It was quite as natural as everything else about it, but it raised a cloud. "She did not know, then, that Reuben Cowder had quarreled with Otto. She did not know there was a question in Sabinsport's mind about his loyalty. And could it be that she cared for him? What more probable?" If the Reverend Richard Ingraham went home, marveling at the sweet and wonderful companionship so fully and naturally opened to him, there was a decided uneasiness running through his exaltation. Did Nancy Cowder care for Otto Littman? Would she understand the feeling about him? Would she know, indeed, anything of the stratagem and plots that the Germans had spun over the country, with what Dick felt was for the most part decidedly amateurish and bungling skill? Would she dismiss the suspicions which connected Otto Littman's name with the intrigues as unfounded and unworthy? Did she care enough to defend him, womanlike, even if it was finally proved that there was a serious, nationwide, Germany-inspired conspiracy abroad and that he was connected with the mischief-making? It was many months before he was to have satisfactory answers to these questions. And for the most part they lay at the bottom of his mind, only working their way for brief, if troubling, moments to the top. Life was too full, too insistent, too weighty, to give time for questions that did not require immediate handling. He saw much of Reuben Cowder and his daughter. The unquestioning, affectionate acceptance of him as part of their life that had so rejoiced and overwhelmed him that first day, continued. It was made the more delightful by the entire naturalness of the Cowders' relations with Sabinsport. Ralph and Dick discussed it again and again. The town took them in, and they accepted the town as if there had been no long black years when Sabinsport had openly scorned the man and his daughter, while it secretly feared him and envied her; or when Reuben Cowder hated them all with a Scotch hate because they so utterly misjudged his beautiful girl. All of this seemed forgotten now--something childish, not worth recall, belonging to a day when men and women occupied themselves with lesser things. The town's suspicions had been washed completely away by the story of Nancy Cowder's noble sacrifice and brave endurance. They plumed themselves no little on the fact that she belonged to them. The change in Reuben Cowder, who, if he owned as much as ever of everything and ran it with as high hand as ever, did it smilingly and generously, wiped out fear and old enmities. And as for Nancy and her father, after you've been where they had been, resentment for neglect and misjudgment have no part in your soul.