“You seem to have your chance here to put over what you boasted to me about.  You remember making good in a straight way.”

“Yes.  And I shall make good—­if only they will let me alone.”  He paused an instant.  “But I have no illusions about the present,” he went on quietly.  “I’m in quiet water for a time; I’ve got a period of safety; and I’m using this chance to put in some hard work.  But presently the police and Barney and the others will learn where I am.  Then I’ll have all that fight over again—­only the next time it’ll be harder.”

She was startled into a show of interest.  “You think that’s really going to happen?”

“It’s bound to.  There’s no escaping it.  If for no other reason, I myself won’t be able to stand being penned up indefinitely.  Something will happen, I don’t know what, which will pull me out into the open world—­and then for me the deluge!”

He made this prediction grimly.  He was not a fatalist, but it had been borne in upon him recently that this thing was inescapable.  As for him, when that time came, he was going to put up the best fight that was in him.

He caught the strained look which had come into Maggie’s face, and it prompted him suddenly to lean toward her and say: 

“Maggie, do you still think I’m a stool and a squealer?”

“I—­”

She broke off.  She had a surging impulse to go on and say something to Larry.  A great deal.  She was not conscious of what that great deal was.  She was conscious only of the impulse.  There was too great a turmoil within her, begotten by the strain of her visit on Miss Sherwood and these unexpected meetings, for any motive, impulse, or decision to emerge to even a brief supremacy.  And so, during this period when her brain would not operate, she let herself be swept on by the momentum of the forces which had previously determined her direction—­her pride, her self-confidence, her ambition, the alliance of fortune between her and Barney and Old Jimmie.

They were sitting in this silence when footsteps again sounded on the gravel, and a shadow blotted the arbor floor.

“Excuse me, Larry,” said a man’s voice.

“Sure.  What is it, Joe?”

Before her Maggie saw the tall, thin man in overalls, his removed broad-brimmed hat revealing his white hair, whom she had noticed a little earlier working among the flowers.  He held a bunch of the choicest pickings from the abundant rose gardens, their stems bound in maple leaves as temporary protection against their thorns.  He was gazing at Maggie, respectful, hungry admiration in his somber eyes.

“I thought perhaps the young lady might care for these.”  He held out the roses to her.  And then quickly, to forestall refusal:  “I cut out more than we can use for the house.  And I’d like to have you have them.”

“Thank you,” and Maggie took the flowers.

For an instant their eyes held.  In every outward circumstance the event was a commonplace—­this meeting of father and daughter, not knowing each other.  It was hardly more than a commonplace to Maggie:  just a tall, white-haired gardener respectfully offering her roses.  And it was hardly more to Joe Ellison:  just a tribute evoked by his hungry interest in every well-seeming girl of the approximate age of his daughter.