“Well, my folks are Presbyterians,” said Dan.  “My own religion is the same as Ware’s.  I’m not sure he vouches for the Devil.”

“It’s my firm conviction that there is one, Daniel,—­a red one with a forked tail; you see his works scattered around too often to doubt it.”

Dan nodded.  Mrs. Owen had placed carefully under a weight a paper she had taken from her reticule.

“Daniel,”—­she looked around at the door again, and dropped her voice,—­“I believe you’re a good man, and a clean one.  And Fitch says you’re a smart young man.  It’s as much because you’re a good man as because you’ve got brains that I’ve called on you to attend to Sylvia’s business.  Now I’m going to tell you something that I wouldn’t tell anybody else on earth; it’s a sacred trust, and I want you to feel bound by a more solemn oath than the one you took at the clerk’s office not to steal Sylvia’s money.”

She fixed her remarkably penetrating gaze upon him so intently that he turned uneasily in his chair.  “It’s something somebody who appreciates Sylvia, as I think you do, ought to know about her.  Andrew Kelton told me just before Sylvia started to college.  The poor man had been carrying it alone till it broke him down; he had never told another soul.  I reckon it was the hardest job he ever did to tell me; and I wouldn’t be telling you except somebody ought to know who’s in a position to help Sylvia—­sort o’ look out for her and protect her.  I believe”—­and she put out her hand and touched his arm lightly—­“I believe I can trust you to do that.”

“Yes, Mrs. Owen.”

She waited until he had answered her, and even then she was silent, lost in thought.

“Professor Kelton didn’t know, Daniel,” she began gravely, “who Sylvia’s father was.”  She minimized the significance of this by continuing rapidly.  “Andrew had quit the Navy soon after the war and came out here to Madison College to teach, and his wife had died and he didn’t know what to do with his daughter.  Edna Kelton was a little headstrong, I reckon, and wanted her own way.  She didn’t like living in a country college town; there wasn’t anything here to interest her.  I won’t tell you all of Andrew’s story, but it boils down to just this, that while Edna was in New York studying music she got married without telling where, or to whom.  Andrew never saw her till she was dying in a hospital and had a little girl with her,—­that’s Sylvia.  Now, whether there was any disgrace about it Andrew didn’t know; and we owe it to that dead woman and to Sylvia to believe it was all right.  You see what I mean, Daniel?  Now that brings me down to what I want you to know.  Somebody has been keeping watch of Sylvia,—­Andrew told me that.”

She was thinking deeply as though pondering just how much more it was necessary to tell him, and before she spoke she picked up the folded paper and read it through carefully.  “When Andrew got this it troubled him a lot:  the idea that somebody had an eye on the girl, and took enough interest in her to do this, made him uneasy.  Sylvia never knew anything about it, of course; she doesn’t know anything about anything, and she won’t ever need to.”