Dennie replied in a voice that made her think of the muffled breaking of the waves on the distant coast. "I was fearsome of it, Deely, but I swore I wouldn't think on't. It ar' best I know it now. We'll go and look for--for Sylv. If he ar' alive, I'll bring you to him." CHAPTER XV. ELBOW-CROOK SWAMP. Without notice Hedson had appeared on the scene; he was hospitably received by Colonel Floyd, and asked Lance to show him over the ground in which the as yet unborn syndicate was expected to invest. Accompanied by Sylv they were occupied in a general survey of the swamp, from the outside, at the time when Dennie was talking with Adela in Newbern. "Yes, yes; fine country for a cemetery," said the hale but sceptical Hedson. "To come down to bed-rock on this thing," he added, turning to Lance, "the expense of paring off the natural growth and filling in here would be enormous, to say nothing of what the lawyers call 'supplementary proceedings.' You know what that means, don't you, Mr. De Vine?" Here he included Sylv in the favored list of those for whom his remarks were intended. The upshot of the exploratory drive was that Hedson gave a semi-adverse judgment; notwithstanding which he began to consult with himself inaudibly as to the best mode of going to work to buy some of the waste land in question on his private account. Sylv showed an unmistakable eagerness to begin his task of investigating the interior of the swamp, and before he parted from Lance for the day he took him aside and told him that he should be in the swamp by daylight of the next morning. Hedson and the colonel found plenty to talk about that evening, and Lance was left alone with Jessie. The conversation that passed between these two was somewhat ruffled. Jessie found fault with her lover because he had gone to Newbern against her will, and Lance assured her that his eccentric interest in Adela Reefe was now appeased: he had done all that he wished to, in disclosing to her the probable relationship with the Floyds, and would henceforth leave her affairs, for the most part, alone. But Jessie was not content with that declaration. "If she comes back here to live, as you say she is about to do," she asked, "what do you expect?" "Simply that we shall receive her as one of us," said Lance. "I have befriended her and the De Vine boys, and I intend to keep on. They are inevitably a part of my system and my plans now." "Then you are going to overturn everything," Jessie asserted. In short, silly though it was, they quarrelled more seriously than they had done hitherto. Jessie, there is reason to believe, was very unhappy in consequence, and passed a wretched night. And Lance scarcely slept a wink. He lay restless on his bed, turning and tossing, until it seemed to him that he veered this way or that with the varying gusts of the tempestuous wind that hourly grew more turbulent, until Fairleigh Manor shook in its angry clutch.