Go to bed--dark streets are n't exactly the place for you." Robert Fairchild obeyed the instructions, a victim of many a conjecture, many an attempt at reasoning as he sought sleep that was far away.

Again and again there rose before him the vision of two men in an open buggy, with a singing, apparently maudlin person between them whom Ohadi believed to be an effeminate-voiced Swede; in reality, only a woman.

And why had they adopted the expedient?
Why had not Larsen been with them in reality?
Fairchild avoided the obvious conclusion and turned to other thoughts, to Rodaine with his squint eyes, to Crazy Laura, gathering herbs at midnight in the shadowy, stone-sentineled stretches of graveyards, while the son, perhaps, danced at some function of Ohadi's society and made love in the rest periods.

It was all grotesque; it was fantastic, almost laughable,--had it not concerned him! For Rodaine had been his father's enemy, and Mother Howard had told him enough to assure him that Rodaine did not forget.

The crazed woman of the graveyards was Squint's lunatic wife, ready to kill, if necessary, for a husband who beat her.