She knew the coast of Maine as few natives knew it and was its best chronicler during those early years of the new century. She watched the invasion alike of the summer sojourner and the automobile, and looked upon both with displeasure, although with the advent of the former there was increased wealth for her. The latter she scorned to employ except in the worst of weathers, when she would occasionally allow some friendly passer-by to carry her to her next stopping-place, the red pushcart bumping along over the stones in the rear; for she hated its choking, sputtering voice along the quiet roads and its rude disturbance of her solitude. She watched children who had feared her upon her first visits grow to maturity and marry; she brought gifts to their children. And each year in graveyards above the sea she saw new white stones, stark and ugly in the wind-swept grass. Before these she would pause not infrequently, to cross herself and to say a prayer for the spirits of those who had learned to look upon her with kindliness. XI SHORT TWILIGHTS AND DRIFTING PETALS It was just five years after Mary Wescott’s wedding that, following unprecedented events in Europe, blood did begin to flow in Erzerum, as in Mary Christmas’ dream beneath the sumachs. But it was not avenging blood; and in those awestruck days when the world was rudely shaken from its serenity, the horror of it was lessened in minds already jaded by atrocities. In the mind of Mary Christmas, however, it eclipsed all other catastrophes. The compelling hideousness of it drove sleep from her tired eyes and within them lighted that red gleam which so many years ago had frightened the Wescotts at their quiet table. She was tormented day and night by the intensity of the fire within her. Seeking blindly the comfort that lies in common suffering, she pushed the papers with their ghastly, burdened words between the elbows of Raphael as he leaned upon his cigar case and pondered his stock; but he, after an impatient glance, turned to the quotations on the tobacco market. Little Mary, it is true, wept with her mother for a few secret moments, but her eyes never left the door through which her husband might at any minute come to stare at her and to shrug his big shoulders. The next two years, driven by a restlessness that dislodged even the sacredness of custom, Mary Christmas began her country traveling early and continued it late. The very exercise of walking long miles over bad roads, muddy in the spring, frozen and rutty in late autumn, loosened the tension under which she was living. Moreover, in the outlying villages and farming districts there were those who, in the light of present events, listened more eagerly to her stories of ancient wrong and cruel aggression, and gave her not only the sympathy for which she had craved, but the more welcome support of their own righteous indignation.