CHAPTER X
By a kind of self-hypnotism Northrup had gained his ends so far as drifting with the slow current of King’s Forest was concerned, and in his relation toward his book. The unrest, as to his duty in a world-wide sense, was lulled. Whatever of that sentiment moved him was focussed on Maclin who, in a persistent, vague way became a haunting possibility of danger almost too preposterous to be considered seriously. Still the possibility was worth watching. Maclin’s attitude toward Northrup was interesting. He seemed unable to ignore him, while earnestly desiring to do so. The fact was this: Maclin looked upon Northrup as he might have upon a slow-burning fuse. That he could not estimate the length of the fuse, nor to what it was attached, did not mend matters. One cannot ignore a trail of fire, and a guilty conscience is never a sleeping one.
The people on the Point had long since come to the conclusion that Northrup was a trailer of Maclin, not their enemy. The opinion was divided as to his relations with Mary-Clare, but that was a different matter.
“I’ll bet my last dollar,” Twombley muttered, forgetting that his last dollar was a thing of the past, “that this young feller will find out about those inventions. Inventions be damned! That’s what I say. There’s something going on at the mines that don’t spell inventions.”
This was said to Peneluna who was aging under the strain of unaccustomed excitement.
“When he lands Maclin,” she said savagely, “I’ll grab Larry. Larry is a fool, but from way back, Maclin is the sinner. Queer”––she gave a deep sigh––“how a stick muddling up a biling brings the scum to the surface! I declare! 134 I wish we had something to grip hold of. Suspicioning your neighbours ain’t healthy.”
Jan-an, untroubled by moral codes, was unconditionally on Northrup’s side. She patched her gleanings into a vivid conclusion and announced, much to Peneluna’s horror:
“Supposin’ we are goin’ ter hell ’long of not knowin’ where we are goin’, ain’t it a lot pleasanter than the way we was traipsin’ before things began to happen?”
Poor Jan-an was getting her first taste of romance and tragedy and she was thriving on the excitement. When she was not watching the romance in the woods with Mary-Clare and Noreen, she was actively engaged in tragedy. She was searching for the lost letters and she did not mince matters in her own thoughts.