girl have a friend that's tender and good to her?"

"A girl can," he said, gravely, "because I'm that friend, Clare. Perhaps
my grandfather cannot understand. But I'll see that he does. We are to
have some very serious talk together, he and I. I'm here to tell you,
little girl, that I'm grateful because you sent that message into the
woods to me. I'm not going to allow myself to be made a fool of in any
such fashion; I'm not going to be sent to the legislature."

"Oh, I've been thinking--thinking how it sounded--all that I said," she
mourned. "It all came to me as I was riding home--after what your
grandfather said. I didn't realize what kind of a girl I must seem to
folks that didn't know. But you know. It sounded as though I was
claiming you for myself, when I didn't want you to go away. I'm
ashamed--ashamed!" She averted her eyes from him. The crimson in her
cheeks was deeper. It was a vandal hand that had wrecked the little
shrine of her childhood. His indignation against Thelismer Thornton
blazed higher.

But Dennis Kavanagh knew how to be even more brutal, for that was Dennis
Kavanagh's style of attack. He came out upon the porch, a broad, stocky
chunk of a man, with eyebrows sticking up like the horns on a snail, and
the eyes beneath them keen with humor of the grim and pitiless sort.

"And how do you do to-day, Harlan Thornton?" he asked. "And how is that
old gorilla of a grandfather of yours? Though you needn't tell me, for I
don't want to know--not unless you can lighten me up a bit by telling me
that he's enjoying his last sickness. But right now while I think of it,
I have something to say to you, young Thornton, sir."