They stared at each other, eye to eye, both plainly wishing with all heartiness that no feminine presence hampered them.

The girl laughed.

"Coffee and pistols for two! If each other's company makes you so impolite, I'll be compelled to separate you. Come, Mr. Harlan Thornton, baron of Fort Canibas, you have volunteered to see me safely home."

He offered his arm, and they followed Mrs. Presson, who had already started for the carriage. He rode with them to the station, flushed and silent, and the girl studied his face covertly and with some curiosity.

On the train, in the first of their tete-a-tete, she sounded him cautiously, trying to discover if his feelings toward Linton were inspired wholly by political differences. She seemed to suspect there was something more behind it, even at the risk of flattering herself.

But she had detected certain suggestive symptoms in the demeanor of Harlan at the breakfast-table that morning. He did not betray himself under her deft questioning. But he promptly grew amiable, and before the end of their railroad ride that day she had proved to her own satisfaction that her ability to interest young men had not been thrown away upon him. The light in his eyes and the zest of his chatter with her told their own story. He left her at her home with a regret that he did not hide from her.

And yet, when he was at last in his room at the hotel that night, he wrote to Clare Kavanagh the longest letter of all those he had written to her since he left Fort Canibas.

It might have been because he had so much to write about.

It might have been because a strange little feeling of compunction bothered him.

But Harlan did not have the courage to examine his sentiments too closely. Only, after he had sealed the letter and inscribed it, he lay back in his chair awhile, and then, having reflected that after three weeks he would no longer be his own man, he decided that he'd better run up to Fort Canibas and attend to his business interests.

And he departed hastily the next morning, in spite of the Duke's puzzled and rather indignant protests that business wasn't suffering beyond what the telephone and mails could cure, and that he himself would go home the next week and see to everything.

There are some men who are strong enough to run away from weakness. Not that Harlan Thornton admitted that he was weak in the presence of Madeleine Presson. But he felt a sudden hunger for the big hills, the wide woods, the serene silences. He wanted to get his mental footing again. He had been swept off in a flood of new experiences. Just now he found himself in a state of mind that he did not understand.

"I'll go back and let the old woods talk to me," he whispered to himself.

Then he tore up the letter he had written to Clare Kavanagh.

It had occurred to him that he could tell it to her so much better.

So when he came to Fort Canibas in the evening of the second day he mounted his horse and rode across the big bridge.

He went before he had read the letters piled on the table in the gloomy old mess-hall. And he brusquely told the waiting Ben Kyle to save his business talk until the morning.

CHAPTER XX

A GIRL'S HEART

He walked his horse when he reached the farther sh.o.r.e. He was wondering just what he was to say to Dennis Kavanagh. They had not parted in a manner that invited further intimacy. From twin windows of the house on the hill lights glowed redly, as though they were Dennis Kavanagh's baleful little eyes. Fear was not the cause of the young man's hesitation. But he dreaded another scene in the presence of the girl.

Kavanagh and his grandfather had brutally violated an innocent friendship. They had put into insulting words what neither he nor Clare had dreamed of--he hastily a.s.sured himself that they were not lovers.

More than ever before he now felt infinite tenderness toward her--compa.s.sion, sympathy--an overpowering impulse to seek her. He had much to tell her. He could not think of any one in all the world who would listen as she would listen. The red eyes glowering out of the summer gloom did not daunt him; they suggested tyranny and insulting suspicion, and he pitied her the more. He rode on past the tall cross of the church-yard. A voice out of the silence startled him. A white figure stood in the shadow of the church porch.

"Come here, Big Boy," she said. "I'm not a ghost. I'm only Clare. I've been waiting for you."

He left his horse, and hurried to her.

"Waiting for me? I did not write. Have you second sight, little Clare?"

"No, only first news. This isn't one of the big cities where the crowds rush by and do not notice each other. It's only a lonesome little place, Harlan, and gossip travels fast. I heard you were home five minutes after the stage was in. So I came here and waited."

He took both her hands between his broad palms, caressing them.

"And you knew I'd hurry to come across the long bridge? That makes me happy, Clare, for you must have been thinking about me."

