to cease.

Having obtained a silence that was breathless he leaned over the edge of the platform, and addressed a man who knelt upon the ground:

"Brother Clinton, can't you get it?"

The man shook his head. "You've been kneeling there night after night," the evangelist continued; "don't you feel that the Lord loves you? Can't you feel it? Can't you feel it now? Can't you get it? Can't you get it now? Brother Clinton, I want you to get through before these revival services close. They close this night. I go away to-morrow. This may be your last opportunity. I want you to get it now. All these waiting friends want you to get it now. All these praying neighbors want to see you get it. Can't you get through to- night? Just quietly here, without any excitement, without any noise or tumult, just you and your soul alone together—Brother Clinton, can't you get through to-night?"

Brother Clinton shook his head.

Fran laughed aloud.

The evangelist had already turned to Hamilton Gregory as a signal for the hymn to be resumed, for sometimes singing helped them "through", but the sound of irreverent laughter chilled his blood. To his highly wrought emotional nature, that sound of mirth came as the laughter of fiends over the tragedy of an immortal soul.

"Several times," he cried, with whitened face, "these services have been disturbed by the ungodly." He pointed an inflexible finger at Fran: "Yonder sits a little girl who should not have been allowed in this tent unaccompanied by her parents. Brethren! Too much is at stake, at moments like these, to shrink from heroic measures. Souls are here, waiting to be saved. Let that little girl be removed. Where are the ushers? I hope she will go without disturbance, but go she shall! Now, Brother Gregory, sing."

The corps of ushers had been sadly depleted by the young men's inclination to bivouac outside, where one could see without being obliged to hear. As the song swept over the worshipers in a wave of pleading, such ushers as still remained, held a brief consultation. The task assigned them did not seem included in their proper functions. Only one could be found to volunteer as policeman, and he only because the evangelist's determined eye and rigid arm had never ceased to indicate the disturber of the peace.

Fran was furious; her small white face seemed cut in stone as she stared at the evangelist. How could she have known she was going to laugh? Her tumultuous emotions, inspired by the sight of Hamilton Gregory, might well have found expression in some other way. That laugh had been as a darting of tongue-flame directed against the armored Christian soldier whose face was so spiritually beautiful, whose voice was so eloquent.

Fran was suddenly aware of a man pausing irresolutely at the end of the plank that held her erect. Without turning her head, she asked in a rather spiteful voice, "Are you the sheriff?"

He spoke with conciliatory persuasiveness: "Won't you go with me, little girl?"

Fran turned impatiently to glare at the usher.

He was a fine young fellow of perhaps twenty-four, tall and straight, clean and wholesome. His eyes were sincere and earnest yet they promised much in the way of sunny smiles—at the proper time and place. His mouth was frank, his forehead open, his shoulders broad.

Fran rose as swiftly as if a giant hand had lifted her to her feet. "Come on, then," she said in a tone somewhat smothered. She climbed over the "stringer" at the end of her plank, and marched behind the young man as if oblivious of devouring eyes. The men at the tent- entrance scurried out of the way, scattering the shavings and sawdust that lined the path.

As they passed the last pole that supported a gasolene-burner, Fran glanced up shyly from under her broad hat. The light burned red upon the young usher's face, and there was something in the crimson glow, or in the face, that made her feel like crying, just because—or so she fancied—it revived the recollection of her loneliness. And as she usually did what she felt like doing, she cried, silently, as she followed the young man out beneath the stars.

CHAPTER III

ON THE FOOT-BRIDGE

To the young usher, the change of scene was rather bewildering. His eyes were still full of the light from gasolene-burners, his ears still rang with the confusion of tent-noise into which entered the prolonged monotones of inarticulate groanings, and the explosive suddenness of seemingly irrelevant Amens. Above all, he tingled from the electric atmosphere of intense religious excitement; he was charged with currents at a pressure so high that his nerves were unresponsive to dull details of ordinary life.

Nothing just then mattered except the saving of souls. Having faithfully attended the camp-meeting for three weeks he found other interests blotted out. The village as a whole had given itself over to religious ecstasy. Those who had professed their faith left no stone unturned in leading others to the altar, as if life could not resume its routine until the unconverted were brought to kneel at the evangelist's feet.

As Abbott Ashton reflected that, because of this young girl with the mocking laugh, he was losing the climacteric expression of the three- weeks' campaign, his displeasure grew. Within him was an undefined thought vibration akin to surprise, caused by the serenity of the hushed sky. Was it not incongruous that the heavens should be so peaceful with their quiet star-beacons, while man was exerting himself to the utmost of gesture and noise to glorify the Maker of that calm canopy? From the weather-stained canvas rolled the warning, not unmusically:

"We reap what we sow,
We reap what we sow."

Above the tide of melody, the voice of the evangelist rose in a scream, appalling in its agony—"Oh, men and women, why will you die, why will you die?"

But the stars, looking down at the silent earth, spoke not of death, spoke only as stars, seeming to say, "Here are April days, dear old earth, balmy springtime and summer harvest before us!—What merry nights we shall pass together!" The earth answered with a sudden white smile, for the moon had just risen above the distant woods.

At the stile where the footpath from the tent ended, Abbott paused. Why should he go farther? This scoffer, the one false note in the meeting's harmony, had been silenced. "There," he said, showing the road. His tone was final. It meant, "Depart."

Fran spoke in a choking voice, "I'm afraid." It was not until then, that he knew she had been crying, for not once had he looked back. That she should cry, changed everything. And no wonder she was afraid. To the fences on either side of the country road, horses and mules were tethered. Torch-lights cast weird shadows. Here and there lounged dimly some fellow who preferred the society of side-kicking, shrilly neighing horses, to the suing melody of soul-seekers.

"But I must go back to the tent," said the usher softly, not surprised that a little girl should be afraid to venture among these vague terrors.

"I am so little," Fran said plaintively, "and the world is so large."

Abbott stood irresolute. To take Fran back to the tent would destroy the Influence, but it seemed inhuman to send her away. He temporized rather weakly, "But you came here alone."

"But I'm not going away alone," said Fran. Her voice was still damp, but she had kept her resolution dry.

In the gloom, he vainly sought to discern her features. "Whose little girl are you?" he asked, not without an accent of gentle commiseration.

Fran, one foot on the first step of the stile, looked up at him; the sudden flare of a torch revealed the sorrow in her eyes. "I am nobody's little girl," she answered plaintively.

Her eyes were so large, and so soft and dark, that Abbott was glad she was only a child of fourteen—or fifteen, perhaps. Her face was so strangely eloquent in its yearning for something quite beyond his comprehension, that he decided, then and there, to be her friend. The unsteady light prevented definite perception of her face. He noted that her legs were thin, her arms long, her body slight, though there was a faint suggestion of curving outline of hips and bosom that lent an effect of charm.

There was, in truth, an element of charm in all he could discern. Even the thin limbs appealed to him oddly. Possibly the big hat helped to conceal or accentuate—at any rate, the effect was somewhat elfish. As for those great and luminously soft black eyes, he could not for the life of him have said what he saw in them to set his blood tingling with feeling of protecting tenderness. Possibly it was her trust in him, for as he gazed into the earnest eyes of Fran, it was like looking into a clear pool to see oneself.

"Nobody's little girl?" he repeated, inexpressibly touched that it should be so. What a treasure somebody was denied! "Are you a stranger in the town?"

"Never been here before," Fran answered mournfully.

"But why did you come?"

"I came to find Hamilton Gregory."

The young man was astonished. "Didn't you see him in the tent, leading the choir?"

"He has a house in town," Fran said timidly. "I don't want to bother him while he is in his religion. I want to wait for him at his house. Oh," she added earnestly, "if you would only show me the way."

Just as if she did not know the way!

Abbott Ashton was now completely at her mercy. "So you know Brother Gregory, do you?" he asked, as he led her over the stiles and down the wagon-road.

"Never saw him in my life," Fran replied casually. She knew how to say it prohibitively, but she purposely left the bars down, to find out if the young man was what she hoped.

And he was. He did not ask a question. They sought the grass-grown path bordering the dusty road; as they ascended the hill that shut out a view of the village, to their ears came the sprightly, Twentieth Century hymn. What change had come over Ashton that the song now seemed as strangely out of keeping as had the peacefulness of the April night, when he first left the tent? He felt the prick of remorse because in the midst of nature, he had so soon forgotten about souls.

Fran caught the air and softly sang—"We reap what we sow—"

"Don't!" he reproved her. "Child, that means nothing to you."

"Yes, it does, too," she returned, rather impudently. She continued to sing and hum until the last note was smothered in her little nose. Then she spoke: "However—it means a different thing to me from what it means to the choir."

He looked at her curiously. "How different?" he smiled.

"To me, it means that we really do reap what we sow, and that if we've done something very wrong in the past—ugh! Better look out— trouble's coming. That's what the song means to me."

"And will you kindly tell me what it means to the choir?"

"Yes, I'll tell you what it means to the choir. It means sitting on benches and singing, after a sermon; and it means a tent, and a great evangelist and a celebrated soloist—and then going home to act as if it wasn't so."

Abbott was not only astonished, but pained. Suddenly he had lost "Nobody's little girl", to be confronted by an elfish spirit of mischief. He asked with constraint, "Did this critical attitude make you laugh out, in the tent?"

"I wouldn't tell you why I laughed," Fran declared, "for a thousand dollars. And I've seen more than that in my day."

They walked on. He was silent, she impenetrable. At last she said, in a changed voice, "My name's Fran. What's yours?"

He laughed boyishly. "Mine's Abbott."

His manner made her laugh sympathetically. It was just the manner she liked best—gay, frank, and a little mischievous. "Abbott?" she repeated; "well—is that all?"

"Ashton is the balance; Abbott Ashton. And yours?"

"The rest of mine is Nonpareil—funny name, isn't it!—Fran Nonpareil. It means Fran, the small type; or Fran who's unlike everybody else; or—Oh, there are lots of meanings to me. Some find one, some another, some never understand."

It was because Abbott Ashton was touched, that he spoke lightly:

"What a very young Nonpareil to be wandering about the world, all by yourself!"

She was grateful for his raillery. "How young do you think?"

"Let me see. Hum! You are only—about—" She laughed mirthfully at his air of preposterous wisdom. "About thirteen—fourteen, yes, you are more than fi-i-ifteen, more than…But take off that enormous hat, little Nonpareil. There's no use guessing in the dark when the moon's shining."

Fran was gleeful. "All right," she cried in one of her childish tones, shrill, fresh, vibratory with the music of innocence.

By this time they had reached the foot-bridge that spanned the deep ravine. Here the wagon-road made its crossing of a tiny stream, by slipping under the foot-bridge, some fifteen feet below. Down there, all was semi-gloom, pungent fragrance of weeds, cooling breath of the half-dried brook, mystery of space between steep banks. But on a level with the bridge, meadow-lands sloped away from the ravine on either hand. On the left lay straggling Littleburg with its four or five hundred houses, faintly twinkling, and beyond the meadows on the right, a fringe of woods started up as if it did not belong there, but had come to be seen, while above the woods swung, the big moon with Fran on the foot-bridge to shine for.

Fran's hat dangled idly in her hand as she drew herself with backward movement upon the railing. The moonlight was full upon her face; so was the young man's gaze. One of her feet found, after leisurely exploration, a down-slanting board upon the edge of which she pressed her heel for support. The other foot swayed to and fro above the flooring, while a little hand on either side of her gripped the top rail.

"Here I am," she said, shaking back rebellious hair.

Abbott Ashton studied her with grave deliberation—it is doubtful if he had ever before so thoroughly enjoyed his duties as usher. He pronounced judicially, "You are older than you look."

"Yes," Fran explained, "my experience accounts for that. I've had lots."

Abbott's lingering here beneath the moon when he should have been hurrying back to the tent, showed how unequally the good things of life—experience, for instance—are divided. "You are sixteen," he hazarded, conscious of a strange exhilaration.

Fran dodged the issue behind a smile—"And I don't think you are so awfully old."

Abbott was brought to himself with a jolt that threw him hard upon self-consciousness. "I am superintendent of the public school." The very sound of the words rang as a warning, and he became preternaturally solemn.

"Goodness!" cried Fran, considering his grave mouth and thoughtful eyes, "does it hurt that bad?"

Abbott smiled. All the same, the position of superintendent must not be bartered away for the transitory pleasures of a foot-bridge. "We had better hurry, if you please," he said gravely.

"I am so afraid of you," murmured Fran. "But I know the meeting will last a long time yet. I'd hate to have to wait long at Mr. Gregory's with that disagreeable lady who isn't Mrs. Gregory."

Abbott was startled. Why did she thus designate Mr. Gregory's secretary? He looked keenly at Fran, but she only said plaintively:

"Can't we stay here?"

He was disturbed and perplexed. It was as if a flitting shadow from some unformed cloud of thought-mist had fallen upon the every-day world out of his subconsciousness. Why did this stranger speak of Miss Grace Noir as the "lady who isn't Mrs. Gregory"? The young man at times had caught himself thinking of her in just that way.

Looking intently at the other as if to divine her secret thoughts, he forgot momentarily his uneasiness. One could not long be troubled by thought-mists from subconsciousness, when looking at Fran, for Fran was a fact. He sighed involuntarily. She was such a fact!

Perhaps she wasn't really pretty—but homely? by no means. Her thin face slanted to a sharpened chin. Her hair, drawn to the corner of either eye, left a white triangle whose apex pointed to the highest reach of the forehead. Thus the face, in all its contour, was rising, or falling, to a point. This sharpness of feature was in her verylaugh itself; while in that hair-encircled oval was the light of elfish mockery, but of no human joy.

School superintendents do not enjoy being mystified. "Really," Abbott declared abruptly, "I must go back to the meeting."

Fran had heard enough about his leaving her. She decided to stop that once and for all. "If you go back, I go, too!" she said conclusively. She gave him a look to show that she meant it, then became all humility.

"Please don't be cross with little Nonpareil," she coaxed. "Please don't want to go back to that meeting. Please don't want to leave me. You are so learned and old and so strong—you don't care why a little girl laughs."

Fran tilted her head sidewise, and the glance of her eyes proved irresistible. "But tell me about Mr. Gregory," she pleaded, "and don't mind my ways. Ever since mother died, I've found nothing in this world but love that was for somebody else, and trouble that was for me."

The pathetic cadence of the slender-throated tones moved Abbott more than he cared to show.

"If you're in trouble," he exclaimed, "you've sought the right helper in Mr. Gregory. He's the richest man in the county, yet lives so simply, so frugally—they keep few servants—and all because he wants to do good with his money."

"I guess his secretary is considerable help to him," Fran observed.

"I don't know how he'd carry on his great work without her. I think
Mr. Gregory is one of the best men that ever lived."

Fran asked with simplicity, "Great church worker?"

"He's as good as he is rich. He never misses a service. I can't give the time to it that he does—to the church, I mean; I have the ambition to hold, one day, a chair at Yale or Harvard—that means to teach in a university—" he broke off, in explanation.

Fran held out her swinging foot, and examined the dusty shoe. "Oh," she said in a relieved tone, "I was afraid it meant to sit down all the time. Lots of people are ambitious not to move if they can help it."

He looked at her a little uncertainly, then went on: "So it keeps me studying hard, to fit myself for the future. I hope to be reelected superintendent in Littleburg again next year,—this is my first term— there is so much time to study, in Littleburg. After next year, I'll try for something bigger; just keep working my way up and up—"

He had not meant to tell her about himself, but Fran's manner of lifting her head to look at him, as he finished each phrase, had beguiled him to the next. The applause in her eyes warmed his heart.

"You see," said Abbott with a deprecatory smile, "I want to make myself felt in the world."

Fran's eyes shone with an unspoken "Hurrah!" and as he met her gaze, he felt a thrill of pleasure from the impression that he was what she wanted him to be.

Fran allowed his soul to bathe a while in divine eye-beams of flattering approval, then gave him a little sting to bring him to life. "You are pretty old, not to be married," she remarked. "I hope you won't find some woman to put an end to your high intentions, but men generally do. Men fall in love, and when they finally pull themselves out, they've lost sight of the shore they were headed for."

A slight color stole to Abbott's face. In fact, he was rather hard hit. This wandering child was no doubt a witch. He looked in the direction of the tent, as if to escape the weaving of her magic. But he only said, "That sounds—er—practical."

"Yes," said Fran, wondering who "the woman" was, "if you can't be practical, there's no use to be. Well, I can see you now, at the head of some university—you'll make it, because you're so much like me. Why, when they first began teaching me to feed—Good gracious! What am I talking about?" She hurried on, as if to cover her confusion. "But I haven't got as far in books as you have, so I'm not religious."

"Books aren't religion," he remonstrated, then added with unnecessary gentleness, "Little Nonpareil! What an idea!"

"Yes, books are," retorted Fran, shaking back her hair, swinging her foot, and twisting her body impatiently. "That's the only kind of religion I know anything about—just books, just doctrines; what you ought to believe and how you ought to act—all nicely printed and bound between covers. Did you ever meet any religion outside of a book, moving up and down, going about in the open?"

He answered in perfect confidence, "Mr. Gregory lives his religion daily—the kind that helps people, that makes the unfortunate happy."

Fran was not hopeful. "Well, I've come all the way from New York to see him. I hope he can make me happy. I'm certainly unfortunate enough. I've got all the elements he needs to work on."

"From New York!" He considered the delicate form, the youthful face, and whistled. "Will you please tell me where your home is, Nonpareil?"

She waved her arm inclusively. "America. I wish it were concentrated in some spot, but it's just spread out thin under the Stars and Stripes. My country's about all I have." She broke off with a catch in her voice—she tried to laugh, but it was no use.

The high moon which had been obscured by gathering cloud banks, found an opening high above the fringe of woods, and cast a shining glow upon her face, and touched her figure as with silver braid. Out of this light looked Fran's eyes as dark as deepest shadows, and out of the unfathomable depths of her eyes glided two tears as pure as their source in her heart.

Suddenly it came to Abbott Ashton that he understood the language of moon, watching woods, meadow-lands, even the gathering rain-clouds; all spoke of the universal brotherhood of man with nature; a brotherhood including the most ambitious superintendent of schools and a homeless Nonpareil; a brotherhood to be confirmed by the clasping of sincere hands. There was danger in such a confirmation, for it carried Abbott beyond the limits that mark a superintendent's confines.

As he stood on the bridge, holding Fran's hand in a warm and sympathetic pressure, he was not unlike one on picket-service who slips over the trenches to hold friendly parley with the enemy. Abbott did not know there was any danger in this brotherly handclasp; but that was because he could not see a fleshy and elderly lady slowly coming down the hill. As superintendent, he should doubtless have considered his responsibilities to the public; he did consider them when the lady, breathless and severe, approached the bridge, while every pound of her ample form cast its weight upon the seal of her disapproving, low-voiced and significant, "Good evening, Professor Ashton."

Fran whistled.

The lady heard, but she swept on without once glancing back. There was in her none of that saline tendency that made of Lot a widower; the lady desired to see no more.

Fran opened her eyes at Abbott to their widest extent, as she demurely asked, "How cold is it? My thermometer is frozen."

The young man did not betray uneasiness, though he was really alarmed, for his knowledge of the fleshy lady enabled him to foresee gathering clouds more sinister than those overhead. The obvious thing to be done was to release the slender hand; he did so rather hastily.

"Have I got you into trouble?" Fran asked, with her elfish laugh. "If so, we'll be neighbors, for that's where I live. Who was she?"

"Miss Sapphira Clinton," he answered as, by a common impulse, they began walking toward Hamilton Gregory's house. "Bob Clinton's sister, and my landlady." The more Abbott thought of his adventure, the darker it grew; before they, reached their destination, it had become a deep gray.

"Do you mean the 'Brother Clinton' that couldn't get 'through'?"

"Yes….He's the chairman of the School Board."

"Ah!" murmured Fran comprehendingly. At Gregory's gate, she said, "Now you run back to the tent and I'll beard the lion by myself. I know it has sharp teeth, but I guess it won't bite me. Do try to get back to the tent before the meeting's over. Show yourself there. Parade up and down the aisles."

He laughed heartily, all the sorrier for her because he found himself in trouble.

"It was fun while it lasted, wasn't it!" Fran exclaimed, with a sudden gurgle.

"Part of it was," he admitted. "Good-by, then, little Nonpareil."

He held out his hand.

"No, sir!" cried Fran, clasping her hands behind her. "That's what got you into trouble. Good-by. Run for it!"

CHAPTER IV

THE WOMAN WHO WAS NOT MRS. GREGORY

Hardly had Abbott Ashton disappeared down the village vista of moonlight and shadow-patches, before Fran's mood changed. Instead of seeking to carry out her threat of bearding the lion in the den, she sank down on the porch-steps, gathered her knees in her arms, and stared straight before her.

