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218 go an' make a fool o' myself here— Oh, you great—you, you—oh, oh, oh!" She could find no words, but ran in close, pelted him viciously with her fists, then turned and bolted toward the town.

Marden neither felt her blows nor heard the sound of her running. He only knew that she had vanished. The darkness swallowed her up, and all memory of her. He was trying to feel his way out of this labyrinth before the tenuous clue should be withdrawn, or spin itself down to nothing in the dark.

"It was n't for such reasons as—as it might have been," he pondered. "If they 'll only give me time, I 'll follow this through yet, and get unsnarled, perhaps."

A soft breeze was drawing cool out of the west. The leaves of the poplar behind the house began to whisper shiveringly. High in the air, a firefly was blown down the wind, so that at the first glance he mistook it for a falling star. And in the sudden coolness Marden found himself thinking clearly and sweetly of his mother, whom he saw again, as in the blue December dawn, with the fire-