“You think all those people down in Woodstock are wonderful people, because they write and paint and carve things, and all that. But they’re not as much as Whalen. He’s big in every way. When you’re just near him you feel it even though he doesn’t say much. Maybe you don’t know what I mean.” “I think I do know. Are you surely coming back to-morrow night? You know you said you were going to do one thing and then you didn’t do it. So how can I know _what_ to think?” “I did just what I wanted to do, didn’t I? Nobody can tell me what I ought to do. And I’m coming back to-morrow night—because I want to.” “Would you like me to hike out to the ledge with you; all the way?” “Sure, and I’ll show you all the initials.” “Esther B’s?” “If I can find it.” “I don’t believe there’s any such one there. That’s why you’re afraid you can’t find it. I bet you know a real girl by that name.” A pause. “Don’t you?” “No, I don’t. We’ll carve our own initials away out on the ledge, hey?” Tom said. “Farther than any of the others—away, way out at the end of the trail. Hey?” “Oh let’s,” said Audry.... CHAPTER XXXIX “HERE’S LUCK” By evening the country knew the whole extraordinary story and only a legal formality was necessary officially to clear Anson Dyker of the stigma and peril which he had known for fifteen years. His rash flight in boyish panic so long ago had taken him to South America, and when he had wandered back, the courage to go and give himself up was lacking. He told Tom these things as they hiked down to Mead’s whence they rode to West Hurley station and caught the train into Kingston. Here they waited for the West Shore train to Catskill. He had been all over the country since the murder, worked in a mining camp in the West, in a lumber camp in Michigan. He had been as far as the islands of the south Pacific in his lonely wanderings. The recurrent resolve to return and give himself up had ebbed away as the crime became a dead letter. He felt that he was another man living in another world. The rash boy he remembered grew dim, and finally disappeared altogether. Then had come the war giving him the opportunity he craved—concealment in the roar of battle, safety. And in the end he had braved the danger of recognition and gone to work on the old mountain which he remembered as a favorite haunt of his innocent boyhood.