There was a wood-pile within a few yards of him. Ma'am Baldwin stepped toward it, breathing heavily and ejaculating: "My sen-ses! How it do blow!" While Leon restrained the terrier with a "_Quiet_, Blink! Don't go for her!" Ma'am Baldwin, intent on holding fast to her shawls and procuring some chunks from the wood-pile--nearsighted as she was, to boot--did not notice the boy and dog standing in the blackness beneath the bare apple-tree. She set the lantern atop of the pile. As she bent forward, groping for a hatchet, its yellow rays kindled two other lanterns in her eyes by whose light the lurking boy gazed through into her heart and saw for a brief moment how tired, lonely, and baffled it was. At the glimpse he straightened up very stiffly. There was a gurgle in his throat, a stirring as of panic at the roots of his hair. But not scare produced the rigidity! It was caused by a sudden great throe within which scraped his throat and sent a dimness to his eyes. The captive, Malign Habit, imprisoned before, was dying now in the grasp of the Scout. To put it otherwise,--at sight of an old woman's arm pathetically shielding her breast, at a startled peep into her heart, the tight little bud of chivalry in Leon, watered of late by his scout training, fostered by the good turn to somebody every day, burst suddenly, impetuously into flower! With a low snarl at himself, he thrust the coil of string deep into his pocket, and flung the shingle as far as he could into the night. "Ughr-r-r! Guess I was meaner'n you'd be, Blink!" he muttered, swallowing the discovery that sometimes of yore, in his dealings with his own kind, he had been less of a gentleman than his dog. To which Blink, freed from restraint, returned a sharp, glad "Wouf!" that said: "I'm glad you've come to your senses, old man!" "Hullo! 'Mom Baldwin,'" Leon stepped forward as the bowed woman started at the monosyllabic bark, and peered fearfully into the darkness. "Don't you want me to split those chunks for you? You can't manage the hatchet." Ma'am Baldwin's experience had taught her to distrust boys--Leon especially! As her peering eyes recognized him, she backed away, raising her right arm to her breast again with that helpless gesture of defense. Starrie Chase blenched in turn. That pathetic old arm warding him off hurt him more at the core than a knockdown blow from a stronger limb. But remembering all at once that he was a scout, trained to prompt action, he picked up the hatchet where she had dropped it, and set to work vigorously, chopping wood. "Now! I'll carry these chunks into the house for you," he said presently. "Aw! let me. I'd just as soon do it!" Ma'am Baldwin had no alternative. Leon pushed the paintless door open and carried the wood inside, while she hobbled after him, well-nigh as much astonished as if Gabriel's trump had suddenly awoke the echoes of the gusty marshland.