CHAPTER IX.
Maggie, as she mounted to her room, was hardly conscious of the ring of menace in Barney's voice; but once she was in bed, his tone and his words came back to her and stirred a strange uneasiness in her mind.
Barney was angry; Barney was cunning; Barney would stop at nothing to gain his ends.

What might be behind his threatening words?
The next morning as she was coming in with milk for her breakfast coffee, she met Larry in the Duchess's room behind the pawnshop.

He smilingly planted himself squarely in her way.
"See here, Maggie--aren't you ever going to speak to a fellow ?" Something within her surged up impelling her to tell him of Barney's savage yet unformulated threat.

The warning got as far as her tongue, and there halted, struggling.
Her strange, fixed look startled Larry.

"Why, what's the matter, Maggie ?" he exclaimed.
But her pride, her settled determination to unbend to him in no way and to have no dealings with him, were stronger than her impulse; and the struggling warning remained unuttered.
"Nothing's the matter," she said, and brushed past him and hurried up the stairway.
At times during the day, while tutoring with Mr.Bronson, Larry thought of Maggie's strange look.