fell. At that moment the door swung open and Peg Grandoken’s face appeared. She looked questioningly at the market man. “I thought I saw Jinnie come in,” she hesitated–– Then realizing something was wrong, her eyes fell upon the stricken girl. “She was just earnin’ a little sausage by dancin’,” the butcher excused. Peggy stared and stared, stunned for the moment. The hangdog expression on Maudlin’s face expressed his crime better than words would have done. Jinnie’s little form was huddled against the counter, the shortwood scattered around her, and from her forehead blood was oozing. On the slender arm was the ring of sausage and between her set teeth was Lafe’s pale rose. With her outraged soul shining in her eyes, Peggy gathered the unconscious girl in her two strong arms. “I bet you done it, you damn Maudlin!” she gritted, and without another word, left the market. Within a few minutes she had laid Jinnie on her bed, and was telling Lafe the pathetic story. 95 CHAPTER XII WATCHING There was absolute quiet in the home of the cobbler for over a week. The house hung heavy with gloom. Jinnie Grandoken was fighting a ghastlier monster than even old Matty had created for her amusement. Of course Jinnie didn’t realize this, but two patient watchers knew, and so did a little black dog. To say that Lafe suffered, as Peggy repeated over and over to him the story of Jinnie’s loving act, would be words of small import, and through the night hours, when the cobbler relieved his wife at the sick girl’s bed, shapes black and forbidding rose before him, menacing the child he’d vowed to protect. Could it be that Maudlin Bates had anything to do with Jinnie’s fall? Even so, he was powerless to shield her from the young wood gatherer. A more perplexing problem had never faced his paternal soul. After his little son had gone away, there had been no child to love until—and now as he looked at Jinnie, agony surged through him with the memory of that other agony—for she might go to little Lafe. There came again the stabbing pain born with Peg’s tale of the dance. The white rose lay withered in the cobbler’s bosom where it had been since his girl had been carried to what the
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