She made a woebegone little figure with her dusty shoes, her black stockings, her huddled body, while the big hat threw all into deepest gloom. From hat to drawn-in feet, she was not unlike a narrow edge of darkness splitting the moon-sheen, a somber shadow cast by goodness- knows-what and threatening goodness-knows-whom.

Though of skilful resources, of impregnable resolution, Fran could be despondent to the bluest degree; and though competent at the clash, she often found herself purpling on the eve of the crisis. The moment had come to test her fighting qualities, yet she drooped despondently.

Hamilton Gregory was coming through the gate. As he halted in surprise, the black shadow rose slowly, wearily. He, little dreaming that he was confronted by a shadow from the past, saw in her only the girl who had been publicly expelled from the tent.

The choir-leader had expected his home-coming to be crowned by a vision very different. He came up the walk slowly, not knowing what to say. She waited, outwardly calm, inwardly gathering power. White-hot action from Fran, when the iron was to be welded. Out of the deepening shadows her will leaped keen as a blade.

She addressed him, "Good evening, Mr. Gregory."

He halted. When he spoke, his tone expressed not only a general disapproval of all girls who wander away from their homes in the night, but an especial repugnance to one who could laugh during religious services. "Do you want to speak to me, child?"

"Yes." The word was almost a whisper. The sound of his voice had weakened her.

"What do you want?" He stepped up on the porch. The moon had vanished behind the rising masses of storm-clouds, not to appear again, but the light through the glass door revealed his poetic features. Flashes of lightning as yet faint but rapid in recurrence, showed his beauty as that of a young man. Fran remained silent, moved more than she could have thought possible. He stared intently, but under that preposterous hat, she was practically invisible, save as a black shadow. He asked again, with growing impatience, "What do you want?"

His unfriendliness gave her the spur she needed. "I want a home," she said decidedly.

Hamilton Gregory was seriously disturbed. However evil-disposed, the waif should not be left to wander aimlessly about the streets. Of the three hotels in Littleburg, the cheapest was not overly particular. He would take her there. "Do you mean to tell me," he temporized, "that you are absolutely alone?"

Fran's tone was a little hard, not because she felt bitter, but lest she betray too great feeling, "Absolutely alone in the world."

He was sorry for her; at the same time he was subject to the reaction of his exhausting labors as song-leader. "Then," he said, with tired resignation, "if you'll follow me, I'll take you where you can spend the night, and to-morrow, I'll try to find you work."

"Work!" She laughed. "Oh, thank you!" Her accent was that of repudiation. Work, indeed!

He drew back in surprise and displeasure.

"You didn't understand me," she resumed. "What I want is a home. I don't want to follow you anywhere. This is where I want to stay."

"You can not stay here," he answered with a slight smile at the presumptuous request, "but I'm willing to pay for a room at the hotel—"

At this moment, the door was opened by the young woman who, some hours earlier, had responded to Fran's knocking. Footsteps upon the porch had told of Gregory's return.

The lady who was not Mrs. Gregory, was so pleased to see the gentleman who was Mr. Gregory—they had not met since the evening meal—that, at first, she was unaware of the black shadow; and Mr. Gregory, in spite of his perplexity, forgot the shadow also, so cheered was he by the glimpse of his secretary as she stood in the brightly lighted hall. Such moments of delighted recognition are infinitesimal when a third person, however shadowy, is present; yet had the world been there, this exchange of glances must have taken place.

Fran did not understand—her very wisdom blinded her as with too great light. She had seen so much of the world that, on finding a tree bearing apples, she at once classified it as an apple tree. To Gregory, Grace Noir was but a charming and conscientious sympathizer in his life-work, the atmosphere in which he breathed freest. He had not breathed freely for half a dozen hours—no wonder he was glad to see her. To Grace Noir, Hamilton Gregory was but a benefactor to mankind, a man of lofty ideals whom it was a privilege to aid, and since she knew that her very eyes gave him strength, no wonder she was glad to see him.

Could Fran have read their thoughts, she would not have found the slightest consciousness of any shade of evil in their sympathetic comradeship. As she could read only their faces, she disliked more than ever the tall, young, and splendidly formed secretary.

"Oh!" said Grace with restraint, discovering Fran.

"Yes," Fran said with her elfish smile, "back again."

Just without the portal, Hamilton Gregory paused irresolutely. He did not know what course to pursue, so he repeated vacantly, "I am willing to pay—"

Fran interrupted flippantly: "I have all the money I want." Then she passed swiftly into the hall, rudely brushing past the secretary.

Gregory could only follow. He spoke to Grace in a low voice, telling all he knew of the night wanderer. Her attitude called for explanations, but he would have given them anyway, in that low confidential murmur. He did not know why it was—or seek to know— butwhenever he spoke to Grace, it was natural to use a low tone, as if modulating his touch to sensitive strings—as if the harmony resulting from the interplay of their souls called for the soft pedal.

"What is to be done?" Grace inquired. Her attitude of reserve toward Gregory which Fran's presence had inspired, melted to potential helpfulness; at the same time, her dislike for the girl solidified. That Fran should have laughed aloud in the tent, removed her from the secretary's understanding. But the worst indictment had been pronounced against her by her own shameless tongue. That one so young, without a home, without fear of the dark streets, should have all the money she wants….

"What do you advise?" Gregory asked his secretary gently.

Grace cast a disdainful look at Fran. Then she turned to her employer and her deliciously curved face changed most charmingly. "I think," she responded with a faint shake of rebuke for his leniency, "that you should not need my advice in this matter." She had occasionally feared that his irresolution at moments calling for important decisions hinted at weakness. Why should he stand apparently helpless before this small bundle of arrogant impudence?

Gregory turned upon Fran with affected harshness. "You must go." He was annoyed that Grace should imagine him weak.

Fran's face hardened. It became an ax of stone, sharpened at each end, with eyes, nose, and mouth in a narrow line of cold defiance. To Grace, the acute wedge of white forehead, gleaming its way to the roots of the black hair, and the sharp chin cutting its way down from the tightly drawn mouth, spoke only of cunning. She regarded Fran as a fox, brought to bay.

Fran spoke with calm deliberation: "I am not going away."

"I would advise you," said Grace, looking down at her from under drooping lids, "to go at once, for a storm is rising. Do you want to be caught in the rain?"

Fran looked up at Grace, undaunted. "I want to speak to Mr. Gregory. If you are the manager of this house, he and I can go outdoors. I don't mind getting wet. I've been in all kinds of weather."

Grace looked at Gregory, Her silences were effective weapons.

"I have no secrets from this lady," he said, looking into Grace's eyes, answering her silence. "What do you want to say to me, child?"

Fran shrugged her shoulders, always looking at Grace, while neither of the others looked at her. "Very well, then, of course it doesn't matter to me, but I thought it might to Mr. Gregory. Since he hasn't any secrets from you, of course he has told you that one of nearly twenty years ago—"

It was not the rumble of distant thunder, but a strange exclamation from the man that interrupted her; it was some such cry as human creatures may have uttered before the crystallizing of recurring experiences into the terms of speech.

Fran gave quick, relentless blows: "Of course he has told you all about his Springfield life—"

"Silence!" shouted Gregory, quivering from head to foot. The word was like an imprecation, and for a time it kept hissing between his locked teeth.

"And of course," Fran continued, tilting up her chin as if to drive in the words, "since you know all of his secrets—all of them—you have naturally been told the most important one. And so you know that when he was boarding with his cousin in Springfield and attending the college there, something like twenty years ago—"

"Leave us!" Gregory cried, waving a violent arm at his secretary, as if to sweep her beyond the possibility of overhearing another word.

"Leave you—with her?" Grace stammered, too amazed by his attitude to feel offended.

"Yes, yes, yes! Go at once!" He seemed the victim of some mysterious terror.

Grace compressed her full lips till they were thinned to a white line.
"Do you mean for ever?"

"Oh, Grace—I beg your pardon—Miss Grace—I don't mean that, of course. What could I do without you? Nothing, nothing, Grace—you are the soul of my work. Don't look at me so cruelly."

"Then you just mean," Grace said steadily, "for me to go away for a little while?"

"Only half an hour; that's all. Only half an hour, and then come back to me, and I will explain."

"You needn't go at all, on my account," observed Fran, with a twist of her mouth. "It's nothing to me whether you go or stay."

"She has learned a secret," Gregory stammered, "that vitally affects— affects some people—some friends of mine. I must talk to her about— about that secret, just for a little while. Half an hour, Miss Grace, that is all. That is really all—then come back to me. You understand that it's on account of the secret that I ask you to leave us. You understand that I would never send you away from me if I had my way, don't you, Grace?"

"I understand that you want me to go now," Grace Noir replied, unresponsive. She ascended the stairway, at each step seeming to mount that much the higher into an atmosphere of righteous remoteness.

No one who separated Gregory from his secretary could enjoy his toleration, but Fran had struck far below the surface of likings and dislikings. She had turned back the covering of conventionality to lay bare the quivering heartstrings of life itself. There was no time to hesitate. The stone ax which on other occasions might be a laughing elfish face was now held ready for battle.

"Hadn't we better go in a room where we can talk privately?" Fran asked. "I don't like this hall. That woman would just as soon listen over the banisters as not. I've seen lots of people like her, and I understand her kind."

CHAPTER V

WE REAP WHAT WE SOW

If anything could have prejudiced Hamilton Gregory against Fran's interests it would have been her slighting allusion to the one who typified his most exalted ideals as "that woman". But Fran was to him nothing but an agent bringing out of the past a secret he had preserved for almost twenty years. This stranger knew of his youthful folly, and she must be prevented from communicating it to others. It was from no sense of aroused conscience that he hastened to lead her to the front room. In this crisis, something other than shuddering recoil from haunting deeds was imperative; unlovely specters must be made to vanish.

How much did this girl know? And how could her silence be purchased? His conscience was seldom asleep; but coals of remorse are endurable, however galling, if the winds of publicity do not threaten to fan them to a blaze.

He tried desperately to cover his dread under a voice of harshness:
"What have you to say to me?"

Fran had lost the insolent composure which the secretary had inspired. Now that she was alone with Hamilton Gregory, it seemed impossible to speak. She clasped and unclasped her hands. She opened her mouth, but her lips were dry. The wind had risen, and as it went moaning past the window, it seemed to speak of the yearning of years passing in the night, unsatisfied. At last came the words muffled, frightened—"I know all about it."

"All about what, child?" He had lost his harshness. His voice was almost coaxing, as if entreating the mercy of ignorance.

Fran gasped, "I know all about it—I know—" She was terrified by the thought that perhaps she would not be able to tell him. Her head grew light; she seemed floating away into dark space, as if drawn by the fleeing wind, while the man before her was magnified. She leaned heavily upon a table with hand turned backward, whitening her fingertips by the weight thrown on them.

"About what?" he repeated with the caution of one who fears. He could not doubt the genuineness of her emotion; but he would not accept her statement of its cause until he must.

"Oh," cried Fran, catching a tempestuous breath, uneven, violent, "you know what I mean—that!"

The dew glistened on his brow, but he doggedly stood on the defensive.
"You are indefinite," he muttered, trying to appear bold.

She knew he did not understand because he would not, and now she realized that he would, if possible, deny. His bearing suggested something so foreign to her own nature, that it gave her strength. She had been afraid to witness the emotion her knowledge might excite, but all he revealed was a determination to avoid the issue.

Pretense and sham always hardened her. "Then," she said slowly, "I will be definite. I will tell you the things it would have been better for you to tell me. Your early home was in New York, but you had a cousin living in Springfield, where there was a very good college. Your parents were anxious to get you away from the temptations of a big city until you were of age. So you were sent to live with your cousin and attend college. You were with him three or four years, and at last the time came for graduation. Shall I go on?"

He fought desperately for self-preservation. "What is there in all this?"

"You had married, in the meantime," Fran said coldly; "married secretly. That was about nineteen years ago. She was only about eighteen. After graduation, you were to go to New York, break the news to your father, come back to Springfield for your wife, and acknowledge her. You graduated; you went to your father. Did you come back?"

"My God!" groaned the man. So she knew everything; must he admit it? "What is all this to you?" he burst forth. "Who and what are you, anyway—and why do you come here with your story? If it were true—"

"True!" said Fran bitterly. "If you've forgotten, why not go to Springfield and ask the first old citizen you meet? Or you might write to some one you used to know, and inquire. If you prefer, I'll send for one of your old professors, and pay his expenses. They took a good deal of interest in the young college student who married and neglected Josephine Derry. They haven't forgotten it, if you have."

"You don't know," he gasped, "that there's a penalty for coming to people's houses to threaten them with supposed facts in their lives. You don't know that the jails are ready to punish blackmailing, for you are only a little girl and don't understand such things. I give you warning. Although you are in short dresses—"

"Yes," remarked Fran dryly, "I thought that would be an advantage to you. It ought to make things easier."

"How an advantage to me? Easier? What have I to do with you?"

"I thought," Fran said coolly, "that it would be easier for you to take me into the house as a little girl than as a grown woman. You'll remember I told you I've come here to stay."

"To stay!" he echoed, shrinking back. "You?"

"Yes," she said, all the cooler for his attitude of repulsion. "I want a home. Yes, I'm going to stay. I want to belong to somebody."

He cried out desperately, "But what am I to do? This will ruin me—oh, it's true, all you've said—I don't deny it. But I tell you, girl, you will ruin me. Is all the work of my life to be overturned? I shall go mad."

"No, you won't," Fran calmly assured him.

[Illustration with caption: "I want to belong to somebody">[

"You'll do what every one has to do, sooner or later—face the situation. You're a little late getting to it, but it was coming all the time. You can let me live here as an adopted orphan, or any way you please. The important fact to me is that I'm going to live here. But I don't want to make it hard for you, truly I don't."

"Don't you?" He spoke not loudly, but with tremendous pressure of desire. "Then, for God's sake, go back! Go back to—to wherever, you came from. I'll pay all expenses. You shall have all you want—"

"All I want," Fran responded, "is a home, and that's something people can't buy. Get used to the thought of my staying here; that will make it easy."

"Easy!" he ejaculated. "Then it's your purpose to compel me to give you shelter because of this secret—you mean to ruin me. I'll not be able to account for you, and they will question—my wife will want to know, and—and others as well."

"Now, now," said Fran, with sudden gentleness, "don't be so excited, don't take it so hard. Let them question. I'll know how to keep from exposing you. But I do want to belong to somebody, and after I've been here a while, and you begin to like me, I'll tell you everything. I knew the Josephine Derry that you deserted—she raised me, and I know she loved you to the end. Didn't you ever care for her, not even at the first, when you got her to keep your marriage secret until you could speak to your father face to face? You must have loved her then. And she's the best friend I ever had. Since she died I've wandered— and—and I want a home."

The long loneliness of years found expression in her eager voice and pleading eyes, but he was too engrossed with his own misfortunes to heed her emotion. "Didn't I go back to Springfield?" he cried out. "Of course I did. I made inquiries for her; that's why I went back—to find out what had become of her. I'd been gone only three years, yes, only three years—but, good heavens, how I had suffered! I was so changed that nobody knew me." He paused, appalled at the recollection. "I have always had a terrible capacity for suffering. I tell you, it was my duty to go back to find her, and I went back. I would have acknowledged her as my wife. I would have lived with her. I'd have done right by her, though it had killed me. Can I say more than that?"

"I am glad you went back,' said Fran softly. "She never knew it. I am so glad that you did—even that."

"Yes, I did go back," he said, more firmly. "But she was gone. I tell you all this because you say she was your best friend."

"A while ago you asked me who I am—and what—"

"It doesn't matter," he interjected. "You were her friend; that is all I care to know. I went back to Springfield, after three years—but she was gone. I was told that her uncle had cast her off, and she had disappeared. It seems that she'd made friends with a class of people who were not—who were not—respectable."

Fran's eyes shone brightly. "Oh, they were not," she agreed, "they were not at all what you would call respectable. They were not religious."

"So I was told," he resumed, a little uncertainly. "There was no way for me to find her."

"Her?" cried Fran, "you keep saying 'her'. Do you mean—?"

He hesitated. "She had chosen her part—to live with those people—I left her to lead the life that pleased her. That's why I never went back to Springfield again. I've taken up my life in my own way, and left her—your friend—"

"Yes, call her that," cried Fran, holding up her head. "I am proud of that title. I glory in it. And in this house—"

"I have made my offer," he interrupted decidedly. "I'll provide for you anywhere but in this house."

Fran regarded him with somber intensity. "I've asked for a home with you on the grounds that your wife was my best friend in all the world, and because I am homeless. You refuse. I suppose that's natural. I have to guess at your feelings because I haven't been raised among 'respectable' people. I'm sorry you don't like it, but you're going to provide for me right here. For a girl, I'm pretty independent; folks that don't like me are welcome to all the enjoyment they get out of their dislike. I'm here to stay. Suppose you look on me as a sort of summer crop. I enjoyed hearing you. sing, to-night—

"'We reap what we sow,
We reap what we sow'—

I see you remember."

He shuddered at her mocking holy things. "Hush! What are you saying? The past is cut off from my life. I have been pardoned, and I will not have anybody forcing that past upon me."

Her words came bitingly: "You can't help it. You sowed. You can't pardon a seed from growing."

"I can help it, and I will. The past is no more mine than hers—our marriage was legal, but it bound me no more than it bound her. She chose her own companions. I have been building up a respectable life, here in Littleburg. You shall not overturn the labor of the last ten years. You can go. My will is unalterable. Go—and do what you can!"

Instead of anger, Fran showed sorrow: "How long have you been married to the second Mrs. Gregory—the present one?"

He turned his back upon her as if to go to the door, but he wheeled about: "Ten years. You understand? Ten years of the best work of my life that you want to destroy."

"Poor lady!" murmured Fran. "The first Mrs. Gregory—my 'friend'— has been dead only three years. You and she were never divorced. The lady that you call Mrs. Gregory now,—she isn't your wife, is she?"

"I thought—" he was suddenly ashen pale—"but I thought that she—I believed her dead long ago—I was sure of it—positive. What you say is impossible—"

"But no one can sow without reaping," Fran said, still pityingly. "When you sang those words, it was only a song to you, but music is just a bit of life's embroidery, while you think it life itself. You don't sow, or reap in a choir loft. You can't sow deeds and reap words."

"I understand you, now," he faltered. "You have come to disgrace me. What good will that do you, or—or my first wife? You are no abstraction, to represent sowing or reaping, but a flesh-and-blood girl who can go away if she chooses—"

"She chooses to stay," Fran assured him.

"Then you have resolved to ruin me and break my wife's heart! "The sweet uncomplaining face of the second Mrs. Gregory rose before him. And Grace Noir—what would she think?

"No, I'm just here to have a home."

"Will you enjoy a home that you seize by force?"

"Don't they say that the Kingdom of God may be taken by force? But you know more about the Kingdom than I. Let them believe me the daughter of some old boyhood friend—that'll make it easy. As the daughter of that friend, you'll give me a home. I'll keep out of your way, and be pleasant—a nice little girl, of any age you please." She smiled remotely.

He spoke dully: "But they'll want to know all about that old college friend."

"Naturally. Well, just invent some story—I'll stand by you."

"You do not know me," he returned, drawing himself up. "What! do you imagine I would lie to them?"

"I think," Fran remarked impersonally, "that to a person in your position—a person beginning to reap what he has sown, lying is always the next course. But you must act as your conscience dictates. You may be sure that if you decide to tell the truth, I'll certainly stand by you in that."

Helplessly driven to bay, he flashed out violently, "Unnatural girl— or woman—or whatever you are—there is no spirit of girlhood or womanhood in you."

Fran returned in a low concentrated voice, "If I'm unnatural, what were you in the Springfield days? Was it natural for you to be married secretly when the marriage might have been public? When you went away to break the news to your father, wasn't it rather unnatural for you to hide three years before coming back? When you came back and heard that your wife had gone away to be supported by people who were not respectable, was it natural for you to be satisfied with the first rumors you heard, and disappear for good and all?

"As for me, yes, I have neither the spirit of girlhood nor womanhood, for I'm neither a girl, nor a woman, I'm nothing." Her voice trembled." Don't rouse my anger—when I lose grip on myself, I'm pretty hard to stop. If I let everything rush on my mind—how she—my 'friend'—my sweet darling 'friend'—how she searched for you all the years till she died—and how even on her death-bed she thought maybe you'd come—you—"

Fran choked back the words. "Don't!" she gasped. "Don't reproach me, or I'll reproach you, and I mustn't do that. I want to hide my real heart from you—from all the world. I want to smile, and be like respectable people."

