As Anthy sat there, the fan stirring her light hair, a smile on her lips, I saw Nort looking at her in a curious, amused, puzzled way, as though he had just seen her for the first time and couldn't quite account for her. I myself thought she looked a little sad around the eyes: it came to me, indeed, suddenly, what a fine, strong face she had. She sat with her chin slightly lifted, her hands in her lap, an odd, still way she sometimes had. Since I first met Anthy, that day in the office of the _Star_, I had come to like her better and better. And somehow, deep down inside, I didn't quite like Nort's look. "We can show 'em a thing or two, eh, Nort?" the Captain was saying. "We can, Cap'n." After that, no matter what happened, the Captain swore by Nort. He was a loyal old fellow, and whatever your views might be, whatever you may have done, even though you had sunk to the depths of being a Democrat, if he once came to love you, nothing else mattered. I have sometimes thought that the old Captain really had a deeper influence upon Nort during the weeks that followed than any of us imagined. This incident of the fan marked the apogee of the first stage of Nort's career in the office of the _Star_. It was the era of Nort the subdued; and preceded the era of Nort the obstreperous. [Illustration] CHAPTER VII PHAETON DRIVES THE CHARIOT OF THE "STAR" I find myself loitering unaccountably over every memory of those days in the office of the _Star_. Not a week passed that I did not make two or three or more trips from my farm to Hempfield, sometimes tramping by the short cut across the fields and through the lanes, sometimes driving my old mare in the town road, and always with the problems of Anthy and Nort uppermost in my mind. Sometimes when I could get away, and sometimes when I couldn't (Harriet smiling discreetly), I went up in the daytime to lend a hand in the office (especially on press days), and often in the evening I went for a talk with Nort or Anthy or the old Captain, or else for a good comfortable silence with Fergus while he sat tipped back in his chair on the little porch of the office, and smoked a pipe or so--and the daylight slowly went out, the moist evening odours rose up from the garden, and the noises in the street quieted down. As I have said, the incident of the fan marked the end of the era of Nort the subdued. From that time onward, for a time, it was Nort the ascendant--yes, Nort the obstreperous! As I look back upon it now I have an amusing vision of one after another of us hanging desperately to the coat tails of our Phaeton to prevent him from driving the chariot of the _Star_ quite to destruction.