Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: "_Joan rose from her self-appointed task. She looked at Thornton and throbbed with hate--but as she looked her mood again changed--she felt such pity as she had never known in her life before._"] THE SHIELD OF SILENCE BY HARRIET T. COMSTOCK AUTHOR OF JOYCE OF THE NORTH WOODS, ETC. FRONTISPIECE BY GEORGE LOUGHRIDGE GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK Made in the United States of America * * * * * COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. * * * * * TO MY SON PHILIP S. COMSTOCK "We will grasp the hands of men and women; and slowly holding one another's hands we will work our way upwards." * * * * * THE SHIELD OF SILENCE _Let us agree at once that_-- We are all on the Wheel. The difference lies in our ability to cling or let go. Meredith Thornton and old Becky Adams--let go! Across the world's heart they fell--the heart of the world may be wide or narrow--and, by the law of attraction, they came to Ridge House and Sister Angela. Unlike, and separated by every circumstance that, according to the expected, should have kept them apart--they still had the same problem to confront and the solution had its beginning in that pleasant home for Episcopal Sisters which clings so enchantingly along the north side of what is known as Silver Gap, a cleft in the Southern mountains. To say the solution of these women's problems had its beginnings in Ridge House is true; but that they were ever solved is another matter and this story deals with that. Meredith Thornton was young and beautiful. Up to the hour that she let go she had lived as they live who are drugged. She had looked on life with her senses blurred and her actions largely controlled by others. Old Becky, on the other hand, had gripped life with no uncertain hold; she, according to the vernacular of her hills, "had the call to larn," and she learned deeply. Sister Angela had clung to the Wheel. She had swung well around the circle and she believed she was nearing the end when the strange demand was made upon her. The demand was made by Meredith Thornton and Becky Adams. Meredith, from her great distance, somewhat prepared Sister Angela by a letter, but Becky, being unable either to read or write, simply took to the trail from her lonely cabin on Thunder Peak and claimed a promise made three years before. And now, since _The Rock_ played a definite part in what happened, it should have a word here.