This incident with David Brown and the getting possession of his chart was the one stimulant that helped Ann to endure this long day of inactivity.  It was like a small thimbleful of wine to one who longed for a generous draught; there was nothing else to do but to wait, alert for all chances that might help her.  Evening closed in; the sisters were left alone.  Christa returned indolently to lounging upon the bed and reading her novel.  If Ann had had less strength, she would have paced the floor of the outer room in impatience; as it was she sat still by the table which held the beer and stitched her seam diligently.  About eight o’clock she heard Toyner’s step.

Was he going to haunt the house again in order to keep her from going out of it?

He came up to the door and came in.

She was preparing herself to act just as if she did not know who had come, and did not take much notice of him; but when he came up and she looked at his face in the lamp-light, she saw written in it the struggle that he had gone through.  Its exact nature and detail she was incapable of conceiving, but one glance proved to her its reality.  She was struck by the consciousness of meeting an element in life which was wholly new to her.  When such a thing forces itself upon our attention, however indefinite and unexpressed may be our thought, it is an experience never to be forgotten.  Ann fought against her conviction.  She began at once, as intelligent humanity always does, to explain away what she did not understand, supposing by that means that she could do away with its existence.

“I think you are ill, Bart,” she said quickly.  “It looks to me as if you were in for a bout of chills; and enough to give it to you too, hanging about in the woods all night.”

He drew a chair close to the table and sat down beside her.

“There isn’t any chills in the swamps about here,” he said; “they are as wholesome as dry land is.”  She saw by this that he had no intention of upbraiding her with his fall, or of proclaiming the object of his visit.  She wanted to rouse him into telling her something.

“I heard them saying something about you to-day that I didn’t believe a bit.  I heard you were in the saloon drinking.”

He took hold of the end of her seam, passed his finger along it as if examining the fabric and the stitches.  “I took one glass,” he said, with the curious quiet gravity which lay to-night like a spell upon all his words and actions.

“Well,” she said cheerily, “I don’t believe in a man making a slave of himself, not to take a glass when he wants it just because he sometimes makes a beast of himself by taking more than he ought.”

“If you choose to think black is white, Ann, it will not make it that way.”

“That’s true,” she replied compliantly; “and you’ve got more call to know than I have, for I’ve never ‘been there.’”

“God forbid!” he said with sudden intensity.  All the habits of thought of the last year put strength into his words.  “If I thought you ever could be ‘there,’ Ann, it’s nothing to say that I’d die to save you from it.”