"The women are plumb crazy over this government woman," Twombley went on, "and the children lap out of her hand. She and Mary-Clare are together early and late. Thick as corn mush."
"Her and Mary-Clare is writing up the doings of the Forest," he whispered. "Writing things allas makes me nervous. What's writ--is fixed."
"Gosh! Heathcote; it's like the Judgment Day and no place to hide in!"
"That's about it, Twombley. No place to hide in."
And then after weeks of strenuous effort Mrs. Dana went away as suddenly as she had come. She simply disappeared! But there was a peculiar sense of waiting in the Forest and a going on with what had been begun. The momentum carried the people along. The church was repaired, a school house started, the Point cleaned.
The summer passed, another winter--not so cruel as the last--and the spring came, less violently.
It was early summer when another event shook the none-too-steady Forest. Larry came home!
Jan-an discovered him sitting on a mossy rock, his back against a tree. The girl staggered away from him--she thought she saw a vision.
"What's left of me--yes." There was a strange new note in Rivers's voice.
Jan-an's horror-filled eyes took in the significance of the words.
Larry touched the pinned-up leg of his trousers.
"I paid a debt with the rest," he said, and there was that in his voice that brought Jan-an closer to him.
"Where yer bound for?" she asked, her dull face quivering.
"I don't know. A fellow gave me a lift and dropped me--here."
"You come along home!" Jan-an bent and half lifted Larry. "Lean on me. There, now, lean heavy and take it easy."
Mary-Clare was sitting in the living-room, sewing and singing, when the sound of steps startled her. She looked up, then her face changed as a dying face does.
"Larry!" she faltered. She was utterly unprepared. She had been kept in ignorance of the little that others knew.
"I--I'm played out--but I can go on." Larry's voice was husky and he drooped against Jan-an. Then Mary-Clare came forward, her arms opened wide, a radiance breaking over her cold white face.
"You have come--home, Larry! Home. Your father's home."
And then Larry's head rested on her shoulder; her arms upheld him, for the crutch clattered to the floor.