Just what happened from the moment when he leaped upon the portico, wrenching loose a piece of iron pipe which formed the support of a giant wistaria, Jim Dodge could never afterward recall in precise detail.  A sort of wild rage seized him; he struck right and left among the dark figures swarming up the steps.  There were cries, shouts, curses, flying stones; then he had dragged Lydia inside and bolted the heavy door between them and the ugly clamor without.

She faced him where he stood, breathing hard, his back against the barred door.

“They were saying—­” she whispered, her face still and white.  “My God!  What do they think I’ve done?”

“They’re drunk,” he explained.  “It was only a miserable rabble from the barroom in the village.  But if you’d been here alone—!”

She shook her head.

“I recognized the man who spoke first; his name is Parsons.  There were others, too, who worked on the place here in the summer....  They have heard?”

He nodded, unable to speak because of something which rose in his throat choking him.  Then he saw a thin trickle of red oozing from under the fair hair above her temple, and the blood hammered in his ears.

“You are hurt!” he said thickly.  “The devils struck you!”

“It’s nothing—­a stone, perhaps.”

Something in the sorrowful look she gave him broke down the flimsy barrier between them.

“Lydia—­Lydia!” he cried, holding out his arms.

She clung to him like a child.  They stood so for a moment, listening to the sounds from without.  There were still occasional shouts and the altercation of loud, angry voices; but this was momently growing fainter; presently it died away altogether.

She stirred in his arms and he stooped to look into her face.

“I—­Father will be frightened,” she murmured, drawing away from him with a quick decided movement.  “You must let me go.”

“Not until I have told you, Lydia!  I am poor, rough—­not worthy to touch you—­but I love you with my whole heart and soul, Lydia.  You must let me take care of you.  You need me, dear.”

Tears overflowed her eyes, quiet, patient tears; but she answered steadily.

“Can’t you see that I—­I am different from other women?  I have only one thing to live for.  I must go to him....  You had forgotten—­him.”

In vain he protested, arguing his case with all lover’s skill and ingenuity.  She shook her head.

“Sometime you will forgive me that one moment of weakness,” she said sadly.  “I was frightened and—­tired.”

He followed her upstairs in gloomy silence.  The old man, she was telling him hurriedly, would be terrified.  She must reassure him; and tomorrow they would go away together for a long journey.  She could see now that she had made a cruel mistake in bringing him to Brookville.

But there was no answer in response to her repeated tapping at his door; and suddenly the remembrance of that stooping shadow came back to him.