Yet who was to uphold her in the hour of weakness? Who was to drive the wolf away from the ewe? Insidiously the temptations RoBards had denounced as complacency, servility, wanton desire took on now the aspect of duty. It was his duty to go home and take up wedlock again, to save the little silly beauty he had married from becoming a monster of iniquity. Now that his house was freed of the intruder, homesickness came over him like a fever. He yearned for the hills of Westchester, those earthen breakers foaming with trees, and carrying on their crests houses like ships anchored on waves that never moved. His long sojourn in New York began to attract open comment, particularly as the heat was so vicious that it looked curious for anyone to remain who could get out. There was nobody in town now but nobodies. What excuse had he to linger? He had to rise and go back. He had not slain Chalender. This abstention in itself had amounted to an acquittal. If he were not going to punish Chalender, why should he punish himself? If his aim were to escape gossip, why encourage it? He went home. Patty was in the yard playing a game with the children. They seemed to have grown amazingly since he left. They ran to him screaming welcome. It was bliss to feel their warm hands clutching him. He could see that Patty was afraid to move either toward him or away. She had never written to him, but he had felt that this was meekness rather than neglect. She waited now struggling between a cry of joy and a fit of tears. He pretended that it was for the children’s sake that he called out: “Hello, Patty!” “Hello, David!” she murmured. Suddenly her eyes were gleaming with tears. CHAPTER XVI The old Jessamines stared at him, but summed up their curiosity and their resentment in a “Well! So you’re back?” “Yes,” he said, the answer sufficient to the question. He was embarrassed to find that a cousin of his wife’s was visiting the farm and the spare room was filled. He had to go back with Patty. But they were like two enemies in the same cell. Sometimes he would wake suddenly in the night from a hell of self-contempt. He would both sweat and shiver with remorse for the shame of having let Chalender live. In his half-insanity it seemed a belated duty to go out and assassinate the villain. To shoot him down openly would be too noble a punishment—like shooting a spy. To garrote him, string him up squirming from a tree limb would be best. Major André had wept pleading to be shot, but they had hanged him—not far from Tuliptree Farm. And only recently people had dug up his grave and found the tiny roots of a tree all grown about his curly hair. Chalender had sneaked into RoBards’ home and Patty had played the Benedict Arnold to surrender the citadel to the enemy. He deserved to be put out of the way like a poisoned dog, a sheep-killer, a lamb-worrier.