At her host's explosive declaration, "I see myself doing it," Jerry had come to herself. Surprised and wounded, but realizing the justice of the ground for suspicion against her--her--Jerry Swaim, who had always had first concern in those about her--she left her room hastily and passed out of the house by the side door. In the little vine-covered entry she sat down and stared out at the lawn, where the fireflies were beginning to twinkle against the shrubbery bordering the driveway. She had thought the disposition of her estate, and the choice of occupation, and the putting away of Eugene Wellington, had settled things for her future. Here was the fulfilling of a sense of something wrong that had recently possessed her, hardly letting itself be more than a sense till now. What did life mean, anyhow? "To go mad or go back East?" Why should she do either one, who had not offended anybody? As Jerry gazed out at the shadowy side lawn the sound of a step caught her ear--a shuffling of feet across the grass, and the noise of a hard sole on the cement driveway. Jerry's eyes mechanically followed a short, shambling figure, suggesting a bear almost as much as a human being, as it passed forward a step or two; then, dividing the spirea-bushes on the farther edge, it disappeared into the deeper shadow of the slope toward the town below "Kingussie." It was Fishing Teddy--old Hans Theodore; Jerry recognized him at a glance, and in the midst of her confused struggle to find herself she paused to wonder about him. Intense mental states often experience such pauses, when the mind grappling in an internal combat rests for a moment on an impression coming through the senses. "What's the old Teddy Bear doing here?" Jerry asked herself, and then she remembered his coming once before almost to this very spot. That was the night Joe Thomson had called--the big farmer whose property her own was helping to destroy. There was something strong and unbreakable about this Joe. A million leagues from her his lot was cast, of course, and yet she hoped somehow that Joe might be near and that the Teddy Bear was waiting for him. "Jerry! Jerry!" York called through the hall, and then he came out to where she sat on the side porch. "I was hunting for you. You have a caller, my lady, a gentleman who wants to take you for a ride up the river. It will be gloriously cool on the ridges up-stream. He will give you a splendid hour before the curfew rings--the lucky dog!" Jerry looked up expectantly. "It must be Joe Thomson," she thought, and she was glad to have him come again. On the front porch little Junius Brutus Ponk was strutting back and forth, chatting with Laura. "Good evening, Miss Swaim. I just soared down to invite you to take a little drive in my gadabout. I hope it will suit you to go."