Ganew walked on like a man in a dream.  He was nearly paralyzed with terror.  They met no human being, and very few words passed between them.  When the cart stopped at the Elder’s door, Ganew stood still without turning his head.  The Elder went up to him and said, with real kindness of tone,

“Mr. Ganew, I expect you can’t believe it, but I don’t bear ye the least ill-will.”

A faint flicker of something like grateful surprise passed over the hard face, but no words came.

“I hope the Lord’ll bring ye to himself yet,” persisted the good man, “and forgive me for havin’ had anything but pity for ye from the first on’t.  Ye won’t forget to send me a writing for Bill Sims that the rest of the buckets in the camp belong to me?”

Ganew nodded sullenly and went on, and the Elder walked slowly into the house.

After dark, a package was left at the Elder’s door.  It contained the order on Bill Sims, and a letter.  Some of the information in the letter proved useful in clearing up the mystery of Ganew’s having known of this tract of land.  He had been in Potter’s employ, it seemed, and had had access to his papers.  What else the letter told no one ever knew; but the Elder’s face always had a horror-stricken look when the Frenchman’s name was mentioned, and when people sometimes wondered if he would ever be seen again in Clairvend, the emphasis of the Elder’s “Never! ye may rely on that!  Never!” had something solemn in it.

In less than forty-eight hours the whole village knew the story.  “The sooner they know the whole on’t the better, and the sooner they’ll be through talkin’,” said the Elder, and nobody could have accused him of being “close-mouthed” now.  He even showed “the little gal’s letter,” as the townspeople called it, to anybody who asked to see it.  It hurt him to do this, more than he could see reason for, but he felt a strong desire to have the village heart all ready to welcome “little Draxy” and her father when they should come.  And the village heart was ready!  Hardly a man, woman, or child but knew her name and rejoiced in her good fortune.  “Don’t yer remember my tellin’ yer that night,” said Josiah Bailey to Eben Hill, “that she’d come to the right place for help when she come to Elder Kinney?”

When Draxy took Elder Kinney’s letter out of the post-office, her hands trembled.  She walked rapidly away, and opened the letter as soon as she reached a quiet street.  The Elder had not made it so clear as he thought he had, in his letter to the “child,” which way matters had gone.  Draxy feared.  Presently she thought, “He says ‘your father’s land.’  That must mean that we shall have it.”  But still she had sad misgivings.  She almost decided to read the inclosed letter which was unsealed; she could not have her father disappointed again; but her keen sense of honor restrained her.