CHAPTER XI

BARNABY VISITS ASHGRAVE

HE STORY which Blanket scarcely more than

THE outlined, at least raised the curtain a trifle and

afforded Barnaby a glimpse of the real Ashgrave. He had asked regarding him, why? Because he was suspicious of him; because he disliked him. Yet lo, the moment he found that this was and had been the attitude of the community toward the fellow, he began to make excuses for him and to find in his very story proof of the blindness which had been the forerunner of injustice. The glimpse accorded had scarcely given him a single one of the details which this community knew as a familiar tale, but it enabled him to grasp at least the concept of cause and effect, to comprehend that there was a whole which these details concealed, and this concept, he found, drew him strangely to the man for whom he was already forming a strong dislike.

Was there, as an actual fact, this terrible thing there at the beginning of years, facing Ashgrave whenever he gave memory way? It was not the horror of it that found place in Barnaby's mind when he asked the question, but an intense awe over the loyalty of the man, who had guarded the secret during all these lonely years and never, for a moment, allowed it to show its hideous face to any human being. What courage had it demanded to live shut in the prison-house of his own knowledge, companioned by this grewsome thing, undaunted by loneliness, unbroken by the denial of human sympathy?

In spite of the brutish force in the man, he felt something in him greater and deeper than the shallow smallness of the lives about him, and this seemed the result of a refining and deepening sorrow. It was certainly not a wholly vacuous mind that had come, even though twisted, undwarfed from the years of lone companionship with the half crazed father, whom he, perhaps, knew to be a murderer, but to whom, none-the-less, he had never faltered in fidelity. Yet it was in this man's house that he had found and left Amanda Seagrave! That, after all, was the indictment he had against the man, and for exoneration therefrom, he found nothing in the story.

After supper, Barnaby strolled again across the hills and came to the spot from which he had first looked down on the Ashgrave farm, and the Seagrave, too, as for that matter. The latter lay at his feet under a sense of rest after toil that lent it an almost ideal charm. A half dozen lads were playing at rounders, Mrs. Seagrave and a neighbour were sitting in rocking-chairs under one of the great elms, and the farmer himself, with a neighbour and one of the hired men, was strolling leisurely about the barn-yards looking at the cattle and hogs. Amanda sat apart with a book, in which Barnaby felt her more deeply engaged than she ought to be.

At the other farm was Ashgrave and Ashgrave only. He was stretched on the grass in front of the house, smoking and companionless. Barnaby, drawn by the sudden interest the man had for him, no less than by compassion for his loneliness, turned here rather than to the Seagrave farm, and strolled down the hillside, which on his other visit he had covered by leaps.

Ashgrave's greeting was not uncordial, and yet there was an air about him as of one on his guard, who felt

suspicion of that which, to other men, was simple neigh

bourly courtesy.

"You smoke?" he asked.

"A cigar, now and then."

"I can't offer 'em, for I can't afford 'em." There was more of defiance in the tone and manner than in the words even, and Barnaby took measure of the man and his mood accordingly.

"You have your hay all safe?" Barnaby sensed a challenge in the other's brusqueness, and found something in his own mood that impelled to acceptance.

"For which I'm indebted to you."

"Not a bit of it! I got more out of it by far than I gave."

"How?" The demand came sharp as a pistol shot, yet with a hint of suppression behind it.

"Oh, in the experience; the excitement of the struggle with the storm; the sense of conquering; in fact, the thing itself paid for itself twice over."

"Perhaps, as long as you had nothing to lose if you failed. It's another thing when you've got your all staked on the struggle."

"Oh, chut," Barnaby retorted, "a man who, whatever happens, will have body and brain left, can't say he's staked all."

"Body and brain! That means strength to work from sunup to sunset, and ability to scheme to keep your head above water. There 's lots in it, is n't there?"

"Oh, you are n't quite fair," said Barnaby. "There's the sense of success."

"You just come back where you started," growled Ashgrave. "Your success is simply not failing. That hay crop was mine. I'd earned it. Still, I had to fight to keep it, and when I'd fought my damnedest, I

still had what was mine before, and not a thing more. That is n't success."

"What is it, then?"

"It's heads, you win; tails, I lose, and you can't make anything else out of it.”

Sharply, before Barnaby could frame an answer, Ashgrave changed the subject.

"Where'd you met 'Mandy before?" he demanded. "Miss Seagrave? I had n't met her before." "But you knew her name."

"She passed us on the road, and Craig told me who she was."

" 'Cause you asked him!" Ashgrave asserted. "Yes, I asked him. One could n't well help it.”

"Why not?" Again the demand was like a challenge, with a purpose he sought to cover half asserting itself in spite of him.

"I don't need to tell you why," Barnaby half laughed. "A fellow, when he sees a girl like that, can't help asking who she is. You are n't Craig."

"I hope to God not; but you'd better been!"

"Thank you," said Barnaby. "I admire Craig, but not in the line of imitating him so far as a pretty woman is concerned."

"I 'spose you think God made pretty women especially for you?" Ashgrave demanded savagely.

"Oh no; but I think he made it a pleasure for me to look at them, and I intend to do it, every chance I get." "Then you'd better stayed where you belonged, and not come snooking round up here. Perhaps there'd be more of 'em to see down there wherever it is."

"May be there are," said Barnaby, "but I never happened to run across 'em. I never saw one anywhere who could hold a candle to Miss Seagrave."

'Don't you think we've talked about her almost enough?" Ashgrave demanded.

"Evidently too much for your comfort," answered Barnaby, with a dim perception that thus he could best give his companion the sting that his surliness deserved. Ashgrave remained silent, under a supreme effort to restrain his temper, and it was not until Barnaby spoke again that he made any pretence of resuming conversation.

What do you admire Craig for?" It was the second time Ashgrave had changed the conversation by a question as sharp and insistent as it was devoid of all pretence of convention.

This time Barnaby was rather left to flounder for an answer, which was the more embarrassing in that he had himself declared the admiration of which the other questioned. Finally he said:

"Because he sticks so determinately and unflinchingly to his sense of duty."

"So does old Seagrave so does Buffington - the duty of making more than they spend, or spending less than they make."

"Oh, pshaw!" exclaimed Barnaby, "that's no parallel, and you know it as well as I. Craig stands absolutely alone, utterly regardless of himself

"

"And everybody else," interrupted Ashgrave.

"Yes," admitted Barnaby, hesitatingly.

"It's like this," exclaimed Ashgrave, jumping to his feet and moving about uneasily as he talked. "Craig is a thing absolutely helpless. He has no will of his own, he don't even try to think for himself. He has looked life in the face, and he knows there's nothing to it. Whatever it is that controls him, it is n't himself, it 's something that he can't control. He knows the fight