of a twig which intruded in shadow upon the sunlit square was sharp and motionless as a purple, painted line; the winter midday was tranquil with a white, cold languor; and the cabin, with its warmth within the walls, did not dispel but instead increased the sense of the desertion and remoteness of this still spot.
Whereas only a few hours earlier Ethel had been restless to reach St. Florentin as quickly as possible, there to enter upon the effort with her grandfather which she had come—almost hopelessly—to spend, now the impulse of her impatience had passed. Until this encounter with Barney Loutrelle, she had been absolutely alone—unassociated with any one and unsupported—in her expedition to St. Florentin. She had been conscious of coming to her grandfather to wage with him a combat involving people whom he knew but of whose very names she was ignorant and involving affairs of which she had no understanding; and she had felt her desperate disadvantage. But,—well, she could not yet define in what respect she felt the disadvantage to be less from having met Barney Loutrelle, but she felt it; and now, when he asked her in more detail about the people at St. Florentin and about the Rock, she answered him fully and almost without reserve. She wished to delay here to think and—as he had put it—to better "work out" affairs together with him before even speaking with her grandfather over the telephone.
But after a few minutes, the bell rang.
It was a sharp, imperative ring; and, as the wire was down everywhere except to St. Florentin, Ethel knew that call came from her grandfather's. The curtness of the ring indeed gave her instantly a vision of her grardfather standing at the telephone instru-