"For God's sake," whispered the other frantically, "hush! I hear my wife coming. Yes, yes, I'll do everything you say, but, oh, don't ruin me. You shall have a home with us, you shall have everything, everything."

"Except a welcome," Fran faltered, frightened at the emotion she had betrayed. "Can you show me to a room—quick—before your wife comes? I don't want to meet her, now, I'm terribly tired. I've come all the way from New York to find you; I reached Littleburg only at dusk—and I've been pretty busy ever since!"

"Come, then," he said hastily. "This way—I'll show you a room…. It's too late," he broke off, striving desperately to regain composure.

The door opened, and a woman entered the room hastily.

CHAPTER VI

MRS. GREGORY

The wind had suddenly increased in violence, and a few raindrops had already fallen. Apprehensions of a storm caused hurried movements throughout the house. Blinding flashes of lightning suggested a gathering of the family in the reception-hall, where, according to tradition, there was "less danger"; and as the unknown lady opened the door of the front room, Fran heard footsteps upon the stairs, and caught a glimpse of Grace Noir descending.

The lady closed the door behind her before she perceived Fran, so intent was she upon securing from threatening rain some unfinished silk-work lying on the window-sill. She paused abruptly, her honest brown eyes opened wide.

Fran regarded her with that elfish smile which, to the secretary, had suggested a fox. It was the coolest little smile, slyly playing upon her twisted mouth.

The perspiration shone on Hamilton Gregory's forehead. "Just a moment," he uttered incoherently—"wait—I'll be back when I make sure my library window's closed…." He left the room, his brain in an agony of indecision. How much must be told? And how would they regard him after the telling?

"Who are you?" asked the lady of thirty-five, mildly, but with gathering wonder.

The answer came, with a broken laugh, "I am Fran." It was spoken a little defiantly, a little menacingly, as if the tired spirit was bracing itself for battle.

The lady wore her wavy hair parted in the middle after that fashion which perhaps was never new; and no impudent ribbon or arrogant flounce stole one's attention from the mouth that was just sincere and sweet. It was a face one wanted to look at because—well, Fran didn't know why. "She's no prettier than I," was Fran's decision, measuring from the natural standard—the standard every woman hides in her own breast. The nose was too slight, but it seemed cut to Fran's liking.

Fran smiled in a different way—a smile that did not instantaneously flash, but darted out of the corner of her eye, and slipped along the slightly parted lips, as if afraid of being caught, and vanished, leaving a wistful face.

"And who is Fran?" asked the mild voice. The lady smiled so tenderly, it was like a mellow light stealing from a fairy rose-garden of thornless souls.

Fran caught her breath while her face showed hardness—but not against the other. She felt something like holy wrath as her presentment sounded forth protestingly—"But who are you?"

"I am Mrs. Gregory."

"Oh, no," cried Fran, with violence, "no!" She added rather wildly,
"It can't be—I mean—but say you are not Mrs. Gregory."

"I am Mrs. Gregory," the other repeated, mystified.

Fran tried to hide her emotion with a smile, but it would have been easier for her to cry, just because she of the patient brown eyes was Mrs. Gregory.

At that moment Hamilton Gregory reentered the room, brought back by the fear that Fran might tell all during his absence. How different life would have been if he could have found her flown!—but he read in her face no promise of departure.

His wife was not surprised at his haggard face, for he was always working too hard, worrying over his extensive charities, planning editorials for his philanthropic journal, devising means to better the condition of the local church. But the presence of this stranger— doubtless one of his countless objects of charity—demanded explanation.

He loathed the necessity that confronted him, above all the uncertainty of his situation. Hitherto the mistakes of his life had passed over his head without dangerous explosions; he had gone away from them, and they had seemed, somehow, to right themselves.

"Come," he said bruskly, addressing neither directly, "we needn't stop here. I have some explanations to make, and they might as well be made before everybody, once and for all…" He paused wretchedly, seeing no outlook, no possible escape. Something must be told—not a lie, but possibly not all the truth; that would rest with Fran. He was as much in her power as if she, herself, had been the effect of his sin.

He opened the door, and walked with heavy step into the hall. Mrs. Gregory followed, wondering, looking rather at Fran than at her husband. Fran's keen eyes searched the apartment for the actual source of Hamilton Gregory's acutest regrets.

Yes, there stood the secretary.

CHAPTER VII

A FAMILY CONFERENCE

With the coming of the rain, the peals of thunder had grown less violent, and the wind had fallen; but those who had sought the reception room for safety found in Fran's presence something as startling, and as incomprehensible, as the most vivid lightning.

Of the group, it was the secretary who first claimed Fran's attention. In a way, Grace Noir dominated the place. Perhaps it was because of her splendidly developed body, her beauty, her attitude of unclaimed yet recognized authority, that she stood distinctly first.

As for Mrs. Gregory, her mild aloofness suggested that she hardly belonged to the family. Hamilton Gregory found himself instinctively turning to Grace, rather than to his wife. Mrs. Gregory's face did, indeed, ask why Fran was there; but Grace, standing at the foot of the stairs, and looking at Gregory with memory of her recent dismissal, demanded explanations.

Mrs. Gregory's mother, confined by paralysis to a wheel-chair, fastened upon the new-comer eyes whose brightness seventy years or more had not dimmed. The group was completed by Mrs. Gregory's bachelor brother, older than his sister by fifteen years. This brother, Simon Jefferson, though stockily built and evidently well- fed, wore an air of lassitude, as if perennially tired. As he leaned back in a hall chair, he seemed the only one present who did not care why Fran was there.

Gregory broke the silence by clearing his throat with evident embarrassment. A peal of thunder offered him reprieve, and after its reverberations had died away, he still hesitated. "This," he said presently, "is a—the orphan—an orphan—one who has come to me from— She says her name is Frances."

"Fran," came the abrupt correction; "just Fran."

There was a general feeling that an orphan should speak less positively, even about her own name—should be, as it were, subdued from the mere fact of orphanhood.

"An orphan!" Simon Jefferson ejaculated, moving restlessly in his effort to find the easiest corner of his chair. "I hope nothing is going to excite me. I have heart-disease, little girl, and I'm liable to topple off at any moment. I tell you, I must not be excited."

"I don't think," replied Fran, with cheerful interest in his malady, "that orphans are very exciting."

Hamilton Gregory resumed, cautiously stepping over dangerous ground, while the others looked at Fran, and Grace never ceased to look at him. "She came here to-night, after the services at the Big Tent. She came here and, or I should say, to request, to ask—Miss Grace saw her when she came. Miss Grace knew of her being here." He seized upon this fact as if to lift himself over pitfalls.

Grace's eyes were gravely judicial. She would not condemn him unheard, but at the same time she let him see that her knowledge of Fran would not help his case. It did not surprise Mrs. Gregory that Grace had known of the strange presence; the secretary usually knew of events before the rest of the family.

Gregory continued, delicately picking his way: "But the child asked to see me alone, because she had a special message—a—yes, a message to deliver to me. So I asked Miss Grace to leave us for half an hour. Then I heard the girl's story, while Miss Grace waited up-stairs."

"Well," Simon Jefferson interposed irritably, "Miss Grace is accounted for. Go on, brother-in-law, go on, if we must have it."

"The fact is, Lucy—" Gregory at this point turned to his wife—for at certain odd moments he found real relief in doing so—"the fact is— the fact is, this girl is the—er—daughter of—of a very old friend of mine—a friend who was—was a friend years ago, long before I moved to Littleburg, long before I saw you, Lucy. That was when my home was in New York. I have told you all about that time of my youth, when I lived with my father in New York. Well, before my father died, I was acquainted with—this friend. I owed that person a great debt, not of money—a debt of—what shall I say?"

Fran suggested, "Honor."

Gregory mopped his brow while all looked from Fran to him. He resumed desperately: "I owed a great debt to that friend—oh, not of money, of course—a debt which circumstances prevented me from paying—from meeting—which I still owe to the memory of that—er—of that dead friend. The friend is dead, you understand, yes, dead."

Mrs. Gregory could not understand her husband's unaccustomed hesitancy. She inquired of Fran, "And is your mother dead, too, little girl?"

That simple question, innocently preferred, directed the course of future events. Mr. Gregory had not intentionally spoken of his friend in such a way as to throw doubt upon the sex. Now that he realized how his wife's misunderstanding might save him, he had not the courage to undeceive her.

Fran waited for him to speak. The delay had lost him the power to reveal the truth. Would Fran betray him? He wished that the thunder might drown out the sound of her words, but the storm seemed holding its breath to listen.

Fran said quietly, "My mother died three years ago."

Mrs. Gregory asked her husband, "Did you ever tell me about this friend? I'd remember from his name; what was it?"

It seemed impossible for him to utter the name which had sounded from his lips so often in love. He opened his lips, but he could not say "Josephine". Besides, the last name would do.

"Derry," he gasped.

"Come here, Fran Derry," said Mrs. Gregory, reaching out her hand, with that sweet smile that somehow made Fran feel the dew of tears.

Hamilton Gregory plucked up spirits. "I couldn't turn away the daughter of my old friend. You wouldn't want me to do that. None of you would. Now that I've explained everything, I hope there'll be no objection to her staying here in the house—that is, if she wants to stay. She has come to do it, she says—all the way from New York."

Mrs. Gregory slipped her arm about the independent shoulders, and drew the girl down beside her upon a divan. "Do you know," she said gently, "you are the very first of all his New York friends who has come into my life? Indeed, I am willing, and indeed you shall stay with us, just as long as you will."

Fran asked impulsively, as she clasped her hands, "Do you think you could like me? Could—you?"

"Dear child"—the answer was accompanied by a gentle pressure, "you are the daughter of my husband's friend. That's enough for me. You need a home, and you shall have one with us. I like you already, dear."

Tears dimmed Fran's eyes. "And I just love you," she cried. "My! What a woman you are!"

Grace Noir was silent. She liked Fran less than ever, but her look was that of a hired secretary, saying, "With all this, I have nothing to do." Doubtless, when alone with Hamilton Gregory, she would express her sincere conviction that the girl's presence would interfere with his work—but these others would not understand. They dwelt entirely apart from her employer's philanthropic enterprises, they did not sympathize with his religious activities, or even read his weekly magazine. Nobody understood him as she did.

Fran's unconventionality had given to Mrs. Gregory's laugh a girlish note, but almost at once her face resumed its wonted gravity. Perhaps the slight hollows in the cheeks had been pressed by the fingers of care, but it was rather lack of light than presence of shadow, that told Fran something was missing from the woman-heart.

In the meantime old Mrs. Jefferson had been looking on with absorbed attention, desperately seeking to triumph over her enemy, a deaf demon that for years had taken possession of her. Now, with an impatient hand, she sent her wheel-chair to her daughter's side and proffered her ear-trumpet.

"Mother," Mrs. Gregory called through this ebony connector of souls, "this is Fran Derry, the daughter of Mr. Gregory's dear friend, one he used to know in New York, many years before he came to Littleburg. Fran is an orphan, and needs a home. We have asked her to live with us."

Mrs. Jefferson did not always hear aright, but she always responded with as much spirit as if her hearing were never in doubt. "And what I'd like to know," she cried, "is what you are asking her to give us."

Grace Noir came forward with quiet resolution. "Let me speak to your mother," she said to Mrs. Gregory.

Mrs. Gregory handed her the tube, somewhat surprised, since Grace made it a point of conscience seldom to talk to the old lady. When Grace Noir disapproved of any one, she did not think it right to conceal that fact. Since Mrs. Jefferson absolutely refused to attend religious services, alleging as excuse that she could not hear the sermon, refusing to offer up the sacrifice of her fleshly presence as an example to others,—Grace disapproved most heartily.

Mrs. Jefferson held her head to the trumpet shrinkingly, as if afraid of getting her ear tickled.

Grace spoke quietly, but distinctly, as she indicated Fran—"You know how hard it is to get a good servant in Littleburg." Then she returned the trumpet. That was all she had to say.

Fran looked at Mr. Gregory.

He bit his lip, hoping it might go at that.

The old lady was greatly at sea. Much as she disliked the secretary, her news was grateful. "Be sure to stipulate," she said briskly, "about wheeling me around in the garden. The last one wasn't told in the beginning, and had to be paid extra, every time I took the air. There's nothing like an understanding at the beginning."

"I'd like a beginning of my sleep," Simon Jefferson announced. "The thunder and lightning's stopped, and the sound of this rain is just what I need, if the house will get quiet." He rose, gnawing his grizzled beard with impatience.

Fran walked up to Grace Noir and shook back her hair in the way that Grace particularly disliked. She said: "Nothing like an understanding at the beginning; yes, the old lady's right. Good thing to know what the trouble is, so we'll know how it'll hit us. I guess I'm the trouble for this house, but I'm going to hit it as the daughter of an old friend, and not as a servant. I'm just about as independent as Patrick Henry, Miss Noir. I'm not responsible for being born, but it's my outlook to hold on to my equality."

"Fran!" exclaimed Mrs. Gregory, in mild reproof.

Grace looked at Mr. Gregory and nothing could have exceeded the saintliness of her expression. Insulted, she was enjoying to the full her pious satisfaction of martyrdom.

"Dear Mrs. Gregory," said Fran kindly, "I'm sorry to have to do this, but it isn't as if you were adopting a penniless orphan. I'm adopting a home. I want to belong to somebody, and I want people to feel that they have something when they have me."

"I reckon they'll know they've got something," remarked Simon Jefferson, shooting a dissatisfied glance at Fran from under bushy brows.

Fran laughed outright. "I'm going to like you, all right," she declared. "You are so human."

It is exceedingly difficult to maintain satisfaction in silent martyrdom. Grace was obliged to speak, lest any one think that she acquiesced in evil. "Is it customary for little girls to roam the streets at night, wandering about the world alone, adopting homes according to their whims?"

"I really don't think it customary," Fran replied politely, "but I'm not a customary girl." At that moment she caught the old lady's eye. It was sparkling with eloquent satisfaction; Mrs. Jefferson supposed terms of service were under discussion. Fran laughed, grabbed the ear- trumpet and called, "Hello. How are you?"

When an unknown voice entered the large end of the tube, half its meaning was usually strained away before the rest reached the yearning ear. Mrs. Jefferson responded eagerly, "And will you wheel me around the garden at least twice a day?"

Fran patted the thin old arm with her thin young hand, as she shouted,
"I'll wheel you twenty times a day, if you say so!"

"But I do not see-saw," retorted the old lady with spirit.

"This is going to agitate my heart," interposed Simon Jefferson, as there came a louder dash of rain against the windows. "I ought to be getting the benefits of this soothing sound, in my bed. When is this company going to break up?"

Gregory, finding Grace's eyes fixed on him searchingly, felt himself pushed to the wall. "Of course," he said coldly, "it is understood that the daughter of—er—my friend, comes here as a—as an equal." As he found himself forced into definite opposition to his secretary, his manner grew more assured. Suddenly it occurred to him that he was, in a way, atoning for the past.

"As an equal, yes!" exclaimed his wife, again embracing Fran. "How else could it be?"

"This is going to be a good thing for you, if you only knew it," Fran said, looking into her face with loving eyes.

Hamilton Gregory was almost able to persuade himself that he had received the orphan of his own free choice, thus to make reparation. "It is my duty," he said; "and I always try to do my duty, as I see it."

"Would you like to know more about me?" Fran asked confidentially of
Mrs. Gregory.

Gregory turned pale. "I don't think it is neces—"

"Do tell me!" exclaimed his wife.

"Oh, Lord!" murmured Simon Jefferson, sinking back into the hall chair.

"Father and mother married secretly," Fran said, solely addressing Mrs. Gregory, but occasionally sending a furtive glance at her husband. "He was a college-student, boarding with his cousin, who was one of the professors. Mother was an orphan and lived with her half- uncle,—a mighty crusty old man, Uncle Ephraim was, who didn't have one bit of use for people getting married in secret. Father and mother agreed not to mention their marriage till after his graduation; then he'd go to his father and make everything easy, and come for mother. So he went and told him—father's father was a millionaire on Wall Street. Mother's uncle was pretty well fixed, too, but he didn't enjoy anything except religion. When he wasn't at church—he went 'most all the time—he was reading about it. Mother said he was most religious in Hebrew, but he enjoyed his Greek verbs awfully."

Grace Noir asked remotely, "Did you say that your parents eloped?"

"They didn't run far," Fran explained; "they were married in the county, not far from Springfield—"

"I thought you said," Grace interrupted, "that they were in New York."

"Did you?" said Fran politely. "So father graduated, and went away to tell his father all about being married to Josephine Derry. I don't know what happened then, as he didn't come back to tell. My mother waited and waited—and I was born—and then Uncle Ephraim drove mother out of his house with her tiny baby—that's me—and I grew to be—as old as you see me now. We were always hunting father. We went all over the United States, first and last—it looked like the son of a millionaire ought to be easy to find. But he kept himself close, and there was never a clue. Then mother died. Sometimes she used to tell me that she believed him dead, that if he'd been alive he'd have come for her, because she loved him with all her soul, and wrecked her whole life because of him. She was happiest when she thought he was dead, so I wouldn't say anything, but I was sure he was alive, all right, as big and strong as you please. Oh, I know his kind. I've had lots of experience."

"So I'd suppose," said Grace Noir quietly. "May I ask—if you don't mind—if this traveling about the United States didn't take a great deal of money?"

"Oh, we had all the money we wanted," Fran returned easily.

"Indeed? And did you become reconciled to your mother's uncle?"

"Yes—after he was dead. He didn't leave a will, and there wasn't anybody else, and as mother had just been taken from me, the money just naturally came in my hands. But I didn't need it, particularly."

"But before that," Grace persisted; "before, when your mother was first disinherited, how could she make her living?"

"Mother was like me. She didn't stand around folding her hands and crossing her feet—she used 'em. Bless you, I could get along wherever you'd drop me. Success isn't in the world, it's in me, and that's a good thing to know—it saves hunting."

"Do you consider yourself a 'success'?" inquired the secretary with a chilly smile.

"I had everything I wanted except a home," Fran responded with charming good-humor, "and now I've got that. In a New York paper, I found a picture of Hamilton Gregory, and it told about all his charities. It said he had millions, and was giving away everything. I said to myself, 'I'll go there and have him give me a home'—you see, I'd often heard mother speak of him—and I said other things to myself—and then, as I generally do what I tell myself to do—it keeps up confidence in the general manager—I came."

"Dear child," said Mrs. Gregory, stroking her hair, "your mother dead, your father—that kind of a man—you shall indeed find a home with us, for life. And so your father was Mr. Gregory's friend. It seems— strange."

"My father," said Fran, looking at Mr. Gregory inscrutably, "was the best friend you ever had, wasn't he? You loved him better than anybody else in the world, didn't you?"

"I—I—yes," the other stammered, looking at her wildly, and passing his agitated hand across his eyes, as if to shut out some terrible vision, "yes, I—I was—er—fond of—him."

"I guess you were," Fran cried emphatically. "You'd have done anything for him."

"I have this to say," remarked Simon Jefferson, "that I may not come up to the mark in all particulars, and I reckon I have my weaknesses; but I wouldn't own a friend that proved himself the miserable scoundrel, the weak cur, that this child's father proved himself!"

"And I agree with you," declared Grace, who seldom agreed with him in anything. How Mr. Gregory, the best man she had ever known, could be fond of Fran's father, was incomprehensible. Ever since Fran had come knocking at the door, Grace's exalted faith in Mr. Gregory had been perplexed by the foreboding that he was not altogether what she had imagined.

Hamilton Gregory felt the change in her attitude. "That friend," he said quickly, "was not altogether to be censured. At least, he meant to do right. He wanted to do right. With all the strength of his nature, he strove to do right."

"Then why didn't he do right?" snapped Simon Jefferson. "Why didn't he go back after that young woman, and take care of her? Huh? What was holding him?"

"He did go back," exclaimed Gregory. "Well—not at first, but afterward. He went to tell his father, and his father showed him that it would never do, that the girl—his wife—wasn't of their sphere, their life, that he couldn't have made her happy—that it wouldn't— that it just wouldn't do. For three years he stayed in the mountains of Germany, the most miserable man in the world. But his conscience wouldn't let him rest. It told him he should acknowledge his wife. So he went back—but she'd disappeared—he couldn't find her—and he'd never heard—he'd never dreamed of the birth of a—of the—of this girl. He never knew that he had a daughter. Never!"

"Well," said Simon Jefferson, "he's dead now, and that's one comfort. Good thing he's not alive; I'd always be afraid I might come up with him and then, afterward, that I might not get my sentence commuted to life-imprisonment."

