The road swung around the mountain and went up through a dim green avenue of pines and hemlocks, and below, in its bowldered crypts and gorges, poured a stream with white foam and mysterious song, or sometimes lay still in black pools. The steep slope of the mountain was on the left. The road climbed steadily, and came out of the woods at last not a mile from the village in a cup of the hills of Hagar. At the cross-roads Morgan stepped out and Gard followed. "The house is behind the church there." Morgan said, shortly, and moved to walk away, but stopped and turned half around when Gard spoke, listening with his mouth set and yellow brows drawn low. "I dare say you'll succeed, you and your philosophy," said Gard, slowly, looking towards the church and the house behind it. "I dare say I sha'n't, in that way--or care to, very much. Competition doesn't seem to me worth while." Morgan was silent. The battered stage had rolled away down the hill to the post-office, where Mr. Paulus came out for the mail, and Thaddeus Bourn followed after him. Thaddeus looked up the hill, dropped the iron point of his cane on the stone step with a click, and stared blankly. Mr. Paulus, mail-bag in hand, stopped and followed the direction of Thaddeus's eyes. The stage-driver climbed down from his seat and joined them. "I don't care," Gard continued, "a blank cartridge what you did or tried to do. There's no stipulation except that we keep out of each other's way. Is that satisfactory?" "That's all right." Morgan hesitated, and brought out with apparent effort: "You'd better look in the cemetery first; I saw something there," went his way with long strides, and disappeared down the first dip on the Cattle Ridge road. "There's a cemetery, very true," Gard thought, and went towards it, past the minister's picket fence and neat gate to where the mournful hemlocks stood in meditation. And there some one in a black dress was kneeling and planting flowers over a new grave, and near by was a tall, gray stone, and thereon, graven in large letters: "SIMON BOURN, "BORN ---- DIED ---- "REMEMBER ME." Morgan swung along, and looked not to right or left, nor cared if any villager speculated on the singular sight of "one of the Map boys" observably bound for the square house on the hill; past the mill where Job Mather watched his slow millstones, past the mill-pond, the blacksmith's, and the rambling, low farm-house that hived innumerable Durfeys, through the stone pillars of Squire Map's gate, up to the square house on the hill. The door was locked. He rang the bell, and waited some time. The place seemed half deserted, unkept, the walks littered with last year's rotting leaves. The door opened suddenly and Squire Map nearly filled it with broad, bowed shoulders. "I've lost her, dad." "Come in, Morgan."