such faith in you. He often said to me——”

[83]

They had been walking swiftly ever since leaving old Ben behind in the lane, choosing automatically a quiet back street, and now, turning a corner, they were alone. He caught her wrists in a grip of steel, cutting her sentence short.

“It’s what I was aiming for the day I started to work,” he said, tensely. “Do you hear? I promised myself, then. And now you listen to me, Glen, you listen, and remember. Five years from the time I started in here as a hand, I’m superintendent: in less than five years more, I’ll own the Altonia!”

“Luke!”

“You listen to me, and you keep still about it, but you remember what I say!” A new Luke Manders, fiery, implacable—new voice, new eyes, new grasp of iron. Gloriana-Virginia Tolliver’s persistent word flashed into her mind and out again—“I’m jes’ pintly skeered of Luke Manders....” It came in of its own volition but she drove it out, loyally, in a panic at herself for harboring it even an instant.

“And your granny!” The image of his ancient kinswoman that day of the first meeting—“hit’s ontelling,[84]  what you might do and be, if you was to be fotched on!” How unerringly the old crone had divined power and purpose in her “son’s son’s son!”

[84]

“Yes, Granny would be satisfied.” He relaxed a trifle, letting go of her throbbing wrists, and she wondered if his mind had reverted to the witch-woman’s threat to “ha’nt him” unless he came to Dr. Darrow. “She would be satisfied.” He repeated it, gravely, and there was reassurance in sensing the return to his normal manner.

He was walking swiftly, with long strides, and Glen, in spite of her fine height, had to take a skipping step now and then to keep up with him. With a touch at her elbow he guided her from the deserted side street into a winding, mounting lane which led, in rambling, dallying fashion to the back of her house, and looking up into his face again, Glen saw that her hour had come—the hour she had visualized on waking that morning.

She stood still when he did, and met his eyes fearlessly and gladly. There was no self-consciousness, no shyness, no maiden reserves. She was conscious of a deep wonder within herself. Was it like this, then? Not in the few romances she had read! She had known since she was fourteen that she would some day fall in 

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