She checked him a gesture. "Don't--oh, don't!" she pleaded. "Perhaps you are right about being poor, but that last seems mockery and sacrilege--I cannot bear it! You don't know what you are saying. You don't know, as I do, how he has gone out in the bitter cold to work, without his breakfast, because there was not enough for all, and how--because he had cooked the breakfast himself--he did not let them know. No, you do not realize--you could not!" Mr. Weatherby regarded his companion rather wonderingly. There was something in her eyes which made them very bright. It seemed to him that her emotion was hardly justified. "I suppose he has told you all about it," he said, rather coldly. She turned upon him. "He? Never! He would never tell any one! I found it out--oh, long ago--but I did not understand it all--not then." "And the mother and sister--what became of them?" The girl's voice steadied itself with difficulty. "The mother died. The little girl was taken by some kind people. He was left to fight his battle alone." Neither spoke after this, and they walked through woods that were like the mazy forests of some old tale. If there had been a momentary rancor between them it was presently dissipated in the quiet of the gold-lit greenery about them, and as they wandered on there grew about them a peace which needed no outward establishment. They held their course by a little compass, and did not fear losing their way, though it was easy enough to become confused amid those barriers of heaped bowlders and tangled logs. By and by Constance held up her hand. "Listen," she said, "there are voices." They halted, and a moment later Robin Farnham and Edith Morrison emerged from a natural avenue just ahead. They had followed a different way and were returning to the Lodge. Frank and Constance pushed forward to meet them. "We have just passed a place that would interest you," said Robin to Miss Deane. "A curious shut-in place where mushrooms grow almost as if they had been planted there. We will take you to it."