"Who is exciting my son?" demanded the old lady from her wheel-chair. Simon Jefferson's red face and starting eyes told plainly that his spirit was up. There was silence out of respect for his weak heart, but there was a general feeling of surprise that Gregory should so determinedly defend his friend.

"After all," said Fran cheerfully, "we are here, and needn't bother about what's past. My mother wasn't given her chance, but she's dead now, blessed soul—and my father had his chance, but it wasn't in him to be a man. Let's forget him as much as we can, and let's have nothing but sweet and peaceful thoughts about mother. That's all over, and I'm here to take my chance with the rest of you. We're the world, while our day lasts."

"What a remarkable child!" murmured Grace Noir, as they prepared to separate. "Quite a philosopher in short dresses."

"They used to call me a prodigy," murmured Fran, as she obeyed Mrs. Gregory's gesture inviting her to follow up-stairs. "Now it's stopped raining," Simon Jefferson complained, as he wheeled his mother toward the back hall.

"That's a good omen," said Fran, pressing Mrs. Gregory's hand. "The moonlight was beautiful when I was on the bridge—when I first came here."

"But we need rain," said Grace Noir reprovingly. Her voice was that of one familiar with the designs of Providence. As usual, she and Hamilton Gregory were about to be left alone.

"Who needs it?" called the unabashed Fran, looking over the banisters.
"The frogs?"

"Life," responded the secretary somberly.

CHAPTER VIII

WAR DECLARED

The April morning was brimming with golden sunshine when Fran looked from the window of her second-story room. Between two black streamers left from last night's rain-clouds, she found the sun making its way up an aisle of intense blue. Below, the lawn stretched in level greenness from Hamilton Gregory's residence to the street, and the grass, fresh from the care of the lawn-mower, mixed yellow tints of light with its emerald hue. Shadows from the tender young leaves decorated the whiteness of the smooth village road in dainty tracery, and splashed the ribbons of rain-drenched granitoid walks with warm shadow-spray.

Fran, eager for the first morning's view of her new home, stared at the half-dozen cottages across the street, standing back in picket- fenced yards with screens of trees before their window-eyes. They showed only as bits of weather-boarding, or gleaming fragments of glass, peeping through the boughs. At one place, nothing was to be seen but stone steps and a chimney; at another, there was an open door and a flashing broom; or a curl of smoke and a face at a window. She thought everything homelike, neighborly. These houses seemed to her closer to the earth than those of New York, or, at any rate, closer in the sense of brotherhood. She drew a deep breath of pungent April essence and murmured: "What a world to live in!"

Fran had spoken in all sincerity when declaring that she wanted nothing but a home; and when she went down to breakfast it was with the expectation that every member of the family would pursue his accustomed routine, undeflected by her presence. She was willing that they should remain what they were, just as she expected to continue without change; however, not many days passed before she found herself seeking to modify her surroundings. If a strange mouse be imprisoned in a cage of mice, those already inured to captivity will seek to destroy the new-comer. Fran, suddenly thrust into the bosom of a family already fixed in their modes of thought and action, found adjustment exceedingly difficult.

She did not care to mingle with the people of the village—which was fortunate, since her laughing in the tent had scandalized the neighborhood; she would have been content never to cross the boundaries of the homestead, had it not been for Abbott Ashton. It was because of him that she acquiesced in the general plan to send her to school. In the unanimous conviction of the need of change in Fran, and because there were still two months of school, she must pass through this two-months' wringer—she might not acquire polish, but the family hoped some crudities might be squeezed out. It was on the fifth day of her stay, following her startling admission that she had never been to school a day in her life, that unanimous opinion was fused into expressed command—

"You must go to school!"

Fran thought of the young superintendent, and said she was willing.

When Mr. Gregory and the secretary had retired to the library for the day's work, Mrs. Gregory told Fran, "I really, think, dear, that your dresses are much too short. You are small, but your face and manners and even your voice, sometimes, seem old—quite old."

Fran showed the gentle lady a soft docility. "Well," she said, "my legs are there, all the time, you know, and I'll show just as much of them, or just as little, as you please."

Simon Jefferson spoke up—"I like to see children wear short dresses— " and he looked at this particular child with approval. That day, she was really pretty. The triangle had been broadened to an oval brow, the chin was held slightly lowered, and there was something in her general aspect, possibly due to the arrangement of folds or colors— heaven knows what, for Simon Jefferson was but a poor male observer— that made a merit of her very thinness. The weak heart of the burly bachelor tingled with pleasure in nice proportions, while his mind attained the aesthetic outlook of a classic age. To be sure, the skirts did show a good deal of Fran; very good—they could not show too much.

"I like," Simon persisted, "to see young girls of fourteen or fifteen, dressed, so to say, in low necks and high stockings in—er—in the airy way such as they are by nature…" It was hard to express.

"Yes," Fran said impartially, "it pleases others, and it doesn't hurt me."

"Fran!" Mrs. Gregory exclaimed, gazing helplessly at the girl with something of a child's awe inspired by venerable years. It was a pathetic appeal to a spirit altogether beyond her comprehension.

Fran's quick eye caught the expression of baffled reaching-forth, of uncertain striving after sympathetic understanding. "You darling lady!" she cried, clasping her hands to keep her arms from flying about the other's neck, "don't you be troubled about me. Bless your heart, I can take care of myself—and you, too! Do you think I'd add a straw to your…Now you hear me: if you want to do it, just put me in long trains with Pullman sleepers, for I'm the little girl for you, dear heart, and I'll do whatever you say. If you want to show people how tame I am, just hold up your hand, and I'll crawl into my cage."

The laughter of Mrs. Gregory sounded wholesome and deep-throated—the child was so deliciously ridiculous. "Come, then," she cried, with a lightness she had not felt for months, "come, crawl into your cage!" And she opened her arms.

With a flash of her lithe body, Fran was in her cage, and, for a time, rested there, while the fire in her dark eyes burned tears to all sorts of rainbow colors. It seemed to her that of all the people in the world, Mrs. Gregory was the last to hold her in affectionate embrace. She cried out with a sob, as if in answer to her dark misgivings—"Oh, but I want to belong to somebody!"

"You shall belong to me!" exclaimed Mrs. Gregory, folding her closer.

"To you?" Fran sobbed, overcome by the wonder of it. "To you, dear heart?" With a desperate effort she crowded back intruding thoughts, and grew calm. Looking over her shoulder at Simon Jefferson—"No more short dresses, Mr. Simon," she called, "you know your heart mustn't be excited."

"Fran!" gasped Mrs. Gregory in dismay, "hush!"

But Simon Jefferson beamed with pleasure at the girl's artless ways. He knew what was bad for his heart, and Fran wasn't. Her smiles made him feel himself a monopolist in sunshine. Simon Jefferson might be fifty, but he still had a nose for roses.

Old Mrs. Jefferson was present, and from her wheel-chair bright eyes read much that dull ears missed. "How gay Simon is!" smiled the mother—he was always her spoiled boy.

Mrs. Gregory called through the trumpet, "I believe Fran has given brother a fresh interest in life."

Simon nodded; he didn't care who knew it. Since his sister's marriage to the millionaire philanthropist, Simon had found life appallingly dull; how could he have found interest in the passing years without his heart-complaint? Hamilton Gregory's perennial absorption in the miseries of folk beyond the horizon, and lack of sympathy with those who sat at his table, set him apart as a model; Simon hated models.

Old Mrs. Jefferson beamed upon Fran and added her commendation: "She pushes me when I want to be pushed, and pulls me when I want to be pulled."

Fran clapped her hands like a child, indeed. "Oh, what a gay old world!" she cried. "There are so many people in it that like me." She danced before the old lady, then wheeled about with such energy that her skirts threatened to level to the breeze.

"Don't, don't!" cried Mrs. Gregory precipitately. "Fran!"

"Bravo!" shouted Simon Jefferson. "Encore!"

Fran widened her fingers to push down the rebellious dress. "If I don't put leads on me," she said with contrition, "I'll be floating away. When I feel good, I always want to do something wrong—it's awfully dangerous for a person to feel good, I guess. Mrs. Gregory, you say I can belong to you,—when I think about that, I want to dance…I guess you hardly know what it means for Fran to belong to a person. You're going to find out. Come on," she shouted to Mrs. Jefferson, without using the trumpet—always a subtle compliment to those nearly stone-deaf, "I mustn't wheel myself about, so I'm going to wheel you."

As she passed with her charge into the garden, her mind was busy with thoughts of Grace Noir. Belonging to Mrs. Gregory naturally suggested getting rid of the secretary. It would be exceedingly difficult. "But two months ought to settle her," Fran mused.

In the meantime, Grace Noir and Gregory sat in the library, silently turning out an immense amount of work, feeding the hungry and consoling the weak with stroke of pen and click of typewriter. If conversation sometimes trickled across the dry expanse of statistical benevolence, it was never, on Grace's part, for pastime. Beneath her words was always an underflowing current, tugging at the listener to bear him away to her chosen haven. As an expert player of checkers knows his moves in advance, so her conversations, however brief, were built up with a unity of purpose which her consciousness of purest motives saved from artificiality.

"About this case, number one hundred forty-three," she said, looking up from her work as copyist, "the girl whose father wouldn't acknowledge her…"

"Write to the matron to give her good clothing and good schooling." He spoke softly. There prevailed an atmosphere of subtle tenderness; on this island—the library—blossomed love of mankind and devotion to lofty ideals. These two mariners found themselves ever surrounded by a sea of indifference; there was not a sail in sight. "It is a sadcase," he murmured.

"You think number one hundred forty-three a sad case?" she repeated, always, when possible, building her next step out of the material furnished by her companion. "But suppose she is an impostor. He says she's not his daughter, this number one hundred forty-three. Maybe she isn't. Would you call her conduct sad?"

Gregory took exquisite pleasure in arguing with Grace, because her serene assumption of "being in the right gave to her beautiful face a touch of the angelic. "I should call it impossible."

"Impossible? Do you think it's impossible that Fran's deceiving you?
How can you know that she is the daughter of your friend?"

He grew pale. Oh, if he could have denied Fran—if he could have joined Grace in declaring her an impostor! But she possessed proofs so irrefutable that safety lay in admitting her claim, lest she prove more than he had already admitted. "I know it, absolutely. She is the daughter of one who was my most—my most intimate friend."

Grace repeated with delicate reproof—"Your intimate friend!"

"I know it was wrong for him to desert his wife."

"Wrong!" How inadequate seemed that word from her pure lips!

"But," he faltered, "we must make allowances. My friend married Fran's mother in secret because she was utterly worldly—frivolous—a butterfly. Her own uncle was unable to control her—to make her go to church. Soon after the marriage he found out his mistake—it broke his heart, the tragedy of it. I don't excuse him for going away to Europe—"

"I am glad you don't. He was no true man, but a weakling. I am glad I have never been thrown with such a—a degenerate."

"But, Miss Grace," he urged pleadingly, "do you think my friend, when he went back to find her and she was gone—do you think he should have kept on hunting? Do you think, Grace, that he should have remained yoked to an unbeliever, after he realized his folly?"

There was heavenly compassion in her eyes, for suddenly she had divined his purpose in defending Fran's father. He was thinking of his own wife, and of his wife's mother and brother—how they had ceased to show sympathy in what he regarded as the essentials of life. Her silence suggested that as she could not speak without casting reflection upon Mrs. Gregory, she would say nothing, and this tact was grateful to his grieved heart.

To the degree that Grace Noir took solemn satisfaction in attending every service of the Walnut Street church, no matter what the weather, she had grown to regard non-attendants as untrue soldiers, bivouacking amidst scenes of feasting and dancing. She made nothing of Mrs. Gregory's excuse that she stayed at home with her mother—the old lady should be wheeled to the meeting-house, even if against her inclinations. As for the services being bad for Simon Jefferson's weak heart,—she did not think they would hurt his heart or that it would matter if they did. Visible, flesh-and-blood presence was needful to uphold the institution, and Grace would have given more for one body resting upright in a pew, than for a hundred members who were there only "in the spirit".

"I have been thinking of something very strange," Grace said, with a marked effort to avoid the issue lest she commit the indiscretion of blaming her employer's wife. "I remember having heard you say that when you were a young man, you left your father's home to live with a cousin in a distant town who happened to be a teacher in a college, and that you were graduated from his college. Don't you think it marvelous, this claim of Fran, who says that her father, when a young man, went to live with a cousin who was a college professor, and that he was graduated from that college? And she says that her father's father was a rich man—just as yours was—and that the cousin is dead —just as yours is."

At these piercing words, Gregory bowed his head to conceal his agitation. Could it be possible that she had guessed all and yet, in spite of all, could use that tone of kindness? It burst upon him that if he and she could hold this fatal secret in common, they might, in sweetest comradeship, form an alliance against fate itself.

She persisted: "The account that Fran gives of her father is really your own history. What does that show?"

He spoke almost in a whisper. "My friend and I were much alike." Then he looked up swiftly to catch a look of comprehension by surprise, if such a look were there.

Grace smiled coolly. "But hardly identical, I presume. Don't you see that Fran has invented her whole story, and that she didn't have enough imagination to keep from copying after your biographical sketch in the newspaper? I don't believe she is your friend's daughter. I don't believe you could ever have liked the father of a girl like Fran,—that he could have been your intimate friend."

"Well—" faltered Gregory. But why should he defend Fran?

"Mr. Gregory," she asked, as if what she was about to say belonged to what had gone before, "would it greatly inconvenience you for me to leave your employment?"

He was electrified. "Grace! Inconvenience me!—would you—could…"

"I have not decided—not yet. Speaking of being yoked with unbelievers—I have never told you that Mr. Robert Clinton has wanted me to marry him. As long as he was outside of the church, of course it was impossible. But now that he is converted—"

"Grace!" groaned the pallid listener.

"He would like me to go with him to Chicago."

"But you couldn't love Bob Clinton—he isn't worthy of you, Grace. It's impossible. Heaven knows I've had disappointments enough—" He started up and came toward her, his eyes glowing. "Will you make my life a complete failure, after all?"

"Love him?" Grace repeated calmly. "This is merely a question of doing the most good."

"But, Grace, love must be considered—if it comes too late, it overturns the purest purposes. Don't wait until it's too late as I— as—I repeat, until it's too late."

"I know nothing about love."

"Then let me teach you, Grace, let—"

"Shall we not discuss it?" she said gently. "That is best, I think. If
I decide to marry Mr. Clinton, I will tell you even before I tell him.
I don't know what I shall choose as my best course."

"But, Grace! What could I do—without—"

"Shall we just agree to say no more about it?" she softly interposed. "That is wisest until my decision is made. We were talking about Fran —do you not think this a good opportunity for Mrs. Gregory to attend services? Fran can stay with Mrs. Jefferson."

"I have no doubt," he said, still agitated, "that my wife would find it easy enough to go to church, if she really wanted to go."

"Mr. Gregory!" she reproved him.

"Well," he cried, somewhat defiantly, "don't you think she could go, if she wanted to?"

"Well," Grace answered slowly, "this girl will leave her without any— any excuse."

"Oh, Miss Grace, if my wife were only—like you—I mean, about going to church!"

"I consider it," she responded, "the most important thing in the world." Her emphatic tone proved her sincerity. The church on Walnut Street stood, for her, as the ark; those who remained outside, at the call of the bell, were in danger of engulfment.

After a long silence, Grace looked up from her typewriter. "Mr.
Gregory," she said pausingly, "you are unhappy."

Nothing could have been sweeter to him than her sympathy, except happiness itself. "Yes," he admitted, with a great sigh, "I am very unhappy, but you understand me, and that is a little comfort. If you should marry Bob Clinton—Grace, tell me you'll not think of it again."

"And you are unhappy," said Grace, steadfastly ruling Bob Clinton out of the discussion, "on account of Fran."

He burst forth impulsively—"Ever since she came to town!" He checked himself. "But I owe it to my friend to shelter her. She wants to stay and—and she'll have to, if she demands it."

"You are unhappy," Grace quietly pursued, "because her character is already formed, because she is a girl who laughs at sacred things, and mocks the only true objects of life. You know it is too late to change her, and you know her influence is bad for—for everybody in this house."

"But it can't be helped," he insisted disconsolately. "If she wants to stay, I can't help it. But, Grace, you are right about her influence. Even my wife finds new strength to resist what she knows to be her duty, because the girl likes her."

"Do you owe more to your dead friend," Grace asked, with passionate solemnity, "than to the living God?"

He shrank back. "But I can't send her away," he persisted in nervous haste. "I can't. But heaven bless you, Grace, for your dear thought of me."

"You will bless me with more reason," said Grace softly, "when Fran decides to go away. She'll tire of this house—I promise it. She'll go—just wait!—she'll go, as unceremoniously as she came. Leave it to me, Mr. Gregory." In her earnestness she started up, and then, as if to conceal her growing resolution, she walked swiftly to the window as if to hold her manuscript to the light. Gregory followed her.

"If she would only go!" he groaned. "Grace! Do you think you could?—
Yes, I will leave everything to you."

"She'll go," Grace repeated fixedly.

The window at which they stood overlooked the garden into which Fran had wheeled old Mrs. Jefferson.

Fran, speaking through the ear-trumpet with as much caution as deafness would tolerate, said, "Dear old lady, look up at the library window, if you please, for the muezzin has climbed his minaret to call to prayers."

Very little of this reached its destination—muezzin was in great danger of complicating matters, but the old lady caught "library window", and held it securely. She looked up. Hamilton Gregory and Grace Noir were standing at the tower window, to catch the last rays of the sun. The flag of truce between them was only a typewritten sheet of manuscript. Grace held the paper obliquely toward the west; Hamilton leaned nearer and, with his delicate white finger, pointed out a word. Grace nodded her head in gentle acquiescence.

"Amen," muttered Fran. "Now let everybody sing!"

The choir leader and his secretary vanished from sight.

"Just like the play in Hamlet," Fran said half-aloud. "And now that the inside play is over, I guess it's time for old Ham to be doing something."

Mrs. Jefferson gripped the arms of her wheel-chair and resumed her tale, as if she had not been interrupted. It was of no interest as a story, yet possessed a sentimental value from the fact that all the characters save the raconteur were dead, and possibly all but her forgotten. Fran loved to hear the old lady evoke the shades of long ago, shades who would never again assume even the palest manifestation to mortals, when this old lady had gone to join them.

There was "Cousin Sarah Tom", who had been present at the great ball in Lexington. "Even Cousin Sarah Tom was there," said Mrs. Jefferson, thus for ever stamping this ghostly outline with greatness. And there was "Aunt Mandy" hovering on the outskirts of the general theme—"Aunt Mandy was there, as full of fun and mischief as ever." The old lady's stories bristled with such subsidiary characters concerning whom it was sufficient to say that they were "there". Sometimes so many were "there" that the historian forgot her original intention and wandered aimlessly among irrelevant acquaintances.

Usually Fran brought her back, with gentle hand, but to-day she divined subterfuge; the tale was meant to hide Mrs. Jefferson's real feelings. Fran ventured through the trumpet:

"I wish there was a man-secretary on this place, instead of a woman."

Mrs. Jefferson snatched away the instrument with indignation. "What is that you say?" she asked, glaring. "In bed with a woman? Who? What woman? "Then she clapped the trumpet to her ear as if defying a French romance to do its worst.

Fran called, "Your grandmother-goosey, and not so loud, if you please!"

The other drew herself up, while her black lace cap quivered at every ribbon-end. What was this? How dare this chit?

Fran took the tube with sudden decisiveness. "All right," she called, "you can take it that way, if you want to. But let me tell you one thing, dear old soldier—there's going to be a big fight put up on these grounds. I guess you ought to stay out of it. But either I or the secretary has got to git."

Fran was not unmindful of grammar, even of rhetoric, on occasion. She knew there was no such word as "git", but she was seeking to symbolize her idea in sound. As she closed her teeth, each little pearl meeting a pearly rival, her "git" had something of the force of physical ejectment.

Behind large spectacle lenses, sparks flashed from Mrs. Jefferson's eyes. She sniffed battle. But her tightly compressed lips showed that she lacked both Fran's teeth and Fran's intrepidity. One steps cautiously at seventy-odd.

Fran comprehended. The old lady must not let it be suspected that she was aware of Gregory's need of cotton in straining ears, such as had saved Ulysses from siren voices. The pretense of observing no danger kept the fine old face uncommonly grim.

"Little girls shouldn't fight," was her discreet rejoinder. Then leaning over the wheel, she advanced her snow-white head to the head of coal-black. "Better not stir up dragons."

