"There's no way of finding out just how things stand between them. The old lady doesn't know anything, that's a cinch. If she really knew she would have let it out to me. I'll never get a better chance to pump her than I had today. She doesn't know. You can see she hopes her son will get her. That's as plain as the nose on your face. But she doesn't know anything. Is that a good sign or a bad one? I wish I knew. Alix isn't the sort to forget. Maybe Strong has gotten over it and not she. It's darned aggravating, that's what it is. There must be some good reason why she's never married. I wonder if she's still keen about him. This talk of Charlie Webster's may be plain bunk. If she hates him,--why? That's the question. WHY does she hate him? There must be some reason beside that debt he owed to old Windom. Gad, I wish I could have seen that letter he wrote her when he sent the cheque. Well, anyhow, it's up to me to get busy. That's sure!" His walk took him past the Windomville Cemetery and up the gravel turnpike leading to the city. Alix had traversed this road an hour or so earlier. Swinging around a bend in the highway, he came in view of the abandoned farmhouse half a mile ahead. It was a familiar object by this time, for he had passed it many times, not only on his solitary walks but on several occasions with Alix. The desolate house, with its weed-grown yard, its dilapidated paling fence, its atmosphere of decay, had always possessed a certain fascination for him. He secretly confessed to a queer little sensation as of awe whenever he looked upon the empty, green-shuttered house. It suggested death. More than once he had paused in the road below the rickety gate to gaze intently at the closed windows, or to scrutinize the tangled mass of weeds and rose bushes that almost hid the porch and its approach from view. He was never without the strange feeling that the body of Edward Crown might still be lying at the foot of the hidden steps. Now he approached the place with a new and deeper interest. Strangely enough, it had been shorn within the hour of much that was grim and terrifying. It was no longer a house to inspire dread and uneasiness. Two young and venturesome spirits had invaded its silent precincts, there to dream in safety and seclusion, unhaunted by its spectres, undisturbed by its secret. In one of its darkened rooms they had set up a "workshop," a "playhouse." A glaze came over his eyes as he wondered what had transpired in that room during the surreptitious six weeks' tenancy. Had David Strong kissed her? Had she kissed David Strong? Were promises made and futures planned? His throat was tight with the swell of jealousy.