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 their knees at prayer and his father with them. Then he thought of Lew, but he spoke to Ellen of Stanley.

"He was a fine old man, narrow and self-righteous as the dickens," said Jay, "but he stood for something; and he certainly stood by us. I liked him; in small separated doses," he qualified honestly. "I'm going down there out of respect to him. Lew will be sneering in his sleeve at me, I know. He'll say I came even to a funeral for business."

Ellen offered no comment; she was sifting through her brown fingers the dried pine needles and her heart was thumping and thumping. Every mention of Lew was like a tocsin, arousing her.

"I'll go down no matter what Lew thinks," Jay continued, "though I'll be only adding to his pleasure at spilling us as soon as he gets around to it, now. He'll not cut us off next week; it'd hardly be decent. Besides, he's the sort that likes to kill slowly; but b'God," said Jay, under his breath, "I've a chance to beat him; to live without him, I mean." He looked out over the lake. "We had rather a rotten time racing up here, you know," Jay added suddenly, making his first voluntary reference to it.

"I knew," said Ellen, keeping her eyes on the pine needles. "That's why I went to meet you. I wasn't sure all the sloops would finish—with everybody aboard." And she had not admitted that before.

"We were all right," said Jay, "but it was no loaf. Lyman Howarth and I spent a fair amount of time at the pumps; and there was a while when we had an exaggerated idea of . . . whether we'd be all right, really. Well, Lyman and I were rather thrown together, anyone'd say. He