SON OF THE WIND
ance! How could a man tell in what foggy ways he came by his ideas? Evolved them out of his own imagination, perhaps. That was the devilish part of people with imaginations. But there was the man on the road. Certainly that fellow had seemed to have his feet firmly planted on earth, and his eyes sharp for the things of it. Certainly he had betrayed the qualities of the materialist, who will make sure of his fact before he takes it seriously. And had not he looked toward the girl as the keeper of the secret? "Try Raders," he had said. Hadn't he meant, "Try Blanche Rader?" The memory of how those two had looked when they had stood together on the drive, and the fellow had taken the gold piece from her, came back a clear little picture. In the light of his new knowledge the thing had an ugly look. He could see how the man might sell her confidence; but to take the money from her hand! To be sure it had been only a way by which the thing had reached a destination for which it was first intended. But there were ways, Carron thought, which were worse than the object they gained.
He caught himself drifting just on the edge of credulity. So many appearances thrust him there; yet, when he thought, after all, they were but appearance—looks surprised out of faces, at the moment more convincing than a vocabulary, but, as
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