Fran threw back her head and laughed defiantly. "Bring on your dragons," she cried boastfully. "There's not one of 'em that I'm afraid of." She extended one leg and stretched forth her arm. "I'll say to the Dragon, 'Stand up'—and she'll stand: I'll say 'Lie down'— and down she'll lie. I'll say Git—and she'll—" Fran waved her dragon to annihilation.

"Goodness," the old lady exclaimed, getting nothing of this except the pantomime; that, however, was eloquent. She recalled the picture of David in her girlhood's Sunday-school book. "Are you defying the Man of Gath?" She broke into a delicious smile which seemed to flood the wrinkles of her face with the sunshine of many dear old easy-going years.

[Illustration with caption: "'Lie down'—and down she'll lie.">[

Fran smote her forehead. "I have a few pebbles here," she called through the trumpet.

Mrs. Jefferson grasped the other's thin arm, and said, with zestful energy, "Let her have 'em, David, let her have 'em!"

CHAPTER IX

SKIRMISHING

Fran made no delay in planning her campaign against Grace Noir. Now that her position in Hamilton Gregory's household was assured, she resolved to seek support from Abbott Ashton. That is why, one afternoon, Abbott met her in the lower hall of the public school, after the other pupils had gone, and supposed he was meeting her by accident.

Since their parting in the moonlight, Abbott had lost his vivid impression of Fran. As superintendent, school hours were fully occupied in teaching special classes, overlooking his staff of teachers, and punishing such refractory children as were relegated to his authority. The rest of the time was spent in pursuing higher education; and in the sunburst of splendid ideals, the mote-beam of a Fran had floated and danced almost unperceived.

"Good evening, Nonpareil," he said, pleased that her name should have come to him at once. His attentive look found her different from the night of their meeting; she had lost her elfish smile and with it the romance of the unknown and unexpected. Was it because, at half-past four, one's charm is at lowest ebb? The janitor was sweeping down the hall stairs. The very air was filled with dusty realism—Fran was no longer pretty; he had thought—

"Then you haven't forgotten me," murmured Fran.

"No," he answered, proud of the fact. "You have made your home with Mr. Gregory. You are in Miss Bull's class-room. I knew Mr. Gregory would befriend you—he's one of the best men living. You should be very happy there."

"No," said Fran, shaking her head decidedly, "not happy."

He was rather glad the janitor was sweeping them out of the house. "You must find it pretty hard," he remarked, with covert reproach, "to keep from being happy."

"It isn't at all hard for me," Fran assured him, as she paused on the front steps. "Really, it's easy to be unhappy where Miss Grace Noir is."

It happened that just then the name Grace Noir was a sort of talisman opening to the young man's vision the interior of wonderful treasure- caves; it was like crying "Sesame!" to the very rocks, for though he was not in love with Gregory's secretary, he fancied the day of fate was not far ahead.

He had no time to seek fair and romantic ladies. Five years ago, Grace Noir had come from Chicago as if to spare him the trouble of a search. Fate seemed to thrust her between his eyes and the pages of his text- books. At church, which he attended regularly, Grace was always present, and to gaze at her angelic face was, in itself, almost a religious exercise. Abbott never felt so unworthy as when in her presence; an unerring instinct seemed to have provided her with an absolute standard of right and wrong, and she was so invariably right that no human affection was worthy of her unless refined seven times. Within himself, Abbott discovered dross.

"Try to be a good girl, Fran," he counseled. "Be good, and your association with Miss Noir will prove the happiest experience of your life."

"Be good," she returned mockingly, "and you will be Miss Noir." Then she twisted her mouth. "She makes me feel like tearing up things. I don't like her. I hoped you'd be on my side."

He came down the steps gravely. "She is my friend."

"I'm a good deal like you," Fran declared, following. "I can like most anything and anybody; but I can't go that far. Well, I don't like Miss Noir and she doesn't like me—isn't that fair?"

"Examine yourself," he advised, "and find out what it is in you that she doesn't like; then get rid of what you find."

"Huh!" Fran exclaimed, "I'm going to get rid of her, all right."

He saw the old elfish smile now when he least wanted to see it, for it threatened the secretary, mocked the grave superintendent, and asserted the girl's right to like whom she pleased. Self-respect and loyalty to Grace hastened Abbott's departure, leaving the spirit of mockery to escape the janitor's broom as best it might.

Fran escaped, recognizing defeat; but on her homeward way, she was already preparing herself for the next move. So intent was she in estimating the forces on both sides, that she gave no heed to the watchful faces at cottage windows, she did not recognize the infrequent passers-by, nor observe the occasional buggies that creaked along the rutted road. With Grace stood, of course, Hamilton Gregory; and, judging from Bob Clinton's regular visits, and his particular attentions to Grace, Fran classed him also as a victim of the enemy. It now seemed that Abbott Ashton followed the flag Noir; and behind these three leaders, massed the congregation of Walnut Street church, and presumably the town of Littleburg.

Fran could count for her support an old bachelor with a weak heart, and an old lady with an ear-trumpet. The odds were terribly against her.

Absolutely neutral stood the one most vitally concerned in the struggle about to take place. Like the king of a chess-board, Mrs. Gregory was resolved, it would appear, to take not even the one step within royal prerogative. Fran wondered, her brow creasing in baffled perplexity, if it ever occurred to Mrs. Gregory that her husband might, say at some far, far distant day, grow too much interested in his secretary? Did the wife perceive his present rate of interest, and fancy, at that rate, that he might not reach a point beyond prudence? Surely she must realize that, in the family economy, the secretary might be spared; but if so, she made no sign.

The first light skirmish between Fran and Grace took place on Sunday. All the Gregory household were at a late breakfast. Sunday-school bells were ringing their first call, and there was not a cloud in the heavens as big as a man's hand, to furnish excuse for non-attendance.

The secretary fired the first shot. Apropos of nothing that had gone before, but as if it were an integral part of the conversation, she offered—"And, Mrs. Gregory, it is so nice that you can go to church now, since, if Fran doesn't want to go, herself—"

"Which she doesn't, herself," Fran interjected.

"So I presumed," Grace remarked significantly. "Mrs. Gregory, Fran can stay with your mother—since she doesn't care for church—and you can attend services as you did when I first came to Littleburg."

"I am sure," Mrs. Gregory said quietly, "that it would be much better for Fran to go to church. She ought to go—I don't like to think of her staying away from the services—and my duty is with mother."

Grace said nothing, but the expression of her mouth seemed to cry aloud. Duty, indeed! What did Mrs. Gregory know about duty, neglecting the God who had made her, to stay with an old lady who ought to be wheeled to church! Mrs. Gregory was willing for her husband to fight his Christian warfare alone. But alone? No! not while Grace could go with him. If all the rest of Walnut Street church should remain in tents of indifference, she and Hamilton Gregory would be found on the field.

Gregory coldly addressed Fran: "Then, will you go to church?" It was as if he complained, "Since my wife won't—"

"I might laugh," said Fran. "I don't understand religion."

Grace felt her purest ideals insulted. She rose, a little pale, but without rudeness. "Will you please excuse me?" she asked with admirable restraint.

"Miss Grace!" Hamilton Gregory exclaimed, distressed. That she should be driven from his table by an insult to their religion was intolerable. "Miss Grace—forgive her."

Mrs. Gregory was pale, for she, too, had felt the blow. "Fran!" she exclaimed reproachfully.

Old Mrs. Jefferson stared from the girl seated at the table to the erect secretary, and her eyes kindled with admiration. Had Fran commanded the "dragon" to "stand"?

Simon Jefferson held his head close to his plate, as if hoping the storm might pass over his head.

"Don't go away!" Fran cried, overcome at sight of Mrs. Gregory's distress. "Sit down, Miss Noir. Let me be the one to leave the room, since it isn't big enough for both of us." She darted up, and ran to the head of the table.

Mrs. Gregory buried her face in her hands.

"Don't you bother about me," Fran coaxed; "to think of giving you pain, dear lady! I wouldn't hurt you for anything in the world, and the person who would isn't worthy of being touched by my foot," and Fran stamped her foot. "If it'll make you a mite happier, I'll go to church, and Sunday-school, and prayer meeting, and the young people's society, and the Ladies' Aid, and the missionary society, and the choir practice, and the night service and—and—"

Hamilton Gregory felt that he should take some part in this small drama, but he did not know exactly what part: "It would make us all happier for you to go. And what is far more important, child, it would make you happier; you'd be learning how to do right, and be good."

"Oh, and would it?" she flashed at him, somewhat incoherently. "Yes, I know some folks think it makes 'em good just to sit in meeting-houses, while somebody's talking about religion. But look at me. Why! the people who ought to have loved me, and cared for my mother—the people that didn't know but what we were starving—they wouldn't have missed a service any sooner than you would; no, sir. I want to tell you," Fran cried, her face flaming, her voice vibrating with emotion long pent-up, "just the reason that religion's nothing to me. It's because the only kind I've known is going to the church, dressed up, and sitting in the church feeling pious—and then, on the outside, and between times, being just as grasping, and as anxious to overreach everybody else, and trying just as hard to get even with their enemies, as if there wasn't a church on the ground."

"This is sacrilege!" gasped Hamilton Gregory. "You show me a little religion," Fran cried, carried beyond herself, "that means doing something besides ringing bells and hiring preachers; you show me a little religion that means making people happy—not people clear out of sight, but those living in your own house—and maybe I'll like it and want some of it. Got any of that kind? But if I stay here, I'll say too much—I'll go, so you can all be good together—" She darted from the room.

Grace looked at Gregory, seeming to ask him if, after this outrageous behavior, he would suffer Fran to dwell under his roof. Of course, Mrs. Gregory did not count; Grace made no attempt to understand this woman who, while seemingly of a yielding nature, could show such hardness, such a fixed purpose in separating herself from her husband's spiritual adventures. It made Grace feel so sorry for the husband that she quietly resumed her place at the table.

Grace was now more than ever resolved that she would drive Fran away— it had become a religious duty. How could it be accomplished? The way was already prepared; the secretary was convinced that Fran was an impostor. It was merely needful to prove that the girl was not the daughter of Gregory's dead friend. Grace would have to delve into the past, possibly visit the scenes of Gregory's youth—but it would pay. She looked at her employer with an air suggesting protection.

Gregory's face relaxed on finding himself once more near her. Fortunately for his peace of mind, he could not read the purposehidden behind those beautiful eyes.

"I wonder," Simon Jefferson growled, "why somebody doesn't badger me to go to church!" Indignant because Fran had fled the pleasing fields of his interested vision, he paused, as if to invite antagonism; but all avoided the anticlimax.

He announced, "This talk has excited me. If we can't live and let live, I'll go and take my meals at Miss Sapphira Clinton's."

No one dared to answer him, not even Grace. He marched into the garden where Fran sat huddled upon a rustic bench. "I was just saying," Simon told her ingratiatingly, "that if all this to-do over religion isn't put a stop to, I'll take my meals at the Clintons'!"

Fran looked up at him without moving her chin from her palms, and asked as she tried, apparently, to tie her feet into a knot, "Isn't that where Abbott Ashton boards?"

"Do you mean Professor Ashton?" he returned, with subtle reproof.

Fran, still dejected, nodded carelessly. "We're both after the same man."

Simon lit the pipe which his physician had warned him was bad for his heart. "Yes, Professor Ash-ton boards at the Clintons'."

"Must be awfully jolly at the Clintons'," Fran said wistfully.

CHAPTER X

AN AMBUSCADE

Fran's conception of the Clinton Boarding-House, the home of jollity, was not warranted by its real atmosphere. Since there were not many inhabitants of Littleburg detached from housekeeping, Miss Sapphira Clinton depended for the most part on "transients"; and, to hold such in subjection, preventing them from indulging in that noisy gaiety to which "transients" are naturally inclined—just because they are transitory—the elderly spinster had developed an abnormal solemnity.

This solemnity was not only beneficial to "drummers" and "court men" acutely conscious of being away from home, but it helped her brother Bob. Before the charms of Grace Noir had penetrated his thick skin, the popular Littleburg merchant was as unmanageable as the worst. Before he grew accustomed to fall into a semi-comatose condition at the approach of Grace Noir, and, therefore, before his famous attempt to "get religion", the bachelor merchant often swore—not from aroused wrath, but from his peculiar sense of humor. In those Anti-Grace and heathen days, Bob, sitting on the long veranda of the green frame building, one leg swinging over the other knee, would say, "Yes, damn it," or, "No, damn it," as the case might be. It was then that the reproving protest of his sister's face would jelly in the fat folds of her double chin, helping, somewhat, to cover profanity with a prudent veil.

Miss Sapphira liked a joke—or at least she thought so—as well as anybody; but like a too-humorous author, she found that to be as funny as possible was bad for business. Goodness knows there was enough in Littleburg to be solemn over, what with the funerals, and widowers marrying again, yes, and widows, too; and there wasn't always as much rejoicing over babies as the county paper would have you believe! The "traveling men" were bad enough, needing to be reminded of their wives whom they'd left at home, and, she'd be bound, had forgotten. But when one man, whether a traveler or not—even a staid young teacher like Abbott Ashton, for instance—a young man who was almost like a son to her—when he secluded himself in the night-time—by himself? with another male? oh, dear, no!—with a Fran, for example— what was the world coming to?

"There they stood," she told Bob, "the two of them, all alone on the foot-bridge, and it was after nine o'clock. If I hadn't been in a hurry to get home to see that the roomers didn't set the house afire, not a soul would have seen the two colloguing."

"And it don't seem to have done you any good," remarked her brother, who, having heard the tale twenty times, began to look upon the event almost as a matter of course. "You'd better not have saw them,"—at an early age Bob had cut off his education, and it had stopped growing at that very place. Perhaps he had been elected president of the school-board on the principle that we best appreciate what does not belong to us.

"My home has been Abbott Ashton's home," said Miss Sapphira, "since the death of his last living relation, and her a step, and it a mercy, for nobody could get along with her, and she wouldn't let people leave her alone. You know how fond I am of Abbott, but your position is very responsible. You could get rid of him by lifting your finger, and people are making lots of talk; it's going to injure you. People don't want to send their tender young innocent girls—they're a mighty hardened and knowing set, nowadays, though, I must say—to a superintendent that stands on bridges of nights, holding hands, and her a young slip of a thing. All alone, Robert, all alone; there's going to be a complaint of the school-board, that's what there's going to be, and you'll have to look out for your own interests. You must talk to Abbott. Him a-standing on that bridge—"

"He ain't stood there as often as I've been worried to death a-hearing of it," growled the ungrateful Bob, who was immensely fond of Abbott.

Miss Sapphira spoke with amazingly significant double nods between each word—"And…I…saw…only…four…days…ago—"

She pointed at the school-house which was almost directly across the street, its stone steps facing the long veranda. "They were the last to come out of that door. You may say she's a mere child. Mere children are not in Miss Bull's classes."

"But Abbott says the girl is far advanced."

"Far advanced! You may well say! I'll be bound she is—and carrying on with Abbott on the very school-house steps. Yes, I venture she is advanced. You make me ashamed to hear you."

Bob tugged at his straw-colored mustache; he would not swear, for whatever happened, he was resolved to lead the spiritual life. "See here, Sapphira, I'm going to tell you something. I had quite a talk with Abbott about that bridge-business—after you'd spread it all over town, sis—and if you'll believe me, she waylaid him on those school- steps. He didn't want to talk with her. Why, he left her standing there. She made him mad, finding fault with the very folks that have taken her up. He's disgusted. That night at the camp-meeting, he had to take her out of the tent—he was asked to do it—"

"He didn't have to stand, a-holding her hand."

"—And as soon as he'd shown her the way to Brother Gregory's, he came on back to the tent, I saw him in the aisle."

"And she whistled at me," cried Miss Sapphira—"the limb!"

"Now, listen, Sapphira, and quit goading. Abbott says that Miss Bull is having lots of trouble with Fran—"

"See that, now!"

"—Because Fran won't get her lessons, being contrary—"

"I wish you could have seen her whistling at me, that night."

"Hold on. So this very evening Miss Bull is going to send her down to Abbott's office to be punished, or dismissed. This very evening he wants me to be over there while he takes her in hand."

"Abbott is going to punish that girl?" cried Miss Sapphira; "going to take her in hand? What do you mean by 'taking her in hand'? She is too old! Robert, you make me blush."

"You ain't a-blushing, Sapphira," her brother assured her, good- naturedly, "you're suffering from the hot weather. Yes, he's to punish her at four o'clock, and I'm to be present, to stop all this confoun— I mean this ungodly gossip."

"You'd better wear your spectacles, Bob, so you'll look old and settled. I'm not always sure of you, either."

"Sapphira, if I hadn't joined the church, I'd say—" He threw up his hand and clenched his fist as if he had caught an oath and meant to hold it tight. Then his honest face beamed. "See here, I've got an idea. Suppose you make it a point to be sitting out here on the veranda at about half-past four, or five. You'll see Fran come sneaking out of that door like a whipped kitten. She'll look everlastingly wilted. I don't know whether Abbott will stuff her full of fractions and geography, or make her stand in a corner—but you'll see her wilted."

Miss Sapphira was highly gratified. "I wish you'd talked this reasonable at first. It's always what people don't see that the most harm comes of. I'll give a little tea out here on the veranda, and the worst talkers in town will be in these chairs when you bring Fran away from Abbott's office. And I'll explain it all to 'em, and they'll know Abbott is all right, just as I've always known."

"Get Miss Grace to come," Bob said sheepishly. "She doesn't like
Fran, and she'll be glad to know Abbott is doing his duty by her.
Later, I'll drop in and have a bite with you."

This, then, was Bob's "idea", that no stone might be left unturned to hide the perfect innocence of the superintendent. He had known Abbott Ashton as a bare-legged urchin running on errands for his widowed mother. He had watched him through studious years, had believed in his future career—and now, no bold adventuress, though adopted into Hamilton Gregory's home, should be allowed to spoil Abbott's chances of success.

The chairman of the school-board had talked confidentially with Grace Noir, and found her as convinced that Fran was a degenerate as was Bob that Grace was an angel. As he went to the appointment, he was thinking not so much of the culprit Fran, as of Grace—what a mouth, what a foot! If all saints were as beautiful as she, religion would surely be the most popular thing on earth.

In his official character as chairman of the board, Robert Clinton marched with dignity into the superintendent's office, meaning to bear away the wilted Fran before the eyes of woman. Abbott Ashton saw him enter with a sense of relief. The young man could not understand why he had held Fran's hand, that night on the foot-bridge. Not only had the sentiment of that hour passed away, but the interview Fran had forced upon him at the close of a recent school-day, had inspired him with actual hostility. It seemed the irony of fate that a mere child, a stranger, should, because of senseless gossip, endanger his chances of reappointment—a reappointment which he felt certain was the best possible means of advancement. Why had he held Fran's little hand? He had never dreamed of holding Grace's—ah, there was a hand, indeed!

"Has she been sent down?" Bob asked, in the hoarse undertone of a fellow-conspirator.

"No." Abbott was eager to prove his innocence. "I haven't seen a sign of her, but I'm looking every minute—glad you're here."

Confidences were impracticable, because of a tousled-headed, ink- stained pupil who gloomed in a corner.

"Why, hello there, Jakey!" cried Clinton, disconcerted; he had hoped that Fran's subjugation might take place without witnesses. "What are you doing here, hey?"

"Waitin' to be whirped," was the defiant rejoinder.

"Tell the professor you're sorry for what you've done, so you can run
along," said the chairman of the board persuasively.

"Naw, I ain't sorry," returned Jakey, hands in pockets. Then bethinking himself—"But I ain't done nothin'."

Abbott said regretfully, "He'll have to be whipped."

Clinton nodded, and sat down solemnly, breathing hard. Abbott was restlessly pacing the floor, and Bob was staring at him unwinkingly, when the door opened and in came Fran.

Abbott frowned heavily, but the wrinkles in his brow could not mar the attractiveness of his handsome young face. He was too fine looking, the chairman reflected uneasily, for his duties. His figure was too athletic, his features too suggestive of aristocratic tastes and traditions. Clinton wished he would thrust a pen behind his ear. As for himself, after one brief glance at Fran, he fumbled for his spectacles.

Fran walked up to Abbott hesitatingly, and spoke with the indistinctness of awed humility. "You are to punish me," she explained, "by making me work out this original proposition"—showing the book—"and you are to keep me here till I get it."

Abbott asked sternly, "Did Miss Bull send me this message?"

"She is named that," Fran murmured, her eyes fastened on the open page.

From the yard came the shouts of children, breaking the bonds of learning for a wider freedom. Abbott, gazing severely on this slip of a girl, found her decidedly commonplace in appearance. How the moonlight must have bewitched him! Her rebellious hair hung over her face like a shaggy mane—what a small creature to be dressed as a woman, and how ridiculous that the skirts should reach even to her ankles! It had not been so, on the night of destiny. He preferred the shorter dress, but neither she nor her attire was anything to him. He rejoiced that Robert Clinton was there to witness his indifference.

