Lucky for him he couldn't, Ellen thought. Where would Mr. Rountree be, after burying Stanley Alban, if Jay had gone his father's way and not taken to people and rowed and played around New London with the Howarths and sailed this race with them?
"Yes; it's up to you," Ellen said, whispering.
"What, d'you figure, can I do about Lew?"
She leaped up and he put up a hand and caught one of hers in surprise at her excitement. "It's late," she cried, explaining. "We must be going back."
Against the evening coolness, and for the night drive to the main road, she gave him a coat of her father's. Ted accompanied them but he stayed with the little car at the crossroad, while Ellen and Jay walked away.
Stars gleamed, the Dipper and Cassiopeia and Andromeda. Were they stale as ever to Lida to-night? Jay wondered. Where was she? And might she send for him to-morrow?
Light spread before the northern stars, a dim, greenish glow creeping up and up; it brightened and became serrated and flowed in folds like a curtain of shining cloth, and one great beam reached and reached toward the zenith. Now the whole curtain moved and shifted its folds; it seemed to crackle. You seemed to see it crackling, not hear it. Light, light glowed and crackled in the sky, and the curtain was shattered; shafts of lights swayed and danced, separated, approached, parted and joined again!
"The dead dance," whispered Ellen. "This is what the Indians say. You can believe it a night like this."
"Suppose Stanley Alban's there?" asked Jay—or Lida's restless soul? This he did not say, nor did he think of
