With all her gift of badinage, she was a solitary soul. The men feared no less than they admired her. They were shy of that wild courage, fearful to put so dark a mystery to the solution. The women hated her, backbit and would not make friends, because of the fatal instantaneous power she wielded to spin men's blood and pitch their souls derelict on that impassioned current. Who shall put his finger on the source of this power? There were girls upon girls with eyes as black, cheeks as like hers as fruit ripened on the same bough, hair as thick and lustrous--yet at the sound of Caddie Sills's bare footfall eyes shifted and glowed, and in the imaginations of these men the women of their choice grew pale as the ashes that fringe a fallen fire. "She's a perilous woman," muttered the collector of the port. "Sticks in the slant of a man's eye like the shadow of sin. Ah! there he goes, like the leaves of autumn." Samuel Dreed trod the dust of the road with a wonderful swaying of his body, denominated the Western Ocean roll. He was a mighty man, all were agreed; not a nose of wax, even for Cad Sills to twist. "Plump she'll go in his canvas bag, along with his sea boots and his palm and needle, if she's not precious careful, with her shillyshallying," said Zinie Shadd. "I know the character of the man, from long acquaintance, and I know that what he says he'll do he'll do, and no holding off at arm's length, either, for any considerable period of time." Such was the situation of Cad Sills. A dark, lush, ignorant, entrancing woman, for whose sake decent men stood ready to drop their principles like rags--yes, at a mere secret sign manifested in her eye, where the warmth of her blood was sometimes seen as a crimson spark alighted on black velvet. She went against the good government of souls. Even Rackby had taken note of her once, deep as his head was in the clouds by preference and custom. It was a day in late November. No snow had fallen, and she floated past him like a cloud shadow as he plodded in the yellow road which turned east at the Preaching Tree. She passed, looked back, slashed a piece of dripping kelp through the air so close that salt drops stung his pale eyes, laughed aloud, and at the top of her laugh, broke into a wild, sweet song unfamiliar to him. It was a voice unlike the flat voices of women thereabouts--strong, sweet, sustained, throbbing with a personal sense of the passion which lurked in the warm notes. Her foot was bare, and more shapely in consequence than if she had had a habit of wearing shoes. Its shape was the delicate shape of strength native to such a foot, and each toe left its print distinct and even in the dust. With his eye for queer details, he remembered that print and associated with it the yellow-rutted road, the rusty alders in the meadow beyond, and the pale spire of the church thrust into a November sky.