"This is the problem," Fran said, with exceeding primness, pronouncing the word as if it were too large for her, and holding up the book with a slender finger placed upon certain italicized words.

"Let me see it," said Abbott, with professional dryness. He grasped the book to read the proposition. His hand was against hers, but she did not draw away, for had she done so, how could he have found the place?

Fran, with uplifted eyes, spoke in the plaintive accents of a five- year-old child: "Right there, sir…it's awful hard."

Robert Clinton cleared his throat and produced a sound bursting with accumulated h's and r's—his warning passed unheeded.

Never before had Abbott had so much of Fran. The capillaries of his skin, as her hand quivered warmly against his, seemed drawing her in; and as she escaped from her splendid black orbs, she entered his brain by the avenue of his own thirsty eyes. What was the use to tell himself that she was commonplace, that his position was in danger because of her? Suddenly her hair no longer reminded him of the flying mane of a Shetland pony; it fell slantwise past the corners of her eyes, making a triangle of smooth white skin to the roots of the hair, and it seemed good, just because it was Fran's way and not after a machine-turned fashion; Fran was done by hand, there was no doubt of that.

"Sit there," Abbott said, gravely pointing. She obeyed without a word, leaving the geometry as hostage in the teacher's hand. When seated at a discreet distance, she looked over at Bob Clinton. He hastily drew on his spectacles, that he might look old.

Abbott volunteered, "This is Mr. Clinton, President of the Board."

"I know," said Fran, staring at her pencil and paper, "he's at the head of the show, and watches when the wild animals are tamed."

Clinton drew forth a newspaper, and opened it deliberately.

Fran scribbled for some time, then looked over at him again. "Did you get it?" she asked, with mild interest.

"Did I get—what?" he returned, with puzzled frown.

"Oh, I don't know what it is," said Fran with humility; "the name of it's 'Religion'."

"If I were you," Clinton returned, flushing, "I'd be ashamed to refer to the night you disgraced yourself by laughing in the tent."

"Fran," Abbott interposed severely, "attend to your work."

Fran bent her head over the desk, but was not long silent. "I don't like a-b-c and d-e-f," she observed with more energy than she had hitherto displayed. "They're equal to each other, but I don't know why, and I don't care, because it doesn't seem to matter. Nothing interests me unless it has something to do with living. I don't care how far Mars is from the earth—if it was next door, I wouldn't want to leave home. These angles and lines are nothing to me; what I care for is this time I'm wasting, sitting in a stuffy old room, while the good big world is enjoying itself just outside the window." She started up impetuously.

"Sit down!" Abbott commanded.

"Fran!" exclaimed Robert Clinton, stamping his foot, "sit down!"

Fran sank back upon the bench.

"I suspect," said Abbott mildly, "that they have put you in classes too far advanced. We must try you in another room—"

"But I don't want to be tried in rooms," Fran explained, "I want to be tried in acts—deeds. Until I came here, I'd never been to school a day in my life," she went on in a confidential tone." I agreed to attend because I imagined school ought to have some connection with life—something in it mixed up with love and friendship and justice and mercy. Wasn't I silly! I even believed—just fancy!—that you might really teach me something about religion. But, no! it's all books, nothing but books."

"Fran," Abbott reasoned, "if we put you in a room where you can understand the things we try to teach, if we make you thorough—"

"I don't want to be thorough," she explained, "I want to be happy. I guess all that schools were meant to do is to teach folks what's in books, and how to stand in a straight line. The children in Class A, or Class B have their minds sheared and pruned to look alike; but I don't want my brain after anybody's pattern."

"You'll regret this, Miss," declared Clinton, in a threatening tone.
"You sit down. Do you want the name of being expelled?"

"I don't care very much about the names of things," said Fran coolly; "there are lots of respectable names that hide wickedness." Her tone changed: "But yonder's another wild animal for you to train; did you come to see him beaten?" She darted to the corner, and seated herself beside Jakey.

"Say, now," Bob remonstrated, pulling his mustache deprecatingly, "everybody knows I wouldn't see a dog hurt if it could be helped. I'm Jakey's friend, and I'd be yours, Fran—honestly—if I could. But how's a school to be run without authority? You ain't reasonable. All we want of you is to be biddable."

"And you!" cried Fran to Abbott, beginning to give way to high pressure, "I thought you were a school-teacher, not just, but also—a something very nice, also a teacher. But not you. Teacher's all you are, just rules and regulations and authority and chalk and a-b-c and d-e-f."

Abbott crimsoned. Was she right? Was he not something very nice plus his vocation? He found himself desperately wishing that she might think so.

Fran, after one long glowing look at him, turned to the lad in disgrace, and placed her hand upon his stubborn arm. "Have you a mother?" she asked wistfully.

"Yeh," mumbled the lad, astonished at finding himself addressed, not as an ink-stained husk of humanity, but as an understanding soul.

"I haven't," said Fran softly, talking to him as if unconscious of the presence of two listening men, "but I had one, a few years ago—and, oh, it seems so long since she died, Jakey—three years is a pretty long time to be without a mother. And you can't think what a fault- blindest, spoilingest, candiest mother she was. I'm glad yours is living, for you still have the chance to make her proud and happy,… No matter how fine I may turn out—do you reckon I'll ever be admired by anybody, Jakey? Huh! I guess not. But if I were, mother wouldn't be here to enjoy it. Won't you tell Professor Ashton that you are sorry? "

"Fran—" Abbott began.

Fran made a mouth at him. "I don't belong to your school any more," she informed him. "Mr. School-Director can tell you the name of what he can do to me; he'll find it classified under the E's."

After this explosion, she turned again to the lad: "I saw you punch that boy, Jakey, and I heard you say you didn't, and yet it was a good punch. What made you deny it? Punches aren't bad ideas. If I could strike out like you did, I'd wait till I saw a man bullying a weaker one, and I'd stand up to him—" Fran leaped impulsively to her feet, and doubled her arm—"and I'd let her land! Punching's a good thing, and, oh, how it's needed….Except at school—you mustn't do anything human here, you must be an oyster at school."

"Aw-right," said Jakey, with a glimmering of comprehension. He seemed coming to life, as if sap were trickling from winter-congealment.

Bob Clinton, too, felt the fresh breeze of early spring in his face.
He removed his spectacles.

"The first thing I knew," Fran said, resuming her private conversation with Jakey, "I had a mother, but no father—not that he was dead, oh, bless you, he was alive enough—but before my birth he deserted mother. Uncle turned us out of the house. Did we starve, that deserted mother and her little baby? I don't look starved, do I? Pshaw! If a woman without a cent to her name, and ten pounds in her arms can make good, what about a big strong boy like you with a mother to smile every time he hits the mark? And you'd better believe we got more than a living out of life. Mother taught me geography and history and the Revolutionary War—you know history's one thing, and the Revolutionary War is another—and every lesson she gave me was soaked with love till it was nearly as sweet as her own brave eyes. Maybe I wouldn't have liked it, if I'd had to study on a hard bench in a stuffy room with the world shut out, and a lid put on my voice—but anything's good that's got a mother in it. And tell these gentlemen you're sorry for punching that boy."

"Sorr'," muttered Jakey shamefacedly.

"I am glad to hear it," Abbott exclaimed heartily. "You can take your cap to go, Jakey."

"Lemme stay," Jakey pleaded, not budging an inch. Fran lifted her face above the tousled head to look at Abbott; she sucked in her cheeks and made a triumphant oval of her mouth. Then she seemed to forget the young man's presence.

"But when mother died, real trouble began. It was always hard work, while she lived, but hard work isn't trouble, la, no, trouble's just an empty heart! Well, sir, when I read about how good Mr. Hamilton Gregory is, and how much he gives away—to folks he never sees—here I came. But I don't seem to belong to anybody, Jakey, I'm outside of everything. People wouldn't care if I blew away with the dead leaves, and maybe I will, some fine morning—maybe they'll go up to my room and call, 'Fran! Fran!'—and there'll be no Fran. Oh, oh, how happy they'll be then! But you have a home and a mother, Jakey, and a place in the world, so I say 'Hurrah!' because you belong to somebody, and, best of all, you're not a girl, but a boy to strike out straight from the shoulder."

Jakey was dissolved; tears burst their confines.

One may shout oneself hoarse at the delivery of a speech which, if served upon printed page, would never prompt the reader to cast his hat to the ceiling. No mere print under bold head-lines did Abbott read, but rather the changing lights and shadows in great black eyes. It was marvelous how Fran could project past experiences upon the screen of the listener's perception. At her, "When mother died," Abbott saw the girl weeping beside the death-bed. When she sighed, "I don't belong to anybody," the school-director felt like crying, "Then belong to me!" But it was when she spoke of blowing away with the dead leaves—looking so pathetic and so full of elfish witchery—that the impression was deepest. It almost seemed possible that she might fade and fade to an autumn leaf, and float out the window, and be lost— Clinton had an odd impulse to hold her, lest she vanish.

Fran now completed her work. She rose from the immovable Jakey and came over to Abbott Ashton, with meekly folded hands.

He found the magic of the moonlight-hour returning. She had mellowed— glowed—softened—womanized—Abbott could not find the word for it. She quivered with an exquisiteness not to be defined—a something in hair, or flesh, or glory of eye, or softness of lips, altogether lacking in his physical being, but eagerly desired.

"Professor Ashton," she spoke seriously, "I have been horrid. I might have known that school is merely a place where young people crawl into books to worm themselves from lid to lid, swallowing all that comes in the way. But I'd never been to school, and I imagined it a place where a child was helped to develop itself. I thought teachers were trying to show the pupils the best way to be what they were going to be. I've been disappointed, but that's not your fault; you are just a system. If a boy is to be a blacksmith after he's grown, and if a girl in the same class is to be a music-teacher, or a milliner, both must learn about a-b-c and d-e-f. So I'm going away for good, because, of course, I couldn't afford to waste my time in this house. I know the names of the bones and the distances of the planets are awfully nice, but I'm more interested in Fran."

"But, Fran," Abbott exclaimed impulsively, "don't you see that you are holding up ignorance as a virtue? Can you afford to despise knowledge in this civilized age? You should want to know facts just because— well, just because they are facts."

"But I don't seem to, at all," Fran responded mildly. "No, I'm not making fun of education when I find fault with your school, any more than I show irreverence to my mother's God when I question what some people call 'religion'. I want to find the connection—looks like it's lost—the connection between life and—everything else. It's the connection to life that makes facts of any value to me; and it's only in its connection to life that I'd give a pin for all the religion on earth."

"I don't understand," Abbott faltered.

She unfolded her hands, and held them up in a quaint little gesture of aspiration. "No, because it isn't in a book. I feel lost—so out in space. I only ask for a place in the universe—to belong to somebody…"

"But," said Abbott, "you already belong to somebody, since Mr. Gregory has taken you into his home and he is one of the best men that ever—"

"Oh, let's go home," cried Fran impatiently. "Let's all of us skip out of this chalky old basement-smelly place, and breathe the pure air of life."

She darted toward the door, then looked back. Sadness had vanished from her face, to give place to a sudden glow. The late afternoon sun shone full upon her, and she held her lashes apart, quite unblinded by its intensity. She seemed suddenly illumined, not only from without, but from within.

Abbott seized his hat. Robert Clinton had already snatched up his. Jakey squeezed his cap in an agitated hand. All four hurried out into the hall as if moved by the same spring.

Unluckily, as they passed the hall window, Fran looked out. Her eyes were caught by a group seated on the veranda of the Clinton boarding- house. There were Miss Sapphira Clinton, Miss Grace Noir, and several mothers, sipping afternoon tea. In an instant, Fran had grasped the plot. That cloud of witnesses was banked against the green weather- boarding, to behold her ignominy.

"Mr. Clinton," said Fran, all sweetness, all allurement, "I am going to ask of you a first favor. I left my hat up in Miss Bull's room and—"

"I will get it," said Abbott promptly.

"Lem me!" Jakey pleaded, with fine admiration.

"Well, I rather guess not!" cried Bob. "Think I'll refuse Fran's first request?" He sped upstairs, uncommonly light of foot.

"Now," whispered Fran wickedly, "let's run off and leave him."

"I'm with you!" Abbott whispered boyishly.

They burst from the building like a storm, Fran laughing musically, Abbott laughing joyously, Jakey laughing loudest of all. They sallied down the front walk under the artillery fire of hostile eyes from the green veranda. They continued merry. Jakey even swaggered, fancying himself a part of it; he regretted his short trousers.

When Robert Clinton overtook them, he was red and breathless, but Fran's beribboned hat was clutched triumphantly in his hand. It was he who first discovered the ambuscade. He suddenly remembered, looked across the street, then fell, desperately wounded. The shots would have passed unheeded over Abbott's head, had not Fran called his attention to the ambuscade.

"It's a good thing," she said innocently, "that you're not holding my hand—" and she nodded toward the boarding-house. Abbott looked, and turned for one despairing glance at Bob; the latter was without sign of life.

"What shall we do?" inquired Fran, as they halted ridiculously. "If we run for it, it'll make things worse."

"Oh, Lord, yes!" groaned Bob; "don't make a bolt!"

Abbott pretended not to understand. "Come on, Fran, I shall go home with you." His fighting blood was up. In his face was no surrender, no, not even to Grace Noir. "Come," he persisted, with dignity.

"How jolly!" Fran exclaimed. "Shall we go through the grove?—that's the longest way."

"Then let us go that way," responded Abbott stubbornly.

"Abbott," the school-director warned, "you'd better come on over to my place—I'm going there this instant to—to get a cup of tea. It'll be best for you, old fellow, you listen to me, now—you need a little er—a—some—a little stimulant."

"No," Abbott returned definitely. He had done nothing wrong, and he resented the accusing glances from across the way. "No, I'm going with Fran."

"And don't you bother about him," Fran called after the retreating chairman of the board, "he'll have stimulant enough."

CHAPTER XI

THE NEW BRIDGE AT MIDNIGHT

It was almost time for summer vacation. Like all conscientious superintendents of public schools, Abbott Ashton found the closing week especially fatiguing. Examinations were nerve-testing, and correction of examination-papers called for late hours over the lamp. At such times, when most needing sleep, one sleeps least.

One strolls, at hours devoted by others to slumber. Abbott Ashton, for instance, had fallen into the reprehensible habit of bolting from the boarding-house, after the last paper had been graded, no matter how late the night, and making his way rapidly from town as if to bathe his soul in country solitude. Like all reprehensible habits this one was presently to revenge itself by getting the "professor" into trouble.

One beautiful moonlight night, he was nearing the suburbs, when he made a discovery. The discovery was twofold: first, that the real cause of his nightly wanderings was not altogether a weariness of mental toil; second, that he had, for some time, been trying to escape from the thought of Fran. He had not known this. He had simply run, asking no questions. It was when he suddenly discovered Fran in the flesh, as she slipped along a crooked alley, gliding in shadows, that the cause of much sleeplessness was made tangible.

Abbott was greatly disturbed. Why should Fran, be stealthily darting down side-alleys at midnight? The wonder suggested its corollary—why was he running as from some intangible enemy? He realized that the Fran-thought had been working in the under-layers of his mental processes all the time his upper crust had busied itself with rehearsals of "Beyond the Alps lies Italy" and the determination of Hamlet's madness. But now was no time for introspection, and he set himself the task of solving the new mystery. As Fran merged from the mouth of the alley, Abbott dived into its bowels, but when he reached the next street, no Fran was to be seen.

Had she darted into one of the scattered cabins that composed the fringe of Littleburg? At the mere thought, he felt a nameless shrinking of the heart. Surely not. But could she possibly, however fleet of foot, have rounded the next corner before his coming into the light? Abbott sped along the street that he might know the truth, though he realized that the less he saw of Fran the better. However, the thought of her being alone in the outskirts of the village, most assuredly without her guardian's knowledge, seemed to call him to duty. Call or no call, he went.

It seemed to him a long time before he reached the corner. He darted around it—yonder sped Fran like a thin shadow racing before the moon. She had taken the direction of the open fields, and so swiftly did she run, that the sound of his pursuit never reached her ears. She ran. Abbott ran. It was like a foot-race without spectators.

At last she reached the bridge spanning a ravine in whose far depths murmured a little stream. The bridge was new, built to replace the footbridge upon which Abbott and Fran had stood on the night of the tent-meeting. Was it possible that the superintendent of instruction was about to venture a second time across this ravine with the same girl, under the same danger of misunderstanding, revealed by similar glory of moonlight? One may do even that, when duty calls—for surely it was a duty to warn this imprudent child to go home. Conscience whispered that it would not be enough simply to warn; he should escort her to Hamilton Gregory's very door, that he might know she had been rescued from the wide white night; and his conscience was possibly upheld by the knowledge that a sudden advent of a Miss Sapphira was morally impossible.

Fran's back had been toward him all the time. She was still unaware of his presence, as she paused in the middle of the bridge, and with critical eye sought a position mathematically the same from either hand-rail. Standing there, she drew a package from her bosom, hastily seated herself upon the boards, and, oblivious of surroundings, bent over the package as it rested in her lap.

Was she reading some love-sick romance by moonlight, or—or possibly a letter? Abbott, without pause, hurried up. His feet sounded on the bridge.

Fran was speaking aloud, and, on that account, did not hear him, as he came up behind her. "Grace Noir," she was saying—"Abbott Ashton—Bob Clinton—Hamilton Gregory—Mrs. Gregory—Simon Jefferson—Mrs. Jefferson—Miss Sapphira—Fran—the Devil—" She seemed to be calling the roll of her acquaintances. Was she reading a list from the package?

Abbott trod noisily on the fresh pine floor.

Fran swiftly turned, and the moonbeams revealed a flush, yet she did not attempt to rise. "Why didn't you answer, when you heard your name called?" she asked with a good deal of composure.

"Fran!" Abbott exclaimed. "Here all alone at midnight—all alone!
Is it possible?"

"No, it isn't possible," Fran returned satirically, "for I have company."

Abbott warmly urged her to hasten back home; at the same time he drew nearer and discovered that her lap was covered with playing-cards. His advice to her was all it should have been; the most careful father could have found no fault with his helpful words—all the same, he didn't understand about those cards.

Fran, looking down, listened with profound respectfulness, and when he had finished, she said, "It is so nice of you to care about me and worry over what people will think, so I'll go home with you just as soon as I tell the fortune of the cards. It won't take but a minute, and I'm awfully glad you came, for it was pretty scary here alone, I tell you! The moon kept making big eyes at me, and the brook sounded like a death-call down there in the dark."

"But you mustn't stay here," he said imperatively. "Let us go at once."

"Just as soon as I tell the fortunes. Of course I wouldn't go to all this trouble for nothing. Now look. This card is Fran—the Queen of Hearts. This one is Simon Jefferson—and this one is Bob. And you—but it's no use telling all of them. Now; we want to see who's going to marry."

Abbott spoke in his most authoritative tone: "Fran! Get up and come with me before somebody sees you here. This is not only ridiculous, it's wrong and dreadfully imprudent."

Fran looked up with flashing eyes. "I won't!" she cried. "Not till I've told the fortunes. I'm not the girl to go away until she's done what she came to do." Then she added mildly, "Abbott, I just had to say it in that voice, so you'd know I meant it. Don't be cross with me."

She shuffled the cards.

"But why must you stay out here to do it?" he groaned.

"Because this is a new bridge. I'd hate to be a professor, and not know that it has to be in the middle of a new bridge, at midnight, over running water, in the moonlight. Now you keep still and be nice; I want to see who's going to get married. Here is Grace Noir, and here is Fran…"

"And where am I?" asked Abbott, in an awed voice, as he bent down.

Fran wouldn't tell him.

He bent lower. "Oh, I see, I see!" he cried. "This is me—" he drew a card from the pack—"the King of Hearts." He held it up triumphantly. "Well. And you are the Queen of Hearts, you said."

"Maybe I am," said Fran, rather breathlessly, "but whose hearts are we king and queen of? That's what I want to find out." And she showed her teeth at him.

"We can draw and see," he suggested, sinking upon one knee. "And yet, since you're the queen and I'm the king, it must be each other's hearts—"

He stopped abruptly at sight of her crimsoned cheeks.

"That doesn't always follow," Fran told him hastily; "not by any means. For here are other queens. See the Queen of Spades? Maybe you'll get her. Maybe you want her. You see, she either goes to you, or to the next card."

"But I don't want any Queen of Spades," Abbott declared. He drew the next card, and exclaimed dramatically, "Saved, saved! Here's Bob. Give her to Bob Clinton."

