"Confound you, Bates! You get clumsier every day you live!"

Varr's outburst was swift, but not swift enough to deceive his sister-in-law. Her quick eye had detected several little items of interest, although they had occurred simultaneously and in opposite directions.

At the mention of Leslie Sherwood's name, Lucy Varr had straightened in her chair and turned to her son with parted lips as if eager for more news, while a delicate flush--the first touch of color Ocky had seen there in two months--sprang into her pale cheeks. This was fair enough. In the old days, Leslie Sherwood had been attentive to Lucy Copley in such degree that their circle confidently stood by for a formal announcement. Then he had rather abruptly departed toward a "business career in New York," making it plain that Hambleton would see him no more for some while to come. His departure left clear the way to the lady's hand for a colder, less attractive, but more determined suitor. Lucy married Simon Varr.

She was ent.i.tled, then, to display some faint emotion at the mention of a recreant knight, and Simon, with propriety, might have shown a husbandly twinge of jealousy or contempt or dislike--any of a dozen different sentiments other than the one he did reveal. At the bit of news so casually dropped by his son, his head had jerked up sharply and a look of fear had flashed into his eyes and out again. He had cleverly seized upon the butler's mishap to cover his confusion, but the ruse was too late to be effective as far as Miss Ocky was concerned.

So Simon was afraid of Leslie Sherwood, or else he had something to fear from the sudden reappearance of that gentleman. Which was it? and why? Miss Ocky determined to find out eventually. In the meantime she would accept the curious circ.u.mstance and store it in that corner of her brain where she was collecting odds and ends of data relating to her brother-in-law.

"When did old Mr. Sherwood die?" she asked promptly.

"Last February," answered her sister. "He had been very ill for several months--a general breakdown."

"Leslie was here at the time, I suppose."

"N-no; he wasn't. You're not posted on local topics, Ocky! This is the first time Leslie has been back in Hambleton since he left to go into business in New York. No one ever knew anything definite, but we have always a.s.sumed that father and son quarreled over something so bitterly that reconcilement was impossible. Still, when the old man died he left everything to Leslie--and he has turned up, now. I wonder if he will sell the place or--or live here?"

That was an unusually long speech for Lucy Varr, and it betrayed her lively interest in the subject under discussion. Simon must have noted that and perhaps resented it, for his face darkened. He made no comment, however, but celebrated the end of dinner in his usual manner by pushing back his chair a little, crossing his legs comfortably, and beginning a series of excavating operations with a quill toothpick which he drew from his vest pocket. Miss Ocky winced. This was the postprandial habit of his that annoyed her excessively.

She had not changed for dinner. Now she took a cigarette case from a side pocket of her coat, extracted a cigarette and lighted it from one of the candles. Simon did not smoke himself, and he disliked intensely the sight of a woman using tobacco. He glanced at Ocky, and to her deep satisfaction made a wry face at the cloud of smoke she contentedly exhaled. Winces were easy.

The little circle broke up after dinner. Varr went off to his study and shut himself in, his wife pleaded a headache, and with a word of apology to her sister departed for her bedroom. Ocky, amiably anxious to distract her nephew's thoughts from whatever he was glooming over, suggested a game of chess. Finding this had not been included in his college curriculum, she announced that she would settle herself in the living-room with some new books that had come.

She went upstairs for one of these, and returned bearing it and a small sheathed dagger with a highly ornamented handle. She found Copley in the living-room, attired in a raincoat, standing and looking at the closed door leading to Simon's study. Miss Ocky settled herself in a chair by the lamp on the center table, drew the dagger from its worn leather sheath and proceeded to cut the pages of Henner's "Through Asia." She glanced up whimsically at her nephew.

"Well, Copley, are you posing for a statue of indecision?"

"Something like that, Aunt Ocky." He smiled ruefully. "I was going for a tramp, then I thought I'd drop in for a chat with father--and now I think I won't have a chat with him, but will go for a walk."

"It's pouring, isn't it?"

"I don't care."

"Of course, you don't. I know that mood--and a good sloshing hike in the rain is a splendid cure for it. I know what's the matter with you, too." She shot a look at the closed door and lowered her voice. "Why don't you cut the Gordian knot and be done with it?" she added quietly.

"I--I don't get you."

"Elope, idiot child! You and she are both of age. Consider the late Mr. Ajax of Greece--he defied the lightning and got away with it! They can't do more than excommunicate you with bell and book and candle."

"But that's plenty, Aunt Ocky." A smile that had greeted her suggestion faded away, leaving him gloomier than ever. "If I only had to think about myself--! But I can't let Sheila in for a lot of hardship. It costs money, these days, to live in even the most moderate comfort, and all I could bring into the family treasury would be just what I could earn with my two hands--supposing I was lucky enough to find a job! It wouldn't be fair to Sheila--that's the long and short of it."

"Have you given her a chance to speak for herself?" His aunt sniffed contemptuously. "Gracious goodness, Copley, isn't there something more in life than money? Don't people think of anything else in America?"

"Oh, yes. It's a free country and a man has a perfect right to be a visionary and starve to death if he wants to. It just happens I don't!" He grinned as some of her disgust went into a savage slashing of uncut edges. "As things are, I don't believe I'll ask Sheila to share my crust of bread."

