"Can you tell me how to find the nearest way out? I'm lost."
Priscilla's heart gave one hard throb and stood still, it seemed for an hour, while an almost forgotten terror seized and held her. She was looking full upon Jerry-Jo McAlpin! A soiled and haggard shadow he was of what he once had been, but it was Jerry-Jo and no other.
"I—I did not mean to frighten you. Forgive me. I ain't going to hurt you, Miss. I——"
But Priscilla was gone before the sentence was finished. Gone before she knew whether the speaker had recognized her or not. Gone before—and then she stood still. She could not leave him to wander alone at night in that big, strange place. No matter what happened, she must treat him humanly, she, who knew the danger. She went back, her blood running like ice through her body; but Jerry-Jo McAlpin was not there. Priscilla waited, and once she spoke vague directions to the empty space, but no answering voice replied. Presently she controlled herself, and took to the path again, and reached John Boswell's house before he had left his window.
She did not tell of the encounter; she felt she must wait, but in her heart she knew that Jerry-Jo McAlpin was as surely on her trail as she was herself. Such things as that meeting did not happen to them of the In-Place unless for a purpose.
She had a wonderful evening with Boswell. They did not go out, and after dinner he read her some manuscript stories. Boswell had never before so intimately permitted her to come close to his work. She had seen stories of his in print, had heard plans for others, but before the fire in his study that night he read, among other things, "The Butterfly and the Beetle." So beautifully, so touchingly, had he pictured the little romance, of which Priscilla herself was part, that the tears fell from the girl's eyes while her lips were smiling at the tender humour. The undercurrent of meaning threw new light on the lonely life of the rich, but wretched man. The joy depicted in simple, friendly intercourse, the aspiration of the Beetle, the grateful appreciation for the plain, common happenings that in most lives were taken for granted, but which in his rose to monumental importance, endeared him to her anew. It brought back to her what Boswell had told her of his relations with Farwell Maxwell, her Anton Farwell. She could now, with her broader, more mature reason, understand the devotion the cripple had given the one man who, in the empty years, had taken him without reservation, had ignored his limitations, and had been his friend and comrade.
Suddenly she asked:
"Have you heard from—from Master Farwell lately?" The question startled Boswell.
"Yes. I had a letter yesterday. He has been ill. That squaw woman, Long Jean, took care of him. The letter sounded restless. There'll be trouble with Farwell before we get through. My letters are evidently lacking power, and your silence baffles him."
"Poor Master Farwell!"