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 cussion of the event at the Rock. She surely was remarkably equipped to be in the confidence of a man like Lucas Cullen.

She made Ethel think of him, at moments, not as her grandfather but impersonally as the old, dominating, wilful, violent and sly man who to many millions of people was the embodiment of disregard of others. Lucas Cullen that morning had thought of Ethel impersonally; she had put herself against him, accusing him; therefore she was to be crushed in the way he thought best. Barney Loutrelle too was to be crushed, if what had been done last night was not enough to eliminate him from Lucas Cullen's schemes. But what was that which was done last night? To whom was it done? And why?

The precise, imperturbable person seated beside Ethel and calmly conversing undoubtedly knew; but nothing could make her tell. Ethel felt a mad impulse to seize her and shake her, with the wild idea of shaking the knowledge out of that prim, stiffly poised head. But of course Ethel Carew continued to sit quietly beside Mrs. Merrill Kincheloe while Sam Green Sky obeyed the orders of Lucas Cullen and drove them to the railroad.

Ethel took refuge in thoughts of her friend—the "one of us" who was staying here. He did not want to feel that she wished him to forget their meeting that morning; she did not want to forget it and how he had held to her and understood and asked no advantage but the right to remember.

Her thoughts flew, then, to her father; and she found that, without having been conscious of further reasoning, she was more fully accepting the conjecture she had hazarded about him. Her father had wished to