Part Four - Neale's Return

July 22. Evening.

He stooped to kiss her and sank down beside her where she sat cowering
in the dark. Although she could not see his face clearly Marise knew
from his manner that he was very tired, from the way he sat down, taking
off his cap, and his attitude as he leaned his head back against the
pillar. She knew this without thinking about it, mechanically, with the
automatic certainty of a long-since acquired knowledge of him. And when
he spoke, although his voice was quiet and level, she felt a great
fatigue in his accent.

But he spoke with his usual natural intonation, which he evidently tried
to make cheerful. "I'm awfully glad you're still up, dear. I was afraid
you'd be too tired, with the funeral coming tomorrow. But I couldn't get
here any sooner. I've been clear over the mountain today. And I've done
a pretty good stroke of business that I'm in a hurry to tell you about.
You remember, don't you, how the Powers lost the title to their big
woodlot? I don't know if you happen to remember all the details, how a
lawyer named Lowder . . ."

"I remember," said Marise, speaking for the first time, "all about it."

"Well," went on Neale, wearily but steadily, "up in Nova Scotia this
time, talking with one of the old women in town, I ran across a local
tradition that, in a town about ten miles inland, some of the families
were descended from Tory Yankees who'd been exiled from New England,
after the Revolution. I thought it was worth looking up, and one day I
ran up there to see if I could find out anything about them. It was
Sunday and I had to . . ."