It was ten days later that, as Lawson hurried down the corridor past the professor's house, the curtains of the library window were stirred slightly and a skinny finger beckoned him.

He was still scornfully angry, but he was anxious; he stopped. The door was set ajar and Susan's face peered through the crack. She was grinning joyously.

"Come inside!" she whispered.

He frowned, but he obeyed her. With one lightning glance about him and one swift memory of the last moment he stood there, he shut the door behind him and waited to hear what the bent and shrivelled old woman had to say.

She drew a paper from the folds of her dress. "Hyar 'tis!" she exclaimed, handling the envelope lovingly. "I cyarnt read, but I'd know dis writin', anywhars; 'tis straight up an' down, an' clear an' hones'!"

[Pg 156]

Lawson seized it quickly. The envelope was directed to Mr. Robert Holloway. He gave a smothered exclamation. The writing was clear and decided, the postmark, "Keswick." The glance he flashed Susan was scathing, but she stood innocently attentive; her manner might have deceived a man of her own State; it did deceive Lawson with his western ignorance of her race.

"She don't write much, Miss Frances don't." Susan had no word to say of the daily message over the telephone, and Lawson himself never thought of that way of communication.

"She allus was mighty kerles 'bout writin'."

"And she's there, as near as that?"

Susan nodded. "Dat's whar she was when she writ, but she 's visitin' 'roun', an' we nebber did know jes' whar she was; but dat's all right."

Lawson hurried into the library. The daily paper of the town lay on the table; he turned the pages to the railroad schedule, Susan eyeing him watchfully from the door.

[Pg 157]

His morning lecture was important, he could not cut it. There were no trains he could make down and back in the afternoon; he would drive. His mind full of the determination he came out in the hall. He did not even notice Susan, eagerly expectant, as she stood there, of another bill to add to her hoard. His eyes were fixed on the carved newel post where Frances' trembling hand had lain when last he had seen her. Could the distrustful old darkey have read his heart she might have forgiven him and befriended him, for at that moment it held nothing but strong, intense love for the girl she herself idolized, and the resolve to see her, to make his peace with her, to overcome whatever barrier, ghostly or real, had risen between them. He was not a whit afraid of any rival. The only effect such declaration had had was to crystallize his dreaming to decision for action, and to fairly madden his impatient nature that was held in leash, action being impossible.

He was the first in the dining-hall that noon. While the sun was still overhead, he[Pg 158] was driving behind his bays out of town, over the dusky bridge where the rafters were draped with cobwebs, fold upon fold and dusty and gray,—and where the Rapidan ran deep and yellow far underneath, up the long winding hill from whose top he might see the rolling hills, the house-tops and spires of the far-stretching town, and circling peaks, and, there to the right, the crest of Monticello. But he never turned his head. He saw his horses and the hard red clay road, perfect in this season as a stretch of asphalt; hills closed about him, as he sped on, or opened showing valley and mountain, bare washed hillsides vividly red, or fresh-plowed fields, or pale green shoots of wheat over fields of brick-dust hue, or sere pasture lands, or stubble fields. Beyond the care for his driving he saw nothing but a vision of a drooping face, the rose-red of confusion flushing it, downcast eyes and tremulous mouth. He dreamed of it, but it was something more than dreaming, it was dreaming translated to resolve. He saw nothing ever that he wanted, without reaching out strong[Pg 159] hands for its possession. He was doubly resolved, doubly strong for this, according to the intensity of his desire.

At the village of Keswick, where the road crossed the railway, he stopped for information, and, having gotten it, rode on. Soon he was off the main road and driving along a way which led through thick woods with many branching roads right and left. His directions were confused. Far down in the forest he paused before one of the branchings, wondering if this were the way, and in the silence he heard wheels and waited. The tread of the team was slow. He could hear the creaking of the wheels, the joltings of a farm wagon and a boy's voice, fresh and clear, urging on the horses. Over and above it all was the low resonant song of the pines and of the bare branches of the forest trees, and the sound of dead leaves rustling in the wind; and for a moment the young man's mood was in sympathy with the mood of nature, sad and solemn, there in the heart of the woods in the hush of a November day. Then the wagon came in sight.

[Pg 160]

"Hello!" he called out cheerily, "is this the way to Mr. Carroll's?"

"Yes!" cried the boy, "drive straight ahead until you get to the big pine tree; there are right many turns and wood roads in there; you'd better let me go first."

"Going this way?"

The boy nodded. Lawson pulled out of the road and the boy drove abreast of him. He had a wagon-load of dead branches he had been gathering up through the woods. He reined in to say, "Mr. Carroll is my father."

Lawson looked his friendly interest.

"I've been getting wood for the kitchen stove; it burns better than the green wood," the boy volunteered by way of conversation as he drove ahead.

Suddenly Lawson called to him, "Your c............