She was, in the end, unwillingly persuaded to a more hopeful point of view. But when she had gone up the stairs to her room Jeff sat for a long time, turning the newspaper in his hands, reading over and over that which was written there. She was so beautiful, so much more beautiful than anyone he had ever seen; and the gown she wore when she came to the farm had stamped itself upon his visual memory as a part of her beauty. That a reward of ten thousand dollars should have been offered for her discovery did not surprise Jeff; though it added to the glamour which cloaked her in his eyes. “She’s worth more,” he told himself softly. “If she was mine I’d give a hundred times that much to get her back again.” And he thought of this husband of hers, whom she wished to torture, and wondered what he had done to her, and hated this man he had never seen because the woman hated him. “He’s not going to get her back,” Jeff swore in his thoughts. “If I can help her keep away from him he’ll not get her again.” There was nothing possessive in the feeling which was awakening in him. His devotion to her was a completely unselfish force. It was also the most powerful emotion Jeff had felt in all his fifty-seven years. IV Will Belter stopped at the farm next morning, and lingered, talking with Jeff, watching furtively for a glimpse of the woman; asked at last, point-blank, if it was true that Jeff’s niece had come to visit him. He and Jeff were on the porch, outside the kitchen door; and Jeff nodded and, raising his voice, called to the woman, who was inside. He called her by his niece’s name. “Mary!” She came slowly to the door, dreading this contact with a stranger. “This here’s Will Belter, one of our neighbors,” Jeff said by way of introduction. “He lives up on the ridge beyond the village.” Will, greedy eyes upon her, said, “Howdo, ma’am!” The woman watched him through the screen door, and answered, “How do you do!” He said no more, and after a moment she turned back into the obscurity of the kitchen. Will told Jeff, “She’s older than I figured she’d be.” “She looks older,” Jeff agreed. “That long train trip was pretty hard; and she was kind of sick.” “Ain’t but twenty-two or three, is she? I’d think she was thirty, anyway.” “Twenty-four,” Jeff told him. When Will presently went on his way Jeff watched his disappearing figure with stern eyes, and there was trouble in his countenance when he turned and saw the woman standing inside the screen door and also watching. “Who was that?” “I’d as soon he hadn’t come here,” Jeff confessed. “He’s a mean hound. A natural-born talebearer. Maybe we fooled him though.” She made no comment, but both understood that her desire to remain hidden was imperiled by this man’s appearance. The shadow hung over them all that day. In the evening they read the paper together, found in it little that was new.