“She’s a spoiled kid,” he said. “Somebody ought to turn her over a knee and spank her.” A statement which pleased me extremely.

Maud was only languidly interested.

“I hope they’ll be happy,” she said, and went back into that unhappy world of her own where none of us could follow her.

How unimportant it all seemed that night, with the river a distant silver strip in the moonlight, and a tug slowly making its way, pushing a crowd of loaded scows ahead of it. Lydia and Bill and Audrey. Cracker Brown and his radio. A bored desk sergeant half asleep at the desk in the station house. The river itself. Even the cemetery halfway down the hill, lovely and quiet and orderly.

Aside from my interest in Lydia, they seemed very remote. But even then the valley and the Hill, having run their parallel courses for years, were gradually approaching each other, and trouble, in the shape of a young woman in a shiny sports car, was on the way from the East.

I remember that Maud roused herself after a long silence.

“I’m glad Lydia Morgan is marrying,” she said. “It’s a lonely business, a woman alone. And I suppose Audrey will marry before long.” She stopped there and looked at Tony, but he only grinned at her.

“She’s a good-looking child,” he said coolly, “but she’s a bit of a brat, Maud. Don’t get ideas in your head.”

That seemed to relieve her mind. I remember that she asked about Evans that night, and that Tony finally told her all the details. She was startled, but certainly not shocked. Looking back now, I am certain she never suspected the truth. Nevertheless, the fact remained that somebody had intended to break into the house, and that night Tony urged her to let him take her jewels up to town. But she merely shook her head. There was a queer streak of obstinacy in her sometimes. It annoyed him.

“I wish to God you’d show some sense,” he said irritably. “What good are they there in that safe? You don’t wear them half the time.”

“Nobody can get at them. I’m the only one who knows the combination.”

“A lot of good that would do, with someone burning matches on the soles of your feet!”

But she was stubborn, and at last he got up in a bad humor and left us.

I think Tony’s uneasiness communicated itself to me during that interval. In spite of the guard Jim Conway had installed in the grounds, I was sleeping badly. Also I was feeling lonely. I missed Maud’s hearty laugh, her shrewd views of people and affairs, the evenings when Tony was out and we sat and she knitted while I made notes on this and that to be done the next day.

Then, too, as she improved Tony was away most of the time. He had lost a week. Now with a strike at one of the mills I seldom saw him. What time he had he spent with Maud.