At the Crossroads

Brace Northrup received the first intimation of his jog when he knocked on the door of a certain little yellow house set rakishly at the crossroads, a few miles from King's Forest.

He began to understand his peculiar mental excitement. Manly was right. All that was needed to bring about complete recovery was detachment and opportunity for his machinery to...

Mary-Clare stood in the doorway of the little yellow house. Her mud-stained clothes gave evidence that the recent storm had not kept her indoors--she was really in a very messy,...

Mary-Clare met Noreen at the brook, smiling and calm. The child was trembling and pale, but the touch of her mother's hand reassured her. It was like waking from a painful dream...

He outlined his plot; read and worked. He felt that he was becoming part of the quiet life of the inn and the Forest, but more and more he was becoming an object of intense but...

When Mary-Clare awoke the next morning she heard Larry still moving about overhead as if he had been doing it all night. He was opening drawers; going to and fro between closet...

Maclin rarely discussed Larry's private affairs with him, but he controlled them, nevertheless, indirectly. His hold on Larry was subtle and far-reaching. It had its beginning i...

Aunt Polly came into the living-room of the inn noiselessly, but Peter, at the fireside, opened his eyes. Nothing could have driven him to bed earlier, but he appeared to have b...

Kathryn Morris, as the days of Northrup's absence stretched into weeks, grew more and more restless. She began to do some serious thinking, and while this developed her mentally...

By a kind of self-hypnotism Northrup had gained his ends so far as drifting with the slow current of King's Forest was concerned, and in his relation toward his book. The unrest...

There had been five days in which to face a rather ugly and bald fact before Northrup again saw Mary-Clare. He had employed the time, he tried to make himself believe, wisely, s...

While the days were passing and Mary-Clare and Northrup, with the book between them as a shield, fought their battle and won their victory, they had taken small heed of the unde...

Northrup decided to turn back at once to his own place in life after that revealing afternoon with Mary-Clare. He was not in any sense deceived by conditions. He had, after twen...

A guilty person, taken by surprise, always imagines the worst. Rivers knew what he believed the man before him knew, he also believed much that Maclin had insinuated, or stated...

She was far more the primitive female than was Mary-Clare. She was simply claiming what she devoutly believed was her own; reclaiming it, rather, for she sagely concluded that o...

"I'm going to buy this Point," he confided, "and I'm going to go away, Twombley. I'm going to leave things exactly as they are until--well, perhaps always. Just consider yoursel...

Northrup arose the next morning before daylight and tried to write a note to Mary-Clare. It was the most difficult thing he had ever undertaken. If he could speak, it would be d...

Noreen and Jan-an late that afternoon returned to the yellow house. They were both rather depressed and forlorn, for they knew that Northrup was gone and had taken away with him...

Once back in the old environment, Northrup went, daily, through the sensations of his haunting dream, without the relief of awakening. The corridor of closed doors was an actual...

"No, Mother, it is conscience. I'm not in the least under an illusion. If I thought of this thing as war--a mere fight--I know I would be glad to avail myself of any honourable...

In King's Forest many strange and awe-inspiring things had happened--but, as far as the Forest people knew, they were so localized that, like a cancer, they were eating in, deep...

Larry, with his superficial gripping of surface things, grew merry and childishly happy. He had paid a debt, God knew. Shocked by the Maclin exposure, he had been roused to dece...

Northrup found his tower room but little changed. The dust lay upon it, and a peace that had not held part during the last days before he went away greeted him. More and more as...