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The pity of it; the tragedy of it; the nearness with which her girlish dream had skirted her life, broke her heart. She got to her feet with her baby, picked up her basket, and moved unseeingly toward the ruinous old manor.

Abner turned and walked on amid confused and painful emotions; the sad tender change in Nessie which motherhood had brought; the tiny baby, his own baby to be reared and cared for by Belshue; and now Nessie was really living in his old ancestral home, while he was an outsider—he could still feel the tiny hand of the child, like a peach petal coiled about the end of his thumb—and all this was because of the mob; the flounderings of the great moral mob; his life and Nessie's and their child's had fallen apart in confusion. What if his little daughter's hand did curl about his thumb, and about his heart, too, the sensibilities of the mob, who had flayed him in bloody agonies, must be respected. And presently the queer fact came to him that thanks to the mob he was the father of a little girl by a woman whom it melted his heart to see or even to think of, and he was betrothed to Adelaide Jones.

The teamster walked on through the long unkempt manor yard meaning to climb the fence at the end and get into the road to the camp, when an old man, who apparently had formed out of the air, came meeting Abner. With a little qualm the young man saw that it was Mr. Belshue, the jeweller whom he had known in Irontown.

The man had gone gray and withered during his few months on the Coltrane place. Time, apparently, had taken the jeweller's own burin to engrave his face. He stopped Abner with a gesture.

"That's Teeftallow—Abner Teeftallow, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Abner, defensive in air and tone.

"What did you do to my wife to send her to the house crying?"

Abner thought quickly what he could say.

"I—was talking to her . . ." he began, trying to frame something.