The old man ceased squeaking and looked down at his stubby legs and old shoes. Was he lying and whining for mercy, being caught with the spoils of his thieving? Jerry's big eyes were fixed on him as she tried to fathom the real situation. The bunch of grubs on the Winnowoc local--common country and village folk--had been far below her range of interest, to say nothing of sympathy. Yet here she sat in the miserable shack of a hermit fisherman, an all-but-acknowledged thief, with his loot discovered, studying him with a mind where pity and credulity were playing havoc with her better judgment and her aristocratic breeding. Had she fallen so low as this, or had she risen to a newer height of character than she had ever known before? Suddenly the old grub hunched down on the table before her looked up. Jerry remembered afterward how clear and honest the gaze of those faded yellow eyes set in a multitude of yellow wrinkles. His hands let go of the table's edge and fitted knuckle into palm as he asked, in a quavering voice: "Be you really Jim Swaim's girl who used to live up in that there Winnowoc country back yander in Pennsylvany?" Jerry's heart thumped violently. It was the last word she had expected from this creature. "Yes, I'm Jim's only child." The same winsome smile that made the artistic Eugene Wellington of Philadelphia adore her beamed now on this poor old outcast down by the deep hole of the Sage Brush. "An' be you hard up, an' earnin' your own livin' by yourself, did ye say? 'Ain't ye got a rich kin back East to help ye none?" The voice quavered up and down unsteadily. "Yes, I have a rich aunt, but I'm taking care of myself. It makes me freer, but I have to be particular not to--to--lose any money right now," Jerry said, frankly. "Then ye air doin' mighty well, an' it's the thing that 'u'd make your daddy awful glad ef he only could know. It 'u'd be fulfillin' his own wish. I know it would. I heered him say so onct." Jerry Swaim's eyes were full of unshed tears. Keenly she remembered when Uncle Cornie had told her the same thing at the doorway of the rose-arbor in beautiful "Eden" in the beautiful June-time. How strange that the same message should come to her again here in the shadow of New Eden inside the doorway of a fisherman's hut. And how strange a thing is life at any time! "Please don't be unhappy about this." Jerry lifted the money which lay in her lap. "It shall never trouble you." And then for a brief ten minutes the two talked together, Geraldine Swaim of Philadelphia, and old Fishing Teddy, the Sage Brush hermit. Joe Thomson, sitting in the gray car, saw Jerry coming through the bushes, her hat in her hand, the summer sunshine on her glorious crown of hair, her face wearing a strange new expression, as if in Fishing Teddy's old shack a revelation of life's realities had come to her and she had found them worthy and beautiful.