The September evening when May uttered the startling sentences, regarding a strange man and a mysterious black, set down at the head of this section of the story of her adventures, was warm and clear. Brightly the stars shone in the sky and in the field back of the Edgley’s kitchen door all the little ponds had become dry. Since that first evening when she had met May a great change had taken place in Maud. May had led her up to the ramparts of the tower of romance and as often as possible now the two sat together under a tree in the field or on the floor by the open window in May’s room. To the field they went through the kitchen door, along the creek where the elders and willows grew and over stones in the bed of the creek itself, to a wire fence. How alone and how far away from the life of the town they were in the field at night! Buggies and the few automobiles then owned in Bidwell passed on distant roads, and over the town, soft lights played on the sky and soft lights seemed to play over the spirits of the two women. On a distant street, that led down to the town waterworks, a group of young men went tramping along on a board sidewalk. They were singing a song. “Listen, May,” Maud said. The voices died away and another sound came. Jerry Haden, a cripple who walked with a crutch and who delivered evening papers, went along quickly, his crutch making a sharp clicking sound on the sidewalks. What a hurry he was in. “Click! click!” went the crutch. It was a time and place for the growth of romance. A desire to reach out to life, to command life grew within Maud. One evening she, alone and unaided, mounted the tower of romance and told May of how a young man in Fort Wayne had wanted to marry her. “He was the son of the president of a railroad company,” she said. The matter was of no importance and she only spoke of it to show what men were like. For a long time he came to the house almost every evening and when he did not come he sent flowers and candy. Maud had cared nothing for him. There was a certain air he had that wearied her. He seemed to think himself in some way of better blood than the Wellivers. The idea was absurd. Maud’s father knew his father and knew that he had once been no more than a section hand on the railroad. His pretensions wearied Maud and she finally sent him away. Maud told May, on several evenings of the imaginary young man whom, because of his pride of blood, she had cast adrift, and on the September evening wanted to speak of something else. For two or three evenings she had been on the point of saying what was in her mind but could not bring the matter to her lips. It trembled within her like a wild bird caught and held in her hand, as, in the dim light, she looked at May. “She won’t do it. I’ll never get her to do it,” she thought.