Other things had not gone to please Ann of late. She had tried her best to be in sympathy with Luke King’s action in paying out his last dollar of ready money for a farm for his family, whom she heartily despised for their treatment of her, but she could not see it from the young man’s sanguine and cheerful stand-point. She had seen the Bruce family driving by in one of the old-fashioned vehicles the Dickersons had owned, and the sight had seemed ludicrous to her. "The boy will never amount to anything," she said. "He’ll be poor all his life. He’ll let anybody impose on him." And yet she loved him with a strange, insistent affection she could hardly understand. Even when she had bitterly upbraided him for that amazing act of impulsive generosity, as he sat in her doorway the next morning, and she saw the youthful blaze of enthusiasm in his eyes as he essayed to justify his course by the theories of life which had guided him in his professional career—even then an impulse was tugging at her heart to listen and believe the things he was so ardently declaring would free her from her bondage to hate and avarice. She could have kissed him as she might have kissed a happy, misguided son, and yet her coldness, her severity, she argued, was to be for his ultimate good. He had sent her copies of his new paper, with his editorials proudly marked in blue pencil. They were all in the same altruistic vein, and, strange to say, the extracts printed from leading journals all over the South in regard to his work were full of hearty approval. He had become a great factor for good in the world. He was one man who had the unfaltering courage of his convictions. Ann laughed to herself as she recalled all she had said to him that day. No wonder that he had thrown it off with a smile and a playful kiss, when such high authorities were backing him up. True, he might live in such a way as never to need the money which had been her weapon of defence, and he might finally rise to a sort of penniless greatness. Besides, his life was one thing, hers another. No great calamity had come to him in youth, such as she had known and so grimly fought; no persistent enemy was following his track with the scent and bay of a blood-hound, night and day seeking to rend him to pieces. These reflections were suddenly disturbed by a most unusual sound at that time of night. It was the sharp click of the iron gate-latch. Ann’s heart sprang to her throat and seemed to be held there by taut suspense. She stood up, her hand on the mantel-piece, bending her ears for further sounds. Then she heard a heavy, even tread approaching. How could it be? And yet, though a score of years had sped since it had fallen on her ears, she knew it well. "It can’t be!" she gasped. "It’s somebody else that happens to walk like him; he’d never dare to—"