Jane and Diana stared as if they found it hard to believe their ears.  Parliamentary etiquette, which was generally very strictly enforced in the A.V.I.S., forbade them giving instant vent to their curiosity, but after the Society adjourned Anne was besieged for explanations.  Anne had no explanation to give.  Judson Parker had overtaken her on the road the preceding evening and told her that he had decided to humor the A.V.I.S. in its peculiar prejudice against patent medicine advertisements.  That was all Anne would say, then or ever afterwards, and it was the simple truth; but when Jane Andrews, on her way home, confided to Oliver Sloane her firm belief that there was more behind Judson Parker’s mysterious change of heart than Anne Shirley had revealed, she spoke the truth also.

Anne had been down to old Mrs. Irving’s on the shore road the preceding evening and had come home by a short cut which led her first over the low-lying shore fields, and then through the beech wood below Robert Dickson’s, by a little footpath that ran out to the main road just above the Lake of Shining Waters . . . known to unimaginative people as Barry’s pond.

Two men were sitting in their buggies, reined off to the side of the road, just at the entrance of the path.  One was Judson Parker; the other was Jerry Corcoran, a Newbridge man against whom, as Mrs. Lynde would have told you in eloquent italics, nothing shady had ever been proved. He was an agent for agricultural implements and a prominent personage in matters political.  He had a finger . . . some people said all his fingers . . . in every political pie that was cooked; and as Canada was on the eve of a general election Jerry Corcoran had been a busy man for many weeks, canvassing the county in the interests of his party’s candidate.  Just as Anne emerged from under the overhanging beech boughs she heard Corcoran say, “If you’ll vote for Amesbury, Parker . . . well, I’ve a note for that pair of harrows you’ve got in the spring.  I suppose you wouldn’t object to having it back, eh?”

“We . . . ll, since you put it in that way,” drawled Judson with a grin, “I reckon I might as well do it.  A man must look out for his own interests in these hard times.”

Both saw Anne at this moment and conversation abruptly ceased.  Anne bowed frostily and walked on, with her chin slightly more tilted than usual.  Soon Judson Parker overtook her.

“Have a lift, Anne?” he inquired genially.

“Thank you, no,” said Anne politely, but with a fine, needle-like disdain in her voice that pierced even Judson Parker’s none too sensitive consciousness.  His face reddened and he twitched his reins angrily; but the next second prudential considerations checked him.  He looked uneasily at Anne, as she walked steadily on, glancing neither to the right nor to the left.  Had she heard Corcoran’s unmistakable offer and his own too plain acceptance of it?  Confound Corcoran!  If he couldn’t