“Why don’t you own up what your grudge is against me?” he gritted. “Why ain’t you man enough to fight fair and lay down when you’re licked? If Syl-vena Willard had wanted you she would have married you, and because she is going to marry me when---when”--his eyes shifted uneasily under the Squire’s stern gaze--“when she gets ready to, is no reason why you should ghost me ’round town and make up stories to retail to her. I suppose you’ll be reporting I’m planning to run away.” “You stop right where you are, Bradish!” cried the lawyer. “Sylvena Willard is too good a woman to have her name bandied here between us, or dragged through a village scandal by your fault. Your affairs and hers are between yourselves. You needn’t discuss them. But you shall not break up young Mayo’s family, nor insult Sylvena Willard by your actions, and I say this as a friend of both. Now, if you know where your head is level you will get out of my office.” The creases deepened about the Squire’s mouth. One fist was clenched at his side. The other hand pointed to the door. Bradish paused irresolutely, closing and unclosing his hands. But at that moment the door opened and a woman came in. Bradish crowded past her and went thumping down the stairs. Mrs. Micajah Dunham, bolt upright in the middle of the seat of a rattly beach waggon and disdaining the support of the leather-covered back, even when the ledges of the Cove road danced her most vigorously, had with a directness typical of Mrs. Micajah Dunham driven straight to the gnawed hitching post in front of Brickett’s store. Mrs. Dunham always appeared to be a very rigid sort of person, but on this occasion there was extra rigidity about her, from the set of her jaw to the stiffness of her knee action, as she stepped down from the waggon. Looking neither right nor left, she ran the halter rope through the gnawed hitching post and walked up the outside stairs exactly in the middle, hands at her sides and neglecting the rain-bleached rail as she had disdained the seat-back. A bonnet trimmed with dust-spotted imitations of grapes framed her narrow face squarely, and a shawl appeared to pinch her shoulders together. She sat down in the “blind-stagger” chair well to the edge, on account of the dust, at which her housewife’s eye glared in disfavour. “Squire,” she said, with a directness of attack that took no account of his averted face, “I’ve come to consult you legally, and I’ve brought the dockyments.” She jerked herself up, crossed the room, and laid on his open book a sheet of rudely scalloped pink paper, on which were pasted hearts cut out of red and blue tissue. “That’s almost the first to which I really was knowin’ the straight facts,” she went on. “But I’ve had a glimmer of an idea for some time. Oh, I tell you it ain’t come all to once, this thing ain’t!” The lawyer turned slowly, picked up the paper, holding it gingerly by the corner.