"Oh, Abbott!" Fran exclaimed, looking at him with starlike eyes and roselike cheeks, making the most fascinating picture he had ever beheld at midnight under a silver moon. "Do you mean that? Remember you're on a new bridge over running water."

Abbott paused uneasily. She looked less like a child than he had ever seen her. Her body was very slight—but her face was…It is marvelous how much of a woman's seriousness was to be found in this girl. She seemed inclined to give her words about the foolish cards a woman's significance. He rose with the consciousness that for a moment he had rather forgotten himself.

He reminded her gravely—"We are talking about cards—just cards."

"No," said Fran, not stirring, "we are talking about Grace Noir. You say you don't want her; you've already drawn yourself out. That leaves her to poor Bob—he'll have to take her, unless the Joker gets the lady—the Joker is named the Devil…So the game isn't interesting any more." She threw down all the cards, and looked up, beaming. "My! but I'm glad you came."

He was fascinated and could not move, though as convinced as at the beginning that they should not linger thus. There might be fatal consequences; but the charm of the little girl seemed to temper this chill knowledge to the shorn lamb. He temporized: "Why don't you go on with your fortune-telling, little girl?"

"I just wanted to find out if Grace Noir is going to get you," she said candidly; "it doesn't matter what becomes of her. Were you ever on this bridge before?"

"Fran, Miss Grace is one of the best friends I have, and—and everybody admires her. The fact that you don't like her, shows that you are not all you ought to be."

"What does the fact that she doesn't like me show?"

"It shows that you ought to be changed. It was a fatal mistake when you left school, but it's worse for you to refuse persistently to go to church."

"And she told you that, did she?"

"I want your higher nature to be developed. Take Miss Grace for your model—I know you have noble impulses; grow up to be a noble woman— try to be like her."

He was sorry to strike these necessary blows, she seemed so pitifully defenseless as he watched the motionless figure at his feet. Fran's drooping head hid her face. Was she contrite, or mocking? Presently she looked up, her expression that of grave cheerfulness. "Now you've said what you thought you had to say," she remarked. "So that's over. Were you ever on this bridge before?"

Abbott was offended. "No."

"Good, good!" with vivacious enthusiasm. "Both of us must cross it at the same time and make a wish. Help me up—quick."

She reached up both hands, and Abbott lifted her to her feet.

"Whenever you cross a new bridge," she explained, "you must make a wish. It'll come true. Won't you do it, Abbott?"

"Of course. What a superstitious little Nonpareil! Do you hold hands?"

"Honest hands—" She held out both of hers. "Come on then. What are you going to wish, Abbott? But no, you mustn't tell till we're across. Oh, I'm just dying to know! Have you made up your mind, yet?"

"Yes, Fran," he answered indulgently, "it's something always in my mind."

"About Grace Noir?"

"Nothing whatever about Miss Grace Noir."

"All right. I'm glad. Say this:

"'Slow we go,
Two in a row'—

"Don't talk or anything, just wish, oh, wish with all your might—

"'With all my mind and all my heart,
While we're together and after we part'—

"say that."

Abbott repeated gravely:

"'With all my mind and all my heart,
While we're together and after we part.'

"What are you going to wish, Fran?"

"Sh-h-h! Mum!" whispered Fran, opening her eyes wide. With slow steps they walked side by side, shoulder to shoulder, four hands clasped. Fran's great dark eyes were set fixedly upon space as they solemnly paraded beneath the watchful moon. As Abbott watched her, the witchery of the night stole into his blood. Beneath them, the brook murmured drowsily in its dark bed. Beyond, stretched the meadows, and, far away, the woods. Before them, and behind, ran the rutted road, hard and gleaming. Over them, the moon showered its profusion of silver beams. Within them were—wishes.

The last plank was crossed. "Now!" Fran cried breathlessly, "what did you wish?" Her body was quivering, her face glowing.

"That I might succeed," Abbott answered.

"Oh!" said Fran. "My! That was like a cold breath. Just wishing to be great, and famous, and useful, and rich!"

Abbott laughed as light-heartedly as if the road were not calling them away from solitudes, "Well, what did you wish, Fran?"

"That you might always be my friend, while we're together, and after we part."

"It doesn't take a new bridge to make that come true," he declared.

She looked at him solemnly. "Do you understand the responsibilities of being a friend? A friend has to assume obligations, just as when a man's elected to office, he must represent his party and his platform."

"I'll stand for you!" Abbott cried earnestly.

"Will you? Then I'm going to tell you all about myself—ready to be surprised? Friends ought to know each other. In the first place, I am eighteen years old, and in the second place I am a professional lion- trainer, and in the third place my father is—but friends don't have to know each other's fathers. Besides, maybe that's enough to start with."

"Yes," said Abbott, "it is." He paused, but she could not guess his emotions, for his face showed nothing but a sort of blankness. "I should like to take this up seriatim. You tell me you are eighteen years old?"

"—And have had lots of experience."

"Your lion-training: has it been theoretical, or—"

"Mercenary," Fran responded; "real lions, real bars, real spectators, real pay-days."

"But, Fran," said Abbott helplessly, "I don't understand."

"But you're going to, before I'm done with you. I tell you, I'm a show-girl, a lion-tamer, a Jungler. I'm the famous Fran Nonpareil, and my carnival company has showed in most of the towns and cities of the United States. I guess you feel funny to have such a celebrated person talking to you, but in ordinary life, great people aren't different. It's when I'm in my blue silks and gold stars and crimson sashes, kissing my hands to the audience, that I'm the real princess."

Though she spoke lightly, she was well aware of the shock she had imparted. For a time her face had never looked so elfish, but in the silence that ensued, the light faded from her eyes.

Abbott was unable to analyze his real emotions, and his one endeavor was to hide his perplexity. He had always treated her as if she were older than the town supposed, hence the revelation of her age did not so much matter; but lion-training was so remote from conventions that it seemed in a way almost uncanny. It seemed to isolate Fran, to set her coldly apart from the people of his world.

"I'm going home," Fran said abruptly.

He followed her mechanically, too absorbed in her revelation to think of the cards left forgotten on the bridge. From their scene of good wishes, Fran went first, head erect, arms swinging defiantly; Abbott followed, not knowing in the least what to say, or even what to think.

The moon had not been laughing at them long, before Fran looked back over her shoulder and said, as if he had spoken, "Still, I'd like for you to know about it."

He quickened his step to regain her side, but was oppressed by an odd sense of the abnormal.

"Although," she added indistinctly, "it doesn't matter." They walked on in silence until, after prolonged hesitation, he told her quietly that he would like to hear all she felt disposed to tell.

She looked at him steadily: "Can you dilute a few words with the water of your imagination, to cover a life? I'll speak the words, if you have the imagination."

As he looked into her eyes, all sense of the abnormal disappeared. "I have the imagination, Fran," he exclaimed impulsively, "if it is your life."

"In spite of the lions?" she asked, almost sternly.

Abbott rested a hand upon each of her shoulders, and studied her face. The moonlight was lost in the depths of the unfaltering eyes, and there came upon him a surging tide as from the depths of the unknown, sweeping away such artificial barriers as the mind prepares against all great shocks, or surprises.

"You needn't tell me a word," Abbott said, removing his hands. "I know all that one need know; it's written in your face, a story of sweet innocence and brave patience."

"But I want you to know."

"Good!" he replied with a sudden smile. "Tell the story, then; if you were an Odyssey, you couldn't be too long."

"The first thing I remember is waking up to feel the car jerked, or stopped, or started, and Seeing lights flash past the windows— lanterns of the brakemen, or lamps of some town, dancing along the track. The sleeping-car was home—the only home I knew. All night long there was the groaning of the wheels, the letting off of steam, the calls of the men. Bounder Brothers had their private train, and mother and I lived in our Pullman car. I don't know how old I was when I found out that everybody didn't live on wheels,—that most children had homes that didn't move around, with neighbors and relations. After a while I knew that folks stared at us because we were different from others. We were show-people. Then the thing was to look like you didn't know, or didn't care, how much people stared. After that, I found out that I had no father; he'd deserted mother, and her uncle had turned her out of doors for marrying against his wishes, and she'd have starved if it hadn't been for the show-people."

"Dear Fran!" whispered Abbott tenderly.

"Mother had gone to Chicago, hoping for a position in some respectable office, but they didn't want a typewriter who wasn't a stenographer. It was winter—and mother had me—I was so little and bad!…In a cheap lodging-house, mother got to know La Gonizetti, and she persuaded mother to wait with her for the season to open up, then go with Bounder Brothers; they were wintering in Chicago. It was such a kind of life as mother had never dreamed of, but it was more convenient than starving, and she thought it would give her a chance to find father—that traveling, all over the country. La Gonizetti was a lion-tamer, and that's what mother learned, and those two were the only ones who could go inside Samson's cage. The life was awfully hard, but she got to like it, and everybody was kind to us, and money came pouring in, and she was always hoping to run across a clue to my father—and never did."

She paused, but at the pressure of Abbott's sympathetic hand, she went on with renewed courage:

"When I was big enough, I wore a tiny black skirt, and a red coat with shiny buttons, and I beat the drum in the carnival band. You ought to have seen me—so little….Abbott, you can't imagine how little I was! We had about a dozen small shows in our company, fortune-tellers, minstrels, magic wonders, and all that—and the band had to march from one tent to the next, and stand out in front and play, to get the crowd in a bunch, so the free exhibition could work on their nerves. And I'd beat away, in my red coat…and there were always the strange faces, staring, staring—but I was so little! Sometimes they would smile at me, but mother had taught me never to speak to any one, but to wear a glazed look like this—"

"How frightfully cold!" Abbott shivered. Then he laughed, and so did Fran. They had entered Littleburg. He added wickedly, "And how dreadfully near we are getting to your home."

Fran gurgled. "Wouldn't Grace Noir just die if she could see us!"

That sobered Abbott; considering his official position, it seemed high time for reflection.

Fran resumed abruptly. "But I never really liked it because what I wanted was a home—to belong to somebody. Living that way in a traveling-car, going to sleep in the rattle of pulling down tent-seats and the roar of wild animals, and waking up with the hot sun glaring into your eyes, and the smell of weeds coming in through your berth- window…it made me want to be fastened to the ground, like a tree. Then I got to hating the bold stare of people's eyes, and their foolish gaping mouths, I hated being always on exhibition with every gesture watched, as if I'd been one of the trained dogs. I hated the public. I wanted to get away from the world—clear away from everybody…like I am now…with you. Isn't it great!"

"Mammoth!" Abbott declared, watering her words with liberal imagination.

"I must talk fast, or the Gregory house will be looming up at us. Mother didn't want me to like that life, maybe that was another reason—she was always talking about how we'd settle down, some day, in a place of our own where we'd know the people on the other side of the fence—and quit being wonders. But looks like I can't manage it"

"Some people are born wonders," remarked Abbott.

"Yes," Fran acquiesced modestly, "I guess I was. Mother taught me all she knew, though she hated books; she made herself think she was only in the show life till she could make a little more—always just a little more—she really loved it, you see. But I loved the books— study—anything that wasn't the show. It was kind of friendly when I began feeding Samson."

"Poor little Nonpareil!" murmured Abbott wistfully.

"And often when the show was being unloaded, I'd be stretched out in our sleeper, with a school-book pressed close to the cinder-specked window, catching the first light. When the mauls were pounding away at the tent-pins, maybe I'd hunt a seat on some cage, if it had been drawn up under a tree, or maybe it'd be the ticket-wagon, or even the stake-pile—there you'd see me studying away for dear life, dressed in a plain little dress, trying to look like ordinary folks. Such a queer little chap, I was—and always trying to pretend that I wasn't! You'd have laughed to see me."

"Laughed at you!" cried Abbott indignantly. "Indeed I shouldn't."

"No?" exclaimed Fran, patting his arm impulsively.

"Dear little wonder!" he returned conclusively.

"I must tell you about one time," she continued gaily. "We were in New Orleans at the Mardi Gras, and I was expected to come into the ring riding Samson—not the vicious old lion, but cub—that was long after my days of the drum and the red coat, bless you! I was a lion-tamer, now, nearly thirteen years old, if you'll believe me. Well! And what was I saying—you keep looking so friendly, you make me forget myself. Goodness, Abbott, it's so much fun talking to you…I've never mentioned all this to one soul in this town…Well—oh, yes; I was to have come into the ring, riding Samson. Everybody was waiting for me. The band nearly blew itself black in the face. And what do you think was the matter?"

"Did Samson balk?"

"No, it wasn't that. I was lying on the cage-floor, with my head on Samson—Samson the Second made such a gorgeous and animated pillow! —and I was learning geology. I'd just found out that the world wasn't made in seven United States days, and it was such surprising news that I'd forgotten all about cages and lions and tents—if you could have seen me lying there—if you just could!"

"But I can!" Abbott declared. "Your long black hair is mingled with his tawny mane, and your cheeks are blooming—"

"And my feet are crossed," cried Fran.

"And your feet are crossed; and those little hands hold up the book," Abbott swiftly sketched in the details; "and your bosom is rising and falling, and your lips are parted—like now—showing perfect teeth—"

"Dressed in my tights and fluffy lace and jewels," Fran helped, "with bare arms and stars all in my hair…But the end came to everything when—when mother died. Her last words were about my father—how she hoped some day I'd meet him, and tell him she had forgiven. Mother sent me to her half-uncle. My! but that was mighty unpleasant!" Fran shook her head vigorously. "He began telling me about how mother had done wrong in marrying secretly, and he threw it up to me and I just told him…But he's dead, now. I had to go back to the show—there wasn't any other place. But a few months ago I was of age, and I came into Uncle Ephraim's property, because I was the only living relation he had, so he couldn't help my getting it. I'll bet he's mad, now, that he didn't make a will! When he said that mother—it don't matter what he said—I just walked out of his door, that time, with my head up high like this…Oh, goodness, we're here."

They stood before Hamilton Gregory's silent house.

"Good night," Fran said hastily. "It's a mistake to begin a long story on a short road. My! But wasn't that a short road, though!"

"Sometime, you shall finish that story, Fran. I know of a road much longer than the one we've taken—we might try it some day, if you say so."

"I do say so. What road is it?"

They had paused at the front gate, Fran in the yard, Abbott outside. It was dark under the heavy sugar-maples that guarded the gate; they could not see beyond each other's faces. Abbott felt strange, as if he knew no more about what he might do, or say, than if he had been another man. He had spoken of a long road without definite purpose, yet there was a glimmering perception of the reality, as he showed by saying tremulously:

"This is the beginning of it—"

He bent down, as if to take her in his arms.

But Fran drew back, perhaps with a blush that the darkness concealed, certainly with a little laugh. "I'm afraid I'd get lost on that road," she murmured, "for I don't believe you know the way very well, yourself."

She sped lightly to the house, unlocked the door, and vanished.

CHAPTER XII

GRACE CAPTURES THE OUTPOSTS

The next evening there was choir practice at the Walnut Street church. Abbott Ashton, hesitating to make his nightly plunge into the dust- clouds of learning, paused in the vestibule to take a peep at Grace. It always rested him to look at her; he meant to drink her in, as it were, to cool his parched soul, then make a dash at his stack of examination-papers. He knew she never missed a choir practice, for though she could neither sing, nor play the organ, she thought it her duty to set an example of regular attendance that might be the means of bringing those who could do one or the other.

Abbott was not disappointed; but he was surprised to see Mrs. Jefferson in her wheel-chair at the end of the pew occupied by the secretary, while between them sat Mrs. Gregory. His surprise became astonishment on discovering Fran and Simon Jefferson in the choir loft, slyly whispering and nibbling candy, with the air of soldiers off duty—for the choir was in the throes of a solo.

Abbott, as if hypnotized by what he had seen, slowly entered the auditorium. Fran's keen eyes discovered him, and her face showed elfish mischief. Grace, following Fran's eyes, found the cause of the odd smile, and beckoned to Abbott. Hamilton Gregory, following Grace's glance—for he saw no one but her at the practices, since she inspired him with deepest fervor—felt suddenly as if he had lost something; he had often experienced the same sensation on seeing Grace approached by some unattached gentleman.

Grace motioned to Abbott to sit beside her, with a concentration of attention that showed her purpose of reaching a definite goal unsuspected by the other. On account of the solo, there were the briefest of whispered greetings to Mrs. Gregory, and merely a wave to old Mrs. Jefferson.

"I'm so glad Fran has taken a place in the choir," Abbott whispered to
Grace. "And look at Simon Jefferson—who'd have thought it!"

Grace looked at Simon Jefferson; she also looked at Fran, but her compressed lips and reproving eye expressed none of Abbott's gladness. However, she responded with—"I am so glad you are here, Professor Ashton, for I'm in trouble, and I can't decide which way it is my duty to turn. Will you help me? I am going to trust you—it is a matter relating to Mr. Gregory."

Abbott was pleased that she should think him competent to advise her respecting her duty; at the same time he regretted that her confidence related to Mr. Gregory. It came vaguely to his mind that it was always like that—which was natural, though, since he was her employer.

"Professor Ashton," she said softly, "does my position as hired secretary to Mr. Gregory carry with it the obligation to warn him of any misconduct in his household?"

The solo was dying away, and, sweet and low, it fell from heaven like manna upon his soul, blending divinely with the secretary's voice. Her expression "hired" sounded like a tragic note—to think of one so beautiful, so meek, so surrounded by mellow hymn-notes, being hired! He had lost the vision of his career in mists of an attenuated Grace Noir. As the material skirts of the spiritual Grace Noir brushed his leg, it was as if, for a moment, his veins ran muslin and pink ribbons.

"You hesitate to advise me, before you know all," she said, "and you are right. In a moment the choir will be singing louder, and we can all talk together. Mrs. Gregory should be consulted, too."

Grace, conscious of doing all that one could in consulting Mrs. Gregory, "too", looked toward the choir loft, and smiled into Hamilton Gregory's eyes. How his baton, inspired by that smile, cut magic runes in the air! An anthem rose buoyantly, covering the ensuing conversation with its mantle of sound.

"Mrs. Gregory," Grace said in a low voice, "I suppose Professor Ashton is so surprised at seeing you in church—it has been more than five months, hasn't it?…that I'm afraid he isn't thinking about what I'm saying." She paused as if to ask why the other was there,—as if she were an interloper, who, having by absence forfeited her rights, now came in her arrogance to claim them. Not only Grace's tone, but her very attitude seemed to ask, "Why is this woman here?"

Mrs. Gregory could not help feeling in the way, because her husband seemed to share Grace's feeling. Instinctively she turned to her mother and laid her hand on the invalid's arm.

"They ain't bothering me, Lucy," said the old lady, alertly. "I can't hear their noise, and when I shut my eyes I can't see their motions."

"I have something to tell you both," Grace said solemnly. "Last night, I couldn't sleep, and that made me sensitive to noises. I thought I heard some one slipping from the house just as the clock struck half- past eleven. It seemed incredible, for I knew if it were any one, it was that Fran, and I didn't think even she would do that."

It was as if Abbott had suddenly raised a window in a raw wind. His temperature descended. The other's manner of saying "That Fran!" obscured his glass of the future.

Mrs. Gregory said quickly, "Fran leave the house at half-past eleven?
Impossible."

Grace smiled unpleasantly. Believing Fran, possibly an impostor, certainly a disturbing element, it was her duty to drive her from her employer's house; but however pure and noble her disapproval, Grace could not speak of the orphan without a tone or look suggesting mere spite.

"How do you know," Abbott asked, "that Fran left the house at such a time of the night?" The question was unfair since it suggested denial, but his feeling for Fran seemed to call for unfairness to Grace.

"I will tell you," Grace responded, with the distinctness of one in power. "At the time, I told myself that even Fran would not do that. But, a long time afterward, I heard another sound, from the yard. I went to my window. I looked out. The moon was bright, but there was a very dark shadow about the front gate. I heard voices. One was that of Fran. The other was the voice of—" her tone vibrated in its intensity—"the voice of a man!"

"It was not Fran's voice," Mrs. Gregory declared earnestly.

"What man was it?" Abbott inquired, rather resentfully.

"I do not know. I wish now, that I had called out," responded Grace, paying no heed to Mrs. Gregory. "That is where I made my mistake. The man got away. Fran came running into the house, and closed the door as softly as she could—after she'd unlocked it from the outside! I concluded it would be best to wait till morning, before I said a word. So this morning, before breakfast, I strolled in the yard, trying to decide what I had better do. I went to the gate, and there on the grass—what do you suppose I found?"

Abbott was bewildered. What serious consequences was Grace about to evolve from the bridge-romance?

Mrs. Gregory listened, pale with apprehension.

