As for my attitude toward him, I hope I am free of the lesser jealousy and resentments. I will not allow myself to brood or cherish unworthy malice. I am trying to accept him, with all his evident and unusual qualities, as a man I’ve got to fight and a man I can’t help liking when I let myself judge him honestly. As for the flimsy, eccentric, meaningless, yet legal tie which links you to him, I care nothing about it. It’s got to be broken ultimately—if one can break a shadow without substance. How to do it without your aid, without knowledge of the facts, without causing you distress for some reason not explained, I don’t know. But sooner or later I shall have to know. Because all this, if I brood on it, seems a nightmare—an unreal dream where I struggle, fettered, blindfolded, against the unseen and unknown, striving to win my way through to you. That is about all I have to say, Steve. Oswald has just come in with his drawings, to find me writing to you. He seems very cheerful. His design is delightful and quite in keeping with the simplicity of the place—just a big, circular pool made out of native stone, and in the centre a jet around which three stone trout are intertwined under a tumbling spray. It is charming and will not clash at all with the long, low house with its shutters and dormers and loop-holes, and the little stone forts flanking it. Telegraph me what day and what train. And tell Helen you and she may bring your maid-of-all-work. JAMES CLELAND, in love with you. There was no need of a fire in the library that evening at Runner’s Rest. The night was mild; a mist bordered the rushing river and stars glimmered high above it. Every great tree loomed huge and dark and still, the foliage piled up fantastically against the sky-line. There was an odour of iris in the night; and silence, save for the dull stamping of horses in the stable. Cleland, deep in an arm-chair on the porch, became aware of Grismer’s tall shape materializing from the fog about him. "It’s a wonderful place, Cleland," he said with a graceful, inclusive gesture. "All this sweet, vague mystery—this delicate grey dark appeals to me—satisfies, rests me.... As though this were the abode of the Blessed Shades, and I were of them.... And the rest were ended." He seated himself near the other and gazed toward the mist out of which the river’s muffled roar came to them in ceaseless, ghostly melody. "Charon waits at every river, they say," he remarked, lighting a cigarette. "I fancy he must employ a canoe down there." "The Iroquois once did. The war trail crossed there. When they burned Old Deerfield they came this way." "The name of your quaint and squatty old house is unusual," said Grismer. "Runner’s Rest? Yes, in the Indian wars before the Revolution, the Forest Runners could find food and shelter here. The stone forts defended it and it was never burned." "You inherited it?"