"I'll be kind to her when I get her. I'm only playing her with the hook in her mouth."
But Jerry-Jo was scheming without considering the Lure, which never was long absent from Priscilla's mind at that time.
One early September afternoon Priscilla presented herself at Farwell's cabin in so startling a manner that she roused the man as nothing previously in his association with her had ever done.
He was sitting at the west window of his living-room, his back toward the door leading to the Green. For a wonder, what he was reading had absorbed him, and he was far and away from the In-Place. He had taken to fine, old literature lately and had found, to his delight, that his mind was capable of appreciating it.
"Wisdom, slow product of laborious years,
The only fruit that life's cold winter bears,
Thy sacred seeds in vain in youth we lay,
By the fierce storm of passion torn away;
Should some remain in rich, gen'rous soil,
They long lie hid, and must be raised with toil;
Faintly they struggle with inclement skies,
No sooner born than the poor planter dies."
With such word-comfort did Farwell dig, from other's experiences, crude guidings for himself! And at that moment a stir outside the open door caused him to turn and confront what, in the excited moment, seemed an apparition from the past, which, for him, was sealed and barred.
"Good Lord!" he ejaculated under his breath and started to his feet. A visitor from the Lodge apparently had descended upon him.
"I beg pardon," he said aloud, and then a laugh, familiar and ringing, brought the colour to his pale, thin face.
The girl came in, threw back the veil from her merry face, and confronted Farwell.
"Miss Priscilla Glenn, sir! Behold her in the battered finery of the place she is going to—to grace some day!"