"It was a card," Grace said, with awful significance, "a gambling card! As long as I have lived in the house, nobody ever dared to bring a card there. Mrs. Gregory will tell you the same. But that Fran…. She had been playing cards out there at midnight—and with a man!"

"I can not think so," said Mrs. Gregory firmly.

"After making up my mind what to do," continued Grace evenly, "I took her aside. I told her what I had seen and heard. I gave her back her card. But how can we be sure she will not do it again? That is what troubles me. Oughtn't I to tell Mr. Gregory, so a scandal can be avoided?"

Abbott looked blankly at Fran, who was singing with all her might. She caught his look, and closed her eyes. Abbott asked weakly, "What did she say?"

Grace answered, "She denied it, of course—said she hadn't been playing cards with anybody, hadn't dropped the card I found, and wouldn't even admit that she'd been with a man. If I tell Mr. Gregory about her playing cards with a man at that hour, I don't believe he will think he ought to keep her longer, even if she does claim to be his friend's daughter."

"But you tell us," Mrs. Gregory interposed swiftly, "that she said she hadn't been playing cards."

"She said!" Grace echoed unpleasantly, "she said!"

"That card you found," began Abbott guiltily, "was it the King of Hearts?" Possibly he had dropped it from his pocket when leaning over the gate to—But why had he leaned over the gate?

Grace coldly answered, "I do not know one card from another."

"Let me try to describe it."

"I hope you can not describe the card I found," said Grace, the presentiment that she was on the eve of discoveries giving her eyes a starlike directness. Abbott felt himself squirming under the heel of a higher order of being.

"I suspect I dropped that card over the fence," he confessed, "for I had the King of Hearts, and last night, about that time I was standing at the gate—"

"Oh," Grace exclaimed, disagreeably surprised. "I did not know that you play cards, Professor Ashton. Do you also attend the dances? I had always thought of you as one of the most faithful members of the Walnut Street church—one who is always there, when you can come—not like some members whose names are on the book. Surely you haven't been dancing and playing cards very long?"

"Not for a great while," responded Abbott, with the obstinacy of a good conscience wrongfully accused.

The secretary no longer held him under her foot—the last icicle-prick of her tongue had liberated him.

"Only since Fran came, I am sure," she said, feeling him escaping. She looked at him with something like scorn, inspired by righteous indignation that such as he could be influenced by Fran. That look wrought havoc with the halo he had so long blinked at, as it swung above her head.

"Does that mean," he inquired, with a steady look, "that you imagine
Fran has led me into bad habits?"

"I trust the habits are not fixed," rather contemptuously. "I hardly think you mean to desert the church, and lose your position at school, for the sake of—of that Fran."

"I hardly think so, either," returned Abbott. "And now I'd better go to my school-work."

"Fran is imprudent," said Mrs. Gregory, in distress, "but her heart is pure gold. I don't know what all this means, but when I have had a talk with her—"

"Don't go, Professor Ashton," interposed Grace, as he started up, "until you advise me. Shall I tell Mr. Gregory? Or shall I conceal it on the assurances that it will never happen again?"

Abbott seated himself with sudden persuasiveness. "Conceal it, Miss
Grace, conceal it!" he urged.

"If you will frankly explain what happened—here before Mrs. Gregory, so she can have the real truth, we will never betray the secret. But if you can not tell everything, I shall feel it my duty—I don't know how Mrs. Gregory feels about it—but I must tell Mr. Gregory."

"I would rather wait," said Mrs. Gregory, "and talk to Fran. She will promise me anything. I trust you, Abbott; I know you would never lead my little girl into wrong-doing. She is wild and untrained, and I suspect you were trying to help her, last night. Leave it all to me. I will have a good talk with Fran."

"And," said Abbott eagerly, "if we both solemnly promise—"

Grace bit her lip. His "we" condemned him.

"I don't ask you to hide the affair on my account," he said, holdingup his head. "I don't want Fran put in an unjust light. She isn't to be judged like other people."

"Oh," murmured Grace, "then you think there is more than one standard of right? I don't. There's one God and one Right. No, I can not consent; what might satisfy Mrs. Gregory might not seem best to me. No, Professor, if you feel that you can not explain what I saw, last night, I shall feel obliged to tell Mr. Gregory as soon as the choir practice ends."

"Didn't Fran refuse to tell?" Abbott temporized.

"Yes," was the skilful response; "but her reticence must have been to save you, for the girl never seems ashamed of anything she does. I imagine she hated to get you into trouble."

"Miss Grace, you have heard Mrs. Gregory say that she trusts me—and she is Fran's guardian. I ask you to do the same."

"I must consider my conscience."

That answer closed all argument.

"You had better tell her," said Mrs. Gregory, "for she is determined to know."

"I was taking a walk to rest my mind," Abbott said slowly, proceeding as if he would have liked to fight his ground inch by inch, "and it was rather late. I was strolling about Littleburg. Yesterday was a pretty hard day, getting ready for Commencement—my mind was tired out."

"Did you get your mind rested?" Grace permitted herself the slight relaxation of a sarcasm.

"Yes, At last I found myself at the new bridge that leads to the camp- meeting grounds, when ahead of me, there was—I saw Fran. I was much surprised to find her out there, alone."

"I can understand that," said Grace quietly, "for I should have been surprised myself."

Mrs. Gregory turned upon Grace. "Let him go on!" she said with a flash that petrified the secretary.

"When I came up to the bridge, she was sitting there, with some cards —all alone. She had some superstition about trying fortunes on a new bridge at midnight, and that explains the lateness of the hour. So I persuaded her to come home, and that is all."

Mrs. Gregory breathed with relief. "What an odd little darling!" she murmured, smiling.

"What kind of fortune was she telling?" Grace asked.

"Whatever kind the new bridge would give her."

"Oh, then the cards stood for people, didn't they! And the card you dropped in the yard was your card, of course."

"Of course."

"And did Fran—have a card to represent herself, perhaps?"

"I have told you the story," said Abbott, rising.

"That means she did. Then she wanted to know if you and she would… Mrs. Gregory, I have always felt that Fran has deceived us about her age! She is older than she pretends to be!"

"I believe this concludes our bargain," said Abbott, rising.

Mrs. Gregory was calm. "Miss Grace, Fran told me long ago that she is eighteen years old; she came as a little girl, because she thought we would take her in the more readily, if we believed her a mere child."

"Does Mr. Gregory know that?"

"I haven't told him; I don't know whether Fran has or not."

"You haven't told him!" Grace was speechless. "You knew it, and haven't told him? What ought I to do?"

"You ought to keep your promise," Abbott retorted hotly.

"Sitting on that bridge at midnight, alone, telling people's fortunes by cards….Professor Ashton—Mrs. Gregory!" Grace exclaimed, with one of those flashes of inspiration peculiar to her sex, "that Fran is a show-girl!"

Abbott started, but said nothing.

Mrs. Gregory rose, and spoke through her mother's ear-trumpet, "Shall we go home, now?"

"That Fran," repeated Grace, "is a show-girl! She is eighteen or nineteen years old, and she is a show-girl!"

"Wouldn't it be best for you to ask her?"

"Ask her? Her? No, I ask you!"

"Let me push the chair," said Abbott, stepping to Mrs. Gregory's side.
He read in the troubled face that she had known this secret, also.

The secretary gazed at him with a far-away look, hardly conscious that he was beating retreat, so absorbed was she in this revelation. Now, indeed, it was certain that Fran, the girl of eighteen or nineteen, Fran, the show-girl, was an impostor! Her age proved that Mr. Gregory must have known her "father" when he was attending college in Springfield, whereas, believing her much younger, it had all the time been taken for granted that they had been companions in New York.

It would be necessary for some one to go to Springfield to make investigations. Grace had for ever alienated Abbott Ashton, but there was always Robert Clinton. He would obey her every wish; Robert Clinton should go. And when Robert had returned with a full history of Hamilton Gregory's school-days at Springfield, and those of Gregory's intimate friend, Fran, with the proofs of her conspiracy spread before her, should be driven forth, never again to darken the home of the philanthropist.

CHAPTER XIII

ALLIANCE WITH ABBOTT

For the most part, that was a silent walk to Hamilton Gregory's. Abbott Ashton pushed the wheel-chair, and it was only Mrs. Jefferson, ignorant of what had taken place, who commented on the bright moon, and the relief of rose-scented breezes after the musty auditorium of Walnut Street church.

"They were bent and determined on Fran going to choir practice," the old lady told Abbott, "so Lucy and I went along to encourage her, for they say she has a fine voice, and they want all the good singing they can have at Uncle Tobe Fuller's funeral. Uncle Tobe, he didn't know one tune from another, but now that he's dead, he knows 'em all—for he was a good man. I despise big doings at funerals, but I expect to go, and as I can't hear the solos, nor the preacher working up feelings, all I'll have to do will be to sit and look at the coffin."

"Mother," said Mrs. Gregory, "you are not cheerful to-night."

"No," the other responded, "I think it's from sitting so long by the
Whited Sepulcher."

Mrs. Gregory spoke into the trumpet, with real distress—"Mother, mother! Abbott won't understand you; he doesn't know you are using a figure of speech."

"Yes," said the old lady, "Number Thirteen, if there's anything unlucky in figures."

Abbott effected diversion. "Mrs. Gregory, I'm glad Miss Noir agreed to say nothing about her discoveries, for the only harm in them is what people might imagine. I was pretty uneasy, at first; of course I knew that if she felt she ought to tell it, she would. I never knew anybody so conscientious."

There was a pause, then Mrs. Gregory responded, "She will not tell."

Abbott had seen them safely into the house, and had reached the gate on his departure, when Fran came running up. In pleased surprise he opened the gate for her, but she stopped in the outside shadow, and he paused within the yard.

"Fran!" he exclaimed with pleasure. "Is the practice ended?"

She made no response.

"Fran, what's the matter?"

Silence.

Abbott was both perplexed and hurt. "Remember what we said on the new bridge," he urged; "we're friends 'while we're together and after we part!'"

"Somebody ought to burn that new bridge," said Fran, in a muffled tone; "it's no good making wishes come true."

"Why do you say that? Aren't we the best of friends?"

Fran collected herself, and spoke with cool distinctness: "I have a pretty hard battle to fight, Mr. Ashton, and it's necessary to know who's on my side, and who isn't. I may not come out ahead; but I'm not going to lose out from taking a foe for a friend."

"Which you will kindly explain?"

"You are Grace Noir's friend—that explains it."

"I am your friend, too, Fran."

"My friend, too!" she echoed bitterly. "Oh, thanks—also!"

Abbott came through the gate, and tried to read her face. "Does the fact that I am her friend condemn me?"

"No—just classifies you. You couldn't be her friend if you were not a mirror in which she sees herself; her conscience is so sure, that she hasn't use for anything but a faithful reflector of her opinions. She empties her friends of all personality, and leaves them filled with their imagination of her character."

"Her friends are mere puppets, it appears," Abbott said, smiling. "But that's rather to her credit, isn't it? Would you mind to explain your imagination of her character?"

His jesting tone made her impatient. "I don't think her character has ever had a chance to develop; she's too fixed on thinking herself what she isn't. Her opinion of what she ought to be is so sure, that she has never discovered what she really is. And you can't possibly hold a secret from her, if you're her friend; she takes it from you as one snatches a toy from a little child."

Abbott was still amused. "Has she emptied me of all she wants?"

"Yes. You have given her strong weapons against me, and you may be sure she'll use them to her advantage."

"Fran, step back into the light—let me see your face; are you in earnest? Your eyes are smoldering—Oh, Fran, those eyes! What weapons have I given her?"

Fran set her back against the fence, and looked at him darkly. Now and then some one passed, with a curious look, and constrained greeting— for in Littleburg every one was known. "The secret of my age, and the secret of my past."

"I told her neither."

"As soon as you and Mrs. Gregory wheeled away Mrs. Jefferson," said Fran, "I went right down from the choir loft, and straight over to her. I looked her in the eye, and I asked what you had been telling about me. Why, you told her everything, even that I was trying to find out whether you and I would ever—would ever get married! I might aswell say it, it came pat enough from her—_and you told! _Nobody else knew. And you dropped your King of Hearts over the fence—you told her that! And when we were standing there at the gate, you even tried—but no, I'll leave you and Miss Grace to discuss such subjects. Here we are at the same gate, but I guess there's not much danger, now!"

"Fran!" cried Abbott, with burning cheeks, "I didn't tell her, upon my honor I didn't. I had to admit dropping the card, to keep her from thinking you out here at midnight with a stranger. She saw us in the shadow, and guessed—that other. I didn't tell her anything about your age. I didn't mention the carnival company."

Fran's concentrated tones grew milder: "But Mrs. Gregory has known about the show all this time. She would die before she'd tell on me."

"I never told, Fran. I'm not going to say that again; but you shall believe me."

"Of course, Abbott. But it just proves what I said, about her emptying her friends, about taking their secrets from them even without their knowing she's doing it. I said to her, sharp and quick, 'What have you been saying about me, Miss Noir?' She said—'I understand from Professor Ashton that you are not a young girl at all, but a masquerader of at least eighteen years.' I answered—'Being a masquerader of at least thirty-five, you should have found that out, yourself.' I hardly think she's thirty-five; it wasn't a fair blow, but you have to fight Indians in the brush. Then your friend said, 'Professor Ashton informs me that you are a circus-girl. Don't you think you've strayed too far from the tent?' she asked. I said—'Oh, I brought the show with me; Professor Ashton is my advance advertising agent.' Then she said that if I'd leave, Mr. Gregory need never know that I'm an impostor. But I told her no tickets are going to be returned. I said—'This show absolutely takes place, rain or shine.'"

"Fran," said Abbott in distress, "I want to talk this over—come here in the yard where you're not so conspicuous."

"Show-girls ought to be conspicuous. No, sir, I stay right here in the glaring moonlight. It doesn't call for darkness to tell me anything that is on your mind, Professor."

"Fran, you can't hold me responsible for what Miss Grace guessed. I tell you, she guessed everything. I was trying to defend you— suddenly she saw through it all. I don't know how it was—maybe Mrs. Gregory can explain, as she's a woman. You shall not deem me capable of adding an atom to your difficulties. You shall feel that I'm your friend 'while we're together and after we part.' You must believe me when I tell you that I need your smile." His voice trembled with sudden tenderness. "You must accept what I say as the greatest fact in my life—that I can't be happy, if you are angry with me."

She looked at him searchingly, then her face relaxed to the eve of revolution. "Who have you been trying to get a glimpse of, all the times you parade the street in front of our house?"

Abbott declared, "You!" In mute appeal he held out his hand.

"You're a weak brother, but here—" And she slipped her hand into his. "If she'd been in conversation with me, I wouldn't have let her have any presentiments. It takes talent to keep from telling what you know, but genius to keep the other fellow from guessing. What I hate about it is, that the very next time you fall into her hands, you'll be at her mercy. If I told you a scheme I've been devising, she'd take it from you in broad daylight. She can always prove she's right, because she has the verse for it,—and to deny her is to deny Inspiration. And if she had her way,—she thinks I'm a sort of dissipation—there'd be a national prohibition of Fran."

"If there were a national prohibition of Fran, I'd be the first to smuggle you in somehow, little Nonpareil. I do believe that Miss Grace is the most conscientious person I ever knew, except Mr. Gregory. Just the same, I'm your friend. Isn't it something for me to have taken you on trust as I have, from the very beginning?"

His brown eyes were so earnest that Fran stepped into the shadow. "It's more than something, Abbott. Your trust is about all I have. It's just like me to be wanting more than I have. I'm going to confide in you my scheme. Let's talk it over in whispers." They put their heads together. "Tomorrow, Grace Noir is going to the city with Bob Clinton to select music for the choir—he doesn't know any more about music than poor Uncle Tobe Fuller, but you see, he's still alive. It will be the first day she's been off the place since I came. While she's away, I mean to make my grand effort."

"At what, Little Wonder?"

"At driving her away for good. I'm going to offer myself as secretary, and with her out of sight, I'm hoping to win the day."

"But she's been his secretary for five years—is it reasonable he'd give her up? And would it be honorable for you to work against her in that way? Besides, Fran, she is really necessary to Mr. Gregory's great charity enterprises—"

"The more reason for getting rid of her."

"I don't understand how you mean that. I know Mr. Gregory's work would be seriously crippled. And it would be a great blow to Walnut Street church—she's always there."

"Still, you see she can't stay."

"No, I don't see. You and Miss Grace must be reconciled."

"Oh, Abbott, can't you understand, or is it that you just won't? It isn't on my account that Miss Noir must leave this house. She's going to bring trouble—she's already done it. I've had lots of experience, and when I see people hurrying down hill, I expect to find them at the bottom, not because it's in the people, but because it's in the direction. I don't care how no-account folks are, if they keep doggedly climbing up out of the valley, just give 'em time, and they'll reach the mountain-top. I believe some mighty good-intentioned men are stumbling down hill, carrying their religion right into hell."

"Hush, little friend! You don't understand what religion is."

"If I can't find out from its fruits, I don't want to know."

"Of course. But consider how Miss Grace's labors are blessing the helpless."

"Abbott, unless the fruits of religion are flavored by love, they're no more account than apples taken with bitter-rot—not worth fifty cents a barrel. The trouble with a good deal of the church-fruit to- day is bitter-rot."

Abbott asked slyly, "What about your fruit, out there in the world?"

"Oh," Fran confessed, with a gleam, "we're not in the orchard-business at all, out here."

Abbott laid his hand earnestly upon her arm. "Fran! Come in and help us spray."

"You dear old prosy, preachy professor!" she exclaimed affectionately,
"I have been thinking of it. I've half a mind to try, really. Wouldn't
Grace Noir just die?…O Lord, there she comes, now!"

Fran left the disconsolate young man in wild precipitation, and flew into the house. He wondered if she had been seen standing there, and he realized that, if so, the purest motives could not outweigh appearances. He turned off in another direction, and Gregory and Grace came slowly toward the house, having, without much difficulty, eliminated Simon Jefferson from their company.

In truth, Simon, rather than be improved by their conversation, had dived down a back alley, and found entrance through the side door. When Hamilton Gregory and his secretary came into the reception hall, the old bachelor lay upon a divan thinking of his weak heart—Fran's flight from the choir loft had reminded him of it—and Mrs. Jefferson was fanning him, as if he were never to be a grown man. Mrs. Gregory sat near the group, silently embroidering in white silk. Fran had hastily thrown herself upon the stairway, and, with half-closed eyes, looked as if she had been there a long time.

"Fran," said Mr. Gregory coldly, "you left the choir practice before we were two-thirds done. Of course I could hardly expect you—" he looked at his wife—"to stay, although your presence would certainly have kept Fran there; and it does look as if we should be willing to resort to any expedient to keep her there!"

"How would a lock and chain do?" Fran inquired meekly.

"I don't think she came straight home, either," remarked Grace Noir significantly. "Did you, Fran?"

"Miss Noir," said Fran, smiling at her through the banister-slats, "you are so satisfactory; you always say just about what I expect. Yes, I came straight home. I'm glad it's your business, so you could ask."

Hamilton Gregory turned to his wife again, with restraint more marked. "Next Sunday is roll-call day, Mrs. Gregory. The board has decided to revise the lists. We've been carrying so many names that it's a burden to the church. The world reproaches us, saying, 'Isn't So-and-so a member? He never attends, does he?' I do hope you will go next Sunday!" Mrs. Gregory looked down at her work thoughtfully, then said, "Mother would be left—"

"It's just this way," her husband interposed abruptly: "If no excuses, such as sickness, are sent, and if the people haven't been coming for months, and don't intend coming, we are simply determined to drop the names—strike 'em out. We believe church members should show where they stand. And—and if you—"

Mrs. Gregory looked up quietly. Her voice seemed woven of the silk threads she was stitching in the white pattern. "If I am not a member of the church, sitting an hour in the building couldn't make me one."

Simon Jefferson cried out, "Is that my sister Lucy? Blessed if I thought she had so much spirit!"

"Do you call that spirit?" returned Gregory, with displeasure.

"Well!" snorted Simon, "what do you call it, then?"

"Perhaps," responded Gregory, with marked disapprobation, "perhaps it was spirit."

Grace, still attired for the street, looked down upon Mrs. Gregory as if turned to stone. Her beautiful face expressed something like horror at the other's irreverence.

Fran shook back her hair, and watched with gleaming eyes from behind the slats, not unlike a small wild creature peering from its cage.

"Oh," cried Fran, "Miss Noir feels so bad!"

Grace swept from the hall, her rounded figure instinct with the sufferings of a martyr.

Fran murmured, "That killed her!"

"And you!" cried Gregory, turning suddenly in blind anger upon the other—"you don't care whose heart you break."