"I'll never tell you!" Lettie blazed up like a fire brand. "Aren't you willing to right the wrongs you've done, and save yourself, too?" His voice did not change. "I'm going to leave here when I get ready. I'm going away, but not till I am ready, and--" She had almost yielded, but evil desire is a strong master. The spirit of her low-browed father gained control again, and she raised a stormy face to him who would have befriended her. "I'm going to do what I please, and go where I please; and I'll fix some precious saints so they'll never want to come back to this town; and some others'll wish they could leave it." "All right, then," O'mie replied, as Lettie flung herself out of the door, "if you find me among those prisent when you turn some corner suddenly don't be surprised. I wonder," he went on, "who got that letter the last night the miserable Melrose girl was here, or the night after. I wonder how she could reach it when she couldn't get the other one. Maybe the hole had something in it, one of Phil's letters to Marjie, who knows? And that was why that letter did not get far enough back from her thievin' fingers. Oh, I'm mighty glad Kathleen Morrison give me the mitten for Jess Gray, one of them Red Range boys. How can a man as good and holy as I am manage the obstreperous girls? But," he added seriously, "this is too near to sin and disgrace to joke about now." CHAPTER XX THE CLEFT IN THE ROCK And yet I know past all doubting truly, A knowledge greater than grief can dim, I know as he loved, he will love me duly, Yea, better, e'en better, than I love him. --JEAN INGELOW. While O'mie and Lettie were acting out their little drama in the store that afternoon, Judson was up in Mrs. Whately's parlor driving home matters of business with a hasty and masterful hand. Marjie had slipped away at his coming, and for the second time since I had left Springvale she took the steep way up to our "Rockport." Had she known what was going on at home she might have stayed there in spite of her prejudices. "It's just this way, Mrs. Whately," Judson declared, when he had formally opened the conference, "it's just this way. With all my efforts in your behalf, your business interest in the store has been eaten up by your expenditures. Of course I know you have always lived up to a certain kind of style whether you had the money or not; and I can understand, bein' a commercialist, how easy those things go. But that don't alter the fact that you'll have no more income from the store in a very few months. I'm planning extensive changes in the Winter for next Spring, and it'll take all the income. Do you see now?" "Partly," Mrs. Whately replied faintly.