allies, confronted Rena, amazingly but unmistakably changed to a foe; Judy, with her immaculate and enviable frock smirched and torn, and her sleek hair wildly tossed, her cheeks darkly flushed, and her eyes strange and shining; a Judy to be reckoned with and admired and feared—a new Judy.

"What's the matter? Are you crazy? What do you want?"

"Make them let him go. They've got to let him go."

"He's a paddy—Neil Donovan—a paddy."

"They've got to let him go.... Give that to me."

"What for? Judy, don't hurt me. Judy!"

Judith wasted no more words. She caught Rena's wrist, twisted it, and snatched the lantern out of her hand. She held it high above her head, and shook it recklessly.

"Don't, Judy! Don't!" The flame sputtered crazily. Judy still shook the lantern, dancing out of reach, and laughing. "Nat—everybody—stop Judy. She's making the lantern explode. Oh, Ed!"

Natalie heard, and then the others. They looked up at her, all of them. Rena and Natalie screamed. Willard started toward her. "Put it down, kid," he was calling.

"I'll put it down.... Now boy."

There he was, with Ed's arm gripping his shoulders. He did not give any sign that he knew she was trying to help him, or that he wanted help. He was not afraid of the lantern, like the others. His black eyes were laughing at all of them—laughing at Judith, too. He was looking straight at Judith.

"Now, boy," she called, "now run!" and she gripped the lantern tight, swung it high, and dashed it to the ground.

It fell at the foot of the steps with a crash of breaking glass. The light sputtered out. The air was full of the smell of spilled kerosene. In the faint radiance that was not moonlight, but a glimmering reflection of it, more confusing than darkness, dim figures struggled and shrill voices were lifted.

"Get him. Hold him."

"Get the lantern."

"Get Judy."

"Hold him, Ed."

"That's me."

"Get him, Rena."

Judith laughed, and out of the dark he had come from, the dark of May-night, lit by a wishing moon, that grants your secret wish for better or for worse, irrevocably, a far-away laugh answered Judith's. The boy was gone.

CHAPTER THREE

Miss Judith Devereux Randall was getting into her first evening gown.

The Green River High School football team was giving its annual September concert and ball in Odd Fellows' Hall to-night. The occasion was as important to the school as a coming-out party. The new junior class, just graduated from seclusion upstairs to the big assembly room where the seniors were, made its first public appearance in society there. Judith was a junior now.

Her first dance, and her first evening gown; it was a memorable scene, fit to immortalize with the first love-letter and the first proposal, in a series of pictures of great moments in a girl's life—chosen by some masculine illustrator, touchingly confident that he knows what the great moments of a girl's life are. Judith seemed to be taking this moment too calmly for one.

The dress lay ready on the bed, fluffy and light and sheer, a white dream of a dress, with two unopened florist's boxes beside it, but there was no picturesque disarray of excited toilet-making in her big, brightly lighted room, and no dream-promoting candlelight. And there were no pennants or football trophies disfiguring the daintily flowered wall paper, and no pictures or programs in the mirror of the dainty dressing-table; there was no other young girl's room in town where they were prohibited, but there was no other room so charming as Judith's, all blue-flowered chintz and bird's-eye maple and white fur rugs, and whiter covers and curtains.

Judith was the most charming and immaculate thing in the room, as she stood before the cheval-glass, bare armed and slim and straight in beruffled, beribboned white, pinning the soft, pale braids tight around her small, high-poised head. Quite the most charming thing, and Norah, fingering the dress on the bed disapprovingly, and giving her keen, sidelong glances, was aware of it, but did not believe in compliments, even to the creature she loved best in the world.

Her mouth was set and her brown eyes were bright with the effort of repressing them. Judith, seeing her face in the glass, turned suddenly and slipped her arms round the formidable old creature's neck, and laughed at her.

"Don't you think I'm perfectly beautiful?" she demanded. "If you really love me, why not tell me so?"

"Your colour's good." Judith pressed a delicately flushed cheek to Norah's, and attempted a butterfly kiss, which she evaded grimly. "Good enough—healthy and natural."

"Oh, no. I made it. Oh, with hot water and then cold, I mean. Nana, don't begin about rouge. Don't be silly. That red stuff in the box on mother's dresser is only nail paste, truly."

"Who sent the flowers?"

"Look and see."

"Much you care, if you'll let me look."

"Do you want me to care?"

"Much you care about the flowers or the party."

Judith had caught up the alluring dress without a second glance, and slipped it expertly over her head, and was jerking capably at the fastenings.

"With the spoiled airs of you, and Willard Nash sending to Wells for flowers, when his father clerked in a drygoods store at his age——"

"Oh, carnations are cheap—or he wouldn't get them."

"These aren't cheap, then."

The smaller box was full of white violets.

"Give them to me. No, you can't see the card. You don't deserve to. You're too cross, and besides you wouldn't like it. Do my two top hooks. Now, am I perfectly beautiful?"

Under her capable hands a pretty miracle had been going on, common enough, but always new. Ruffle above ruffle, the soft, shapeless mass of white had shaken itself into its proper lines and contours, lightly, like a bird's plumage settling itself, and with it the change that comes when a woman with the inborn, unteachable trick of wearing clothes puts on a perfect gown, had come to her slight girl's figure. It looked softer, rounder, and more lightly poised. Her throat looked whiter above the encircling folds of white. Her shy half smile was sweeter. The white violets, caught to her high girdle, were sweeter, too.

Norah surrendered, her voice husky and reluctant.

"You're too good for them."

"For the G. H. S. dance? For Willard?" Judith pretended great humility: "Nana!"

"There's others you're more than too good for. Others——"

"Nana, don't."

"Come here." Norah put two heavy hands on her shoulders and regarded her grimly. It was the kind of look that Judith used to associate with second sight, and dread. It was quite formidable still. But Judith met it steadily, with something mature and assured about her look that had nothing to do with the softness and sweetness of her in her fluffy draperies, something that had no place in the heart of a child; something that Norah saw.

"Too good for them, and you know it," pronounced Norah. "You know it too well. You know too many things. A heart of gold you've got, but your head will rule your heart."

"Nonsense." Norah permitted herself to be kissed, still looking forbidding, but holding Judith tight.

"Little white lamb, may you find what's good enough for you," she conceded, unexpectedly, "and may you know it when you find it."

"You're an old dear, and you're good enough for me."

Downstairs there was a more critical audience to face. Judith saw it in the library door, and