"I haven't many things to do these days except think," she returned, wistfully. "You'll understand why I came down here. I'm not trying to hide away from my father, and I know you are not afraid of him. But lectures on the subject of not doing the things you don't have any idea of doing are not to my taste, and I know they don't suit you. So we'll sit here in peace and quietness, and you shall tell me all about it."

He turned his back on the two red eyes of the Kavanagh house, and sat down on the step below her, and began his story, eagerly, volubly.

Once in a while he looked up at her, and she gave wise little nods to show she understood. In relating the early episodes of his journey, he ventured to leave out details. But she insisted that he give them.

"I want to know about the world--how they all look, and how they speak, and what they do. I've been lonely all these weeks. I've been wondering all the time what you were doing. Now I want it to seem that you've come to take me with you, back through it all. I want it to seem just as though I were travelling along with you--that will make me forget how lonely I've been, waiting here on the edge of the big woods."

And he humored her whim, for he had always understood her child's ways.

The woods had trained him to note the details of all he saw; his experiences had been fresh and stirring, and he told his story with zest.

Then he came to his mention of Madeleine Presson. "Her father is the State chairman--the man you saw at 'The Barracks.' I was at their house a few times. Her mother--"

"But about her! You are skipping again, Big Boy."

"There is not much about her," he said, stammering a bit. "I saw her here and there, and talked with her, that's all."

"But I'm seeing with your eyes and hearing with your ears as I go along with you," she insisted. "I want to know how other girls are in the world outside. I have been waiting to have some one tell me. You saw her, you heard her. Begin, Harlan: her looks, her clothes, her manners, what she said, what she talks about. I have only you to ask."

His self-consciousness left him after he began. He drew his word-picture as best he could.

"That makes her beautiful," she said, when he paused, searching his mind for some word of description. "I think I can see her with your eyes, Big Boy. Tell me what she knows; and how does she talk?"

In the dusk he could not see the expression on her face. He knew that she listened intently, leaning above him. He was not conscious that he praised Madeleine Presson's gifts of mind or person. But as he had found her, so he portrayed her to the isolated girl of the north country, describing her attainments, her culture, her breadth of view, her grasp of the questions of the day, her ability to understand the big matters in which men were interested.

She made no comment as he talked. She did not interrupt him when he had finished with Madeleine Presson and went on to relate how he had been forced into the forefront of the State's political situation.

"So, then, you have become a great man," she faltered. "I remember. I was selfish. I did not want you to go away."

"No, I am not a great man, little Clare," he protested, laughingly. "I'm only a little chap that a great man is using. And you were not selfish.

It was you that first put the thought into my mind that I ought to use my opportunities. That night at the end of the bridge, you know! I was sullen and obstinate. But you talked to me like a wise little woman. All the time I was with my grandfather later that evening, trying to be angry with him, I kept remembering your advice."

"I lied to you!" she cried, so pa.s.sionately that he leaped to his feet and stared down on her. "I said it. I remember. But I lied. I was punishing myself because I had been selfish about you. But I didn't believe what I was saying--not deep in my heart. I wanted you to say you wouldn't go--but I didn't want you to look back ever and blame me for my selfishness. You see now how wicked and wrong and weak I am. I didn't want the world to take you away from--from us up here: from the woods and the plain folks. You'll hate me now. But I have to be truthful with you!" Her voice broke.

"The world has not won me away from my friends, dear. You must know me too well for that suspicion to shame me."

She crouched on the step before him. Her hands, fingers interlaced, gripped each other hard to quiet their trembling. In her girlish frailness, as she bent above her clasped hands, huddled there in the black shadow of the porch, she seemed pitifully little and helpless and forsaken. The woe in her tones thrilled him. She was trying hard to control her voice.

"You see, Harlan, I can look ahead and understand how it will be. A woman does understand such things. That's the awful thing about being a woman--and looking ahead and knowing how it must be before it ever happens!"

"Before what happens, Clare? I'm trying hard to understand you."

He leaned forward, and could see her eyes. He had seen that look in the eyes of a stricken doe.