They were the clothes of a tramp. His boots were burst, a dirty handkerchief was knotted round his long throat, and on his chin was an unkempt beard--a piebald beard, half black, half gray. He was handsome still, but it was the wreck of comeliness--the sodden face of a dissolute man of fifty. “He must have had ill luck lately,” Jethro said. “He was evidently coming back to us.” “If he had come back--alive,” she said thoughtfully, “I wonder----” Her steady gaze on the dead, aged, handsome face never wavered. If he had come back to Folly Corner alive--so--would he have possessed the old magic? His eyes were fathoming the raftered roof. In every corner, clothed in the swaying black cobwebs, was an imp--the evil spirits who had swayed his life. “We shall never know what brought him to this. Come away, dear,” urged Jethro. She shook Jethro’s big hand off with petulance. The water from the dead man’s clothes was freezing at her feet, beneath her slippers, and chilled her. That was the nearest approach to contact she reached with the dead. She made no attempt to touch him, to go a little nearer, to stoop and stare into the glazing, fearful surface of his wide dark eyes. What a mystery he had always been! What a mystery he was now! She had never been certain even of his name. She didn’t know and never would know the secret history of the last fifteen months. Two might tell her--Sutton or the woman in brown. But she did not wish to revive either of them. That was past. Everything was past. She was stripped at last of everything; the world was simply Folly Corner. She felt as a slave might feel when he heard the blows which loosened his shackles. She was free. She had always been free--in the letter; in the spirit she had been a wretched slave. A slave to first love--that indefinable, holding thing. She turned away suddenly, turned her back on the dead man--not with horror, grief, or repulsion, but apathetically--as if she had seen enough. She dismissed him. She put her head to Jethro’s coat, with the persuasive, rubbing air of a cat. “I can’t feel,” she said, holding one hand out toward the roughly improvised bier. “I thank God that I don’t feel any longer. I’m not touched in the least, not even by ordinary natural emotions. I’m not sorry; I’m not ashamed; I’m not even glad. I’m only free. Jethro!” “Dear love!” His great hand was on her hair.