He understood at last the full force of the trouble which engulfed Madeline Taylor and why she had said that it would have been better for her if that mad joy ride with him had ended life for her.  The doctor had gone to her as he had promised and had extracted the whole miserable story.  It seemed Madeline had married, or thought she had married, Willis Hubbard against her grandfather’s express command, a few weeks after Ted had parted from her in Holyoke.  In less than two months Hubbard had disappeared leaving behind him the ugly fact that he already had one wife living in Kansas City in spite of the pretense of a wedding ceremony which he had gone through with Madeline.  Long since disillusioned but still having power and pride to suffer intensely the latter found herself in the tragic position of being-a wife and yet no wife.  In her desperate plight she besought her grandfather’s clemency and forgiveness but that rigid old covenanter had declared that even as she had made her bed in willful disobedience to his command so she should lie on it for all of him.

It was then that she had turned as a last resort to Ted Holiday though always hoping against hope that she could keep the real truth of her unhappy situation from him.

“It is a bad affair from beginning to end,” wrote the doctor.  “I’d like to break every rotten bone in that scoundrel’s body but he has taken mighty good care to effect a complete disappearance.  That kind is never willing to foot the bills for their own villainy.  I am telling you the story in order to make it perfectly clear that you are to keep out of the business from now on.  You have burned your fingers quite enough as it is I gather.  Don’t see the girl.  Don’t write her.  Don’t telephone her.  Let her alone absolutely.  Mind, these aren’t polite requests.  They are orders.  And if you don’t obey them I’ll turn the whole thing over to your uncle double quick and I don’t think you want me to do that.  Don’t worry about the girl.  I’ll look after her now and later when she is likely to need me more.  But you keep hands off.  That is flat—­the girl’s wish as well as my orders.”

And this was what Ted Holiday had to carry about with him all that bleak day and a half sleepless, uneasy night.  And in the morning he was summoned home to the House on the Hill.  Granny was dying.

CHAPTER XXVIII

IN DARK PLACES

The House on the Hill was a strange place to Tony and Ted those November days, stranger than to the others who had walked day by day with the sense of the approaching shadow always with them.  Death itself was an awesome and unaccustomed thing to them.  They did not see how the others bore it so well, took it all so calmly.  To make matters worse, Uncle Phil who never failed any one was stricken down with a bad case of influenza and was unable to leave his bed.  This of course made Margery also practically hors de combat.  The little folks spent most of their time across the street in motherly Mrs. Lambert’s care.  Upon Ned Holiday’s children rested the chief burden of the hour.