"When it comes to that, son, Peter can fight his own in the open, but he ain't any hand to sense danger in the dark till it's too late. Peter never can believe a fellow man is doing him a bad turn till he's bowled over. But then," she ran on plaintively, "it ain't just us--Peter, Mary-Clare, and me--it's them folks down on the Point," the old face quivered touchingly. "The old doctor used to say it was God's acre for the living; the old doctor would have his joke. The Point always was a mean piece of land for any regular use, but it reaches out a bit into the lake and the fishing's good round it, and you can fasten boats to it and it's a real safe place for old folks and children. There's always drifting creatures wherever you may be, son, and King's Forest has 'em, but the old doctor held as they ought to have some place to move in, if we let 'em be born. So he set aside the Point and never took anything from them, though he gave them a lot, what with doctoring and funerals. Dear, dear! there are real comical happenings at the Point. I often sit and shake over them. Real human nature down there! Mary-Clare goes down and reads the Bible to the Pointers--they just about adore her, and she wouldn't sell them out, not for bread and butter for her very own! It's the title as worries Peter and me, son. We've always known it was tricky, but, lands! we never thought it would come to arguing about and I put it to you: What does this Maclin man want of that Point?" Northrup looked interested. "I'm going to find out," he said presently, feeling strangely as if he had become part and parcel of the matter. "I'm going to find out and you mustn't worry any more, Aunt Polly. We'll try Maclin at his own game and go him one better. He cannot account for me, I'm making him uneasy. Now you help the thing along by just squatting--that's a good phrase of yours; one can accomplish much by just squatting on his holdings." And now that tricky imagination of Northrup's pictured Mary-Clare in the thick of it and carrying out the old doctor's whims; taking to the desolate bit of ground the sweetness and brightness of her loveliness. It was disconcerting, but at the same time gratifying, that pervasive quality of Mary-Clare. She was already as deep in the plot of Northrup's work as she was in the Forest. Whenever Northrup saw her, and he did often, on the road he was amused at the feeling he had of _knowing_ her. So might it be had he come across an old acquaintance who did not recognize him. It was a feeling wrought with excitement and danger; he might some day startle her by taking advantage of it. The weather, after the storm, took an unexpected turn. Instead of bringing frost it brought days almost as warm as late summer. The colour glistened; the leaves clung to the branches, but the nights were cool. The lake lay like an opal, flashing gorgeously in the sun, or like a moonstone, when the sun sank behind the hills.