there in the little Eastern college town where they had lived. It
was a few months later that Bella--Cousin Bella, who worked at "the
farm"--came for him, a furtive, desperate Bella with a bruised
face--a Bella tight-strung for flight, for a breaking of the galling
accustomed ties of her life, for a terrible plunge into unknown
adventure. She had muttered to him, as she dressed him and bundled
together a few of his belongings, that they "were going to Hugh"--only
it was another name she used, a name since blotted from their lives.

Hugh had sent for them. She was the only person in the world that
Hugh could trust. But no one must know where they were going. They
must be away by the time the man who took charge of the shop came
back in the morning.

Pete remembered the journey. He remembered the small frontier station
where they left the train at last. He remembered that strange,
far-flung horizon, streaked with dawn, and his first taste of the
tangy, heady air. There had been a long, long drive and a parting
with the friendly driver where Bella turned on to the trail through
the woods. It had been dim and dark and terrible among the endless
regiments of trees--mazy and green and altogether bewildering. And
after vague hop-o'-my-thumb wanderings, he had a disconnected memory
of Hugh--a wild, rugged, ragged, bearded Hugh who caught him up
fiercely as though he had an ogrish hunger for the feel of little
boys. It was night when they came to Hugh's hiding-place. For miles
Pete had been carried in his brother's arms. Bella had limped behind
them. There had been a ford, he remembered; the splashing water had
roused Pete, and he stayed awake afterward until he found himself
before a dancing fire of logs in a queer, dark, resinous-smelling
house, very low, with unglazed windows. He remembered, too, that Bella