"Then I'll ask her for you--blessed if I don't! I intended to run over and see her in the morning, anyway. Did it ever strike you that matchmaking is the proper business of old maids? They atone for celibacy through vicarious marriage!"

"So that is the explanation of their favorite indoor sport, is it? But I can't regard you as a confirmed old maid, Aunt Ocky." He moved to her side and dropped a hand affectionately on her shoulder. "If you won't think me awfully fresh for saying it--you're about the youngest looking woman for your age that I've ever laid eyes on."

"Oh, thank you, Copley; thank you very much. Really, I must remember you in my will for them kind words! But about to-morrow--may I represent myself as being your plenipotentiary?"

"Sure thing. Go as far as you like, Aunt Ocky. Anything you start, I'll finish." The sound of a chair being pushed back in the study caught his ear and indicated a discreet change of subject. He stooped to retrieve the dagger that had slipped from her lap and examined it a moment. For all its exquisite beauty of design and workmanship, it was a wicked little weapon. "You have a bloodthirsty taste in paper cutters, Aunt Ocky. Where did you get this? Has it a history?"

"Very likely, but I don't know it. It is certainly old enough to have a lurid past. I picked it up in the bazaar at Teheran. That inscription on the blade is Persian."

"What does it mean? They taught me Persian when they taught me chess."

"It reads, 'I bring Peace!'"

"Oh. The Oriental point of view, I suppose! We would be more apt to think of a dagger as bringing war."

"We think backwards at times," commented Miss Ocky. She reclaimed her colorful souvenir of the East, then glanced up as the study door opened. "h.e.l.lo, Simon. I expect you will sleep easier to-night; no fear of fire bugs in a rain like this!"

He grunted something unintelligible, and stared at Copley standing there in the parlor in his raincoat. The young man returned the stare with expressionless face. Neither he nor his father spoke, and in a moment the tanner left the room.

Miss Ocky was as good as her word the following morning. She marched cross-country to the Graham house, some half-mile distant, and had a long and enlightening conversation with Sheila. She had met the girl several times and approved of her highly, and when she left her finally to return home her good opinion of Miss Graham was in nowise diminished. The young woman, if she were not mistaken, had just the qualities needed to make a useful citizen out of a husband like Copley whose chief defect was clearly a lack of decision. He wanted starching, that was it.

She bore homeward a book that she had borrowed from Sheila, and though it only wanted twenty minutes to lunch time, she neither went to her room to freshen up nor sought her nephew to make a hasty report on the result of her emba.s.sy. She betook herself instead to the study, and there was a malicious twinkle in her eye as she tapped on the closed door. She obeyed a gruff command to enter.

Varr had made the best of his period of enforced idleness by working on a batch of order-books that he had brought from his office. He was busy with them now, and he looked as displeased as he was surprised by Ocky's interruption.

"What do _you_ want?" he snapped irritably.

"I've picked up some information that I thought you'd like to hear, Simon. How is your nerve this morning? I've just been to call on Sheila Graham and she fairly made my blood curdle."

"Serves you right. Mine curdles when I even think of her." He frowned. "Why did you go to see her?"

"I promised to take her a recipe for a cous-cous I described to her the other day. Anyway, I like her, even if you don't. But that has nothing to do with our muttons! While I was chatting with her I happened to mention our experience yesterday with the monk--"

"You did! What in the world _for_?"

"Well, Simon, when I go to call on any one I like to talk about _something_--I can't sit like a dummy--"

"You can't!"

"And that was certainly the most interesting bit of news that I had.

It quite woke her up. She's something of a blue-stocking, you know, and has read a lot about the early history of this country. When I spoke of the monk she looked very queer and went straight to a shelf of books and took out this one--" Miss Ocky held up the one she was carrying, and Varr saw that she was keeping a place in it with one forefinger. "When she showed me a certain pa.s.sage in it, I put it right under my arm and brought it--"

"You needn't have," he told her abruptly. "I recognize the thing, though I've never bothered to read it; Jennison's 'History of Wayne County,' isn't it? There's a copy among your father's books in the library."

"Is there? I wish I'd known it!" She opened the book at her place, steadied the heavy volume on her knees and cleared her throat. "I am going to read this to you, Simon--it isn't long."

"Go ahead." He had tried overnight to put the disagreeable subject out of his mind but had not succeeded very well. He was consumed by curiosity now to learn what she had discovered, though nothing would have induced him to admit it. "What's it all about?"

She began to read in a soft, well-modulated voice.

"'Wayne County is not without its share of legends and quaint sc.r.a.ps of folklore, some of them nicely calculated to chill the blood o' nights.

One fable, at least, has risen from a base of fact; I refer to the famous Monk of Hambleton. Ancient chronicles of this town record the arrival--in pre-Revolutionary times--of an unfortunate individual whose face had been shockingly mutilated by accident or disease. He drifted to Hambleton from the outer world and apparently quartered himself on the countryside, living the life of a hermit in a small dry cave that still shows traces of his presence. He habitually wore the garb of a friar--a penance, perhaps, for former sins--and his disfigured face was always concealed from curious eyes by a mask of black cloth.