that the lawyer was in a tight place with the banks; and gossip suggested that Darnell preferred being in Torso without his wife whenever he was there. The farm was on a small hill above a sluggish

xplained. The house was a shabby frame affair, large for a farmhouse, with porticoes and pillars in Southern style. They found the Darnells with the Falkners in the living-room. Tom Darnell was r

d! that it w

done; to call

turn up his sw

ys, and to redee

houghts were far away. Mrs. Darnell, who looked slovenly but pretty, stared vacantly out of the window. The sun lay in broad, streaks on the dusty floor; there was an air of drowsy peace, broken only by the warm tones of the lawyer as his voice rose and fell over the spirited

gone these hundreds of years. Falkner always starts me

The fields were green with the soft grass, already nearly a foot high. Over the house an old grape-vine was budding in purple balls. There was a languor and sweetness to the air that instigated laziness. Although Lane wished to be off, Isabelle lingered on,

l started a

I am

Lane, but to Isabelle's surprise her husband was at a disadvantage:-the two men could not find common ground. Then Darnell and Falkner quoted poetry, and Isabelle listened. It was all very different from anything she

not six miles from Torso, but in some fa

belle. "And what about Congr

are of the cities, of people. You will flit from this Indiana landscape one day, from provincial Torso, and spread your gay w

know what he was; and it flattered her that he should see her "spreading gay wi

ton, while we are still

e play the game-play the ga

cluded sagely; 'she doesn't understand him, a

y," she ventured with a little thrill of surprise to find her

rew wistful. "There is nothing in the game

to her, but she

ow

th love and

given her that special sensation, which women know, of confidence between them. She wished that John had not been so anxious to be off, and she di

ho

Dar

ay. It is his own fault. He has pl

in whom that result was being worked out. They talked a little longer about the fermenting tragedy of the household that they had just left, as th

vastated by the mammoth sheds of some col

VALLEY CO

lly about the place. Then he suggested tur

associating the name of the coal company with its president;

looked at the elegant figure t

eresting as Tom Darne

"for the reason men stand each other

mean? He isn't

t of several things:-John was in other business than the railroad, and that puffy-faced German-American was in some way connected with it; business covered many mysteries; a man did business with people he would not ordinarily associate with. It even cr

her, and that led on to the question of the summer itself. It had been decided that Isabelle should not spend another summer in the Torso heat, but whether she sho