Note: Images of the original pages are available through the Google Books Library Project. See https://books.google.com/books?id=R7QhAAAAMAAJ&hl=en Transcriber’s note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). THE MAN ON THE OTHER SIDE by ADA BARNETT [Illustration] New York Dodd, Mead and Company 1922 Copyright, 1922 by Dodd, Mead and Company. Inc. Printed in U. S. A. DEDICATED TO HIM “_Oh, I would siege the golden coasts Of space, and climb high Heaven’s dome, So I might see those million ghosts Come home._” _Stella Benson_ CONTENTS CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII The Man on the Other Side CHAPTER I Ruth Courthope Seer stood on her own doorstep and was content. She looked across the garden and the four-acre field with the white may hedge boundary. It was all hers. Her eyes slowly followed the way of the sun. Another field, lush and green, sloped to a stream, where, if the agents had spoken truth, dwelt trout in dim pools beneath the willows. Field and stream, they too were hers. Good fields they were, clover thick, worthy fields for feed for those five Shorthorns, bought yesterday at Uckfield market. The love of the land, the joy of possession, the magic of the spring, they swept through her being like great clean winds. She was over forty; she had worked hard all her life. Fate had denied her almost everything—father or mother, brother or sister, husband or children. She had never had a home of her own. And now fate had given her enough money to buy Thorpe Farm. The gift was immense, still almost unbelievable. “You perfectly exquisite, delicious, duck of a place,” she said, and kissed her hand to it. The house stood high, and she could see on the one hand the dust-white road winding for the whole mile to Mentmore station; on the other, green fields and good brown earth, woodland, valley, and hill, stretching to the wide spaces of the downs, beyond which lay the sea. In 1919, the year of the Great Peace, spring had come late, but in added and surpassing beauty. The great yearly miracle of creation was at its height, and behold, it was very good.