"My dear little Kathryn! It is going to be all right, all right. Why, childie, when he comes home I am going to insist upon the wedding. I am not a young woman, really, though I put up a bit of a bluff--and the time isn't very long, no matter how you look at it--so, darling, you and Brace must humour me, do the one big thing to make me happy--you must be married!" Kathryn looked up. The tears hung to her long lashes. "You want this?" she faltered with quivering lips. Helen believed she understood at last. "My darling!" she said tenderly, "it is the one great longing of my heart." Then she dropped back on her pillow and closed her eyes while the pain gripped her. But the pain, for a moment, seemed a friend, not a foe. It might be the thing that would open the door--out. Helen had spoken truth as truth should be but never quite is, to a mother. She had taken her place in the march, her colours flying. But her place was the mother's place, lagging in the rear. Such an effort as she had just made caused angels to weep over her. CHAPTER X By a kind of self-hypnotism Northrup had gained his ends so far as drifting with the slow current of King's Forest was concerned, and in his relation toward his book. The unrest, as to his duty in a world-wide sense, was lulled. Whatever of that sentiment moved him was focussed on Maclin who, in a persistent, vague way became a haunting possibility of danger almost too preposterous to be considered seriously. Still the possibility was worth watching. Maclin's attitude toward Northrup was interesting. He seemed unable to ignore him, while earnestly desiring to do so. The fact was this: Maclin looked upon Northrup as he might have upon a slow-burning fuse. That he could not estimate the length of the fuse, nor to what it was attached, did not mend matters. One cannot ignore a trail of fire, and a guilty conscience is never a sleeping one. The people on the Point had long since come to the conclusion that Northrup was a trailer of Maclin, not their enemy. The opinion was divided as to his relations with Mary-Clare, but that was a different matter. "I'll bet my last dollar," Twombley muttered, forgetting that his last dollar was a thing of the past, "that this young feller will find out about those inventions. Inventions be damned! That's what I say. There's something going on at the mines that don't spell inventions." This was said to Peneluna who was aging under the strain of unaccustomed excitement. "When he lands Maclin," she said savagely, "I'll grab Larry. Larry is a fool, but from way back, Maclin is the sinner. Queer"--she gave a deep sigh--"how a stick muddling up a biling brings the scum to the surface! I declare! I wish we had something to grip hold of. Suspicioning your neighbours ain't healthy." Jan-an, untroubled by moral codes, was unconditionally on Northrup's side. She patched her gleanings into a vivid conclusion and announced, much to Peneluna's horror: