He took his pay in the shape of a bountiful dinner, and--after half an hour's smoke and talk with the farmer, to whom he gave a few pamphlets from the store in his knapsack--said good-bye to all hands and once more set his face northward for the long hike through much wilder country, to West Point, where he hoped to pass the night.
Thus we must leave him, for a while.

For now the thread of our narration, like the silken cord in the Labyrinth of Crete, leads us back to the Country Club at Longmeadow, the scene, that very afternoon, of the sudden and violent rupture between the financier and Catherine Flint.
Catherine, her first indignation somewhat abated, and now vastly relieved at the realization that she indeed was free from her loveless and long-since irksome alliance with Waldron, calmly enough returned to the club-house.

Head well up, and eyes defiant, she walked up the broad steps and into the office.

Little cared she whether the piazza gossips--The Hammer and Anvil Club, in local slang--divined the quarrel or not.

The girl felt herself immeasurably indifferent to such pettinesses as prying small talk and innuendo.